MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - 2021's Almost Here: What Do You Guys Hope For in Mame/Mess?

> Well I guess I will have to start the "end of the year" thread this time. I do wonder
> what any of you have hopes for this year. My opinions are rather the same as with
> last year's thread so I can't really say much.
>
> P.S. Sorry if I made this before you could Master O.

We've planted the seeds for a lot of things in 2020, so while it's been a bad year for most of the world outside of emulation, there has been a lot of promise within the project.

I can’t say for sure which of these seeds I feel are likely to grow into something in the new year – it’s even possible none of them will, and progress will be seen on things started years before, but as long as new developers continue become involved, and MAME does the things needed to capture the interests of some of the younger audience who might fancy trying their teeth on figuring things out, there is a lot of potential.

On a personal level, I’d like to see the handful of long-term regressions in the project reduced down further; there aren’t many, but it’s always uncomfortable when we have to tell users to use older versions that we know are awful in many other ways. Things like the Microprose 3D sound still being in a regressed state are a shame, and the way MAME handles vector games might need a rethink to properly solve the Major Havoc ‘vanishing enemies’ issue without breaking anything else. Peace of mind in knowing that a new version can be whole-heartedly recommended without a user having any issues would be a wonderful thing, even if there aren’t a huge number of long term ones.

There are a few mid-term regressions that play on my mind too; at some point the Magnet System games got a bit worse, with the Exzisus version hanging / resetting early on now, and I don’t think that’s something I changed, which makes it a bit more annoying to investigate.

I think we will start to see Laserdisc stuff at some point in the next few years, although outside of preservation I have little interest in it, as they represent some of the absolute worst playing arcade games ever, where gameplay was traded away entirely for film-like visuals; I hold no fond memories of any game of that type.

A handful of the things I’d like to see still depend on us being able to pick them up; obscure ‘junk’ handhelds and the like that most people probably threw in the bin a week after buying them, but often have interesting secrets to reveal once you start looking at the code.

I think in terms of things that would be good for MAME, getting some more of the educational systems from the 2000s up and running would help the project, as the age of the people who grew up with them are likely to be of an age where MAME development is a thing that might interest them, and if those things have nostalgic value, might be what bring them to the project when we can’t realistically be emulating platforms such as the PS2 and even PS3, which are both now considered quite Retro.

It would be nice if there was movement on things like multi-channel sound output, support for multiple audio cards at the same time and all sorts of things like that, but even after trying my best to get that running, I couldn’t, and there’s been no sign of anybody becoming involved with a good enough understanding of that side of things to get that working.

The recent work from Vas on artwork system improvements also puts improvements to the Fruit Machines / Non-video Slot Machines more within reach, and with the untimely passing of ‘Wizard’ the author of the most well known emulator for those things it might really be time for MAME to step up a gear and plug the gap that has been left in that community, although there is a lot of catching up to do. It is important for MAME to have a strong reputation in different fields, as again it makes it an attractive project to contribute to.

I’m hopeful the remaining minor Game & Watch software variants will turn up, but again that’s an ‘out of our hands’ matter for at least one of them, where we’re simply relying on somebody identifying that they have a specific version, and allowing it to be used for dumping, rather than trying to charge over the odds for it.

Personally I also hope the Amiga gets a bit of love, it’s a real shame a system like that, with a huge community built around it is in such a bad state, and it’s difficult to understand why, with such a technical community, they’re happy to place all their eggs in one basket with UAE, and seemingly have little interest in improving the MAME emulation on a technical level, even if they’re unlikely to be using it from day to day. I was trying to play some very simple public domain games the other day, and even those were tripping up with severe audio issues.

I don’t expect anything however, but things that help build bridges with new communities, especially technical ones, and thus help the project, ensuring it has a solid future, are always going to be good to see.

-- hardware injects 4 levels into Y line, thus increasing luminosity
-- It can also clamp Y line to GND, thus blacking it out
-- this is not so easy to do in RGB land, so use custom colours to look more like real hardware