Whos' in the house?

[Tom Speirs]

Ill probably ask this question from time to time on the forum.

I am very interested to hear what your involvment is in the following, even if a noob or purely retro gaming fan.

1. Are you active or have been involved with the MAME scene. How long, tell us how it all started?

2. Have you been or are you a contributor (of any sort) to another MAME (or MAME itself), Front-End or HTPC, or Emulation project/s? If so which ones, what did or do you do?

3. Are you a developer who would love to get your hands on the GameEx Source code for the purpose of making it better for all? What do you think you could contribute?

Thanks,

Tom.

[cupid]

Hi Tom,

1. i'm not active in Mame Dev.

2. since i'm able to program and own a MCE i once tried to write my own Mame/Gamelauncher Frontend using the MCE-Dev-Kit for MCE-HTML applications. Since it worked for a few games i tried it with 10000 list items and it was to slow. Then i tried to use Mysql but that was only a little bit faster. I somewhere posted my work at thegreenbutton.com, but i decided not to use my MCE as a game-machine since old scool games do not really look good at a 42" plasma. So it came to a real cab with at first mamewah and now GameEx.

3. Yes. I'd like to make custom favourite game lists with Foldertree support.

4 ;-). I'm active in developing a babelfish (all in one converter) for Console Controllers. I'm ready with one Converter working for one SMS, Nes, SNES, N64, Atari or PS Controller (it automaticly recognises which controller is connected via a DB25), but i'm currently working on simulating a mouse for Atari paddles and PS Analog joys. If i'm able to get a joystick and a mouse working with only one USB interface, i could also emulate a keyboard for these joypads... But i currently have some USB-Problems when simulating more than one device. (since i have to program my microcontroller in assembler)

Why: i'm think that 40 USB converters in one PC won't work :-). My Converter is one PC joystick and stays one PC joystick, even if you unplug a controller and insert another. So you can also play NES Games with a Sega Pad without the need of configuring the Nes Emulator once again. It is always a 6 Analog controls and 24 Buttons USB Joystick, with often the most of the controls not working. (IE. Nes has only X and Y axis and 4 buttons). The other analogcontrols and buttons are set to Zero.

I'd really like to be able to play Zelda with my nes pad and Sonic with my sega pad without reconfiguring everything after every restart. Even with 8 USB Converters the whole USB bus mixes up after every restart! And Nes1 is joystick 3 where it was Joystick 1 before restart. If I'm able to simulate more than one USB Device (Goal is 4 Joysticks, 4 mice and one keyboard) i will post it at BYOAC. Total cost for 1 Controller is 15â?¬ at the moment, but i think i need a display...

Yours Cupid

[djrobx]

That sounds like a very cool product, Cupid. Not to hijack Tom's thread, but why do you need to simulate a mouse? z26, for example, allows you to control the paddle via an analog joystick input. X axis becomes paddle 1, Y axis becomes paddle 2.

To answer Tom's questions...

I've been following Mame and other emulator development for many years. I've tinkered with many projects for my own purposes but never released anything noteworthy. The first emulator I used was Massage for the SMS, I think it was in 1996. Wanting to improve on its AdLib sound, I found MasterGear and its source code, but the DOS code was missing in the source package. When I explained what I wanted to do, Marat provided me with the missing code. I added PCM sound and parallel port SNES pad support to it, so I could play on my laptop. It was never released officially per Marat's request (he charges for it). Today I've come full circle and am making contributions towards improving the video and sound support in Meka. Omar is receptive to the contributions so bits of my code may actually end up in an official release. I've made small changes to almost all the emulators I run on my HTPC to try and get everything working consistently in that environment:

Mame: Removed disclaimers. Added relative analog support for joysticks. This makes many trackball games playable with a PS2 controller's analog stick. MAME Developers seem uninterested in adding this for some reason, it wasn't difficult to do. May add hq2x at some point (this is in advmame already).

Z26: Added assignable buttons for reset and difficulty so you don't have to grab the keyboard. Added POV hat support so the digital stick on a PS2 controller controls it.

Gens: Added HQ2X video and fixed POV hat support

Meka: Fixed sound distortions, added HQ2X, added tripple buffering support

As you can see, I make use of sources when they're available. So of course I'd love to have the GameEx code. Mostly because I'd rather just go in and fix/add things than bother you with feature requests or bug reports. The config save problem for example, I'd much rather go into the code and debug it myself, and just email you the fix, than get on a forum and try to describe the issue. Its difficult to say what I'd contribute. I think I could be helpful in many ways but you seem to be developing this thing at warp speed. If nothing else I could probably help with some of the smaller feature requests and additions while you focus on some of the bigger plans you have.

Given that you are keeping GameEx free, I think it would benefit from going open source. It just seems like the sort of thing where many might contribute in small ways to make the whole better. But, I respect your decision if you want to keep the source private.

I was one of the core developers of the first version of a very ambitious HTPC project called Pluto. The UI design tools were done in .NET, the controllers in CE, and the actual media functions running on Linux.

http://plutohome.com/index.php?

I worked on it for a couple years. For financial reasons I quit the company before they started working on this second (now open-source and alpha) version.