Development Bounties

[7zark7]

improve mame , especially namco system 1 emulation .....

7Zark7

 

[Pleng]

@Bounties:
If 2 people each come with a solution for a problem nearly at the same time, do booth get the money or only the first one or the one who solved it better?

AFAIK bounties work like this:

1. A task is put out with a figure for the completion.
2. Somebody says 'yes Ill do that'
3. A completion date is decided on
4. Upon completion the figure is paid

This prevents two people working towards the same goal for the same reward. Clearly if a bounty developer has shown progress but not finished by completion date, the deadline is usually extended. The deadline date is just put in place to stop people accepting bounties and then doing nothing.

 

[skeezix]

Emulation never ever has been illegal, anywhere. (it's rom piracy that is usually illegal and note that is a complex area per country.)

Jeff

the DMCA made removing encryption illegal, if the legal copy of the rom or disk is encrypted (even a ROT-13 retarded encryption), you're not allowed to decrypt it.

but you're right for non-encrypted machines, as long as it does not involve patent-protected software technologies.

Said I said, _emulation_ is and always has been legal (and remember, people here think 'emulator' as SNES, but every VM is an emulator, and every developer uses emulation in day to day life for various things, since the 60s. Think Vmware, even.. virtualization is just another kind of emulation, right? At legal levels. Anyway.)

ROM 'piracy' is and always has been wheree it gets complicated.

But not that even the DMCA (I'm not Americam btw) specifies that encryption itself _can_ be removed, with well defined terms (ie: you're entitled to play a game, so if you must format shift (including breaking encryption), then that is legal.. provided the software is not supported by the company anymore. Note that Nintendo for instance still actively sells old games (Virtual Console), and I think that kills all of this.) Still, whenever I see someone say 'emulation' and 'legality', I have to jump in and correct them. People seem to think Emulation is some dark underground thing, when it is not

(And trust me, I've written ground up emulators back 15 years ago, and sold legal emulators, I know my business

jeff

 

[hedwards]

But not that even the DMCA (I'm not Americam btw) specifies that encryption itself _can_ be removed, with well defined terms (ie: you're entitled to play a game, so if you must format shift (including breaking encryption), then that is legal.. provided the software is not supported by the company anymore. Note that Nintendo for instance still actively sells old games (Virtual Console), and I think that kills all of this.) Still, whenever I see someone say 'emulation' and 'legality', I have to jump in and correct them. People seem to think Emulation is some dark underground thing, when it is not

The encryption is from Title 17, 1201. And the relevant portion is:

(a) Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures.—
(1)
(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title. The prohibition contained in the preceding sentence shall take effect at the end of the 2-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this chapter.
( B) The prohibition contained in subparagraph
(A) shall not apply to persons who are users of a copyrighted work which is in a particular class of works, if such persons are, or are likely to be in the succeeding 3-year period, adversely affected by virtue of such prohibition in their ability to make noninfringing uses of that particular class of works under this title, as determined under subparagraph (C).

Adversely affected, is sort of tough to define, however if you've got cartridges and no console, there's a pretty good chance it applies to you. Likewise if you do have a console which is 20 years old, you're probably OK. But I don't believe that there's a lot of case law to really tell people what exactly "Adversely affected" really means in any given context.

It gets a tad complicated as the Librarian of Congress gets to set some of that up. And I'm not sure what exactly the rules are there.

EDIT: But in terms of ROMs the reallly applicable bit is probably the effective copy protection. Meaning that things like CSS on DVDs are unlikely to count.

 

[Tom`]

Leaving aside the fact that the actual legality is (at least for some systems) hazy, at least until ruled upon by a judge (probably not happening anytime soon), the real issue with selling emulators is that the companies that still own the rights to the consoles are dead-set against even dumping ROMs of games you own. They maintain that even this, which would at least in some cases be considered fair use under US law, is not only illegal but the next thing to kicking puppies.

Being legally correct doesn't always help much if a megacorporation decides to set their team of expensive lawyers after you.

 

[God Ginrai]

... but the next thing to kicking puppies.

O_O

...



-God Ginrai

 

[Exophase]

Leaving aside the fact that the actual legality is (at least for some systems) hazy, at least until ruled upon by a judge (probably not happening anytime soon), the real issue with selling emulators is that the companies that still own the rights to the consoles are dead-set against even dumping ROMs of games you own. They maintain that even this, which would at least in some cases be considered fair use under US law, is not only illegal but the next thing to kicking puppies.

Being legally correct doesn't always help much if a megacorporation decides to set their team of expensive lawyers after you.

Nonetheless, and contrary to common belief, companies generally don't bother challenging commercial emulators. Console emulators have been sold since the beginning, for over 15 years. The only cases of litigation against an emulator that I've ever heard of were the two Sony suits against the PS1 emulators VGS and Bleem!. Despite litigating the two companies to death Sony eventually lost, which is important because the case stands as precedent that can be used to prevent a future case from even making it to trial (although DMCA might have overturned any such victory). Nonetheless, no one has bothered since.

It is said that Nintendo has made two C&D orders/threats against emulators. The first is against UltraHLE, but this is slightly questionable since none of the many later N64 emulators were known to have received similar C&Ds. Still, it was released during a really hot period for N64 and really took everything by storm, so it's not very hard to believe; no development quite so dramatic has happened for any other non-handheld platform. The other instance is where Firestorm claimed to have received a letter for the GBA emulator they were promoting for Zodiac, but I can almost guarantee this was a lie, like most of the other things the company was saying at the time. Since they ended up eventually releasing it anyway (although in pretty pitiful shape) that should put to rest any of the claims - if a company is going to make a threat they'd do well to follow through with it or else not be taken seriously in the future.

These days lots of emulators are sold for handheld platforms, including Android, iPhone (although not on the app store but on jailbroken sites like Cydia), Symbian, and Windows Mobile. They're sold online by people who are probably not that easy to track, so even if the companies wanted to they'd probably have a hard time ceasing things, and if they did it'd likely just force the emulator development more underground and possibly for free, or at worst force another emulator to eventually take its place. It's probably not worth fighting, much less worth spending money on expensive lawyers over.

 

[Tom`]

Leaving aside the fact that the actual legality is (at least for some systems) hazy, at least until ruled upon by a judge (probably not happening anytime soon), the real issue with selling emulators is that the companies that still own the rights to the consoles are dead-set against even dumping ROMs of games you own. They maintain that even this, which would at least in some cases be considered fair use under US law, is not only illegal but the next thing to kicking puppies.

Being legally correct doesn't always help much if a megacorporation decides to set their team of expensive lawyers after you.

Nonetheless, and contrary to common belief, companies generally don't bother challenging commercial emulators. ...

Thanks for this.

I know of the Bleem! case, and I'd assumed there were more instances like this given the rather extreme stance Nintendo takes on copying even legally purchased games. I think I'd conflated it in my head with things like this, by Square Enix and not Nintendo; I was fairly upset about this one at the time.

 

[zohnnyg]

what does "youtube hardware player" mean? does that mean we will be able to watch youtube on our pandoras?

 

[skeezix]

We don't need to tread this - emulation is legal. In context of console emulation it can get tricky , buy nothing to do with emulation. Just the usual lawsuit fodder like anything else. Ie: patented protocols, ports, protection schemes etc. Ie: emulate palm handheld better not support hotsync - hardware us public, but the protocols are all pain for the emu legalities

Anyway, people are 300% misguided in general so suffice to say - emulation as a technique is fully legal. (if not, it breaks every VM and half the development practices of the last 30 years right?). On a case by case basis it's more usually a case on infringement - emu includes colour prom info or a bios and *blam* obviously

Jeffphone

 

[skeezix]

Note also nintendo is known for posting lies on it's faqs - suggesting something is illegal or amoral when the opposite is true. In their defense - it's a complex topic per country and it's easier for them to say a blanket 10 word summary than a 30 page truth, but still generally incorrect ..

Jeffphone

 

[el_pango]

Did the idea of setting bounties die? If so, I'd like to resurrect it with saying I'll cheerfully contribute some money to whoever can deliver a newbie-friendly preconfigured cross-compiler and tools with all relevant headers and libraries already where the compiler wants them for Win32.

 

[Garrick]

£10 over paypal for whomever ports JA2 (theres an n800 build with source) to pandora!

That's ten whole English pounds with relatively favourable exchange rates!

 

[torpor]

Emulation is legal, and there *ARE* legal ROM's for most of the emulators out there. Thus, if you do your homework properly and are ethical about it, it *is* possible to sell emulators bundled with ROM's.

For example, I know for a fact that Oricutron - Oric-1/Atmos emulator - can be bundled with some perfectly legal ROM's, with permission from the authors.

 

[laurens]

£10 over paypal for whomever ports JA2 (theres an n800 build with source) to pandora!

That's ten whole English pounds with relatively favourable exchange rates!

I gave it a quick compile and tried it with the demo, but it gave me an unhandled exception saying 'Initialising libraries failed', although in the readme it said it only depended on sdl, which is obviously available on the pandora. Don't have more time to investigate atm, sorry.

BTW: I tried the normal port from http://tron.homeunix.org/ja2/, not the n800 specific one.

 

[zohnnyg]

put a bounty for mame .106 for pandora! or a bounty that combines the pandora mame4all with pandora mame .106 like craig was saying!

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Perfect Amiga Emulation of the Amiga 500 and 1200.Perfect Amiga Emulation of the Amiga 500 and 1200.(Deja vu?)
amiga and mame would be tops.Some sort of individualised pandora specific apps would be nice too

 

[Wrath Of Khan]

Actually a really cool original game for the pandora would be sweet.Could be a 16bit amiga style or such.
Something to make the pandora sing.

 

[Trip]

If your looking for something to spend the dev fund on that will help the project, then I have a few ideas Craig (most have been mentioned before seem to have been forgotten about)..

1. Build a Mame cab with the Pandora in place of a full size PC.
   This will allow you to sell to a whole new group of people and help with Pandora sales.
   
2. Pay for a port of OnLive.
   This is the sort of thing that the Pandora will excel at and show everyone the reason why the Pandora has real controls.
   
3. Pay for a port of StreamMyGame.
   This will allow people to play their PC games whilst away from the PC and again show off the Pandoras controls. Also, all it would take to increase Pandora sales, would be for someone to make a video of them playing W.O.W over the net whilst away from home.
   

Can't remember what else I was going to add to this list but you get the basic idea

 

[Garrick]

£10 over paypal for whomever ports JA2 (theres an n800 build with source) to pandora!

That's ten whole English pounds with relatively favourable exchange rates!

I gave it a quick compile and tried it with the demo, but it gave me an unhandled exception saying 'Initialising libraries failed', although in the readme it said it only depended on sdl, which is obviously available on the pandora. Don't have more time to investigate atm, sorry.

BTW: I tried the normal port from http://tron.homeunix.org/ja2/, not the n800 specific one.

Mayhaps it's fine, a quick google around suggests that is due to a lack of games files (maybe not with the demo version?). Alas my panda is in for surgery at the moment, or i'd try help test with the full game files.

Many thanks for looking into it, I think it would be rather grand playing on the pandora.