MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Can someone explain why there are no active dev do for mame?

> > I have visited the page:
> > http://www.mamedev.org/devwiki/index.php?title=Developer_WIPs,

> Those are archived pages from the heyday of MAME development back when regular
> updates were posted to the old mame.net site.

That's not true, that was nearly a decade ago at this point.

What jasd is looking at, at the top of that page, are Wiki updates from when the mamedev.org wiki was created (2007-ish?) to present day. Developer "To-Do" Lists, not even full-fledged WIP entries.

There are still occasionally updates:
25 April 2013
(diff) (hist) . . Phil B's To-Do List‎; 09:52 . . (+18) . . PhilBennett (Talk | contribs)
(diff) (hist) . . m Phil B's To-Do List‎; 09:50 . . (+38) . . PhilBennett (Talk | contribs) (→Doing - )
(diff) (hist) . . Phil B's To-Do List‎; 09:50 . . (+88) . . PhilBennett (Talk | contribs) (→Done - )
(diff) (hist) . . Phil B's To-Do List‎; 09:49 . . (-260) . . PhilBennett (Talk | contribs) (→To do - )

19 December 2012
(diff) (hist) . . Arbee's To-Do List‎; 20:56 . . (+9) . . Rbelmont (Talk | contribs)
(diff) (hist) . . Arbee's To-Do List‎; 20:55 . . (-40) . . Rbelmont (Talk | contribs) (→Later - )
(diff) (hist) . . Arbee's To-Do List‎; 20:55 . . (+277) . . Rbelmont (Talk | contribs) (→Near-term - )

11 October 2012
(diff) (hist) . . Arbee's To-Do List‎; 19:37 . . (+60) . . Rbelmont (Talk | contribs) (→Near-term - )

13 September 2012
(diff) (hist) . . Arbee's To-Do List‎; 20:42 . . (+313) . . Rbelmont (Talk | contribs) (→Near-term - )

But those are the only updates in the last year. Aside from R. Belmont's, Phil B's, and MooglyGuy's, the rest have not been updated since 2007-2009. Not what I'd call "the heyday from when mame.net was updated with WIP updates".

In fact, the wiki overall has had less than 650 updates in the last two years. For a wiki, that's not a lot.

There's a number of things at play here:
- The hosting issues that mamedev.org and mess.redump.net/mess.org went through throughout 2012
- The growing number of inactive devs in that list
- The newer devs who have never bothered getting a Wiki account and creating pages
- The relative lack of attention the Wiki gets (aside from Osso's, and occasionally Tafoid's endeavours)
- The lack of priority these pages have over individual WIP pages hosted elsewhere

It would be nice for them to, get more attention, yes, and there was even a suggestion back in March that end-users would see more WIP updates in the official blog, but stuff happened.

> You'll have to hunt down the
> developers' individual blogs for more recent updates, or check out the news
> submission board here for aggregation. Updates were more frequent back then because
> there were far more simple unemulated systems and easy improvements to make.

There used to be a blogroll someone had set up for all the individual pages with RSS feeds, not sure what became of that, and even if it still works.

So for the time being, do what Vas suggests and visit the individual pages linked at the _bottom_ of that page, or follow the News Submission forum here which often updates when a dev has made a new update to their WIP page.

Pages that have received updates in the last eighteen months:
Aaron Giles (Aaron) - http://www.aarongiles.com/ (but only because of Last Survivor in August 2012)
Andrew Gardner (Drew) - http://ajg.mameworld.info/
Angelo Salese (Kale) - http://mamedev.emulab.it/kale/
Charles MacDonald (Cgfm2) - http://cgfm2.emuviews.com/
David Haywood (Haze) - http://mamedev.emulab.it/haze/
Fabio Priuli (etabeta/MESS) - http://mamedev.emulab.it/etabeta/
Guru (Guru) - http://members.iinet.net.au/~lantra9jp1/gurudumps/
Luca Elia (Luca) - http://www.lucaelia.com/mame.php
Michael Zapf (mizapf/MESS) - http://mess.redump.net/people/mizapf
Nicola Salmoria (Nicola) - http://mamelife.blogspot.com/ (but only to make it clear he's retired from MAME)
Norbert Kehrer (nkehrer) - http://web.utanet.at/nkehrer/index.html (but only for console development)
Phil Bennett (PhilB) - http://philwip.mameworld.info/
Pierpaolo Prazzoli (Reip) - http://reip.mameworld.info/ (but only for Boong-Ga Boong-Ga in 01/2012)
R. Belmont (Arbee) - http://rbelmont.mameworld.info/
Roberto Fresca (Robbie) - http://robbie.mameworld.info/
smf (smf) - http://smf.mameworld.info/
Tomasz Slanina (dox) - http://doxdev.blogspot.com/ and http://slanina.pl/ (but only to make it clear he's retired from MAME)
Wilbert Pol (judge/MESS) - http://mess.redump.net/people/wilbert_pol
Ville Linde (Ville) - http://vlinde.mameworld.info/

... but no, barely any of these get regular updates anymore. Maybe Haze's and Arbee's.

Also, consider: hap is VERY active but barely maintains a WIP page since 2011 (http://tsk-tsk.net)

Yeah, it's not like the old days, we get it.

> > but I don't know why many dev site old for quite a long time,I doubt even most of
> > them has leave Mame for ever,so why?they are all busy?no time?

For those pages that have not had updates in a while and yet the developer's name is still seen frequently in SVN checkins and MAME whatsnew.txt: yes.

For those pages that have not had updates in a while and the developer's name has not been seen in a while: Real Life Syndrome (and in a few cases, quit).

And there are a few devs who do not have pages.

Outward-facing public WIP updates are a great way to promote the project and show that it is still alive. However, very few people can take the time to do that, apparently.

Hope this helps.

- Stiletto

Edited by Stiletto (06/24/13 06:33 PM)