I see you are surprised about re-write for what seems like a huge effort where there is no any personal gain, only I never told you what is my build really about. Chinese bootlegger? No, but I'm not rewriting it just because crows drank my brain either, or to maintain yet another unnecessary xxxMAME build with few different settings. I have two big new features, one never before seen in MAME or any other emulator, as far as I know, and the other never before seen anywhere else. I need MAME to present and advertise these two new features, that will also be available for purchase as separate libraries on Android and possibly iPhone market. The two features can be incorporated and used in other emulators and also in any other games on those mobile platforms. Both features are completely independent and unrelated to MAME source code. One of those features is possible to implement on a PC too, but not the other. Two of them are not related in any way, one is related to playability and the other to re-playability of the games.
Would you like to guess what those two features are about?
And that's all ready for testing, but I think I can get in trouble with Google if I post a link outside Android Market, so maybe it's best to wait few more weeks when it will be available for download from the Market, for free. Although, I suppose I could give you a link in a private message.
I don't need full MAME rewrite to publish that, it's good enough as it is for the purpose it needs to serve. But, if it becomes popular, as I said, then I'll probably go for the full re-write. I'm only actively working with 7-8 games and supporting around 100 "test" games all together until I'm happy with the design and start mass-converting. Anyway, if all that goes well then there will also be a third very cool feature. I will try to add support for some home computers and consoles, but nothing like MESS is doing. In my build C64 or NES will be ROM images that you load in MAME just like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, and will have their drivers designed in similar manner as any other hardware platform in MAME, as "driver", not interwoven within and obfuscating MAME code. How does that sound?
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