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Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators?
I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :)
I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome.

(subliminal message)
Heliophobe, you could conceptualize the debugger of your dreams !
(/subliminal message)

Quote

> Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators?
> I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :)
> I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome.

Personally, I'd love to help if it wasn't for one thing... I have yet to learn any C-type language. And a newbie ain't gonna code anything much good; it's a basic fact that most of what you code in your first year or so is, well, crap.

That is perhaps why I try my best to contribute via my existing skills... (subliminal message) Delphi is good, Delphi is like C only readable... (/subliiminal message)

Also, there is a certain amount of pride in coding. We all to some extent like to be able to say "I did this". "I contributed to this" doesn't give you the same fuzzy warm glow.

If you're serious about going open source then I suggest you just do it; if it becomes OpenMeka with a programming team of one then so be it. The fact that someone anonymous can download it, tweak it, and then email you about their great improvement is an advantage; the fact that they can release it and claim it's their own is the obvious disadvantage.

One thing that does come to mind is that there seem to be a few people who've made their own SMS emus, in a fairly independent fashion. Between them there probably is a killer emulator; it's just a matter of how many of them are willing to contribute and share.

Maxim

Michael Montague (NeoSMS) and I were just recently discussing collaborating on an emulator (since I'm in the process of rewriting CHASMS anyway), but one of the things we were interested in is designing it as a multiconsole architecture. Furthermore, ahh, organizationally it'd be a whole bag of worms. 'Too many cooks' as the phrase goes, from my experience with nonemu coding is a very real problem with any sort of collaboration. Most opensource stuff ends up taking the form of one project leader doing the main code, and then individuals download it and add onto it and tweak and resubmit, etc... But in terms of forming an opensource emulator from the getgo, it's not easy. Plus there are a variety of stylistic/personal preference concerns. (I, personally, like emulators with lots of features more than I do something like MAME, MESS or Darcnes that emulates tons of stuff but virtually requires a frontend and has no UI to speak of)

In short, it's a good idea, but I don't know of a good way to handle the logistics. (On another note.. SMS Plus is open source, and is an excellent emulation core to start with. In theory, we could adopt it and make it the über-emulator. But again, it's all logistics. And of course, half the fun is doing it yourself.)

-vecna

may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone.

as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something.

a s out.

Very cool idea..
but are this project starting from scratch ?
semms like a lot of work..

Quote

> Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators?
> I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :)
> I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome.

> (subliminal message)
> Heliophobe, you could conceptualize the debugger of your dreams !
> (/subliminal message)

Hmmm Yes. Open Source. THing is with console emulators, unless its Multi-Console (ala MESS) whats the point of working on it as a team. I can understand the TEAM aspect of a driver based system, but when you only have a few systems, 3 or 4 in the Sega 8 Bit department, most of them being clones, why do you need more then one person to do it? In the end even with open source it will end up one person submitting most of the code, just like some other people here have said, with a few submitting hacks and such. As VECNA pointed out, SMS Plus is open source, and it has encouraged lots of ports to other platforms, which is good. But some of the ports arent very good, which brings about the quality issue of Open Sourcing.
I'm not saying open sourcing is particurly bad, it just has its downfalls. If you (Zoop) don't feel like coding much, or dont have the time for it, well then you have some options ;).
a) Give Up
b) Release Source code so others can continue your work
c) Go the way of open source (although I think you mean "open source" on a new project, not the existing MEKA).
d) Continue as now.

It'll be hard to find coders willing to "Just do a GUI" or "Just make the sound", as when yuove started on an emulator project, if you have the skills you want to finish it off.

Just my 2 sents. Take it as a grain of Visual C.
-Jason Starr-

Quote

> Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators?
> I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :)
> I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome.

I think this is a great idea, and I'd love to contribute.

For management, having this at SourceForge would be good as they provide CVS and other features that make large projects easier to handle.

I think starting a mailing list would help getting things going, so everyone could argue about the basic elements of the emulator. (like "C" vs "C++", how portable is portable, write our own code or borrow from MAME, and so on :)

My Homepage

Emulate Jeffrey Dahmer!
No, emulate John Wayne Gacy!
No, Dahmer!
No, Gacy!

oooooh, damn, I just can't decide - I love them both!

(er, yeah, serious reply forthcoming)

Short answer:
I think it's great idea, and I'd be willing to put some effort into it.

Quote

> Emulate Jeffrey Dahmer!
> No, emulate John Wayne Gacy!
> No, Dahmer!
> No, Gacy!

> oooooh, damn, I just can't decide - I love them both!

> (er, yeah, serious reply forthcoming)

Quote

> Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators?
> I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :)
> I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome.

> (subliminal message)
> Heliophobe, you could conceptualize the debugger of your dreams !
> (/subliminal message)

Nooo... this would probably end up being too complicated to run on my poor old P133! It has enough trouble with Meka as it is!

Hmmm... will you be writing your own Z80 core yourselves, or would you be using somebody elses?

~unfnknblvbl

I like the idea. I wrote an SMS emulator over Christmas, but it got abandoned as I couldnt run it at speed on my P166 without skipping 3 in 4 frames.
I would like to contribute to an open source emulator, and create new features, rather than re-inventing the wheel. It would take too long for me to write something even approaching Meka, but to build on pre-created base would be more fun, and more productive.

Quote

> Nooo... this would probably end up being too complicated to run on my poor old P133! It has enough trouble with Meka as it is!

I don't think making a biggest project is a reason for it to be slower, actually, I believe I could make emulation run fasters if I rewrote it from stratch.

Quote

> Hmmm... will you be writing your own Z80 core yourselves, or would you be using somebody elses?

I'm not interested in rewriting one from stratch since there's no real point now, but I'm thinking about 'reformatting' Marat's core: basically reoverhauling it, keeping all 'technical' stuff and changing its structure and a few things that are very ugly to read. So basically it'll be still 70% of Marat work.

Quote

> I would like to contribute to an open source emulator, and create new features, rather than re-inventing the wheel. It would take too long for me to write something even approaching Meka, but to build on pre-created base would be more fun, and more productive.

This one will be made from stratch, so we will do the bases again.
But then, you won't be alone =)

I'm sorry, but I didn't understand *anything* of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :)

Quote

> may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone.
> as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something.
> a s out.

I was thinking the same thing ... :o was asynchronous reading the same post? I'm confused...

-vecna

Quote

> I'm sorry, but I didn't understand *anything* of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :)

> > may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone.
> > as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something.
> > a s out.

soon after i posted i realised that you were referring to the open-source of meka. i thought you were talking rewriting meka to run off the source code of a game, going from the debugging comment, making it possible to line race code and set breakpoints. you know, like a C/C++ IDE.

my misunderstanding.

a s out.

Quote

> I was thinking the same thing ... :o was asynchronous reading the same post? I'm confused...

> -vecna

> > I'm sorry, but I didn't understand *anything* of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :)

> > > may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone.
> > > as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something.
> > > a s out.

why is everyone suddenly rewritting their emulators?

has it something to do with springtime in america? =o)

Even if it won't be easy to split the work up into discreet and interesting parts it's a good idea because people can always add new things. It would be much easier to develop a new blitter or to emulate another i/o device for example. Not to mention the fact that it would allow anyone to extend the emulator to other Z80 based systems (starting with similar systems such as the MSX (very similar?) and GB/GBC (quite similar?)). Plus it could also lead to derived works such as ports to other systems (Linux would be a favourite for many), other languages (Java for example) or simply optimized / specialized versions like MAME (net play, optimized for specific processors, etc).

Plus it would be great to have a good open source Sega 8-bit emulator for those of us that haven't tried and/or don't know how to write an emulator.

I'm sure some lamers will release their own versions of it but that's always going to happen.

And I'd have to agree that it's never easy to have many programmers working on a single system / program but it does have it's advantages - multiple view points on any problems that arise and better documented code (as the authors will need to understand each other's work). Plus, as long as each programmer is good, any problems should be less serious - whenever I've been part of a team I've only found the work frustrating when the rest of the team have been crap coders. Which happens far too much in my life! ;-)

Anyway, what I *really* wanted to say is that everyone should be positive about this as Zoop is offering the community his experience and knowledge. And MEKA is at a point now where it does everything really well - the only sort of features I'd like to see in MEKA now are some ROM hacking tools (so we can have graphic and level hacks floating around - I'm sure we could do better than some of tectoy's efforts!)

Quote

> soon after i posted i realised that you were referring to the open-source of meka. i thought you were talking rewriting meka to run off the source code of a game, going from the debugging comment, making it possible to line race code and set breakpoints. you know, like a C/C++ IDE.

> my misunderstanding.

> a s out.

>
> > I was thinking the same thing ... :o was asynchronous reading the same post? I'm confused...

> > -vecna

> > > I'm sorry, but I didn't understand *anything* of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :)

> > > > may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone.
> > > > as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something.
> > > > a s out.

Author	Message
Zoop Joined: 24 Jun 1999 Posts: 1732 Location: Paris, France	Opensource 'killer' emulator Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2001 10:01 pm
	Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators? I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :) I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome. (subliminal message) Heliophobe, you could conceptualize the debugger of your dreams ! (/subliminal message)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14745 Location: London	Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2001 11:22 pm
	Quote > Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators? > I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :) > I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome. Personally, I'd love to help if it wasn't for one thing... I have yet to learn any C-type language. And a newbie ain't gonna code anything much good; it's a basic fact that most of what you code in your first year or so is, well, crap. That is perhaps why I try my best to contribute via my existing skills... (subliminal message) Delphi is good, Delphi is like C only readable... (/subliiminal message) Also, there is a certain amount of pride in coding. We all to some extent like to be able to say "I did this". "I contributed to this" doesn't give you the same fuzzy warm glow. If you're serious about going open source then I suggest you just do it; if it becomes OpenMeka with a programming team of one then so be it. The fact that someone anonymous can download it, tweak it, and then email you about their great improvement is an advantage; the fact that they can release it and claim it's their own is the obvious disadvantage. One thing that does come to mind is that there seem to be a few people who've made their own SMS emus, in a fairly independent fashion. Between them there probably is a killer emulator; it's just a matter of how many of them are willing to contribute and share. Maxim

vecna Guest	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 12:07 am
vecna Guest	Michael Montague (NeoSMS) and I were just recently discussing collaborating on an emulator (since I'm in the process of rewriting CHASMS anyway), but one of the things we were interested in is designing it as a multiconsole architecture. Furthermore, ahh, organizationally it'd be a whole bag of worms. 'Too many cooks' as the phrase goes, from my experience with nonemu coding is a very real problem with any sort of collaboration. Most opensource stuff ends up taking the form of one project leader doing the main code, and then individuals download it and add onto it and tweak and resubmit, etc... But in terms of forming an opensource emulator from the getgo, it's not easy. Plus there are a variety of stylistic/personal preference concerns. (I, personally, like emulators with lots of features more than I do something like MAME, MESS or Darcnes that emulates tons of stuff but virtually requires a frontend and has no UI to speak of) In short, it's a good idea, but I don't know of a good way to handle the logistics. (On another note.. SMS Plus is open source, and is an excellent emulation core to start with. In theory, we could adopt it and make it the über-emulator. But again, it's all logistics. And of course, half the fun is doing it yourself.) -vecna

asynchronous Joined: 14 Aug 2000 Posts: 742 Location: Adelaide, Australia	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 1:40 am
	may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone. as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something. a s out.

Shaka Guest	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 2:52 am
Shaka Guest	Very cool idea.. but are this project starting from scratch ? semms like a lot of work.. Quote > Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators? > I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :) > I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome. > (subliminal message) > Heliophobe, you could conceptualize the debugger of your dreams ! > (/subliminal message)

PolestaR Guest	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 2:56 am
PolestaR Guest	Hmmm Yes. Open Source. THing is with console emulators, unless its Multi-Console (ala MESS) whats the point of working on it as a team. I can understand the TEAM aspect of a driver based system, but when you only have a few systems, 3 or 4 in the Sega 8 Bit department, most of them being clones, why do you need more then one person to do it? In the end even with open source it will end up one person submitting most of the code, just like some other people here have said, with a few submitting hacks and such. As VECNA pointed out, SMS Plus is open source, and it has encouraged lots of ports to other platforms, which is good. But some of the ports arent very good, which brings about the quality issue of Open Sourcing. I'm not saying open sourcing is particurly bad, it just has its downfalls. If you (Zoop) don't feel like coding much, or dont have the time for it, well then you have some options ;). a) Give Up b) Release Source code so others can continue your work c) Go the way of open source (although I think you mean "open source" on a new project, not the existing MEKA). d) Continue as now. It'll be hard to find coders willing to "Just do a GUI" or "Just make the sound", as when yuove started on an emulator project, if you have the skills you want to finish it off. Just my 2 sents. Take it as a grain of Visual C. -Jason Starr-

Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 6:29 am
Charles MacDonald Joined: 28 Sep 1999 Posts: 1197	Quote > Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators? > I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :) > I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome. I think this is a great idea, and I'd love to contribute. For management, having this at SourceForge would be good as they provide CVS and other features that make large projects easier to handle. I think starting a mailing list would help getting things going, so everyone could argue about the basic elements of the emulator. (like "C" vs "C++", how portable is portable, write our own code or borrow from MAME, and so on :) My Homepage

Heliophobe Site Admin Joined: 25 Oct 1999 Posts: 2029 Location: Monterey, California	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 7:56 am
	Emulate Jeffrey Dahmer! No, emulate John Wayne Gacy! No, Dahmer! No, Gacy! oooooh, damn, I just can't decide - I love them both! (er, yeah, serious reply forthcoming)

Johannes Holmberg Guest	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 10:52 am
Johannes Holmberg Guest	Short answer: I think it's great idea, and I'd be willing to put some effort into it.

unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891	Martin Bryant! Martin Bryant! nt Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 3:42 pm
unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891	Quote > Emulate Jeffrey Dahmer! > No, emulate John Wayne Gacy! > No, Dahmer! > No, Gacy! > oooooh, damn, I just can't decide - I love them both! > (er, yeah, serious reply forthcoming)

unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891	Noooo..... Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 4:03 pm
unfnknblvbl Joined: 12 Jul 1999 Posts: 891	Quote > Is anybody interested in collectively working on an opensource Sega 8-bit emulators? > I already asked that more than a year ago, and didn't got much interesting answer ("it'll be cool but i'll continue my emulator" - I mean, working seriously), but I'm giving it another chance :) > I'm basically willing to rewrite Meka, but combined to the fact I'm setting myself difficult goals and that I don't have much time, I believe help from other people would be really welcome. > (subliminal message) > Heliophobe, you could conceptualize the debugger of your dreams ! > (/subliminal message) Nooo... this would probably end up being too complicated to run on my poor old P133! It has enough trouble with Meka as it is! Hmmm... will you be writing your own Z80 core yourselves, or would you be using somebody elses? ~unfnknblvbl

RetroSpark Joined: 08 Dec 2005 Posts: 488 Location: Melbourne, Australia	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 4:11 pm
	I like the idea. I wrote an SMS emulator over Christmas, but it got abandoned as I couldnt run it at speed on my P166 without skipping 3 in 4 frames. I would like to contribute to an open source emulator, and create new features, rather than re-inventing the wheel. It would take too long for me to write something even approaching Meka, but to build on pre-created base would be more fun, and more productive.

Zoop Joined: 24 Jun 1999 Posts: 1732 Location: Paris, France	Core Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 9:39 pm
	Quote > Nooo... this would probably end up being too complicated to run on my poor old P133! It has enough trouble with Meka as it is! I don't think making a biggest project is a reason for it to be slower, actually, I believe I could make emulation run fasters if I rewrote it from stratch. Quote > Hmmm... will you be writing your own Z80 core yourselves, or would you be using somebody elses? I'm not interested in rewriting one from stratch since there's no real point now, but I'm thinking about 'reformatting' Marat's core: basically reoverhauling it, keeping all 'technical' stuff and changing its structure and a few things that are very ugly to read. So basically it'll be still 70% of Marat work.

Zoop Joined: 24 Jun 1999 Posts: 1732 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 9:40 pm
	Quote > I would like to contribute to an open source emulator, and create new features, rather than re-inventing the wheel. It would take too long for me to write something even approaching Meka, but to build on pre-created base would be more fun, and more productive. This one will be made from stratch, so we will do the bases again. But then, you won't be alone =)

Zoop Joined: 24 Jun 1999 Posts: 1732 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 9:42 pm
	I'm sorry, but I didn't understand anything of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :) Quote > may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone. > as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something. > a s out.

vecna Guest	Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2001 11:04 pm
vecna Guest	I was thinking the same thing ... :o was asynchronous reading the same post? I'm confused... -vecna Quote > I'm sorry, but I didn't understand anything of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :) > > may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone. > > as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something. > > a s out.

asynchronous Joined: 14 Aug 2000 Posts: 742 Location: Adelaide, Australia	Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2001 2:04 am
	soon after i posted i realised that you were referring to the open-source of meka. i thought you were talking rewriting meka to run off the source code of a game, going from the debugging comment, making it possible to line race code and set breakpoints. you know, like a C/C++ IDE. my misunderstanding. a s out. Quote > I was thinking the same thing ... :o was asynchronous reading the same post? I'm confused... > -vecna > > I'm sorry, but I didn't understand anything of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :) > > > may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone. > > > as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something. > > > a s out.

asynchronous Joined: 14 Aug 2000 Posts: 742 Location: Adelaide, Australia	Spring time Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2001 2:06 am
	why is everyone suddenly rewritting their emulators? has it something to do with springtime in america? =o)

Steven Morley Guest	Open source = bloody great idea... Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2001 6:48 am
Steven Morley Guest	Even if it won't be easy to split the work up into discreet and interesting parts it's a good idea because people can always add new things. It would be much easier to develop a new blitter or to emulate another i/o device for example. Not to mention the fact that it would allow anyone to extend the emulator to other Z80 based systems (starting with similar systems such as the MSX (very similar?) and GB/GBC (quite similar?)). Plus it could also lead to derived works such as ports to other systems (Linux would be a favourite for many), other languages (Java for example) or simply optimized / specialized versions like MAME (net play, optimized for specific processors, etc). Plus it would be great to have a good open source Sega 8-bit emulator for those of us that haven't tried and/or don't know how to write an emulator. I'm sure some lamers will release their own versions of it but that's always going to happen. And I'd have to agree that it's never easy to have many programmers working on a single system / program but it does have it's advantages - multiple view points on any problems that arise and better documented code (as the authors will need to understand each other's work). Plus, as long as each programmer is good, any problems should be less serious - whenever I've been part of a team I've only found the work frustrating when the rest of the team have been crap coders. Which happens far too much in my life! ;-) Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that everyone should be positive about this as Zoop is offering the community his experience and knowledge. And MEKA is at a point now where it does everything really well - the only sort of features I'd like to see in MEKA now are some ROM hacking tools (so we can have graphic and level hacks floating around - I'm sure we could do better than some of tectoy's efforts!)

Zoop Joined: 24 Jun 1999 Posts: 1732 Location: Paris, France	Not a bad idea, actually! .. nt Posted: Wed May 02, 2001 10:37 pm
	Quote > soon after i posted i realised that you were referring to the open-source of meka. i thought you were talking rewriting meka to run off the source code of a game, going from the debugging comment, making it possible to line race code and set breakpoints. you know, like a C/C++ IDE. > my misunderstanding. > a s out. > > > I was thinking the same thing ... :o was asynchronous reading the same post? I'm confused... > > -vecna > > > I'm sorry, but I didn't understand anything of your post. Can you be more clear? It is even related? :) > > > > may i suggest to just modify meka to be able to run from a list file. that way the code has to compile, it's able support breakpoints and line tracing and it's a mod not total rewrite - which is a major selling point for those who are pressed for time. unless you want to create a development suite or IDE containing an emulator, not just an emulator alone. > > > > as for delphi/pascal - java borrow from C, not pascal, which itself says something. > > > > a s out.

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