> > just a quick note > > > > 'Target Hits' should have been included in the "Machines promoted to working" list, > > the game was entirely non-functional in 0.190 (and marked as such) > > If it was really non-functional in 0.190 it should have actually been marked > MACHINE_NOT_WORKING, but it wasn't. It was just marked MACHINE_UNEMULATED_PROTECTION. > The lists of promoted systems are just systems that have had the MACHINE_NOT_WORKING > flag lifted in the release cycle. If we try to define it any other way it'll lead to > endless arguments about whether things are worthy of listing or not. >
It was definitely 100% unplayable, there were no targets to shoot at and the game would hang as soon as you attempted to start it or if you let it play the demo. The dallas does all the calculations and maths for the targets appearing and movement of the targets.
I guess somebody felt UNEMULATED PROTECTION was a 'more accurate' way of saying MACHINE NOT WORKING or something since both give red screens.
The fact it wasn't marked as NOT WORKING in previous releases is definitely the mistake here, it's very much something that has been promoted to working in 0.191.
The unemulated protection flag seems ambiguous anyway, if the protection simulation on a game isn't trusted well enough to be sure the gameplay is correct, then the driver should be marked as NOT WORKING anyway. If it is instead intended to be used for all cases where protection is simulated, not emulated, even if that simulation is 100% (eg silly cases like Semicom 0x200 byte code transfer) then it shouldn't be a red screen (and needs adding to a LOT more drivers)
I've even seen cases where it seems to have been used to tag things like hardware collision detections being wrong, which isn't protection at all IMHO while in the case we've seen here it was simply (inappropriately) used as a substitute for a proper NOT WORKING flag.
Given all that, I'd say the most important thing to apply in cases like this however is common sense.
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