
MAME and the New Emulation Reality - smacktoward
http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4641
======
bane
I've been following the emulation scene since the late 90s and have really
come to appreciate how important a cultural preservation emulation is
providing. It's more than just nostalgia, these machines were literally the
focal point around which entire cultural milieus were constructed.

If you didn't grow up when arcades were healthy, there's literally nothing
similar to them today. The local Dave and Busters has the games, but the mood
and setting is all wrong. Stepping through the entrance at your local mall
arcade was like walking out the backside of a magic wardrobe. The lights and
sounds instantly drove parental units away and a curious kid could wander
around with pocket change and try a few games and take control of skilled
fighters, jet planes, space ships, skateboarders and on and on forever.

Forging skill, he could become a minor celebrity in this world, if he could
top the high score, or compete harder than all challengers, a crowd would
literally gather and start cheering the player on..and soon you had this
[https://youtu.be/07Upyd9EVog?t=84](https://youtu.be/07Upyd9EVog?t=84)

With so many people in one place, all doing the same things, with competition
and champions, losers and cheaters, how could a culture not spontaneously
emerge?

I can't really think of any similar phenomenon today and work like this, and a
few scattered preservationist barcades and personal collections might be the
only thing that comes close.

I'm just sad I never made it to Luna City before it closed
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/02...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/02/01/AR2008020103933.html)

~~~
windlep
Ground Kontrol ([http://groundkontrol.com/](http://groundkontrol.com/)) has
generally done an awesome job imparting the vibe I remember. And The 1-Up
([http://www.the-1up.com/](http://www.the-1up.com/)) has given me similar
goose-bumps.

Of course, now that I can enjoy a beer, the fact that both these arcades serve
fantastic beer and some food sure doesn't hurt. I'm only sad that I don't live
in Portland or Denver near these arcades...

~~~
bane
Ground Kontrol is absolutely awesome. I've only been there once, but it was as
close to those glory days as I've ever experienced. Absolutely amazing place
to go hang out for a few hours. I can't believe the ages of some of the
hardware they have working there, stuff that would normally be in a museum
behind glass, you can walk right up to and play in anger.

------
__david__
I did some fun work on MAME back in the day. I managed to get a hold of a PAL
fusemap that was used in the Jr. Pac-man ROM encryption hardware. From there I
created a little schematic and then implemented it in software inside MAME.
The logic was stateful (it had registers) and so it wasn't something I could
just run the ROM image through, so I ran the game with the encryption
emulation running for each ROM fetch and built an unencrypted ROM image for
the game while playing. After that I just released the unencrypted ROM image,
but the decryption stuff was still sitting around in the MAME source last time
I checked.

I think I may have done the actual game emulation stuff for Jr. Pac, too—it
was basically the same as Pac-Mac/Ms. Pac-Man with the addition of scrolling
hardware and a bit that controlled whether the sprites showed up on top of or
underneath the character/text graphics. That bit is so that during the
cutscenes the sprites could be on one side of a fence or the other, or go
inside a house. It's a single bit for _all_ the sprites though, so if you pay
attention to the cut scenes, when a character sprite goes behind something,
all the other character sprites are away from the text graphics so that they
don't go behind things as well.

~~~
Lord_Nightmare
Do you still have that PAL fusemap (or .jed file)? The MAME team could use it
for the jrpacman.c driver for preservation purposes at the very least.

------
orionblastar
It is good that they are changing the license for MAME/MESS so that the code
is more free and open. They have to get permission of the original programmers
and if not they have to rewrite those parts so that they are free and open.

This is a key to emulation history. A lot of arcade machines no longer work
and with the rise of the video game consoles with Internet access nobody plays
arcade games anymore. With MESS a lot of the old video game consoles and home
computers are emulated even if they are no longer supported or made anymore.

With the JavaScript versions of MESS and MAME once they finish them you can
play all of those games in the web browser.

ROMs and Disk Images can be found on web sites and BitTorrent sites, but be
aware some of the DOS floppy disks and EXE files might be virus infected,
hacked, or modified in some way to make a crack work. I say this as a warning
because when people archive these DOS games they don't check for viruses and
other stuff. In QEMU there is a Venom vulnerability for floppy drive
emulation: [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=QEMU-
VENO...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=QEMU-VENOM-
Vulnerability) there might be a similar one in MESS.

~~~
joezydeco
_They have to get permission of the original programmers and if not they have
to rewrite those parts so that they are free and open._

How considerate. I wonder if the programmers and copyright holders that
published these games are getting the same consideration...

 _" ROMs and Disk Images can be found on web sites and BitTorrent sites"_

Nah, fuck that.

~~~
ChrisClark
They are emulating the hardware, not pirating the software.

I don't think DOSBox needs to get permission from id Software because it can
run Commander Keen.

If the game publishers want to sell their ROMs, they are free to. In fact,
because MAME exists, they actually might find some customers to sell to!

~~~
MaulingMonkey
Or to take a concrete example, I believe several re-releases on GOG take
advantage of DOSBox to ensure games are playable on modern systems.

------
karmakaze
MAME is the answer to preserving our culture through preserving the ability to
use older media. We save the original bits of the media, and write an emulator
for the player hardware. 6502 lives.

------
fsk
MAME is great. I can play all the arcade games I used to enjoy when I was
younger.

Another good bit is MESS and the emulators for the older consoles. Retroarch
is another good collection of emulators.

~~~
mrob
RetroArch is commonly used with emulators but it's not an emulator itself.
RetroArch is just an A/V frontend for software using the libretro API
("libretro cores"). It's well suited to all applications that need very low
latency and tight A/V synchronization, using only limited types of hardware
device (libretro cores are not sandboxed so they can technically access any
hardware, but they work best if they use the libretro abstractions).

------
ilitirit
I did some Mame hacking the other day. Basically, I added code that would let
me automatically reload a state and record my inputs at the touch of a button
on my fight stick. I wanted this functionality so that I could test various
glitches in games and then replay and record the event.

While I'm not the biggest fan of Mame's source code (it's still got a _lot_ of
macros from it's C heritage), it is fairly simple to understand, and you can
gain a lot of insight into how the hardware worked back in those days. I hope
this project lives on for a very long time.

------
flohofwoe
Let's not forget to praise MESS, MAME's little brother which emulates old
computers and was merged back into MAME a little while ago. This allowed me to
revive my old 8-bit games I wrote as a kid in the 80's for an obscure East-
German home computer line, and even put the demos on my web page (reminds me
that I should try to update them to a newer MESS and emscripten version) :)

([http://www.flohofwoe.net/history.html](http://www.flohofwoe.net/history.html))

~~~
fit2rule
MESS is awesome (and was praised in the article, btw) .. incidentally what was
your obscure East-German home computer? I'm a huge fan of 8-bit emulation and
am always interested in hearing stories from folks who return to their code
from 30 years ago ..

~~~
flohofwoe
These were KC85/3 and KC85/4, small and neat Z80 machines with 16 to 128 kByte
RAM, and a BASIC interpreter and pretty nice 'modular' OS in ROM. Unlike later
machines (like the KC Compact which was a CPC clone), the KC85/2 to /4 haven't
been straight copies of western 8-bitters (the chips were Z80 bootlegs, but
the actual system and OS were quite unique, similar in performance and
capabilities to the ZX Spectrum, but better color resolution (you could give a
block of 8x4 or 8x1 pixels one out of 16 fore- and background colors) and
completely different OS.

There's a bit more info about these machines on the About page here:
[http://flohofwoe.net/about.html](http://flohofwoe.net/about.html)

And I wrote a couple blog posts about the topic:

[http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2013/11/messing-around-with-
mes...](http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2013/11/messing-around-with-mess-and-
jsmess.html)

[http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2014/11/new-adventures-
in-8-bit...](http://flohofwoe.blogspot.de/2014/11/new-adventures-in-8-bit-
land.html)

Enjoy :)

~~~
fit2rule
Cool - thanks for the links, I'll check 'em out! Love to hear about these
obscure systems. I was an Oric-1 user back in the day and am thoroughly
enjoying its revival .. new stuff being made for it every few months!

------
crimsonalucard
I wonder what documentaries he's editing.

~~~
textfiles
A documentary on the 6502 chip, a documentary on the place of arcades, and a
documentary on the medium of tape.

~~~
crimsonalucard
Thanks! You know the titles and where I will be able to find these
documentaries when released?

~~~
escap
see [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason-
sco...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/textfiles/the-jason-scott-
documentary-three-pack) for the detail of each.

you will find them on his site, once they are ready.

------
fit2rule
I'd love it if the MAME project produced an emulator for the Motorola 56k DSP
models .. anyone know of any effort to do that? I know its a gargantuan task,
but .. so?

If this were to happen, MAME could start to take over the synthesizer (musical
instrument) world as well .. imagine a Virus in MAME! :)

~~~
Lord_Nightmare
MAME does already emulate the Motorola dsp56k, IIRC. It is used in the
Polygonet driver.

~~~
fit2rule
Wow, thats very interesting .. off to port some code!

