Let's help Skeezix & b_o_b add games to Compo4all MAME
- Thread starter Mr_Loon
- Start date
Kumaki, I think you already made it pretty clear what you want to happen. There's no need to keep repeating yourself. I think you're past the point where your requests have a motivational effect on those who can make them happen, and you're now entering the territory where you're starting to actually de-motivate them.
This is mostly because of the tone of your requests, which is not friendly and humble but more like "I DEMAND you to do this NOW" and "I cannot understand what is taking you so long! Chop chop, hurry up you lazy bastard!". If I were skeezix, I'd stop listening to your requests just to teach you a lesson in politeness. Meanwhile, you are insulting people like TrashyMG and me by saying that our work is worthless to you.
I understand that you're only doing this because you are very enthusiastic about those games you like. But please take some more time to reflect on how your posts will be perceived.
This is mostly because of the tone of your requests, which is not friendly and humble but more like "I DEMAND you to do this NOW" and "I cannot understand what is taking you so long! Chop chop, hurry up you lazy bastard!". If I were skeezix, I'd stop listening to your requests just to teach you a lesson in politeness. Meanwhile, you are insulting people like TrashyMG and me by saying that our work is worthless to you.
I understand that you're only doing this because you are very enthusiastic about those games you like. But please take some more time to reflect on how your posts will be perceived.
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@Kumaki
The reality is that "NO ONE" gets paid for their efforts in this community. Yeah, we do donate to some who have the options to do so, but it is just that, a "Donation" It is not payment for services rendered. It is in appreciation for what has "been" done.
Everyone here who is a part of this project also have day jobs, other hobbies, life, relationships, kids etc. I would have loved to see full speed PS1 emulation the day my Pandora arrived, but that was just not the case. It took several "cool" guys to work on it when they had "free" time, and many others in the community to test and give opinions(politely) over time. It doesn't happen overnight.
I personally have not played one of the ported/homebrew games, as I am just more interested in the classic Mame games(I can barely find time to compete in those). There are even games among the Mame ones that I don't care for, and that I personally don't feel should have even been added. I voiced my opinions, and gave reasons for and against certain games and then it was in others hands on what to add and or remove. I can't be upset that others like things that I don't, that is what makes everyone unique and individuals.
If Jeff adds 1 game a month for the next year, and only 3 out of those 12 are Mame games, say "Thank You", and leave it at that. Jeff and his "team" are mainly trying to build a good foundation and polish up the overall Compo experience. Adding a TON of games is not the current goal. Once everything is as it should be, the games will arrive, along with the monthly tournaments, and other new and exciting things. Jeff is also doing this while taking care of his family, and trust me when I say that in and of itself is a "Full Time" job, and can take up a TON of free time very quickly.
Just within the last few post, others have mentioned not caring for Mame games, so that should be a sign, that others have different taste, likes, and desires. Compo is for the community, by the community, and from the community. This means that "none" of us will ever like all the games, or the choices made, but that is what "community" is all about.
When I was a child, my family always taught me, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". These are good words to live by, as they will keep you out of trouble 99.9% of the time.
Chris
The reality is that "NO ONE" gets paid for their efforts in this community. Yeah, we do donate to some who have the options to do so, but it is just that, a "Donation" It is not payment for services rendered. It is in appreciation for what has "been" done.
Everyone here who is a part of this project also have day jobs, other hobbies, life, relationships, kids etc. I would have loved to see full speed PS1 emulation the day my Pandora arrived, but that was just not the case. It took several "cool" guys to work on it when they had "free" time, and many others in the community to test and give opinions(politely) over time. It doesn't happen overnight.
I personally have not played one of the ported/homebrew games, as I am just more interested in the classic Mame games(I can barely find time to compete in those). There are even games among the Mame ones that I don't care for, and that I personally don't feel should have even been added. I voiced my opinions, and gave reasons for and against certain games and then it was in others hands on what to add and or remove. I can't be upset that others like things that I don't, that is what makes everyone unique and individuals.
If Jeff adds 1 game a month for the next year, and only 3 out of those 12 are Mame games, say "Thank You", and leave it at that. Jeff and his "team" are mainly trying to build a good foundation and polish up the overall Compo experience. Adding a TON of games is not the current goal. Once everything is as it should be, the games will arrive, along with the monthly tournaments, and other new and exciting things. Jeff is also doing this while taking care of his family, and trust me when I say that in and of itself is a "Full Time" job, and can take up a TON of free time very quickly.
Just within the last few post, others have mentioned not caring for Mame games, so that should be a sign, that others have different taste, likes, and desires. Compo is for the community, by the community, and from the community. This means that "none" of us will ever like all the games, or the choices made, but that is what "community" is all about.
When I was a child, my family always taught me, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all". These are good words to live by, as they will keep you out of trouble 99.9% of the time.
Chris
1. Wow. I'm pretty sure that there's very little magic involved here. Releases happen because there are people who have finished their volunteer work on all sorts of games, and apparently right now nobody is done with the work on further MAME games.
2. Maybe because they were easier than others? I have no inside knowledge or skills here, but MAME is an after-the-fact collection of games, not some kind of standard which applied at the time of making them. it makes sense to me, then, that MAME games can be internally very different and require different amounts of work, ingenuity and trickery; so at the moment it's probably the low-hanging fruit which get picked.
3. As others have explained, the people releasing non-MAME material aren't the same ones who might work on MAME instead. Maybe all the MAME-relevant people happen to be busy otherwise at the moment? Maybe, see above, they have already done all the relatively straightforward ones and are stuck on more complicated problems for the time being?
4. Not a crime, but you do come across as a little explanation-resistant. I think by now the message is clear that there is at least one user who would appreciate more MAME. A sustained level of whining about the matter probably won't make anybody pick up the work who doesn't already have an interest, and if anyone is already on it it won't make them work faster.
In all fairness, the different levels of difficulty here might not be appreciable by everybody, since it is a bit technical. And if you're not a bit technical, you might think that a game is a game, and what's the difference?
Let's make a simile. Consider installing central heating into a house - A boiler, radiators, piping for the heater water and so on. Let's compare this to adding C4A-support.
1) If you're building the house yourself from the ground up, it is easy as pie. You plan it yourself, you add the necessary fittings as you go along, and in the end you have a perfectly integrated heating system. That is what happens when you decide to add C4A to a game that you're currently making, just as _wb_ did with NubNub.
2) You've built the house yourself, and decide at a later date that you want central heating. Slightly more difficult - you need to remodel a bit, dedicate a room to be a boiler room, make holes in the walls to pass the piping through...Still, you have the plans, and you know where everything in the house is, so it is just a bit of work. This is like adding C4A to a game retroactively, like Skeezix with Battlejewels or _wb_ with Microbes. You have the source and know why stuff are where they are.
3) You've bought a house, and decide to add central heating: The actual work is much like above, but it is made a bit more difficult by not having the plans and not having been there when it was built. You can measure things and make educated guesses, but there is no telling whether the original architect happened to route the electrical cables a funny way, so you might have a few mishaps where the fuses blow when you happen to drill into the power lines. This is like adding C4A to a port. You have the source and can tinker around with that, but when you stumble upon something funny you don't know whether it is just a bad coder or some intentional fudge to handle a to you unknown problem.
4) You're going to add central heating to a house. This is somewhat difficult, since you do not actually have the keys to the house. It is also made of concrete through and through. There are tools at your disposal - An x-ray machine and some ultrasound detector things - but they do give at best a fuzzy picture. You have to do all your work by sticking in drills and probes through the letters slot in the front door, and try to remote control them through the rooms. You make a boiler room by bolting on a container to the outside of the house. There are several of these houses that need central heating, but unfortunately they are all different on the intside despite looking like identical grey boxes from outside. And it is not even your house.
This is MAME. To start off with, nobody has the source code for these games. Nobody wants you in there at all. You may run a debugger to try to figure out what happens, or disassemble stuff and see what you can glean from that, but anything is going to be guesses. There is no support at all in the actual game code for C4A functionality, so you'll have to kludge that on externally. Also, MAME is not one emulator but several, so even when you've got one game down, the next might run on a completely different machine architecture and necessitate completely different techniques.
This might be to some help in understanding the different difficulties involved. Actual devs, have I made a fair representation?
Let's make a simile. Consider installing central heating into a house - A boiler, radiators, piping for the heater water and so on. Let's compare this to adding C4A-support.
1) If you're building the house yourself from the ground up, it is easy as pie. You plan it yourself, you add the necessary fittings as you go along, and in the end you have a perfectly integrated heating system. That is what happens when you decide to add C4A to a game that you're currently making, just as _wb_ did with NubNub.
2) You've built the house yourself, and decide at a later date that you want central heating. Slightly more difficult - you need to remodel a bit, dedicate a room to be a boiler room, make holes in the walls to pass the piping through...Still, you have the plans, and you know where everything in the house is, so it is just a bit of work. This is like adding C4A to a game retroactively, like Skeezix with Battlejewels or _wb_ with Microbes. You have the source and know why stuff are where they are.
3) You've bought a house, and decide to add central heating: The actual work is much like above, but it is made a bit more difficult by not having the plans and not having been there when it was built. You can measure things and make educated guesses, but there is no telling whether the original architect happened to route the electrical cables a funny way, so you might have a few mishaps where the fuses blow when you happen to drill into the power lines. This is like adding C4A to a port. You have the source and can tinker around with that, but when you stumble upon something funny you don't know whether it is just a bad coder or some intentional fudge to handle a to you unknown problem.
4) You're going to add central heating to a house. This is somewhat difficult, since you do not actually have the keys to the house. It is also made of concrete through and through. There are tools at your disposal - An x-ray machine and some ultrasound detector things - but they do give at best a fuzzy picture. You have to do all your work by sticking in drills and probes through the letters slot in the front door, and try to remote control them through the rooms. You make a boiler room by bolting on a container to the outside of the house. There are several of these houses that need central heating, but unfortunately they are all different on the intside despite looking like identical grey boxes from outside. And it is not even your house.
This is MAME. To start off with, nobody has the source code for these games. Nobody wants you in there at all. You may run a debugger to try to figure out what happens, or disassemble stuff and see what you can glean from that, but anything is going to be guesses. There is no support at all in the actual game code for C4A functionality, so you'll have to kludge that on externally. Also, MAME is not one emulator but several, so even when you've got one game down, the next might run on a completely different machine architecture and necessitate completely different techniques.
This might be to some help in understanding the different difficulties involved. Actual devs, have I made a fair representation?
It's a funny and quite accurate analogy imo 
One small detail: your analogy is a bit flawed in the sense that it is not strictly necessary to modify the software / rom itself, as long as you can find out a way to extract the highscores. So I guess it's not really like installing central heating in the different kinds of houses, but more like figuring out where the kitchen is and finding out what food is stored in the fridge. And where some of the MAME houses have kitchens in very weird spots, with strange, antique fridges which can be hard to recognize as actually being a fridge.
One small detail: your analogy is a bit flawed in the sense that it is not strictly necessary to modify the software / rom itself, as long as you can find out a way to extract the highscores. So I guess it's not really like installing central heating in the different kinds of houses, but more like figuring out where the kitchen is and finding out what food is stored in the fridge. And where some of the MAME houses have kitchens in very weird spots, with strange, antique fridges which can be hard to recognize as actually being a fridge.
Kumaki
Well-Known Member
Well, I'm sorry, your perceptions are incorrect, and you are way too sensitive. Sorry, not EVERYONE is going to like your work.
So your work is "useless to me" Big deal. That hurts you? Plenty of other people DO like what you're doing.
I am just trying to point out that the entire damn program is CALLED C4A MAME for a REASON!!!
So how about we SEE some MAME added?
The whole reason I was interested...and excited about C4A was MAME!!! Not all this other stuff.
Take heart from the fact other people like your stuff, okay? Part of being an artist, if you will...is that not everyone is gonna like your work. Get used to that.
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Kumaki
Well-Known Member
I GET that, Chris!!
But, hell...C4A STARTED with, like, ten MAME games.
since then...about TWENTY non-MAME have been added...AND ONLY ONE MAME!!
Do you not understand my frustration?
MAME is what made me excited about this project. Getting to play the video games of my youth...against others.
I'm NOT INTERESTED in the modern stuff. That carries no nostalgia for me.
Chris, I'd say Thank You if EVEN ONLY TWO of those 12 were MAME!!
I'm upset because NO MAME has been added in forever!!
Kumaki
Well-Known Member
I get this, too, Chris.
I know not everyone is going to like everything, I even said as much in my response to WB.
My point it...while GOBS AND GOBS of games I don't care about get added...NO MAME WHATSOEVER has been added.
I mean, why did they call it C4A MAME?
Kumaki
Well-Known Member
If that is the case...then how about an update to let me know it is being worked on and that more is on the way??
Right now...from my end...it looks like everything except MAME is going to be added, now and forever.
Kumaki
Well-Known Member
Well...would it KILL anyone to give us MAME fans an update as to what is being worked on...when it might be coming...and to let us know it is EVEN BEING WORKED ON AT ALL??
Is THAT so much to ask?
If I had an idea some MAME games were in fact being worked on...and would soon be available, I'd be happy to wait.
But seeing everything BUT MAME added...and no MAME no word, no matter how much I ask getting no information...do you not understand why this is frustrating?
Especially seeing as how it was originally called C4A MAME
I mean...what else do I have to say...to convey what I actually mean...and without having people take things out of it that were not said or meant?
Add other gems to your heart's content...I don't have to like any or all of them...but for Christ's sake can we at least get SOME MAME going? Can we at least be UPDATED as to progress on some MAME stuff, and know what is being worked on at the moment?
I mean, for me..this is as excruciating as an RPG that you buy...and then they drip-feed it to you. RPG fans will know what I mean. The rest of you can infer. Basically, for those who don't get the metaphor...it's like the carrot on a stick. I'd just like to know that once in a while I will actually GET a carrot!
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mcobit
Advanced Member
- Joined
- Jul 28, 2008
- Messages
- 6,909
So will you now scream at people because they are doing their best to get this rolling?
Learn how to add MAME games yourself if you want them and don't just demand, demand, demand...
You are an ignorant, angry brat. Nothing else.
Edit: And yes, it started as C4A MAME, but right now it has become so much more than that thanks to people who dedicate hours and hours of hard work in their freetime to it to make it more universal and bigger.
If you want more MAME games, I would be a bit more quiet. If I were skeezix I wouldn't add any MAME games to it for years after reading your posts.
Learn how to add MAME games yourself if you want them and don't just demand, demand, demand...
You are an ignorant, angry brat. Nothing else.
Edit: And yes, it started as C4A MAME, but right now it has become so much more than that thanks to people who dedicate hours and hours of hard work in their freetime to it to make it more universal and bigger.
If you want more MAME games, I would be a bit more quiet. If I were skeezix I wouldn't add any MAME games to it for years after reading your posts.
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DrCJBoduma
Active Member
As much I love to read the various "Kumaki vs the world" arguments, I just wish they wouldn't clog up otherwise useful threads
CJ
CJ
Additionally, it's way easier adding non-MAME games than MAME games.
When I find some time, I'll add support to my Tux Commander Port as well.
When I find some time, I'll add support to my Tux Commander Port as well.
Agreed.
Sadly the thread title is "let's help", and there doesn't appear to be much of that coming from a certain member who shall remain nameless^ ^_^
Chris
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Kumaki, calm down. Stop yelling and stop demanding. This is not the way to treat others with respect.
skeezix
Internal Development
Don't be so selfish all the time Kumaki; the world does not revolve around you
I hate having to explain this process every other week :/ I haven't a lot of time, don't like to spend it butting heads As noted a few days ago (and you replied to), I'll be adding more MAME games for next month (which is a week away.) The last big batch went in what, 3 weeks ago. Now, I shoudl ask which ones to add, but not a lot of time; you've posted a few wants, and some others, and I'll just pick a bunch; so I'll likely add 10 more in a week (I was planning on doing it Tuesday, in fact, if time works out.)
(It is actually not so hard to do now, for a little while.)
As said before.. I'm trying to release them in batches each month, so people have some focus; if I dump 200 in at once, people will be all over and spread out.. instead, if I put out say 5 or 10 a month, people can focus on those, plus the previous stuff, and keep things together. We're _also_ adding in the indie titles as they come.. theres not that many; I actually posted a week or two back a list of all the games added, and the breakdown.. and indie isn't a large portion; it looks like more since Super Hexaghon is 6 entries, for example..
Also, I'm reworking parts of the server, and working with pmprog on his thing, plus other stuff. Oh, and family.
So, no more whining please
.. I like your enthusiasm, but remember the big picture. People put hard work into their indie titles and I add them as they ask; the MAME stuff in monthly batches. You're discouraginmg people doing their other work, and being self centric.If you want me to add 200 MAME games in one shot.. well, get a poll, and see if everyone agrees, and if they do, I'll do it. But I'm thinking it wouldn't be as nice that way.
I donmt' want to ignore anyone, but man.. you are acting a brat.
jeff
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skeezix
Internal Development
It is actually Compo4All, descended from ROT; ROT is a monthly tournament, not currently active; Compo4All is the new framework.
c4a-mame is the MAME subseet of it; the first cut But the entire thig you will note is .. Compo4All; for all people, on all platforms, for all systems we can manage.
I'm sure there will always be plenty of MAME, and it'll be the largest portion probably... but patience dear.
PATIENCE
Not drama
jeff
Rushed replies, take them in the spirit intended, not the words (got a kid freaking out here
edit: My goodness .. short memory; its been 3 weeks only since last batch!
c4a-mame is the MAME subseet of it; the first cut
But the entire thig you will note is .. Compo4All; for all people, on all platforms, for all systems we can manage.I'm sure there will always be plenty of MAME, and it'll be the largest portion probably... but patience dear.
PATIENCE
Not drama
jeff
Rushed replies, take them in the spirit intended, not the words
(got a kid freaking out here edit: My goodness .. short memory; its been 3 weeks only since last batch!
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skeezix
Internal Development
My 6 year old has more patience :0
skeezix
Internal Development
Another point.. If you stop and think ahead .. The website and frontends are not yet well suited to en masse 500 games; we need filtering and favorites and so on.. Every facet is lots of work that you dont think about. Every step is lots of effort you don't see.
We make it look easy, but dont underestimate the time i spend on this; i dont have time to even play it, if you notice.. I'm doing all this cor you guys
We make it look easy, but dont underestimate the time i spend on this; i dont have time to even play it, if you notice.. I'm doing all this cor you guys
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