> And none of those "millions of users" are actually contributing to MAME development. > It's the people who care about preservation who've kept the MAME train rolling for > almost twenty years.
Huh ? So What ? You don't like the idea of millions of people enjoying the software you've made or contributed to: then don't make it public/freeware.
You will never change the fact that to the masses of users the 'museum' claim will forever translate to "yeah we love that part, but, er, cool story bro now iama play if you don't mind". For anyone video games are naturally made to be played, not just being code sitting on a hard drive. Like it or not even if MAME is a huge preservation media it is for the vast majority a huge gaming platform.
Like Vaughan I'll always be grateful for what the people who've made MAME did, but that disdain for the users some of you show is absurd. I've been playing since the early 80's and I don't have any morality lessons to receive from you guys about who genuinely loves games and who's a leech, just because you have the skills to contribute doesn't make you a more 'moral' person than me. Maybe you wish you had the power to select users worthy of MAME and kick the dirty peasants out ? again by all means make it private and/or commercial. Or simply, to those of the MAME crowd who can't stand the sight of users wording criticism and make requests; maybe just don't even talk to them ?
It's been mentioned after all: bannister is a more elite place, go have a chat with gentlemen coders here and leave the stupid plebe to memeworld.
@Vaughan: to me genuine low res RGB CRT's superiority is still obvious, I've owned several, still do, living in Europe it's always been easy access and display/signal quality an important part of the experience. Not saying we should never kiss CRTs goodbye, but I don't feel the current flat panel displays + shaders are worthy-enough replacements yet. Maybe in some years when OLED or similar (4K or more) with gaming monitor variants will hopefuly become widely available and affordable. I know my CRT's will easily live another decade or two, I'm going to keep them until I can tell 'okay I can live with only simulation'.