Neogeo Mvs Bounty


DijiTao

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In the free open source software world when you want something done and you don't have the means to do it yourself, your only real option (beyond whining and complaining) is paying somebody else to do it. If I were to write up a specific requirements list for a NeoGeo MVS emulator, who would be interested in pledging donations to the developer to first release an emulator that meets those requirements? Would such a bounty entice any of the developers out there to actually develop said NeoGeo emulator?
 
this is a good idea, imagine 10 people donated $10 thats 100 bucks right off the bat, and im sure more than 10 people would use such an emulator.
 
I was thinking that I should be able to put up around a $100 just for this myself, I'm not loaded or anything, but I really do appreciate what those with programing talent some people have. I also appreciate the challenge that is proper NeoGeo MVS emulation. Here's a good quote from the Wikipedia article on the NeoGeo that helps give it some perspective

Compared to the other consoles of the time, the NeoGeo AES was incredibly powerful. The home system featured two CPUs: a 16-bit Motorola 68000 main processor running at 12 MHz and a ZiLOG Z-80A backup processor running at 4 MHz. The system's main CPU was 50 percent faster than the 68000 processor found in Sega's Genesis console. The NeoGeo AES also had the benefit of specialized audio and video chipsets. A custom video chipset allowed the system to display 4,096 colors and 380 individual sprites onscreen simultaneously (compared to 64 simultaneous colors and 80 individual sprites for the Genesis), while the onboard Yamaha 2610 sound chip gave the system 15 channels of CD-quality sound with seven channels reserved specifically for digital sound effects.

Then you have to consider the monumental problem of game roms that are larger then the amount of ram available on the GP2X. I floated some ideas on how to tackle that beast here: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=21676 not exactly easy stuff.

So with the power of the console and it's huge cartridge sizes, it looks to me that this isn't going to happen under the current GPH Linux implementation. This either means that you'll either have to create a better Linux for the GP2X or run your emulator directly on the hardware. Not easy, not easy at all.
 
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My contribution to this bounty? For whoever pulls this off, I will kill one person for you no questions asked.

I'm kidding, but I'd put in for an MVS bounty if it meant getting a playable MVS emu. Fuck yeah
 
DijiTao posted on Dec 16 2005 at 07:43 PM said:
Then you have to consider the monumental problem of game roms that are larger then the amount of ram available on the GP2X. I floated some ideas on how to tackle that beast here: http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=21676 not exactly easy stuff.

The method in the above thread is more general approach, and we can have more specific approach that may not need paging in SD card. The basic assumption is however the size of ROM, you won't need the whole thing at the same time. So, the ROM should be pre-parsed and pre-processor should spit out memory map infomation specific to the ROM. That information will contain what needs to be in RAM displaying which chunk of game. For example, bitmaps for main menu will rarely overlap with in-game data. With the info, the data will be overlayed in buffer memory in RAM and will be constantly streamed by the emulator using the parsed data as roadmap. It sounds more complex than actually what it is.

Speaking of price tag, I think upto $20 is reasonable, although that means I would expect pretty much flawless emulation.
 
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Different people will have different expectations.

Without making the requirements get to complicated, saying that it runs on average more then x fps on a set few high end games. And that it runs in a playable form for more then y% of games. While the CPUs are running at z mhz.

Where x = 30, y = 95 and z = 266 is loosly near to what I would want. But other will want x, y and z to be different.

personally, I have a few goals in my mind for games I will donate for.

If you write your requirements up I'll state how much I plan to pay. if its greater then or equal to my requirements (or not much lower).

But I doubt everyone will be happy with your requirements unless they are really strict. and in that case, I'd assume the developer wouldn't be convinced to code it.
 
I can not speak for the developers in the scene, but I am sure they are not motivated by money. Maybe some are but I doubt it. Motivation for their work as I have seen it from the gp32 scene is from doing what they get a kick out of doing, whether it be emulating the systems they love or pushing the hardware as far as they can to just making a fun game.

Sure a little extra cash always helps. ;)

Good luck with your bounty idea, I hope you raise enough to get someone interested but I won't be holding my breath for MVS emulation. If it does get released then I may consider donating.
 
I have sent donations to several devs. already, I have no problems sending donations to people who work damn hard on a console I love, to bring something new and exiting out. Now an MVS emulator would take first place on my SD card along side a working PCEngine emu. (I would dontate to this also) I know the PCEngine works almost perfect on my GP32 but I want in on my 2X.

So if anyone starts working on an MVS emu, I WILL donate.
 
I'll spend a little time writing up a fairly formal requirements document - depending on what needs to get done I end up working on Software QA for the company I work for on a fairly regular basis.
 
The more I look at what a NeoGeo emulator should be I just keep coming to the conclusion that it should be DrMD for NeoGeo, any chance of a DrNG Reesy? :)

DrMD has a really good interface.
 
DijiTao posted on Dec 17 2005 at 09:48 PM said:
The more I look at what a NeoGeo emulator should be I just keep coming to the conclusion that it should be DrMD for NeoGeo, any chance of a DrNG Reesy? :)

DrMD has a really good interface.


That and the fact that many of the same chips are emulated (68000, Z80). The Neo in simple terms is a buffed up Megadrive. Maybe DrMD could be used as a base for Neo emulation. The only problem is I don't know if Reesy cares for NeoGeo enough to spend time on it. If the source is given to a coder that is interested though it could be a good base.
 
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Seems like he might have this shit figured out. It's AES, but IIRC that's virtually identical to MVS.
actually they are the exact same thing save some minor differenced the AES was the home console version of the MVS
 
triton posted on Dec 18 2005 at 11:21 AM said:
Seems like he might have this shit figured out. It's AES, but IIRC that's virtually identical to MVS.
actually they are the exact same thing save some minor differenced the AES was the home console version of the MVS

So what exactly are you disputing in my statement?
 
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huh? not really disputing i guess dont mind me i got about 4 hours of sleep lol
 
DaveC posted on Dec 18 2005 at 01:04 PM said:
DijiTao posted on Dec 17 2005 at 09:48 PM said:
The more I look at what a NeoGeo emulator should be I just keep coming to the conclusion that it should be DrMD for NeoGeo, any chance of a DrNG Reesy? :)

DrMD has a really good interface.


That and the fact that many of the same chips are emulated (68000, Z80). The Neo in simple terms is a buffed up Megadrive. Maybe DrMD could be used as a base for Neo emulation. The only problem is I don't know if Reesy cares for NeoGeo enough to spend time on it. If the source is given to a coder that is interested though it could be a good base.

Yes, they do seem very similar on the surface - the *big* difference afaik is the custom graphics chips used by the NG. The other odd ball is getting any NG emu to do the raster effects correctly.
 
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