Is emulation development slowing down?

[Keatah]

Do you think emulation development is seeing a significant slowdown..?

 

Systems like the VCS seem to be fairly well represented and complete and (to me) it seems all that is left is fixing minor bugs and UI polishing and the like.

 

Classic computers like the 400/800, Apple II, C64 & VIC-20, those are different beast. They have expansion ports with all sorts of goodies to be plugged in and so on and so forth. A lot of these peripherals have yet to be emulated.

 

So what do you think?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Actually Stella needs a full rewrite of the TIA emulation.

 

Currently it works with (almost) all known scenarios, but it frequently fails for unknown scenarios. This is because Stella is simulating the TIA behavior instead of really emulating it. Stephen is looking for volunteers which want to help him there.

Edited March 17, 2015 by Thomas Jentzsch

[Arbee]

I was under the impression that the TIA rewrite was actually happening, and that Carl (crazyc) from MESS was participating. If that's not correct, I'll go slap him around a bit

 

Emulation of new arcade games is slow because what's left is primarily PC-based, oftentimes running on faster PCs than people care to run MAME itself on (e.g. Intel's new Atom stick). PC emulation is a bit soulless compared to the stuff MAME was cranking out in the glory years so it's harder to get psyched up for.

 

Regarding the emulation of wacky peripherals for classic computers: I've been on it for a while, subject to the necessity of having (at bare minimum) a dump of any (P)ROMs on the card/peripheral and a list of chips. (A hi-res photo with readable chip labels works too). The Apple II Documentation Project has been super, super helpful for that on the Apple II, and Commodore fans seem to have equally comprehensive sites for C64 and Amiga cards and peripherals (we've started emulating a few Amiga Zorro cards in MESS, for instance).

[Thomas Jentzsch]

No, AFAIK noone in currently working on a TIA rewrite.

Edited April 2, 2015 by Thomas Jentzsch

[Keatah]

Emulation of new arcade games is slow because what's left is primarily PC-based, oftentimes running on faster PCs than people care to run MAME itself on (e.g. Intel's new Atom stick). PC emulation is a bit soulless compared to the stuff MAME was cranking out in the glory years so it's harder to get psyched up for.

 

Agree. I even wonder if emulation is needed in that area? Perhaps a way of running the game software, os, protection, and all that is all that's needed. More like a patch. If the hardware is the same...? Know what I'm a-saying? Why go through all the trouble of emulating that when it could just be run natively?

 

Are you talking about intel's Compute Stick thing?

[Keatah]

PC-based arcade games? They mean absolutely nothing to me, and are worse than those fighting game things.

[Arbee]

There *are* patches to run many of those games on PCs, if you have 32-bit XP (which is what most PC-based games shipped on). The existence of those patches makes it very, very difficult to get clean, unpacked dumps of the games without trainers and crack intros and the whole nine yards. (And they also cause the manufacturers to double down on copy-protection features). A couple of the games run Linux instead and are relatively unmolested. Anyway, 32-bit x86 and Windows XP are both past-their-sell-by-date technologies so those patches will be worthless (at least on brand new PCs) probably by the end of the decade.

 

Thus MAMEdev sees farther: we intend MAME to be what Mr. Spock is actually playing when he's got his head down in that viewer thing, which means actually emulating PCs for the glorious future when PCs don't exist and everyone uses a 512-bit optical-chip-based Apple II.

[Trebor]

I was under the impression that the TIA rewrite was actually happening, and that Carl (crazyc) from MESS was participating. If that's not correct, I'll go slap him around a bit

Whenever the TIA rewrite takes place, it will be *very* much appreciated. In the meantime, unfortunately, there are issues outside of TIA impacting MESS emulation of the 2600. Haunted House, a 'staple' game of the system's library, still doesn't display or play properly due to issues with a (relatively) new 6502 core [?]

 

Do you think emulation development is seeing a significant slowdown..? ... So what do you think?

 

While emulation development overall for a variety systems has left some (many) content enough, with one or several options to scratch that nostalgic itch or subjective standard set to one's own preference/interest; there's still a significant amount of work left, IMHO. Nonetheless, I do agree to an extent with the "slowdown" assessment and observation overall.

 

The mid-late 90's and early 2000's to about the mid 2000's, were the most exciting times and seemingly most active times, when it came to the emulation 'scene'. Part of what we are seeing now, as time goes on, is more of a 'hardcore' crowd remaining, and obviously those who interest still lies in the subject. People changing over time includes some leaving (classic) gaming (emulation), or at least development in it, behind...For better or for worse.

 

Additionally, many are content with just a 'Flashback' / Plug and Play type 'ported' option too.