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MEKA-frankenstein idea? New codebase from an existing emulator
Post Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 9:45 am
Here's the deal- Meka is old and clunky emulation.

Nowadays I've been able to create lots of interesting tools and make proper quality non-clunky software. Creating a new UI from stratch would be rather easy for me but I probably don't have time to create a quality emulator.

I thought it would be interesting to reboot Meka by starting from an existing emulator whose codebase is decent and has a free-software license (BSD/MIT style). Can you suggest such emulator?

Say, take smsplus (I don't remember if its license is permissive) and rebrand it into a new full featured software, e.g. mekaplus

I might be able to help by bootstrapping a new interface and all the bell and whistle (database, features, debugger, hacking tools, scripting language) that would define a moderner Meka and design it in a way that would be welcoming other programmers to work with.

Other experienced programmers would be welcome.
Serious reply please!
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 19, 2016 7:08 pm
I don't know any emulator well. You say Meka is clunky. I have no idea if others are better. I wrote a simple ColecoVision emulator a few years ago.
I use emulators. Mostly xmess and Meka. Meka has a bad interface, but good features for developers.
I need a good, free emulator with some developer features. So far, Meka is the closest match. I don't have a preference for MIT/BSD. GPLv2 or later would be just as fine for me. I might contribute sometime to Meka or whatever, but I currently have little time to spend on improving any emulator, and don't know many programming languages. Meka is written in C, which I know.

Philipp
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2016 8:41 pm
I guess cycle accuracy is the name of the game these days, and SMS Plus lacks it. Genesis Plus GX seems more advanced too these days, but probably isn't cycle accurate either.

What makes you think other emulators have a better code base?
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 20, 2016 10:26 pm
Maxim wrote
What makes you think other emulators have a better code base?


Good point, they may not have good code base. But they are more likely to be more accurate with what they support, and we can add the remaining emulation ourselves.

I just don't realistically see myself writing a new accurate emulator nowadays. I could write an semi-ok one in a few weeks but a good one would take so much more time.

However I can see myself taking a reasonably healthy emulator and turning it into a nice package with tools.
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 21, 2016 9:09 pm
Have you looked at blueMSX?
It is GPL, but on the other hand it seems to be cycle-accurate, emulates MSX machines that are built with almost exactly the same hardware chips (and in fact already claims support for both SG-1000 and SC-3000)
It has a configuration editor which allows you to build your own MSX-style machine by picking components... it did well reproducing my old VG-8235.

I have not looked at the source code yet, so can't vouch for its "non-clunkiness" right now
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 08, 2016 10:16 pm
Mame/Mess is free now, mostly under BSDL.
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2016 10:32 pm
Bock wrote
Say, take smsplus (I don't remember if its license is permissive) and rebrand it into a new full featured software, e.g. mekaplus

I might be able to help by bootstrapping a new interface and all the bell and whistle (database, features, debugger, hacking tools, scripting language) that would define a moderner Meka and design it in a way that would be welcoming other programmers to work with.


Feels like it was only yesterday that you posted this thread:
http://www.smspower.org/forums/1352-OpensourceKillerEmulator
But apparently that was 15 years ago. Ho hum...

Do you have some ideas about how you would like to build this thing? Ie, what should the GUI look like, which libraries would you use, would it be all C or would you consider using a higher level language for the GUI and debugger features? As awesome as the Meka GUI is, it is first and foremost a full screen application which is not really a good fit for a modern desktop environment.

Even if you can't find the perfect emulator to use as a starting point, consider writing a placeholder emulator that just focuses on clean code. If the UI and the debugging features are good enough, and if the overall design is clean, there are probably people in the community that will be happy to work on improving the emulation itself.

I guess what I want to say is that I'd love to see what you could come up with. I'm on Linux full time these days and I'm sorely missing an SMS emulator that even comes close to being what Meka was on DOS. I don't know what your platform of choice is these days but as long as you don't target something completely silly (like Direct X), I'd be happy to spend some time working on Linux support.
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