Mess For Pandora

[chad78]

I don't know how I forgot about MESS - but, not having a Windows computer for so long might have had something to do with it. SDLMESS is the Linux port. Could that work on the Pandora? That would give us a ton of older systems right there.

Or, are their problems that my n00bish mind doesn't see?

 

[naples39]

There is a MESS gp2x port. A lot of stuff runs pretty slow, but that would be a starting point.

 

[vampire8bit]

telengard's your man - I remember him saying in an old thread that he was abandoning Mess on GP2X and waiting for Pandora.

 

[ldesnogu]

I don't know how I forgot about MESS - but, not having a Windows computer for so long might have had something to do with it. SDLMESS is the Linux port. Could that work on the Pandora? That would give us a ton of older systems right there.

Or, are their problems that my n00bish mind doesn't see?

sdlmess could probably be ported in a less than a day. The only problem (for most people I mean) is that MAME and MESS focus on accuracy (no HLE thingie for instance ) so you may be disappointed by its speed.

 

[plopperz]

If there's one thing I really really want out of the Pandora is a good Apple II emulator. Hopefully MESS will be ported so I can achieve that dream.

 

[vampire8bit]

I don't know how I forgot about MESS - but, not having a Windows computer for so long might have had something to do with it. SDLMESS is the Linux port. Could that work on the Pandora? That would give us a ton of older systems right there.

Or, are their problems that my n00bish mind doesn't see?

sdlmess could probably be ported in a less than a day. The only problem (for most people I mean) is that MAME and MESS focus on accuracy (no HLE thingie for instance ) so you may be disappointed by its speed.


I don't know much about Mess but surely the older computers/consoles can be 60fps with full sound at 600Mhz? or am I wrong?

 

[ldesnogu]

I don't know much about Mess but surely the older computers/consoles can be 60fps with full sound at 600Mhz? or am I wrong?

It depends on how far "older" goes
MESS/MAME are multiple system/arcade emulators with a focus on accuracy, so they will *always* be slower than a dedicated emulator.

For instance, MESS is improving its n64 support, but you wouldn't be able to run it on the Pandora, while a dedicated HLE n64 emulator might be doable.

 

[vampire8bit]

I don't know much about Mess but surely the older computers/consoles can be 60fps with full sound at 600Mhz? or am I wrong?

It depends on how far "older" goes
MESS/MAME are multiple system/arcade emulators with a focus on accuracy, so they will *always* be slower than a dedicated emulator.

For instance, MESS is improving its n64 support, but you wouldn't be able to run it on the Pandora, while a dedicated HLE n64 emulator might be doable.

I meant the 8-bit and lower systems like Atari 7800, Colecovision, intellivision, Apple II etc.

 

[Chip]

I don't know much about Mess but surely the older computers/consoles can be 60fps with full sound at 600Mhz? or am I wrong?

Older by MESS standards, yes. MESS covers a lot of consoles and computer systems. Most 8-bit and some 16-bit systems will probably run decently on Pandora.

 

[Exophase]

I don't know much about Mess but surely the older computers/consoles can be 60fps with full sound at 600Mhz? or am I wrong?

Older by MESS standards, yes. MESS covers a lot of consoles and computer systems. Most 8-bit and some 16-bit systems will probably run decently on Pandora.


MESS always struck me as a jack of all trades, master of none. Some of the more interesting ones (like 3DO, Jaguar) have close to no support actually done for them and certainly don't run anything useful.

I find the whole matter of "MESS strives for higher accuracy, so it'll be slower but more accurate" argument a little thin too, without a lot more empirical evidence. I do believe that that's their goal, but it doesn't mean that they've achieved it any more than the standalone emulators do. On the other hand, I have seen a MESS author mention that he "doesn't care about speed", for a portion that I know already is not as compatible as other standalone variants.

I would like to know if anyone thinks MESS does an especially superior job at emulating any of the platforms it does, compared to the best open source standalones, or if it's just interesting people for the convenience of getting several platforms emulated at once.

EDIT: Would also seem that savestate is unsupported for just about everything >_>

 

[Chip]

I would like to know if anyone thinks MESS does an especially superior job at emulating any of the platforms it does, compared to the best open source standalones, or if it's just interesting people for the convenience of getting several platforms emulated at once.

I'm not really competent enough in the technical aspects of emulation to know if it is more or less "accurate" than stand alone emulators. I was just trying to answer a question.

I don't personally have a strong desire to see a MESS port, though I would probably play around with it if it did exist. The main reason being, as you stated, that it would bring a lot of systems to the Pandora in one go. Many of them would not work (some don't really work in any version of MESS), others would be too slow, but several older systems would work fine. Many of those systems are not well known and would probably never see a standalone emulator port. I'm sure there is a guy out there who really loves the Jupiter Ace, and knowing he could run his old Forth programs on the Pandora is enough to convince him to buy one.

One of the main goals of the MESS project is (or at least claims to be) ease of portability. Laurent seems to think it could be done in a day. Even if only 25% of the systems MESS claims to support end up being usable on Pandora, the benefit seems well worth the cost. Of course, it isn't costing me anything, so maybe you should do your own cost-benefit analysis

 

[ldesnogu]

Laurent seems to think it could be done in a day.

I perhaps need to sustain this claim
MAME and MESS share a big amount of code. SDLMAME and SDLMESS use SDL and so are very portable (SDLMAME runs on PowerPC macs and on the PS3 for instance, so most endianness and alignment issues have been sorted out).
Cross-compilation should be a no-brainer.

So I think in one day, it will be done. Unless there is some tweaking necessary for inputs and outputs of course