MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Re: Does someone know what's wrong with Mamedev?

To put things bluntly, the current rate of progress is the new normal. Let me explain why for a few large reasons.

First off, MAME has emulated nearly every game that anyone currently alive is going to be nostalgic about, and what's left is mostly cookie-cutter 3D fighters, racers, and shooters of the sort that Yahtzee gleefully eviscerates every Wednesday. There are folks active on this board who claim all the games that matter were emulated by 0.37b5. I don't happen to share that opinion, but at the same time any unemulated games I do work on now it's more for the intellectual stimulation of the process than because I give a shit about the game.

Secondly, all those guys you saw in the credits every 2 weeks in 2004 are now 35+ and have wives/husbands and kids. And for whatever reasons the younger generation (under 25) isn't as into computer programming in general. (They *are* into music production, which has been great for OCRemix and similar projects). This isn't MAME or emulation-specific either. I've seen discussions for a variety of F/OSS projects wondering why there's little or no new talent. Most of those projects compensated by getting corporate backing and therefore being able to make programming Linux or GCC or WebKit your actual "day job" that can support your kids rather than taking time away from them. For a variety of reasons I don't think that model could work for MAME.

Even within emulation you'll notice that for instance ElSemi isn't exactly cranking things out like he used to, and in fact new non-MAME emulators are hard to come by. Supermodel was the last major launch, and it's already run into its own conflicts with the author's real life.

Thirdly, anything I'd remotely describe as "easy" to do in MAME has already been done. MESS offers a much larger untamed frontier, given that Al Kossow is dumping new 8-bit computers I've never heard of pretty much like clockwork, but even there things are starting to get harder.

So my conclusion is that MAME's current state is basically where it was destined to be, and nobody can change that or bring back 2004. It's a series of natural processes, not some boogeyman. If H*z* or anyone else is convinced they really can bring back 2004 rates of progress, they're welcome to fork the project under the terms of the license and give it a try. If it works, it's great for everyone. If not, well, it means I'm right