Retroblox

[thetick1]

I suppose it's possible that Mednafen's author could be contractually forbidden from incorporating work done specifically for the Polymega's emulation, but it's just another thing that makes me wonder exactly what hardware they were running to produce those videos.

 

Wow that is beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt. There certainly is a reason why you don't see the bootup screen. Only the game playing is shown. We all know why.

 

I know we are not supposed to post any personal details.. but just lookup Playmaji on LinkedIn and you can read all about the douchebag CEO crook. He's all bullshit with no products delivered. A certified Scrum Master.. woohoo!

 

"I'm a creative leader with over a decade of experience leading project teams ranging from small to really big. I believe in the mission of digital but I love the disconnected world equally. I believe productivity tools will never be more valuable than a face to face conversation. I believe you can have it fast/cheap/good, but pick two. I don't believe in work-life balance because if you need balance, you're probably not doing what you love."

Edited January 17, 2019 by thetick1

[cybercylon]

I didn't bother looking this person up, but that is supposed the "elevator speech", sales pitch? Reads like nonsense to me.

[godslabrat]

"Fast/cheap/good, pick two".

 

Well, PolyMega isn't getting here fast, and it's not especially cheap. Calling it "good" would require considerable benefit of the doubt. Dude, you're not even scoring one out of three, much less two.

[DurradonXylles]

I suppose it's possible that Mednafen's author could be contractually forbidden from incorporating work done specifically for the Polymega's emulation, but it's just another thing that makes me wonder exactly what hardware they were running to produce those videos.

 

Wow that is beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt. There certainly is a reason why you don't see the bootup screen. Only the game playing is shown. We all know why.

 

 

Well... Something I left out from my previous diatribe about Playmaji and Polymega is that on top of the Saturn emulation showcase videos with the menu UI is that none of the Saturn games are actually booted up; they are only started up via loading save states. Ryphecha, author of the beetle-Saturn core and one of the heads of the Mednafen team AFAIK, never created an HLE BIOS option for the core. You NEED a copy of the BIOS from a Saturn console to even use it, a little detail Playmaji conveniently forgot to mention when they revealed to use Mednafen's Saturn core in the Polymega.

 

They did say in one of their replies to me on Twitter that the console will default to using HLE (or high level emulation) BIOS, with the option to provide your own official BIOS if wanted, but rewriting a significant part of an emulator made for a disc-based console takes a lot of doing to allow for that. Not to mention, HLE BIOS replacement for emulation suck. Compatibility and stability go straight out the window, with many games unable to boot and the ones that can have errors out the wazoo. I can guarantee you that you won't get the smooth performance out of those games they showed in their demos. Especially not the smoothness of the arcade version of Sega Rally that they "accidentally" included in the original cut of their Saturn reveal trailer.

 

So, yeah, the reason none of the games are shown booting up is because they actually haven't rewritten a good chunk of Ryphecha's work on beetle-Saturn and are attempting to cover up this fact by only showing the games starting up from save states in their videos.

 

As for the Mednafen team being contractually forbidden from using any forked changes for Playmaji, it's possible since licensing agreement and commission for commercial projects often have such agreements about code usage in place, but seeing how little the company has to show for it, then or now, I doubt we have to worry about that.

[Silanda]

 

Wow that is beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt. There certainly is a reason why you don't see the bootup screen. Only the game playing is shown. We all know why.

 

It's not that I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, it's that I'm erring on the side of caution because I could be publicly drawing conclusions with insufficient evidence, and I don't like doing that.

 

I'm drawing the conclusion that the lack of recent significant improvement to Mednafen's Saturn emulation suggests that the talk of a perfect and optimised Saturn emulator is unlikely as I would have expected to see the improvements rolled back into Mednafen releases. That might not have been too clear in my previous post. I'm being cautious as I have no insight into Mednafen's development, so I could be talking out of my arse. To be clear, I think Playmaji have been less than truthful in the best case scenario.

[Flojomojo]

It's not that I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, it's that I'm erring on the side of caution because I could be publicly drawing conclusions with insufficient evidence, and I don't like doing that.

 

That's literally the definition of giving them the benefit of the doubt. They've haven't shown any evidence that they've built what they said they did. When you say "maybe they haven't shown us everything," you're erring on the side of believing their promises, even though you have zero reason to do so.

 

FLOJOMOJO'S PRINCIPLE: Assume all vaporware is bullshit unless proven otherwise.

 

Hasn't failed me yet!

[godslabrat]

The problem is, at multiple steps along the way, Playmaji has said they had something when their later actions proved they did not have what they claimed. At what point are we supposed to believe they've STARTED being truthful?

[DurradonXylles]

FLOJOMOJO'S PRINCIPLE: Assume all vaporware is bullshit unless proven otherwise.

 

Hasn't failed me yet!

 

The problem is, at multiple steps along the way, Playmaji has said they had something when their later actions proved they did not have what they claimed. At what point are we supposed to believe they've STARTED being truthful?

 

Preach brothers! In all seriousness, Playmaji, like multiple other console project creators before them, have the ball in their court to prove us wrong. They insist we're being unrealistically pessimistic, but that's what Atari SA, Fergal Mac, Smach, PGS, and even our own Mike Kennedy said, in one form or another, before being proven to be full of shit and thus called out on their bullshit. Burden of proof lies in your hands as project creators because you're the ones asking for money before there's a product with your name on it on store shelves. You're asking us, the John and Jane Q. Publics of the world, to put our cash and faith in you. Benefit of the doubt is earned through actions, not advertising jargon; failure to recognize that shows a lack of competency at absolute best.

[Silanda]

 

That's literally the definition of giving them the benefit of the doubt. They've haven't shown any evidence that they've built what they said they did. When you say "maybe they haven't shown us everything," you're erring on the side of believing their promises, even though you have zero reason to do so.

 

For the record, I suspect they have shown us everything they've got, hence their refusal to post videos of actual hardware in operation and periods of radio silence, and I question whether they will be able to deliver what was promised.

 

However, I was talking about the non-zero possibility that any developments for Polymega contractually could not be incorporated into Mednafen, and therefore my suggestion that Mednafen's lack of Saturn improvement could throw further doubt on whether it could run on the proposed hardware probably isn't evidence even though I suspect that I'm right. Whether Polymega's a scam or not though, based on the deleted tweets and comment on Mednafen's board, Ryphecha has almost certainly worked on its emulation and could be contractually bound to not use that work elsewhere or for a certain amount of time.

 

What I posted is not about giving Playmaji the benefit of the doubt, it's just honest acknowledgement that my suspicion is only a suspicion, has possible alternate explanations, and proves nothing. Based on what they've shown and what they haven't, I wouldn't put a cent towards Polymega and would advise that no-one else does. However, libel and slander laws are real, and I'd rather avoid publicly accusing a company of being liars and scam artists unless I can prove it, or suggest that something is proof of them being that when it's not. To quote "A Few Good Men": it doesn't matter what I believe, it only matters what I can prove.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Silanda

[DurradonXylles]

What I posted is not about giving Playmaji the benefit of the doubt, it's just honest acknowledgement that my suspicion is only a suspicion, has possible alternate explanations, and proves nothing. Based on what they've shown and what they haven't, I wouldn't put a cent towards Polymega and would advise that no-one else does. However, libel and slander laws are real, and I'd rather avoid publicly accusing a company of being liars and scam artists unless I can prove it.

 

Funny thing about libel laws, they can only be applied if it's proven that baseless slander is being used, and while some companies and people have threatened to sue for such it's usually to strong arm critics. Other than saying that they're full of shit, which is a blanket statement and cannot be easily proven to be libel, most people here have not duly slandered the man or made personal attacks on him or his character. Here's what has been said though.

 

Playmaji currently has no working prototypes of the Polymega that have been publicly shown based off of their current hardware specs, only the ARM-based proof-of-concept unit shown twice over the course of two years before the hardware architecture changeover in July of 2018.

 

Playmaji have promised multiple times to show videos of the current hardware working, and as of January 17, 2019, about half-a-year after announcing the large changes to hardware, have failed to do so.

 

The videos showing Saturn games working only show games started up from the menu UI via save states, not even showing the console's boot sequence, and even incorrectly shown the arcade version of one of the games shown off in one of their first videos showing off the supposed capability.

 

Have publicly announced they're working with Ryphecha and Mednafen once, with a tweet that makes their relationship with the team sound personal and not professional, and Ryphecha denounced that tweet on Mednafen's forums causing Playmaji to take that tweet down. Since then, they've kept this open secret quiet, but won't deny the usage of beetle-Saturn on social media.

 

Rob Wyatt, designer of the OG Xbox and currently shacked up with Atari on their VCS project as head of hardware architecture R&D, was one of the men who originally conceived the hybrid emulation tech that was patented for the Polymega, and both he and the second CTO of Playmaji as well as the man responsible for the development of the in-house emulation software left due to Playmaji's head being a horrible and unreasonable boss (former CTO's words, not mine).

 

Peter Kitsch, hired photographer and shill for the Polymega, cannot and/or will not go into detail about the console working other than, "I've tried it and it works."

 

Playmaji had completely forgone a trusted crowdfunding website altogether like Kickstarter or IndieGogo, and has taken money directly. They also extended the "preorder campaign" a month since they were not able to reach their goal in the 30 days they originally were planning on taking money for.

 

The purport to have a manufacturing facility where the Polymega is made, even showing a video to that effect, yet still doesn't have a working unit to show off and used the excuse of device manufacture as for the reason they've been mostly quiet since they barely went over their $500k goal back in November.

 

They have a planned release date of April 1st. No joke. Even if they think that they can successfully R&D the hardware and software for a project they effectively started over from scratch eight months before, which is ballsy and unrealistic to say the least, they decided to have the release date on a day known for cruel tricks.

 

Sure, none of those factors are smoking guns for the Polymega being a scam, but they currently hold over $500k of publicly invested cash, as well as at least another $1 million of angel investor money on top of that, with literally nothing to show for it two and a half months prior to their projected release date. That's alarming to say the least.

[Flojomojo]

SEGA has publicly stated that they want to bring Saturn and Dreamcast games to SEGA Forever, which to date has mostly included Megadrive ports. They have stated that Panzer Dragoon is expected before the end of the year. They have delivered remakes of old arcade games under the SEGA AGES name on the Switch. They seem like they do not grant permission to their stuff to just anyone.

 

If I were the author of Mednafen, would I sign an exclusive agreement with the weenies at PolyMeataMega, or with SEGA themselves? Only an exclusive deal would add any value to the Retroblox project, and only SEGA has shown that they actually pay their bills and follow through.

 

If posting opinions, based on observable events, under a pseudonym, in a forum about nerdy old games, constitutes "libel and slander" then I guess we'd all better watch our backs!

[Silanda]

 

Funny thing about libel laws, they can only be applied if it's proven that baseless slander is being used, and while some companies and people have threatened to sue for such it's usually to strong arm critics. Other than saying that they're full of shit, which is a blanket statement and cannot be easily proven to be libel, most people here have not duly slandered the man or made personal attacks on him or his character.

 

I'm in the UK. Our courts have been abused for libel and slander cases as AFAIK our law demands that those accused prove that they haven't libelled or slandered the complainant rather than the complainant having to prove their case against the accused. I think that the Polymega smells very off, but I'm cautious about making accusations as if from a position of authority because of that. I'm probably being paranoid, but hey ho.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Silanda

[Flojomojo]

Oh no! You've helped them narrow down your location!!

[Silanda]

Oh no! You've helped them narrow down your location!!

 

I know. I'm barricading my doors and looking out from the roof just in case a legal strike team is inbound.

[atm94404]

 

Playmaji had completely forgone a trusted crowdfunding website altogether like Kickstarter or IndieGogo, and has taken money directly. They also extended the "preorder campaign" a month since they were not able to reach their goal in the 30 days they originally were planning on taking money for.

 

The purport to have a manufacturing facility where the Polymega is made, even showing a video to that effect, yet still doesn't have a working unit to show off and used the excuse of device manufacture as for the reason they've been mostly quiet since they barely went over their $500k goal back in November.

 

Putting those two points together, we only have Playmaji's word they reached the $500,000 goal. The original deadline was supposedly necessary to determine the interest and viability for the project, so extending the deadline was for what reason? Would interest suddenly change? The only logical reason was to give them an extra chance to reach the arbitrary $500,000 that would allow them to keep everyone's money and allow them until April 1st until most people could start demanding either a product or a refund. And that date just happens to be past most (every?) credit card's cutoff date for disputing charges. I'm surprised that on the last day of the second deadline, their webpage counter didn't just tick over to $500,000.01.

Edited January 17, 2019 by atm94404

[Flojomojo]

Putting those two points together, we only have Playmaji's word they reached the $500,000 goal.

 

That's a good point. As much as we deride them, crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo do provide a thin layer of respectability and trust to a project. The project owners may keep your money and fail to deliver, but at least you can more or less trust that the numbers are solid and backed by paying customers.

[godslabrat]

We're due for another round of "I think they just have poor communication skills, that's all." Be on the lookout for some poster who just joined and only posts in this exact thread.

[Flojomojo]

Maybe they started with good intentions, but it looks like they're trying to cover up criticism and erase history. They took their forums offline, and the latest Wayback snapshot is several months old.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20180705100427/polymega.com/forums/forum/community/general/

 

The Hater Brigade will have to step up its archiving and screen capture efforts. It's no good when a slippery con can get away with saying, "I never said that."

 

[godslabrat]

The forum was ostensibly taken offline so they could replace it with one that better integrated into their console ecosystem. Since the social media platform was a stretch goal that was never met, is that their excuse for not replacing it?

 

Regardless, I think it's far more plausible that the forum was a liability PolyMega couldn't afford.

[Flojomojo]

The forum was ostensibly taken offline so they could replace it with one that better integrated into their console ecosystem.

 

[godslabrat]

I wonder what PolyMega's marketing Schlub is up to? Maybe I'm being too hard on him. He's probably a distinguished professional with a lot of insight.

 

 

 

....oh.

[thetick1]

I wonder what PolyMega's marketing Schlub is up to? Maybe I'm being too hard on him. He's probably a distinguished professional with a lot of insight.

 

3283127C-D91A-4F00-A15C-8CA2DAA905FF.jpeg

 

 

....oh.

 

What a dork ...

Edited January 23, 2019 by thetick1

[derFunkenstein]

The forum was ostensibly taken offline so they could replace it with one that better integrated into their console ecosystem.

They've succeeded. The forum is nonexistent, and so is the rest of their presence online.

[godslabrat]

Here's how I see this going down, leading up to their April 1st ship date:

 

February: "We really appreciate all the questions you are asking, but we don't have time to answer them, because we're so busy prepping this awesome system for shipping!"

 

March: *Crickets*

 

April: "We're going to slightly delay shipping to iron out the last few bugs. We want it to be perfect! Good things take time!"

 

May, June, July: *Crickets*

 

August: "Why are you all so impatient!?! Don't you want your cool system to be just right??"

 

September, October: *Massive social media shutdown*

 

November: "This is the most difficult e-mail I've ever had to write..."

[DurradonXylles]

I wonder what PolyMega's marketing Schlub is up to? Maybe I'm being too hard on him. He's probably a distinguished professional with a lot of insight.

 

3283127C-D91A-4F00-A15C-8CA2DAA905FF.jpeg

 

 

....oh.

 

To be fair, he's only officially hired as their photographer, at least as far as public communique is concerned. Being a marketing shill appears to be an unofficial secondary role they might've paid him a little bit more for as well.

 

Here's how I see this going down, leading up to their April 1st ship date:

 

February: "We really appreciate all the questions you are asking, but we don't have time to answer them, because we're so busy prepping this awesome system for shipping!"

 

March: *Crickets*

 

April: "We're going to slightly delay shipping to iron out the last few bugs. We want it to be perfect! Good things take time!"

 

May, June, July: *Crickets*

 

August: "Why are you all so impatient!?! Don't you want your cool system to be just right??"

 

September, October: *Massive social media shutdown*

 

November: "This is the most difficult e-mail I've ever had to write..."

 

I'd say that with this console being crowdfunded, this timeline needs to be padded at least another eighteen to thirty months, mostly with more *crickets*, "Have some patience," and some obligatory "See what minimal progress we've done to prove we're not dead/a scam that ran off with your money!" posts in between, before the oh-so-gut-wrenching "Sorry, we cannot deliver; we have failed you," email bit, but this is a product that isn't being done through a crowdfunding website. So, in other words, nothing is stopping them from cutting the stringing along bit as soon as May or June when the six month chargeback period on PayPal and most major credit cards runs out without legitimate proof that the product purchased still hasn't been delivered (that is exactly as hard as it sounds to communicate to those companies).

 

However, something sorta dawned on me thinking about this project. If they decide to pull this (it's been looking likely with how bad they're attempting to control the narrative on their product), I wonder what consumer laws, if any, would protect those who "pre-ordered" through them. A pre-order is not the same as an investment, or backing a crowdfunding campaign, at least in legal terms. Pre-ordering means buying a presumably real product before it gets released, while investing in, or "backing", a crowdfunding campaign for a product at the end is simply a risky investment (one of the reasons Kickstarter and IndieGogo scammers can be a slippery bunch sometimes). So if you pre-order a product from a company based in the US, and that product turns out to be complete vaporware, there surely has to be legal recourse for this. I'm not an expert in consumer protection and fraud laws, so I really would like to know if this technicality amounts to really anything.

Edited January 23, 2019 by DurradonXylles