MAMEWorld Forums - News - Re: DU Update: And now, Weekend Update with Smitdogg Jones

> > The best only way to preserve them is get them in a mame skeleton driver.
>
> Not really imho. They aren't arcade games... there's nothing to emulate...

100% wrong and what I do is preserve arcade game data. They are arcade games with data to preserve.

> they are
> pc games. I mean do you really want to bloat mame/mess with a windows xp emulator at
> this stage of the game? As I said, years from now it will be more doable, but not at
> the present time. Even when the time comes it STILL makes more sense to just write
> loaders because... well... they are pc games.

Having games in mame puts them on hard drives around the world and stops the few people who work at this stuff from having to keep up with it. I can speak about this with as much authority as anyone. Ask Tafoid how many times he has asked me to reupload stuff. It isn't even possible for some of the stuff now because of bandwidth caps. Getting stuff in mame quickly is the best way. What if I got hit by a bus. You are completely wrong.

> I think the type-x games are the best example of this. It was trivial to get them
> running on a normal pc and you can find em all over the net and will continue to do
> so. Now if you are talking about the more ancient games that run on the equivelent of
> a 486 then sure, but the high level ones are a ways off. MAME would be so slow
> running them that it would be tedious to even write a driver.

No... The Type-X, you don't even understand the picture of the situation. The fact that they are shitdumped just makes a lot of people less concerned about getting correct dumps. The ones on the web aren't in mame because they are hacked up. That's the only reason. People I know are scared to try to dump them correctly because of rumors that they self destruct if you do it wrong.

> Instead of focusing on newer games, it might make more sense to focus on the ancient
> ones. I'm talking EM games and EM hybrids. They are more expensive, and it's a bigger
> pain in the butt (in most instances you'd have to buy the entire game, not just a
> circuit board) but these types of games are fading fast and as of yet there is NO
> effort to preserve them... pinball excluded of course.
>
> Most of them are so primative that it wouldn't take much to make an
> emulator/simulator. They just need to be carefully taken apart, have the artwork
> scanned and have their "trace boards" scanned as well as the speed of movements
> documented.

I deal with arcade game data. The task you are talking about is for someone else.

> I think 18 wheeler is a good example of this. It's already emulated pretty well in
> mame.... we just need a scan of the road surface and lamps and some 2d/3d models
> based on the truck. Then it's just a matter of exploiting the artwork system and
> setting up some virtual switches and you've got a really good approximation of a game
> most people will never get the chance to play.

18 Wheeler road art is a viable target for the DU but most EM games are not.