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


they both use 12MB for system ram and the rest is storage, if you live in the UK you can't order off of tapwave's site though.... Seriously go ask questions about this on zodiacgamer! They mostly all have one so ask people who have one ;)
 
Where you getting your figures from?

tapwave.com - zodiac1 = $300 = £164. Import duty plus VAT = £231 and at least £20 delivery GRAND TOTAL = ~£250

gbax.com - gp32 blu = £135
GRAND TOTAL = £162

hmmmmm
 
I think that Sam's asking about externam mem.

It says that it can use MMC/SD cards. Those can be had in sizes up to 512mb. (Like 4 SMC's put together!)

But, games like Doom (I play this all the time on my GP) are $29.99. Homebrew doesn't seem to be quite as well developed. Many emu's are being SOLD rather than given away.

-Peter
 
Yeh seriously, developers go through alot of work to make us software that we love. I ussualy download the demos and if i like em i buy em. Stealing isnt cool, I think that people should pay for all the software they buy. And dont use that gay im only 13 year old excuse cause its just stupid to me. IF you realy want something you save up for it and buy it. Thats my point of view.
 
Yes, I agree those who steal or pirate should be punished, but thats not the subject at hand. :rolleyes:

Regarding paying for emulators, its touchy for me... Ive paid for emulators, bleem and the Sega Smash Pack, but developers spent money to create these. No doubt, homebrewers spend LOTS of time with minimum resources, but constantly, people on these boards talk about how developers create emu;s for THEIR OWN pleasure and satisfaction. To my knowledge, bar Microsoft C++ programs or the like, homebrew DONT spend money devolping emus's. Therefore, I would be glad to donate for a Geneis emulator, even a GBA emu for GP32. But I dont think I would pay for one. Correct me if Im wrong anyone.
 
To my knowledge, bar Microsoft C++ programs or the like, homebrew DONT spend money devolping emus's.

True to a certain extent but as they say time is money. Just ask Jeff coder of the CaSTaway ST emu. Any time he spends on developing CaSTaway is taken directly from the projects he codes to earn a living.
 
Mr. Moose, paying for emulators is touchy for me as well, but for an entirely different reason: these developers are profiting from the hard work of thousands of software developers who made the original games. That's a pretty irreverent thing to do.

It may be usually a victimless crime, but perhaps not in the case of emulators like the GBA project once intended to sell for the Zodiac. In my eyes, Nintendo had a right, and a legitimate interest, to threaten lawsuit upon the author and salesperson. This emulator was advertised to play thousands of Gameboy and Gameboy Advance roms on the Zodiac. If knowledge of such a thing reached a large market, regardless that that's a big IF, Nintendo's Gameboy division would be ruined. Seriously, how many gamers you know are so righteous they'd sooner purchase a GBA with a handful of games than spend the same amount of money on a sleeker black handheld capable of playing all Gameboy games without purchasing them?

A Gameboy Advance emulator freely distributed could still be a reality. (Perhaps it is, but I don't care enough to check.) But even so, while a free emulator would have the same disastrous effect, only Tapwave would profit from Nintendo's loss. And what has Tapwave done but stuffed functionality similar to a PC into a handheld console? They're totally innocent until they market Nintendo roms. OK, you would think all of this is obvious, but I was surprised how many folks in other forums accused Nintendo of unfair or bully business practices against the company of a competing console, simply because they tried to stop an unaffiliated dude in the interest of copyright protection.

Sure, all emulator developers who charge don't intend to do wrong; most are simply trying their best to compensate for the time and energy spent on projects. And, yeah, they're better than the gluttonous morons you'll find distributing roms on ebay any given day of the week. But emulation of gaming consoles is an industry best kept small, and to consoles with no market value left. Uptight people will often shout "pirates" at the mention of the word "rom", but playing Legend of Zelda on your PC hurts Shigeru Miyamoto as much as borrowing Dandelion Wine from your local library hurts Ray Bradbury. Conversely, it would (if anything) make both authors feel proud.

And to further expand -- or further stray from the topic, depending on how annoyed you are by this post thus far -- granted the fact it would be easier and thus more efficient to download something than to travel a ways, what will people think about emulation when the general public loses its stigma over video games, accepts interactive entertainment as art, and provides shelves of libraries with copies of Tomb Raider and Max Payne? Then what will be a pirate?
 
Vimacs posted on May 27 2004 at 11:54 PM said:
whats your problem with paying for stuff you want?
Doom on Z is expensive and is a shit. <_<
 
Last edited by a moderator:
The Moose posted on May 28 2004 at 02:43 AM said:
Yes, I agree those who steal or pirate should be punished, but thats not the subject at hand. :rolleyes:
WHY??? :blink: YOU are probably Stealing / Pirating games right now.. Them ROMS you have on your GP32 are classed as Pirated unless you own the Actual game (which I highly doubt you will)

So you should be punished as well :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

:p :p :p :p

If they reduce the price of games from £40 down to £5 - £10 then big Piracy will Stop (and they will probably make the same money as they would selling the games at £40)....


Anyway... Zodiac is Expensive and paying for Emus and things is just wrong... I got a GP32 for the Free homebrew games etc and Free Emus... Etc
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Drumaster posted on May 28 2004 at 08:58 AM said:
Vimacs posted on May 27 2004 at 11:54 PM said:
whats your problem with paying for stuff you want?
Doom on Z is expensive and is a shit. <_<
Then technically, if it is "a shit", you haven't responded fully to the question, as nobody "wants" shit.

I'll take a stab at it though: All things that take time and effort are not worth money. Everything has a price, true, but the price of emulators should be a hobbyist's dedication to old games and preserving the art of old games. A very nominal fee or donation plea is not a bad thing when it exists in the spirit of allowing a developer to continue his work, but when the same developer plays entrepeneur and slaps down a heavy (be it seemingly fair, even, considering the usefulness of the product) price tag, he risks to some degree exploiting the hard work of thousands of artists and programmers who before him created the actual games that sell his emulator. With emulators, this is not always and necessarily illegal, but it is wrong.

Furthermore, not everything you want is good or good for you.. But Drumaster (side note: is it pronounced drum master or dru master?) pretty much articulated this one already. There are loads of salesmen trying to sell you stuff you want, that is actually shit, and they are a plague in societies even striving on and promoting capitalism. Don't empty your pockets for that ab cruncher on TV when you can simply make your own with a rolling pin, and don't open your Paypal account to attain an emulator a greedy person made today (cough, Bleem) that someone will make better tomorrow for free (cough, every PSX emulator since Bleem).
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I really hate these morons who say charging for an emulator is "profiting from the hard work of thousands"

How pathetic can you get? Did these unnamed thousands spend the months/years writing 50,000 to 100,000 lines of code to emulate a piece of hardware? No. So where is this "profiting from someone elses work" coming in? Surely you cant mean from the software thats run ON the program the developer made. By that reasoning microsoft shouldnt charge for their OS, after all, they are just making money off of the thousands of ISV that develop software for that platform. Shame on them for charging for their OS. And by the same token, GamePark shouldnt charge for the GP32 (any more than the bare minimum it costs to manufacture of course), after all, all they are doing is making money from the hard work of all of us gp32 devs. Stop being so god damn selfish.

There are many companies that offer emulators for different hardware, such as x86 or PPC even microsoft sells one (VirtualPC), why cant an indie do the same thing with a different platform? People these days have this "I should get everything for free" mentality that really pisses me off. They try and justify this by creating bogus reasons about why they shouldnt charge for it, or why its too expensive, or any number of excuses, it all comes down to the same thing, they are selfish.
I mean, I love getting stuff for free just like the next guy, and would never think of charging for any of my games or software (regardless of what it costs me to develop), but I fully respect the other developers right to charge for their hard work.

Developing software, free or not, is still costly. And not all of those costs are monetary, the biggest cost, and the one ignored the most, is time. We put months, even years into our work, How much is YOUR time worth? Dont you think we should be compesated for the years of work we put into our projects?
but the price of emulators should be a hobbyist's dedication to old games and preserving the art of old games.
Last time I checked, dedication doesnt pay the bills.

Anyone who thinks someone shouldnt have the right to charge for their work, regardless of what it is. Needs to take their head out of their ass and stop being so damn selfish.

And donations, thats a joke right? If we pooled all the money that all of the gp32 dev'ers have been donated, together, we probably wont have enough to even buy a GP32, let alone account for things like webhosting, domain names, software licences, dev software, hardware, media, TIME and the hundreds of other things that go into software development, free or not.
 
Wow, talk about a frustrated developer. Akuma, your games are wonderful and I mean that, but your argument is more passionate than the latest film about Jesus Christ and has more holes than Stanley Yelnats and all his ancestors. (I'm a movie person, so feel free to hate me.)

For starters, you picked the worst candidate in the whole wide world to side with, the big M dollar sign. You've got it all backwards. Microsoft is making money in a large way from all the software developers out there, because the SOFTWARE, as everyone knows, sells the OS. Ask a computer expert which OS is the best and he'll say Linux. Then ask him which one he uses most, and he'll shrug half-heartedly and hold up the light blue box with the flying windows. Why is this? Could it be that because, like his XBOX, Windows plays all his favorite games??? Microsoft is exploiting everyone in this industry, and no one but the occassional hotmail hacker is exploiting big M. I thought this would be tough, but you are making my point for me.

I mean, didn't Bill Gates buy DOS from some now poor, depressed programmer for chump change, and then turn it into an international empire? Seriously man, when you told me to "stop being so god damn selfish" after you mentioned the word microsoft in the same paragraph, you were short on about ten million winking smileys. But at least Microsoft earned, in a strange, totalitarian way, what some great programmers think they should by writing an emulator. That is, of course, money.

Your one good argument in the whole mess is that donations don't pay the bills, and this is true, but man, am I the only one in the world who doesn't feel sorry for the computer programmers of this world? It's one job that happens to usually pay more than doctors and lawyers, and unlike doctors and lawyers, programmers usually like their job. Just apply yourself, complete your resume for Microsoft or whatever, make your money in some kind of legitimate way, no one really cares about your bills. Donations?!! I spent a lot of time and effort playing harmonica in my spare time, but you couldn't fill a hat with all the pennies I've earned on street corners (trust me on this one). I don't care and I keep on doing it because, despite all the hard work and money, (harps don't grow on trees, and if you play enough you'll go through a few every month), it is just a hobby, people love it, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

But I suppose that is all neither here nor there. It's just sad that so many programmers, like drug-dealers and prostitutes, live under the assumption that because a job takes time and effort, that job is inherently good and it should support their lives. Because, you see, making emulators is good, but the money flow isn't going in the right direction. It makes sense, from a functionalist, not moral, point of view, but like I said, so does drug-dealing, prostitution and most criminal activities. As an example, it's pretty despicable to see people side with the GBA programmer who planned to charge for an emulator. Consider you work for Nintendo -- this is a HUGE threat to your business (Nintendo wouldn't have responded if it weren't, trust me), and yet the threat comes from a big fan of your company's games! It's really weird to me why people don't think about this.

But, sigh, since you mention the ever-precious issues of TIME and MONEY and STRESS, it's a fitting time to declare that I want compensation for my one and only semester in film school. That's 4 kilowatts by the way. And I'll keep whining, with my "head in my ass" just like you, until I get it.

EDIT: Programming Challenge

Step 1. Write an emulator

Step 2. Advertise it like this. "Buy TODAY! Only $35! With the help of LOTS of code I copied from the original system, you can now play thousands of great games like Pikmin and Windwaker made by other game developers, and ALL from the comfort of your Office Depot computer chair!"

Step 3. Wait for the big N to come a'knockin.
 
Thanks for the enlightenment, LHC, that's exactly the kind functionalist attitude I was talking about earlier. Nothing wrong with that, really.

I consider myself a pretty liberal dude too, but they say everyone is until the first time they're mugged.

P.S. No offense, really, it's just my smartass way to dodge a conversation-killer of a post. 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?
 
You miss the entire point, and go off on some worthless tangent about microsoft, trying to use their tyrany as more of an excuse not to want to pay for a good product, I could have used 1000 other software companies as an example, but I figured microsoft is more known, so its something even you can understand.

But I suppose that is all neither here nor there. It's just sad that so many programmers, like drug-dealers and prostitutes, live under the assumption that because a job takes time and effort, that job is inherently good and it should support their lives.

Who said anything about supporting our lives? I am talking about simply paying for the costs of development and maybe make a little to continue development. When the developer has to PAY for hosting, PAY for software, PAY for domain names, PAY for licences, PAY for many many different things AND at the same time, is spending all of their free time developing software for the masses. You are so damn selfish that you think that you should get this for free? By what fucking twisted logic can you say that?

All you can do is bring up points that have absolutley NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. Where does nintendos poisition on emulation even enter into the right for a developer to sell his work? How does bill gates or DOS even enter into this? This is simply about a developer (or multiple developers) working hard, spending their time and their money to make a product, and want to sell that product. WTF is wrong with that? Who are you now to pick and choose who you think should be able to sell their works? Because you have some moral issue with emulators? Emulators are 100% Legal, in every aspect, and will ALWAYS BE. (unless they violate patents, but thats easy to work arround). And as such, a developer of fully legal software, that thousands will use, has every right to sell it to supliment the development costs.

no one really cares about your bills
Really now. No one cares? You think they will care when the money that was going to developing a game/program, now has to goto bills, and you can no longer afford to spend tons of money in development? I know this one all too well, a nice 5 year project of mine, that was comming to a finish, has been put on long term pause because I cant even afford to keep the website up anymore. All my money has to goto bills, the bills that you dont seem to care about, I put nearly $3000 into this project, and got back about $100 in donations over the years.

But at least Microsoft earned, in a strange, totalitarian way, what some great programmers think they should by writing an emulator. That is, of course, money.
Bullshit.

You seem to think that those charging for emulators are doing so to make some huge profit. They do it to pay for development costs, and pay for future development costs, to keep going. No one donates, they need to get money somehow. And thats how. Stop trying to make it look any different that it is.

I appologize if I come off harsh. I wish that everyone writing and emulator put a price tag on it. I seriously do.

EDIT:
With the help of LOTS of code I copied from the original system,
Where the hell do you get that? You do know they are emulating HARDWARE, which means there is no code to copy! These people write the emulators from nothing. There is no "original code".
 
LOL moz, another conversation-killer. But at least not a total bore like Akuma.

But to your credit, Akuma, you are passionate about this and I can kind of respect that. Just quit with the whole "selfish" bullshit. If you're going to try personal attacks, listen: Since I was about eighteen years old, I've mostly abandoned the whole emulation scene altogether. I've got a huge collection now of SNES and NES cartridges that I play "occasionally" when I'm bored. My only emulation contact comes from playing Jumpman on my GP32, this cool little game I pulled out of the air sometime for some old system with a blue startup screen which I can't remember the name of.

LOL, all this relevance to the topic must really be putting your panties in a twist now! Anyway, I'm boring me about as much as you are now, so my point is I simply don't have an interest invested in emulation, at least not anymore, and I don't have the energy to be selfish about the cost of emulators when I play them sporadically at best. Seriously, my very low frequency of posts here pretty much represents my involvement with emulation. (That and how my fingers instinctively type zophar.net whenever I open a web browser. This is a strange side-effect of my emulation-obsessed days, because usually I'll close it without reading even the first bulletin.)

Looking back, MOST of my post about Microsoft wasn't relevant, sure, but I thought it was a lighthearted break to poke fun at them after your angry post. Note to self: don't go off-topic with Akuma, even in the off-topic forums. There, problem solved. Anyway, you got me good with the whole "microsoft is something even you can understand" bit. C'mon, I survived junior high, I can take much more than that!

Yawn, yeah yeah, a developer has every, blah blah, I know. I understand it's legal, I just don't think that it is right. Get a grip on yourself man, listen for a change. I say this with exception to that Nintendo vs. GBA emulator author case, which WAS illegal AND wrong, and was a perfectly good example of a developer who shouldn't charge for his emu, from which I'll never expect a relevant response from you. Oh well.

Anyway, sorry man, your last post didn't have much to add to the table, so I can't this time around either. You responded seriously to approximately zero of my points, so there is this kind of awkward silence. Can we at least agree that you "really hate these morons who say charging for an emulator is 'profiting from the hard work of thousands'", and I love you despite your intolerance for a moron like me?

I still don't care about your bills, buddy, calm down. It was a flippant remark, I suppose yeah, but I never suspected you'd take it so much to heart.

P.S. Sorry about the whole "original code" thing. That was lazy of me, when I was trying to refer to the code of the games which the system emulates, and it didn't come out right. Yeah, I'm not a programmer or anything but I don't need to be reminded about backward compatibility and all that jazz, thanks for letting me off easy here Akuma.
 
Back
Top