I've Just Realised That A 32mb Zodiac...


Jumpman was the WORST Commodore 64 game EVER. For those of you who.ve never played this travesty of a game, it's a bit like Chuckie Egg, only shit.
 
Yeah sorry for the personal attacks there, I feel very strongly about this, not only from being a developer myself and knowing the hell that you can go through monetary wise, and you kept making light of it, like these programs magic themselves into being, with no money or effort involved. I didnt like that one bit. Especially since I am currently going through these very finacial problems that charging for software or getting decent donations, would fix. (I will never do the former, and the latter wont happen till hell freezes over)

Not only from being a developer in a similar situation, but being a huge emulation fan. Even of consoles and games I own, I use the emulators to play those very same games. The consoles die in time, the hardware fails, the batteries die, the lasers stop reading cds, age kills them (and sometimes my 5 year old does) emulation keeps those consoles alive years after they would have died. I see too many emulators be canceled long before completion, good emulators that could be great, because the authors cant afford the development costs, or have no motivation, or have more important things to do to keep the bills paid. If these authors charged for the product, it wouldnt have taken ten years to get a decent SNES emulator. We wouldnt have to wait forever, through canceled and rewakened projects, over and over, until eventually we have a full working emulator. As it is, we are still waiting for a PSX emulator that gets over 5 FPS for the dreamcast, years after Bleem! developed their few single game psx emulators for DC that are full speed! Thats what paying for emulators gets you. Quality. (of course this is not always the case, some low life could try and charge for a piece of shit but you can spot them a mile away)
 
Anyone who thinks costware emus aren't right has absolutely not thgouth about it one wit.

For background and my comemnts on legality, ethics of free and shareweare emus see here:
http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/textfiles/emulation.txt

An emulator is an OS for enabling old software. A hard drive has no contents yet has value. A BBQ has no meat, but can support cooking. A emulator is an immense undertaking and adds value and supports execution of other software.. like a app launcher. You enjoy it, it thus has value; it takes hughe time to make, thus has value.

Most are given up for free, but that has nothign to do with whethor or not they *should* be free -- its 100% purely up to the author to do what he wants (depending on any licensing he may also be depending on).

Take it from me, since I do all the extremes.. I write them frmo scratch for free and for shareware, I do ports for free, I make a living on software.

Anyone who says I shouldn't charge for XCade is completely off their rocker and annoys me to no end :)

jeff
 
How many suicidal cows do you know... No, don't answer that...

On topic:

As a relative newbie to emulation - mainly due to this -> gp32_console , I'd like to say that regardless of the morality of Emulation a developer should be able to charge for their work.

I've done a very little bit of original coding in my time - a (crap) battleships game for BBC, and a "noddy" (a computer language not a character) roll playing game for the Memotech MTX512, as well as some Macro programming, and a little bit of "de-compiling" to work out how things work. Now programming is (or seems to me) to be an incredibly frustrating thing to do - but, in the end, incredibly satisfying (even if no-one else ever even sees the end result).

So there is some argument to say that development is its own reward....

However, that said it does cost to distribute applications - if only in bandwidth, and this is where payment should come in - its how Public Domain "warehouses" originally made their money (those that did) by collecting PD (and shareware)software together onto floppies and (later on) CDs - and sending the results out in the post (I'm talking 12-15 years ago now) - the theory always was that any shareware products that were used you paid the author for - I got some brilliant apps that way - PCType, PCCalc, and Doom to name but three.

Now I know that some people on the GP32 scene have tried the "shareware" approach by releasing demos of applications and then nobody buys the final product - imho that can only reflect the quality of the product - I'm pretty sure that Gloop DX has worked out for combustion...

Now, if an emu could work in the same way (i.e. offer some functionality but not all: maybe exclude save states, gamma correction, something like that) then it would be possible to sell it. BUT gp32_console has kind of grown up with a tradition of free emulators - whereas the Zodiac hasn't. So offering a new emulator in a shareware stylee better offer something that no other emu has done yet, if people are going to pay for it...

If Emu writers want to make money out of their programming maybe they should write something original rather than an emu (not that emu's can't be original - look at the work enf65 is doing on gba...)...

Going back to an earlier point - if people need somewhere to host their project why not consider making your project open-source and hosting it on SourceForge, AFAIK that is free (at least for open source)...

Gor blimey look at me rambling on - that's gotta be my biggest post (or load of old drivel yet! :D )...

Argon0

(not a n00by, but not exactly an oldbee either)
 
Blimey what a load of old tripe I do spout sometimes!!! :lol:

Basically, developers - charge if you think you can get away with it!

No morality involved - if its good and something people want it'll get bought - unless there is something else out there free which'll do the same job!
 
Oh, P.S. Akumo (sp?) I really like your games I'd even go so far as to say I'd pay for them! (not meant as an insult at all!!!)

Nice codin' :lol:
 
jot2b posted on May 28 2004 at 12:32 PM said:
Anyone who truly believes morality is subjective couldn't possibly read a discussion forum post through the thick cloud of pot smoke emanating around his desk. And if he followed his own rule, why would he bother anyway?
this is the most subvertive notion I have heard for a long time.
thankyou for reminding me what it feels like to be frightened by an opinion.

wub. (from behind a huge cloud of pot smoke) ;)
 
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@skeezix, well said.

Now, if an emu could work in the same way (i.e. offer some functionality but not all: maybe exclude save states, gamma correction, something like that) then it would be possible to sell it
Many commercial emulators do. VMWare, Bleem!, CGVS, to name a few, they allow you to install and run the emulator, with certain features disabled, time limits, etc..

If Emu writers want to make money out of their programming maybe they should write something original
A lot of times its not really about the emu authors, its about the ten thousand people that want an emu, and the author knows he can make one, so he tries to fill that gap.

Going back to an earlier point - if people need somewhere to host their project why not consider making your project open-source and hosting it on SourceForge, AFAIK that is free (at least for open source)..
There are times when opensource can be bad for a project, my 5 year project is one of them. So open source is out (not to mention it spanned 3 languages, none of which is free)

But open source aside, its not really about "hosting a project" . "hosting a project' is boring, ugly, impersonal. Communities dont want that, they want a nice personal custom site, with your own forums and news posts and all the goodies, email addresses that come with having your own site. (sure you can get little, small, websites hosted on source forge, but that is rather limited)

Oh, P.S. Akumo (sp?) I really like your games I'd even go so far as to say I'd pay for them! (not meant as an insult at all!!!)
PayPal Donations are always welcome.

I would never charge for my games, doing so would cross the boundry of doing this as a hobby to doing it as a source of income (however limited). Regardless if its just to supliment the development costs. That doesnt mean I cant respect other developers who choose to sell their hard made works.
 
Sorry for the late response, I keep forgetting and then remembering this great place.

To The Wub:

LOL, it was a pretty stupid comment. I am not against pot (um, trust me), nor people who believe "morality is subjective". I guess what I meant to say was, "what a lazy comment!", but I gave a pretty lazy response to what may have been simply a small attempt at peacemaking (maybe), as it favored no real sides. ;) Before I even read your post, I felt like a jackass having typed that reply. I thought probably nobody noticed it, so please forgive me, you too LHC.

Cheers everyone! Skeezix, seems like you've given the topic a lot more thought than I have, and I'll look into it of course. The one thing I still feel is the GBA emulator was wrong, but I've learned a lot here today and before today from Akuma.

It's not the fact that I'm outnumbered that's proven I've lost bad. My original post was vague and sloppy, and for no rational reason I defended it to no end. Well, maybe this end.

As I've ended heated discussions with Rico and another good fellow who posts a lot, "extreme" his name I think, I'll end here:

NO HARD FEELINGS I HOPE, AKUMA??

yours truly,
jot

edit: replaced "GBAx" with "GBA". another weird typing habit i think.
 
I know no one probably cares about my opinion but :p emulators are legal therefore they can be sold. And I would like to be a genesis and SNES emu on the GP32 that was made almost perfectly. The current ones are awesome but they have full time jobs already and don't have much time to work on the emus. Anyway most people want everything for free on this forum.
 
Anyway most people want everything for free on this forum.

kotd, I don't think you give us all enough credit. Lots of people like myself shelled out money for Moviepark and GPcinema, and many invested, in a way, in the GP32 with their purchases. The handheld now or once costed more than it was worth, or perhaps more than it should, but we've all made that plunge at least.

I guess my point being that the Gamepark crowd are one who value money and paying for good stuff. At least in comparison with the emulation world in general. :p
 
bringoutthegimp posted on May 31 2004 at 08:25 AM said:
kotd posted on May 31 2004 at 05:31 AM said:
And I would like to be a genesis and SNES emu
and i wish i was a ps2 emulator. i would kick ass
god damn you joke stealer! >_<
 
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