precious emu authors

[Flip & Flop]

why is it that emu authors take the huff when an emu is pre-released?, who made them god and said only the lucky few should be allowed to try them?

a tip for any emu author, if you want to keep it in house, then develop it yourself, if you want the world to share in your programming genius, then let everyone try it as you develop it. but for f$%ks sake, don't be so bloody precious as to go cry in the corner because you missed out on all the glory as someone else put your emu out before you, try using the ST emu as an example in how you should perhaps involve a community to develop your emu, much praise will come your way if you do. but to cry over spilt milk.. perhaps it would be better if you save yourself the time and obvious effort by perhaps not bothering.

I for one will not rush to pat your back should you ever decide to carry on with your emu development, the world does not need another author who loves himself and demands that we all love him for allowing a screen shot or 2 of his precious emu.

 

[Tobriand]

1) The emu authors own the copyright to their stuff. Its their right to take it offline if they want to, not to give it out and anything else. If they're willing to show us what the thing is all about before hand - that's great. If not, then BE PATIENT. They may not be "going into a huff because someone stole their glory" - simply angry that some fuckwit (I think that's the word isn't it?) went against their rights as authors.

2) They don't have to dev. This is kind of key insofar as what the attitude to dev'rs should be. If everyone simply said
"the world does not need another author who loves himself and demands that we all love him for allowing a screen shot or 2 of his precious emu."
we wouldn't have ANYTHING. I'll leave this open for others to talk about though, since I'm not the best at explaining the reasons.

3) Remember Psemu? How far was that when its beta was released? And, more importantly, how much dev time was lost on PSX emus as a result of that release - a hell of a lot. PSemu 2K was said to be almost ready and amazing for what it did. That probably means near-ish to the standards of ePSXe - which means effectively a year and a half was lost as a result of that similar fuckwit releasing that one. I'm sorry I keep hammering this case-study home, but it is very important to realise that it HURTS IF SOME ARSEHOLE BETRAYS YOUR WISHES, and frequently, it TAKES ALL THE JOY OUT OF CONTINUING TO CODE FOR IT - becauser you know that you'll be giving that shitface the ability to use a newer ver when it comes out.

I relinquish the floor to Arutha, or someone else who's willing to put the points better than I have.

 

[CapnTree]

who made them god and said only the lucky few should be allowed to try them?

Ummm.... no-one made them god, but it is their software to do with as they please. And its obvious that they would get a little upset at the breach of trust as well as the thunder stealing.

BTW insulting people is not the best way to get them to do things for you

 

[Demonix]

/RANT MODE ON

If you give the users a chance to give feedback during the development you'll almost always find the finished product is better. So sharing a "beta" is normally a good thing (come on.. even Microsoft do this!).

The ST EMU developer has hit the nail on the head - look at all the feedback he's getting, most of it constructive.

/RANT OFF.

 

[Tobriand]

BUT the whole point of private betas IS to give emu authors feedback on their project. And to protect US from potentially lethal SMC-killing bugs (yes, a lot of the time early betas have bugs that wipe whtever they're stored on - hence some limited distribution).

It also protects them from the inevitable barrage of bug-reports from a few thousand users every day (which is kind of annoying, especially when a lot of them might be the same thing - see Intelecto's example of taking away his email to prevent it). And of course hate mail along the lines of

"You wanker, why doesn't your shitty emu play {insert game name here} properly. Make it work or I'll sign you up for kiddie porn."

To rational human beings it might sound bizarre, but its not that uncommon, and I'm guessing it isn't all that pleasnt either - so authors wait until {insert game here} probably WILL work before a release.

I'll concede that I doubt anyone on these forums would do that though, although I'm sure if the GP32 grows massively into the less technically minded masses, it'll start to happen. As I say, with public betas its often kind of inevitable.

 

[Mr Fixit]

Dudes,

I think that anyone who has every tried to develop a programme, GUI, game etc etc.. gets extremely tired and frankly pissed off when all he gets is critism and comments like "This button doesnt work!!". From this point of view I have to agree with a developer that basically sticks two fingers up in the air when he gets screwed.

I think though that we must keep things in perspective at the end of the day. Public testing is the best way to get constructive feedback, but it must be with the developers permission. And throwing toys out of the pram when something goes wrong is just a part of life!

P.s Please dont have a go at developers, they do good work and I'm sure all will work out in the end

Mr Fixit

 

[Arutha]

The main reason developers stop developing after something like this is because the broken trust kills their love of coding things for awhile. They are doing this for free, so their only motivation is how much they enjoy doing it. When that's gone, all thats left is whiney cry babies like the initial poster... a group that the world not only doesn't need more of, but needs LESS of!

As for private vs public betas, the reasons are many and have been discussed a lot lately... agree or not, the main point is, its the developers work and his/her choice.

Demonix: Microsoft doesn't put out public betas very often, it is usually to a smaller specific group... similar to a private beta. In addition, when there betas are released to even that group, they are usually 95%+ complete and running. It would be the equivalent of the current "non-beta" emus such as PC-Engine and SMS... that 's what would be released, not the W.I.P. emus such as Genesis and NeoGeo Pocket that were spread here.

 

[Flip & Flop]

1) The emu authors own the copyright to their stuff. Its their right to take it offline if they want to

<snip the other bits>

forgive me for being a bit slow, but the games that emu's are made to run are &copy; to the makers and please, none of this, I own the original so I can run the backup crap..

1/ lets get something right here, most emu users don't own the original games, they just down load them or have access to cd's full of the games.

2/ of course they don't have to, but they do and many thanks to those that do, but sorry, if they don't want to run the risk of an emu getting put around, they should keep it in doors.

3/ psemu should have been kept in doors, I have no sympathy etc. see point 2

 

[Flip & Flop]

who made them god and said only the lucky few should be allowed to try them?

Ummm.... no-one made them god, but it is their software to do with as they please. And its obvious that they would get a little upset at the breach of trust as well as the thunder stealing.

BTW insulting people is not the best way to get them to do things for you

stop being so silly, it was not intended as an insult to emu authors, it was a simple point of fact.

 

[Flip & Flop]

/RANT MODE ON

If you give the users a chance to give feedback during the development you'll almost always find the finished product is better. So sharing a "beta" is normally a good thing (come on.. even Microsoft do this!).

The ST EMU developer has hit the nail on the head - look at all the feedback he's getting, most of it constructive.

/RANT OFF.

try reading what i actually wrote...

 

[Flip & Flop]

BUT the whole point of private betas IS to give emu authors feedback on their project. And to protect US from potentially lethal SMC-killing bugs (yes, a lot of the time early betas have bugs that wipe whtever they're stored on - hence some limited distribution).

It also protects them from the inevitable barrage of bug-reports from a few thousand users every day (which is kind of annoying, especially when a lot of them might be the same thing - see Intelecto's example of taking away his email to prevent it). And of course hate mail along the lines of

"You wanker, why doesn't your shitty emu play {insert game name here} properly. Make it work or I'll sign you up for kiddie porn."

To rational human beings it might sound bizarre, but its not that uncommon, and I'm guessing it isn't all that pleasnt either - so authors wait until {insert game here} probably WILL work before a release.

I'll concede that I doubt anyone on these forums would do that though, although I'm sure if the GP32 grows massively into the less technically minded masses, it'll start to happen. As I say, with public betas its often kind of inevitable.

aw, come on....

we all run risks when having emu's on our system, some bugs may occur when doing something the beta testers have not tried. many bugs can appear after the release of an emu to us all, not just beta testers. check any text file that comes with an emu, it will probably say that the author is not responsible etc...

as for email addys, please, I'd have thought it was common sense not to have an e-mail addy with an emu.

 

[DarkGod]

Ahhhhh, the old "Private vs Public Beta" discussion. I was once on the side of public, but due to recent ...leaking of betas... I can now understand why in these such cases the emulator authors chose private betas. From my experience I was looking forward to something.. which from other releases of this author was expecting much from this emulator. When I tried it unfortunately I was very disapointed, but not with the author, with myself for having such high expectations of a private beta. I am now patiently waiting for public releases of emulators for the GP32 (particularily all the genesis emus) so I can actually enjoy playing/testing a new emulator that comes out rather than being disapointed with myself.

 

[lurch]

Has anyone actually written an emulator and then had a beta released by someone else felt ok about it-I know I would be annoyed by it.I aint got the skills to write an emu so rely on others doing it for me.Anyone who slows down or stop that process aint doing anyone any good-whatever their motivation e.g. sharing a great piece of software that in their opinion everyone should have even thought the guy who wrote it hasn't had a say in the matter.Talk about taking away your personal rights.even though they are producing an emulator of someone elses computer the work is still theirs and in IMHO they should be able to get the feeling of joy and accomplishment that comes with sharing their work with others-not to have that taken away by someone else.

 

[Shrike]

ok lets put it simply...imagine you are useful and do something useful like write programs to make computers say "Flip & Fl0p 15 teh 1337" and someone nicks your code and gives it to everyone then you'd pissed off too

 

[Rico]

I actually think authors are totally entitled to feel smug and 'love themselves' as you put it, because they spent their hours coding this thing. Flip & Flop, you retarded whiner, do you not realise that if you give authors the demand that they must release it to the world every build they make, or else not release it at all, they won't release it? You'll end up with no emulators.

Most of these emulators weren't made public, so if you were whining about demanding them to get released then you might have actually stopped a few developing. Put simply so you're microbe-sized brain can understand it: It's not your fucking place to decide who gets the emulators. You criticise authors for being god, well let's define 'God'. According to Christianity - and I'm not, but that doesn't really matter - God created the Earth so he governs it. The authors make the emulators, so they can govern them. Instead of opening them up to the masses and watching the bug reports and criticisms (as well as the praise) ensue, that they can't keep track of (think - if no email is released with the emu, no feedback) then they won't want to code it.

So instead of tracking forums and asking around, some developers release it to a few people and ask them to test it. They are not the "lucky few". They must look for bugs and devote some time to testing these emus, and regularly update the author on them. You can't say that in a public release, everyone is going to do that. Plus add the whingers who complain of incompatible games, etc, and you've got yourself an obvious reason to keep it private and release betas.

As for keeping it totally in house - then they have to bug test and code at the same time. For some coders, private builds is the only method that makes sense.

So stop complaining, if you're pissed that you can't play fGen, but can't wait either, go code your own fucking emulator and release it to everyone. Then you'll have proved your faulty arguments.

- Rico

 

[lurch]

OK-lets not get into name calling or a slanging match-even though i disagree with the topic it is still a valid point of view from the posters perspective.they were simply saying what was on their mind-as i did in my last post-every had an opinion and are entitled to it,the emu authers,the testers and the general public.thats what these boards are for.I have always enjoyed a good balnced agument as it get things sorted and opinions aired.so lets not diss anyone for offering their thoughts.

Any emu writers reading this? what are your thoughts on the topic? if you have ever had this happen to you,how exactly did it make you feel?I'm sure your side of thing would help to put things into perspective.

 

[Flack]

This was obviously just a post to get people riled up. You're saying that Microsoft shouldn't get mad that Longhorn got leaked?

If you're so upset with these programmers, delete all the emulators and homebrew off your GP32 and enjoy your new doorstop and korean games.

I don't think most emulator authors think they are gods, but when you write the software, you write the rules. As is, I don't think we'll have to worry about it because I think the rules changed after this last big leak. People will be very careful as whom to trust from now on.

If the GBA emulator were public there would be 10,000 threads here saying "THIS SUX IT'S SLOW THE CODERS SUCK THIS IS TEH SUCK." As a VB Coder, I know I'll often send someone 10 versions of beta 1, making changes over, and over (and over) before releasing beta 2.

 

[seth]

who is the athur of the gba emu?