Comments for David Haywood's MAME(tm) WIP

Comment on Back of the Net by Roy Simoes

Roy Simoes — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 11:50:07 +0000

Hi,

In using multifish roms (e.g., mfish_3) there are 4 games in this package, 1 slot and 3 pokers. I find a problem, however. After exiting any of the games, mame retains the credits in the games but does not allow betting in the poker games (bet reverts to zero only in the poker games). Is this normal or is it a bug? Many thanks if you can answer.

Comment on Back of the Net by ant

ant — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:57:40 +0000

Hello Haze,
Do you think work Zombie revenge and dynamite cop?
Thanks to answer

Comment on Back of the Net by CGR

CGR — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:19:24 +0000

to bledi_gti: i literally think the same way

to Haze: Its harder than decrypt a machine…

Comment on Back of the Net by Haze

Haze — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:51:31 +0000

I’ll do a little update on some modern games I’ve enjoyed at some point in the near future.

Comment on Back of the Net by bledi_gti

bledi_gti — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 02:22:43 +0000

hi
talking about modern vgames
in these last years since ps3 and xbox 360 7 generation games.
who do u think is a a rare gem if we can call
or an inovative game .
sa i played a lot of games and i think graphics are awsome but no fun anymore
and not to tel that they are a little stressant :)
bye from balkan

Comment on Back of the Net by Haze

Haze — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 11:46:18 +0000

Yeah, in the speccy days you could throw together a game in the best part of a day, and release it. These days even the cheapest of games involve big budgets, and multiple people. An english-only text adventure with BEEP 10,10 for sound or whatever is no longer considered acceptable.

Comment on Back of the Net by etabeta

etabeta — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:09:58 +0000

but game development was not that expensive ;)

Comment on Back of the Net by cantido

cantido — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:18:10 +0000

piracy has been rampant since the speccy days though…

Comment on Back of the Net by Haze

Haze — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:26:42 +0000

Well the problem is that money isn’t usually made in hardware sales, and a cracked platform is less attractive to developers.

Hardware developers, especially with arcade hardware provide assurance to their clients that the platform is secure, if this becomes untrue contractual disputes can arise and games can simply end up being cancelled or moved to other platforms which are secure.

Developers are already reluctant to produce proper PC versions of games anymore that aren’t just bad ports, and the new protection systems (forcing people to be online, limited installs, remote saves etc.) are just snowballing the issue. As I said above, PC games aren’t attractive to me anymore because of the amoun of baggage that comes with them. If I was Microsoft I’d actually be worried about this as ‘gaming’ is still cited as the #1 reason people use Windows over Linux, of course right now it drives people to the XBox instead but the bigger picture isn’t pretty.

Anyway, back to hardware, yes, having a larger user-base can help, but it’s also useless if that entire user-base has no intention of actually buying the games, and only bought the system because they knew the games would be free. This is a significant problem with both the DS and PSP right now and has resulted in less games for the systems because if you’re not producing one of the top titles then getting sales can be very difficult.

Likewise with the iPhone you can have a piracy rate of around 95% at the moment with no real way of preventing it, and that figure has a large impact on the amount of time and money developers are willing to invest in development, hence the number of utterly pointless apps/games outweighing the useful ones by a significant magnitude. (which only goes on to cause more problems as people who do pay for things end up feeling ripped off due to the lack of quality)

The flip-side is of course it can be incredibly frustrating as an owner of the actual software not to be able to make backups, or having to rely on digital downloads and hope that the servers are online forever if you need to replace them. The disc for one of my PS3 games cracked in the drive, but the chances of getting a replacement are 0.

If these PS3 hacks come to fruitation it might just spell the end for the system because right now it’s main edge in the market (despite the lower install base) is that it’s considered by developers to be a secure platform; it’s worth porting the mulit-platform games to because there are guaranteed sales. You’ve only got to see what happened with the Dreamcast for evidence of this.

As a developer I wish Sony had opened up the Linux options on the system a bit more rather than crippling it and eventually removing the option from newer models, but it would be a shame to see the system die, or become further locked down due to piracy because it does offer a degree of openness not found on the 360 (for example, the option to use Keyboard + Mouse in a few games, and import PC maps etc.)

Just remember that a platform without developers is a dead platform, and the “Don’t shit where you eat” analogy comes to mind here. With emulation we’re emulating games and hardware which are, for the most part, past their viable commercial life (or are considered iconic games and will continue to sell regardless) Developers often turn to emulators to run their own older titles, or for ideas and influences from days gone by. This is one reason why very little action is ever taken against people working on emulation software, the industry are smart enough to not want to shoot themselves in the foot.

When you’re hacking brand new games on the other hand it’s taking a direct chunk out of current sales, and will heavily affect the decisions of both the software developers and hardware manufacturers. Action will be taken, projects will get cancelled, and over the top security measures will be introduced.

Comment on Back of the Net by CGR

CGR — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:23:36 +0000

Oh yeah dawg, u may be right about a crack-proof thing, but it doesn’t mean it can’t be simulated, still being able to parcially emulate and play the game, not as close as the original one, but we been playing some titles like this for years now, and we didn’t even notice, till we got informed, or played on the actual hardware and a emulator, right?

About the pirating thing, it actually helps the company to get some money over some countries or even over the system, taking the PSP as an example, that wouldn’t sell shit if it wasn’t the “pirating”. They (the companies) just have to follow their own pollitics, otherwise they wouldn’t even care (in mah point of view).

BTW, you got me curious about the Raiden 2, gonna read about it. Peace man :)