Writting a book wana help me ?

[russ]

I wish to ask for help from anyone Who is interested in helping me gather infromation for a book i am Writting to be published to the internet for free

for those who wish to read it and to preserve what i feel is an important Event in computer history that i wish to not be lost in the passage of time.

 

The book will be a complete History of Emulation basicly i am looking for help in getting information on the Who, What and why of Emulation from people Who are Actively Developing Emulators Their Educational backgrounds and so forth as well as thier Personal views and reasons Why on they decided to Write an emulator or participate in it's creation i am also open to Any information from experts Who have emulated or are still Emulating computers,games,calculators so if you have the time and would like to help me Email me a Brief description of yourself what your current project is and why you are doing it and so forth i thank you in advance

 

Scincerly Russell Morton (Email: Russell_m9@hotmail.com

[Keatah]

Has there been any progress on this? Or maybe we need to start a fresh one since 12 years have passed and there have been hundreds of new developments.

[Brian O]

LOL

[Bill Loguidice]

As an author who knows a thing or two about what it takes to write a proper book, I have to admit it bothers me when people who can't write think they'll just whip up something worth publishing. It particularly bothers me when they have access to important resources that could use a proper literary treatment, though that was clearly not the case here. Based on the litany of typos and grammatical issues in the topic post, I'm rather glad this seemingly didn't get beyond the initial posting in 2002.

[+Gemintronic]

As an author who knows a thing or two about what it takes to write a proper book, I have to admit it bothers me when people who can't write think they'll just whip up something worth publishing. It particularly bothers me when they have access to important resources that could use a proper literary treatment, though that was clearly not the case here. Based on the litany of typos and grammatical issues in the topic post, I'm rather glad this seemingly didn't get beyond the initial posting in 2002.

 

No love for emulation? I think it has many interesting stories to tell.

http://patpend.net/articles/ar/sil10.html

 

P.S. I already know I must have misunderstood your meaning. I just had to ask the question anyway

[VectorGamer]

Pleez help me writt a book on emulashion

[Bill Loguidice]

 

No love for emulation? I think it has many interesting stories to tell.

http://patpend.net/articles/ar/sil10.html

 

P.S. I already know I must have misunderstood your meaning. I just had to ask the question anyway

 

Yes, but I meant access to unique resources, i.e., not the same resources we all have access to. Naturally, conducting research and interviews is standard for this stuff, but not necessarily to specific people or archives that might otherwise be restricted or unavailable. Also, when a book is written the first time on a subject and it's crafted poorly, it makes it more difficult (in various ways, from commercial reasons to legitimacy to access to resources) for future works on the topic to see release.

[Keatah]

I was hoping that during the past 15 years emulation would have gained a wider audience. A greater acceptance. There's a persistent band of hobbyists seemingly always bashing these programs. Their constant drivel is that emulators are not original hardware. It's tiring. Too bad, some of these emulators exhibit wonderful technique and great prowess in what they do. Not only that, but they can expand the classic gaming experience to thousands upon thousands of folks.

 

And one thing I always say, emulation may very well become the only way to preserve the games across the generations. You may argue that collectors do the same. Pffaaagghh!! That's a load. And it stinks. They're hoarders. And, sure, I can drive 45 miles to the nearest operational Tempest machine. And upon arriving I could be confronted with a unit that is in-op or down for maintenance, has flaky controls, has a distorted monitor - any number of things. Not only that, but I'd have to leave my cozy alcove, go out in sub-zero weather, on a time schedule that isn't all mine.. MAME eliminates all that. MAME runs on reliable hardware that can be purchased from Wal-Mart.

 

Sure some folks may liken the classic gaming experience to the classic car experience. Ain't nothing like RoadRunner. But do you want to use that RoadRunner for daily driving in a grinding commute - and still keep it pristine? Soon enough you want to make it a weekend car and get something for daily use, something efficient and low-maintenance. Something you don't mind getting all full of road grime and salt. This daily driver would be the emulator.

 

I feel that any book written on the history of emulation would need to include interviews of the programmers as well as the users. Things like time spent on development must be discussed. Things like how an end user uses the emus must also be talked about. End user experience, the joys of seeing an old classic game again after 35 years. The trials and tribulations of getting them set up. The success of integrating them into a home theater environment, and much more.

[atarilovesyou]

This original post was such troll bait, lol! Kudos to the forum for not biting. I agree with Keetah, even though I'm an original equipment guy (for software, anyway)I can see his point.

[+Gemintronic]

Emulation has always been magical to me. Transforming one computer into another is awesome! Despite drastic architecture differences between the N64 and PCs emulator developers figured out that games used specific APIs much of the time. By emulating the high level behavior of these common routines programs like UltraHLE were amazingly fast.

[Bill Loguidice]

Certainly in the book "Vintage Game Consoles" we mention emulators and emulation as part of a particular platform's modern scene, but we don't go into the history of emulation or its development. There have actually been rumblings in publishing circles over the years about books focused on the "how to's" of emulation (since getting started is a challenge for some), but it's a bit of a challenge because of the issue of the legality (and general availability) of ROMs. Precious few platforms have ROMs that are free and clear for legal download and sites that do carry them go up and down all the time. I've also shied away from going into more details in the two books I've done where it would have been relevant (Vintage Games and Vintage Game Consoles) because how-to's and specifically finding ROMs were too far out of scope.

The other issue of course is getting enough material to fill a book. Certainly descriptions of emulators and how tos are fine (if a bit mundane and potentially quickly out-of-date), but I wonder out loud how many developers/hosts really want the exposure of a true history. I'm not a fan of pseudonyms either. Featuring "emulationmaster123" in a book is a lot different than "Jeffrey Beamer."

[Brian O]

Lim dis if u cry evry tim.

[jhd]

One could (at least partially) get around the grey-area legal issues by discussing only those emulator projects that have been commercially released for one or another platform.

 

The first Activision Action Pack was released in about 1995, there were (at least) two licensed Microsoft arcade compilations (.e.g. Pac Man, Asteroids, Dig Dug) for Windows 3.1 about the same time, and a Williams arcade collection shortly thereafter.

 

The original PlayStation had several commercial emulators (2600, Intellivision, many arcade games); the Sega Genesis received the Arcade Classics compilation in 1996, though I do not know if that was emulation or a port.

 

Jeff Vavasour's website has some interesting commentary on the projects that he worked on (which seems to include most of the early commercial emulators):

http://www.vavasour.ca/jeff/games.html

[+Gemintronic]

I don't know if leagality or developer ambiguity is much of an issue nowadays. One only has to look at pdroms.de for a plethora of homebrew for almost every platform.

 

Doing the right thing and making your own backups has never been easier thanks to the Retrode and Kazoo boards.

[Bill Loguidice]

Again, to me, I think the developer/development history aspect for the major emulators has some value, but I think the general "emulation" subject matter may have too niche of an appeal without the right angle. I do think the best angle and the best chance at selling in reasonable numbers is the "how to" angle, with maybe a brief history section that relies on developer interviews (and of course gives a brief background on the platforms' history and technical capabilities). I could see focusing on say, the 5 - 10 biggest emulators and make sure their use on multiple platforms (through their variants) is well covered/documented (probably the biggest section of the book, and one of the five, would be MESS, though now that I think about it, it would probably be sufficient to do a whole book on MESS and MAME by themselves, particularly since the former's reach is so expansive). I suspect with that angle, I believe it might - just possibly - sell in sufficient numbers (say a few thousand copies over its lifetime) where a traditional publisher might express some interest.

[+Gemintronic]

You'd probably have to sell it as a book to guide people through the process of building their own dream mame/emulation station. Sprinkle in some history as seasoning.

[Bill Loguidice]

You'd probably have to sell it as a book to guide people through the process of building their own dream mame/emulation station. Sprinkle in some history as seasoning.

 

I think those are two different books and two different audiences. The audience that wants to build a dream MAME/emulation station is probably going to go the arcade machine route. There are plenty of books for building your own cab, plus I would hope that audience is sophisticated enough to learn the ins and outs of the emulation on their own.

 

The audience I was thinking of was the person who wanted to set up emulation on their computers and handheld devices (primarily Android, since iOS is fairly closed to anything that's not turnkey). It could be done in a way to tap into the more casual nostalgia crowd that isn't necessarily motivated enough to do all the legwork on their own but would still love to play all the old games.

Of course, with all of the above in mind, it's getting to the point where doing emulation within your Web browser straight from various Websites with a click or two is just about the easiest possible thing to do, with the quality improving all of the time (and it will continue to improve as code gets better and the client hardware gets faster). So yeah, I think I just talked myself out of the need for it at all...

[+Gemintronic]

it's getting to the point where doing emulation within your Web browser straight from various Websites with a click or two is just about the easiest possible thing to do

 

Indeed! One of my tabs is from www.classicdosgames.com where I'm playing Moraff's Revenge.

[atarilovesyou]

This thread reminds me of a book I was going to buy at Chapters about how to build your own 'arcade dream machine'. By the time I finally came around to buying it, I found a copy at the library....after which I read the Amazon reviews, which I find very helpful in sorting the good from the bad. As it turned out, the book was only about three years old but almost ALL the links to software suppliers, equipment, anything to do with MAME, were all out of date. The only thing it was good for was a few carpentry tutorials, which can be found for free in any decent forum. It was a very nice looking and I'm sure it was useful for the six months or so that it was relevant to the emulators of the time, but I doubt I'd go the hard copy book route for such a project. Although having all the information in one spot would make things a lot easier! I still would like to do the MAME cabinet at home 'right', but time isn't really on my side lately.

 

I wouldn't buy a book on emulators, but I would buy your book, Bill. It looks very well put together, and I wish you the best with it.

[Bill Loguidice]

This thread reminds me of a book I was going to buy at Chapters about how to build your own 'arcade dream machine'. By the time I finally came around to buying it, I found a copy at the library....after which I read the Amazon reviews, which I find very helpful in sorting the good from the bad. As it turned out, the book was only about three years old but almost ALL the links to software suppliers, equipment, anything to do with MAME, were all out of date. The only thing it was good for was a few carpentry tutorials, which can be found for free in any decent forum. It was a very nice looking and I'm sure it was useful for the six months or so that it was relevant to the emulators of the time, but I doubt I'd go the hard copy book route for such a project. Although having all the information in one spot would make things a lot easier! I still would like to do the MAME cabinet at home 'right', but time isn't really on my side lately.

 

I wouldn't buy a book on emulators, but I would buy your book, Bill. It looks very well put together, and I wish you the best with it.

 

Good points. Yeah, I think that's a danger. Right now, for instance, my wife and I are trying to wrap up a book on the Xbox One, and it's been extremely difficult to try and stay on top of all the updates prior to us having to turn it all in on Monday. That's the "problem" with today's electronics -- they're constantly being improved, so they're moving targets for documentation. Our "My PlayStation Vita" book is not that old (November 2012 pub.), but it's already mostly out-of-date. I think the publishing model for these types of books will have to change dramatically in the future.

 

With that said, books like "Vintage Games" (2008), "CoCo: The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer" (2013), and "Vintage Game Consoles" (2013), really don't become out-of-date, since they talk about things that are in the past and the modern scene that doesn't really change much (homebrew stuff is talked about in all of those books, but in a way that is not all-inclusive, so it really doesn't matter if it doesn't mention the latest and greatest stuff because the reader is armed with enough info to find out about it if he or she so chooses). To put it another way, those books simply run their commercial courses rather than stop selling because it's out of date. Obviously, considering all of the effort these take, I'd much rather write books that have a 5+ year shelf life, than a book that has a shelf life of a year or less.

 

Anyway, thanks for the support. I appreciate it.

[+Gemintronic]

 

Good points. Yeah, I think that's a danger. Right now, for instance, my wife and I are trying to wrap up a book on the Xbox One, and it's been extremely difficult to try and stay on top of all the updates prior to us having to turn it all in on Monday.

 

The solution would be easier access to yet-to-be-released changes from Microsoft. Unfortunately, I would assume that early access also would mean M$ wanting some sort of editorial control.

[Bill Loguidice]

 

The solution would be easier access to yet-to-be-released changes from Microsoft. Unfortunately, I would assume that early access also would mean M$ wanting some sort of editorial control.

 

We've never been able to get special access from major companies like Nintendo, Microsoft, or Sony for any of our books. They pretty much just avoid doing anything like that these days. You'd need a pre-existing relationship to have any shot at that these days. The only time we got something approaching privileged access was from HP when we were working on a book on the TouchPad. They gave us two loaner tablets and some accessories. Of course, the book ended up being canceled when HP canceled production rather quickly after launch. Otherwise, all materials for every other book have been purchased by us like anyone else from stores out of our own pockets.

[VectorGamer]

I like how a soon to be 12 year old troll thread still has life...

[Keatah]

I see nothing "troll thread" about this. But the thread can now provide additional insights into the world of professional publishing, as there is a pro-level author participating.

 

IMHO - I think people like to pick up "situations" like this (a 12 year old revived thread) just to pick them up. Reminds me of the grammar police.

[Keatah]

I recall back in the day, printed books describing single-board computers.. They were written "generically-enough" that they remained relevant throughout the lifecycle of the hardware. They were technically biased, and tech specs usually don't change. The material remains relevant today as a layperson's reference.

 

Back then we didn't have the internet, so almost any source of information was welcome. Today a physical printed book may not be the best method of delivery. Not with things becoming dated in a matter of days or weeks. Once a platform has run its course, did all it was going to do, and all that, then maybe a historical recount would be appropriate. IDK!!