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Arcade Preservation And The Act Of Giving......
#397488 - 12/01/23 02:31 AM
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Following on from this thread which got heated by looks..
https://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/sh...;new=1701390183
My feeling has always been arcade preservation should become an official not for profit organization which can accept donations of any shape and size with a structure in place that projects connected to that field can then apply for funding
Often in life if people like something there is feeling they'd like to give back currently with regards to MAME or preservation more generally options are limited in that dept to rom dumping communities.
What if for example someone wanted to leave part of their death estate to MAME or another project connected to the preservation of arcade games.?? as far as i can tell there is no way of relistically doing that and equally no structure in place to determine which projects and or parts of the said projects would benefit from such an act.
Individuals should never profit from game preservation but that does not mean overall projects cannot maybe one day we'll see it.?? but i fear not in my lifetime.
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| gregf |
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Dumping Project and Dumping Union
[Re: gamez fan]
#397491 - 12/01/23 10:47 AM
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….assuming you have read Smit’s past Dumping Union news, it is exactly what you mention. Without DU involvement, maybe one eighth of the supported items would probably still be on the want list. DU has accomplished what you described.
Both were (Dumping Union still is) are the means for those that want to give back by way of monetary donations.
It might seem to be quiet here without Smit around these days, but DU should still be active.
What used to be a single focus acquisition project of trying to band contributions towards a rare coinop cab or a pcb has transformed over to various specific niche projects such as gambling games, handheld games, plug and play, computers, and musical equipment. Folks that contributed in the past towards a single specific coinop game are probably focusing towards a niche part of MAME such as electronic chess. The older days where the coinop game Dumping Union group acquisition are probably over with MAME emulation branching out in different directions.
The ‘donation payment’ thread about the color issue of some Astrocade video hardware games’ color output was probably not going anywhere because the ideal person that could fix the issue would have a long standing experience with analog components and ability of working with the specific monitor models used with some of the Astrocade hardware. Those folks are extremely rare to find. The past contributors such as Derrick Renaud, Couriersud, and maybe Aaron are what would be needed. The materials are out there and online, but what is needed is an analog components guru and is familiar with monitors that were used with Astrocade hardware.
If anything, the Votrax speech chip emulation finally happening was the bigger deal and the addition of adding foreign language regions for some of the Astrocade hardware games was an added bonus. The color output is an issue, but it will not be a bug fix issue, but likely more of an overhaul issue with the Astrocade video output file…..assuming Astrocade source file has not been fully modernized yet.
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Re: Dumping Project and Dumping Union
[Re: gregf]
#397498 - 12/02/23 01:03 AM
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> ….assuming you have read Smit’s past Dumping Union news, it is exactly what you
> mention. Without DU involvement, maybe one eighth of the supported items would
> probably still be on the want list. DU has accomplished what you described.
Yes im aware of the DU as i used to be a member of it afterall.
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Re: Dumping Project and Dumping Union
[Re: gregf]
#397503 - 12/02/23 04:56 PM
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> The ‘donation payment’ thread about the color issue of some Astrocade video hardware
> games’ color output was probably not going anywhere because the ideal person that
> could fix the issue would have a long standing experience with analog components and
> ability of working with the specific monitor models used with some of the Astrocade
> hardware. Those folks are extremely rare to find. The past contributors such as
> Derrick Renaud, Couriersud, and maybe Aaron are what would be needed. The materials
> are out there and online, but what is needed is an analog components guru and is
> familiar with monitors that were used with Astrocade hardware.
Yes my overarching point is difficult to make without causing offense the jist of it would be
that arcade preservation is more important than to be left in the hands of amateur coders and
hobbyists, dont get me wrong without them arcade and console preservation would not be as it is now
they're a super talented bunch however a more professional setup is required as per what i eluded
to in my first post.
In life if you cannot do something eg plaster a wall and you dont have anyone in your circle who can
help with that then you've hit a brickwall pardon the pun and have to hire someone who has the
skillset to do so.
There are brickwalls when it comes to preserving arcade games or systems many have been scaled however
there are a fair few that remain just that bit too high and maybe require a leg up so to speak from a professional coding team and that is never going to happen with the current setup.
Two examples of brickwalls would be High Seas Havoc and F1 Superbattle as things stand at the moment
these games and many others like them will remain unplayable unless someone comes along with the
skillset required to fix them, this could happen next week or never it's left to chance in other words.
What im proposing here to recap is a not for profit society for the preservation of arcade games is created which can accept donations of all types and sizes to which projects like MAME can firstly apply to join and seconally apply towards for funding, and then if successful for example MAME could have the money to hire in experts in certain fields to lend a hand.
We're not talking pateron or bounty nonsense here im only suggesting what is par for the course when it comes many other organizations who provide a service for the greater public good.
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Re: Dumping Project and Dumping Union
[Re: gamez fan]
#397504 - 12/02/23 05:07 PM
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> There are brickwalls when it comes to preserving arcade games or systems many have
> been scaled however
> there are a fair few that remain just that bit too high and maybe require a leg up so
> to speak from a professional coding team and that is never going to happen with the
> current setup.
>
You do realise that the current devs *are* the 'professional coding team' and in quite a few cases, also do this (or similar) on a commercial level.
The thing is, at a professional level the standards are MUCH MUCH lower, and 'any hack as long as it can ship' is the priority 100% of the time.
The work I do for MAME, in my own time, far exceeds any expectations of quality when doing the same work as a professional.
Most of the remaining problems with MAME's emulation of well known systems are not coding problems, they're reverse engineering problems, and that isn't a skillset that is taught, it is almost always self-learned. Likewise the kind of hardware hacking needed to extract any missing data is almost always in the hobbyist realm.
There is no mythical group of professionals beyond those who have worked on this very project. The people needed are always going to be hobbyists who have dedicated a large part of their lives to understanding something nobody else cares about.
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| gregf |
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Ramtek's Trivia promoter
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Past cameo appearance contributors
[Re: Haze]
#397508 - 12/04/23 09:18 AM
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> There is no mythical group of professionals beyond those who have worked on this very project.
And also with past assistance from the actual game developers that either worked for Atari or some of the other smaller size coinop companies along with businesses that owned and marketed games from Exidy and other companies by allowing roms to be picked up from MAMEdev site and also some hardware developers that designed audio hardware equipment.
> The people needed are always going to be hobbyists who have dedicated a large part of their lives to
> understanding something nobody else cares about.
There are still younger generations such as offspring of those that used to be in the business of creating games and products from 20th century era wanting to see or play what their parents had created many years earlier just for the novelty sake of: “What did dad help make when he worked for a company back then?”
But yep….most won’t have interest from a game product long ago….but maybe the emulation of some of the musical instruments might be something that could be useful in the eyes of younger generations since those have useful uses to this day and age compared to Space Invaders.
One example to mention: a piano teacher had mentioned to my sister that one of the students that is currently taking lessons from that same teacher had informed teacher about the recent ‘awesome’ work of how Casio Cz series synthesizers have been emulated with Cz 101 or Cz-1. The student had a laptop set with recent MAME in order to run and play Cz-1 emulation for the teacher. The teacher had mentioned some of the other software products already existed, but the student now prefers the emulation in MAME over the already existing commercial programs out there. The student made a video of himself playing a music piece while running MAME Cz-1 emulation and showing video to the teacher. While PacMan may or may not be popular with younger generation, it looks like some stuff in MAME might be useful to younger generations.
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