Poll: Anyone Interested In A Port Of Magic Engine?

[bast525]

Hey all. Well I have been having an email conversation with David Michel, the programmer behind the fantastic Magic Engine. I was actually trying to talk him into a port of his wonderful emulator for the Xbox... unfortunately since his emulator is a pay-for emu, there would be licensing issues involved in porting his emu to the Xbox that makes it very unfeasible, to say the least.

However he mentioned that a port to an open system (like the GP32) would be somewhat more in the realm of possibility, though at the moment he had no interest in doing that.

Well, I'm thinking, maybe if we got a show of hands of people saying that they would really be interested in a port, and be willing to pay the $20 to license it (a small price to pay! Many of us have donated TWICE that to guys like Reesy or Ryleh!), maybe we could get the ball rolling.

Now, for anyone who doesn't know, Magic Engine is possibly one of the best, most accurate emulators out there. It has been consistently worked on for years now, and is still being worked on to this day (one of the great advantages to a pay-for emu... they are a lot more likely to 'stay alive' instead of being abandoned and left for dead!). It has support for Supergraphx and Super CD-ROM, and even Arcade CD-ROM (yes I know, the CD-ROM support is not an option for the GP). It runs every game I've tried perfectly, and doesn't suffer from the bugs common to Hugo and it's various ports. I think if we got David to port this over to GP, we'd be looking at an emulator on par with the best from Reesy and Ryleh, with a great menu with lots of options and features, and no doubt it would be a full speed emulator with support for saves and possibly SuperGraphx support. It's all that and more in it's PC iteration.

So let's get a show of hands! Who'd be willing to pay for a nigh-on-perfect PCE emu on the GP?

 

[Jaw]

yeah i would

 

[tattooman]

Thank you for posting this great idea in making some thing happen!!! This is very posative here to see we have some one who didn't just post, "we should have better Pc-Engine support." They actually are being proactive, made a poll and trying to dos ome thing usfeull. I love PC-Engine and would devote ana entire 128MB SMC to it if there was the emulator mentioned above. If it works as you describe and can play every PC-Engine game, minus the CDROM's, however those will fit on an SMC minus the music the games are only a few MB, but anyways I would be $20.00, hell $40.00 for a PC-Engine emulator that would do that and it would be well worth the money!!!! Everyone, do your part and fill out the survey, I did!!!!

Again, bast525 I thank and commend you for taking this step as I feel this forum is ment for posts like this you have my 110% support!!!!!!

 

[Tidus]

yeah I would pay for it
I already paid for the PC version & it's really a perfect emu, so of course it would be extremly great to got it on GP32

I wish it'll come true

 

[Hooka]

Umm, why couldn't it have cd support? GBA has SCD support so I'm thinking that if a commercial PCE emu in the class of Magic engine was ported it could have .iso support, heck if it had to be ripped .iso support I wouldn't care but if it was .iso + .mp3 I'd crap myself... anyways $20 isn't a bad price for a full Turbo Duo + Super Graphx in the palm of your hand

 

[bast525]

I dunno it just seems every time anyone ever asked about CD support the general responses are always to the effect of "it can't be done". Well that is specifically to getting it running WITH music. I'd have thought it could be done with MP3 support since GP plays MP3's already as it is, but apparently just playing the MP3's takes a huge amount of processing power for the GP...

But yeah maybe he could do it like it is on the GBA with iso support but no music.

I'd just be happy to have it w/o all the Hugo bugs

Hopefully Mr. Michel will see a lot of interest here (keep those votes coming! and don't forget to post after you vote!) and think it worthwhile.

There's also been talk about possibly getting the GBA PCE emu ported over... I think Reesy was interested in possibly doing that after finishing DrSMS, I don't think Flubba could be coaxed into bothering.



I wish we would hear something about fPCE aparently no one is even beta testing this one yet?

 

[Quiest]

Sure! If we put together to get the 20$, that would be great! I would like to have a better PCEngine emu on my smc

 

[bast525]

Sure! If we put together to get the 20$, that would be great! I would like to have a better PCEngine emu on my smc

​

ummmm... no dude $20 each this is what it costs to register the PC/Mac version of Magic Engine. It's actually fully functional w/o registering but will only let you play for 5 mins at a time.

For the absolute cheapest of you, maybe we can get Mr. Michel to include this demo funcionality in the GP version.

 

[sam fisher]

quiest i dont think a commercial game could be sold for $20 for everyone to use it.

 

[x68000]

the only thing i want to add though is that the gp32 emulation scene is completley without charge and for one person to port an emu over and then charge for it is a bit of a kick in the teeth for the likes of franxis, rlyeh and reesey who put hundreds and thousands of hours of their spare time in to giving us superb free emulators. Surely the best way forward would be to allow people to donate money to the devver in question if they decide to use it and like it.

 

[ralp99]

i'm in, hell yah!!

+ thank you

 

[Tidus]

oh and I forgot to thank you bast525 for this great idea

 

[Bronze]

$20 sounds a great price to me!

I'd pay even more for a perfect Genesis emulator

 

[EvilDragon]

Maybe you could make a special deal with him - 20 US$ (or 25 or something like that) to get a license for the GP32 AND PC version

Maybe more people would buy it then

 

[Dryer Lint]

the only thing i want to add though is that the gp32 emulation scene is completley without charge and for one person to port an emu over and then charge for it is a bit of a kick in the teeth for the likes of franxis, rlyeh and reesey who put hundreds and thousands of hours of their spare time in to giving us superb free emulators. Surely the best way forward would be to allow people to donate money to the devver in question if they decide to use it and like it.

​

I absolutely agree.

Also, seeing that fPCE is gonna get released sooner or later I don't think it would be fair towards the developer of Magic Engine either.
Because, by the time he finished the port, fPCE might be there already and then interest in paying for his emulator might be slightly less, to say the least...

I'd rather wait for fPCE.

 

[bast525]

Maybe you could make a special deal with him - 20 US$ (or 25 or something like that) to get a license for the GP32 AND PC version

Maybe more people would buy it then

​

I'm 99.9% sure he would do that. It makes perfect sense...

for instance, he has the PC and a Mac port, I'm almost positive if you pay for one you can use/unlock both.

 

[Tarka]

It might not be fair for a commercial Dev to do this port because I can only see a limited life - if a donationware / freeware version pops up.

anyway I like the Opesnes 0.3 version even though its sound free its also cost free

and being a family man my family gets all my money anyway :blink:

 

[KickinWing]

not interested here. I'm perfectly happy with GPEngine, save states are not a necessity for me, especially since most of the games can be finished in one sitting. But i'm sure Rylehs emu is going to be very good. If anything, we need to find someone to code a SNES emu. I'd pay $20 for that, PC Engine, not worth it since the emu we already have is very good and Rylehs will undoubtedly be very good.

EDIT: btw, these polls are pointless for a hypothetical situation. Of course people are going to say they'd pay for it, but when it actually comes down to it, i'd bet that only 10% of the people that said they'd pay, would actually put up the money.

 

[GA01]

I'm happy with what we've got (GPEngine) plus Rlyeh's fPCE32 will be a bonus.

 

[DaveC]

I would get it if it was significantly better than the others. Also I would get it if it wasn't encrypted to a single GP32. If it was I would have to think about it. If the unit that the emu was encrypted to broke it wouldn't work on a replacement. If it was useable on more than one system and had working saves, and no glitches it would be worth it.