What Ever Happened To That 3do Emulator?

[slaanesh]

I was reading the recent thread on releases for 2008 and was a bit disappointed that the 3DO emulator was not on the list.

Does anyone know if this is going to see the light of day?

 

[DaveC]

It was probably a fake. I heard alot of talk but without a release of any kind (even a buggy slow emu without sound) I don't put much stock in it.

 

[naples39]

My understanding is the project was supposed to be undertaken by admin@freedo.org, who wrote freedo for windows.

His last post about release plans on the boards there was from November, and mentioned nothing about a GP2X port. Odds are he got some more information about the GP2X and realized how unrealistic it was to get decent speed emulation. After all, the windows version doesn't even run fullspeed on many 2+ ghz systems.

The post in full
QUOTE
Actually something is happening... I'm working on 3do-scene.com project. Unfortunately no one else have free time to work on the freedo.
At the launch of 3do-scene i'll be releasing Freedo2 for win platform; Freedo 1.9.2 for DC; FPGA-Multiplayer (with sources) and Phantom SDK.
Estimated release time -- February 2008. Unfortunately i have very limited time resources, so i can't finish Mac version in time, unless i'll get another developer to work on mac.
I've aqcuired the virtual console license from Nintendo, so you may see Freedo for virtual console. It will be commercial product, allowing to play 3do disks for points. But it's far from being released any time soon --- not until summer.
On another note - i've moved 3do-scene.com and freedo.org to the new hosting -- lunarpages.com; they offer unlimited storage for good price. I've prepayed the service for next 3 years.
Hopefully it will bring some life into 3do-scene.
Aside from all this -- i see nothing more i can do for the community.


Kinda interesting about working on virtual console though, even if it's entirely unrelated to the GP2X.

EDIT:

Wait, I found newer posts from admin and our friend jaguardine over at freedo.org.

Admin has stated previously on the site that a PSP version of FreeDO will not happen anytime in the near future. If you're looking for a portable version of FreeDO, there is currently a GP2X version in the works.

That's right -- of all portable devices only GP2X will be supported in upcoming release.

I still remain very skeptical, but it would certainly be a pleasant surprise if something did surface.

 

[slaanesh]

Thanks for the update.

Was just curious as I remember the dev sounded fairly sure that he could get a good speed 3DO emu happening on the GP2X.

Personally I'd love to see it happen.

 

[Hooka]

Me too, I'd truly enjoy playing trip'd on the go... there's many other good titles for the 3do imo, but trip'd definitely left an impression

 

[Exophase]

Jaguarandine offered me an upcoming beta several months ago (late July), I declined because I don't have storage space for CD-ROM images. Actually, Jaguarandine said Freedo was done, and he just wanted to test it on a few people to get a good assessment of how well it worked before saying anything about it.

I'm going to assume that Jaguarandine never actually got the build to distribute. I asked him a few weeks later what happened to it and he said he gave zodttd some new info, but I didn't hear anything about what happened to the actual build that was supposed to come out.

I'd say it sounds suspicious but I can understand how such a thing can happen. I was planning on releasing a new version of gpSP in the spring/summer as I had made some performance improvements, but I got too overwhelmed with everything I wanted to try or do and too fed up with strange behavior on GP2X, then real life kicked in and once real life settled down I started working on my PC-Engine emulator instead (don't worry, I intend to go back to gpSP after this).

If he's like me maybe he kept chasing small improvements, but it's one thing to delay a new version and it's another thing to claim it's done then have nothing for months. I do wonder what happened... I think the whole thing is feasible in principle, but some of the things Admin@FreeDO have said (or things I've heard others say he's said, which might have been distorted) sound a little weird.

I kinda wonder if his approach ended up only allowing a few demos or games to work and if he got stuck trying to improve compatibility. It'd be great if we heard something though. One thing I do believe is that Jaguarandine is not trying to deceive anyone, I can't say the same thing with absolute certainty for Admin@FreeDO (but will still give him the benefit of the doubt)

EDIT: After looking at all the other claims Admin@FreeDO has made and failed to deliver on, usually with some excuse tagged to it, I'm finding myself very skeptical. Especially what he claimed about a Dreamcast version. Lots of missed release dates. He also never released a video of the PocketPC version (that he also claimed was perfect but didn't want to release because the controls weren't good enough) that he was quick to agree to do.

 

[Squidge]

I remember Jaguarandine sending me a PM saying that Freedo was working and would I like to test it. I agreed but nothing appeared. A month or so later I asked what was happening and was told Admin@Freedo has not given Jaguarandine anything to distribute yet, only the fact that Freedo was complete for the gp2x.

Another couple of months went by and I believe everyone assumed that it was never going to happen and gave up asking.

Maybe his idea of "Completely replacing Linux with all my own routines" was too much? Or maybe he wrote a Linux version and found out how slow it was and decided not to go any further? I guess no one will know now.

 

[DaveC]

I received that same "I will send a beta for you to test soon" message from Jaguarandine as well but instead all I really got was some excuse. I have doubts anything useable was real even though he made claims about how he beat the whole game of PO'ed on it

 

[imhotep]

GP2X vapourware? Never thought I'd see the day...

 

[Jaguarandine]

Sorry to disappoint everyone. I tried to do my part in getting a gp2x to the FreeDO developer, but whatever he has in store for the gp2x is in his hands. This has been a really important project for me for a long time and I hope to see it finished. Anyone who's seen Admin's latest comment in the FreeDO forums should know his intentions at least.

I don't have any new information so that's all I can say for now.

 

[Exophase]

Sorry to disappoint everyone. I tried to do my part in getting a gp2x to the FreeDO developer, but whatever he has in store for the gp2x is in his hands. This has been a really important project for me for a long time and I hope to see it finished. Anyone who's seen Admin's latest comment in the FreeDO forums should know his intentions at least.

I don't have any new information so that's all I can say for now.

Admin (Felix L) is really mysterious to me. I don't think I've ever encountered an emu author less clear cut than he is.

On the one hand, let's take the good things:

- He was a lead developer in FreeDO itself and that obviously works.
- Posts on freedo.org show that he really knows what he's talking about when it comes to 3DO hardware and other consoles, and emulation in general.

And balance with the bad things:

- Several promised release dates have come and gone, for many ports. Excuses are really weird, like being funded by a commercial entity which is not ready to release it, or the controls aren't good enough. Never have there been screenshots, videos, anything, even though a video of the PocketPC version was promised.
- His explanations can be overly optimistic or simplistic compared to real world situations (like "just virtualizing" things such as ARM on ARM or SH2 on SH4 for Dreamcast, or 1:2 average recompilation ratio for ARM6 to SH4): some of these things might be doable but bear a lot of technical explanation to really be convincing.. and others might just be exaggerated.
- Some other things are kinda hard to believe, like getting a "Virtual Console license" to do 3DO games for it. I don't think it really works like that, and even if it did, 3DO is one of the least practical platforms to offer on Virtual Console since it wasn't very popular and the CD-ROM based games will eat up space heavily.
- Word is that FreeDO for PC is quite slow. The CPU is a 12MHz ARM, and while I know that takes quite a bit to emulate with an interpreter that shouldn't be bringing down all of the CPU time in a fast PC. Meaning that the emulation of the other peripherals must be taking a major toll, so how could Admin be so confident that this will run so well on a 200MHz ARM9 CPU? Writing optimized ARM code helps, but probably not by more than a factor of 2, and compilers don't do so badly with x86 code anyway. If he has such fast 3DO chip emulation then what has been holding FreeDO back all these years?
- Some of the technical things put forth have been really weird, like claiming that Linux uses up 40% CPU time on GP2X.

With most cases of emu dev it's usually pretty black and white, either the person is completely honest about it or they're flat out lying about everything. Sometimes it's somewhere inbetween, especially if the person has already done an emulator before. There was a case recently where word got out that someone had done GBA virtualization on Nintendo DS (using the MMU) and that it was much faster. I called BS on this, but after talking to some DS devs it did seem plausible. In the end the author admitted that only a couple games worked, with some glitches, and without sound, but it was running them beyond real time speed. The original claim was vague, but seemed to suggest more. We could call this an exaggeration.

I think that this might be the case here... actually I really don't know what to think. But I'm sure this must be very frustrating for a lot of people, something weird is definitely up.

 

[DaveC]

Sorry to disappoint everyone. I tried to do my part in getting a gp2x to the FreeDO developer, but whatever he has in store for the gp2x is in his hands. This has been a really important project for me for a long time and I hope to see it finished. Anyone who's seen Admin's latest comment in the FreeDO forums should know his intentions at least.

I don't have any new information so that's all I can say for now.

That seems to confirm that the whole thing was a total lie. First you e-mailed some of us here saying that the dev has completed the emu and played through entire games like POed etc on the GP2X port. Now you state that the dev of this doesn't even have a GP2X. Now you state that this project comes down to "intentions". All of this seems very contradictory.

 

[Exophase]

Sorry to disappoint everyone. I tried to do my part in getting a gp2x to the FreeDO developer, but whatever he has in store for the gp2x is in his hands. This has been a really important project for me for a long time and I hope to see it finished. Anyone who's seen Admin's latest comment in the FreeDO forums should know his intentions at least.

I don't have any new information so that's all I can say for now.

That seems to confirm that the whole thing was a total lie. First you e-mailed some of us here saying that the dev has completed the emu and played through entire games like POed etc on the GP2X port. Now you state that the dev of this doesn't even have a GP2X. Now you state that this project comes down to "intentions". All of this seems very contradictory.


I think he meant that him getting the developer the GP2X was him trying to do his part, not that he tried to get him one and failed. I'm sure that Admin@FreeDO really did tell Jaguarandine that he was about to release and that he played through entire games on his GP2X. If anyone is lying it's Admin, because this exact scenario has already repeated at least a couple times in the past.

Honestly I feel bad that Jaguarandine got shafted in all of this, but on the other hand it's a good thing he didn't publicly announce anything.

 

[sand_man]

Even though I didn't know the technical specs like Exophase does, I thought this whole project was a bit shady from day 1.

 

[DaveC]

Honestly I feel bad that Jaguarandine got shafted in all of this, but on the other hand it's a good thing he didn't publicly announce anything.

Yeah I don't think Jag' was doing the lying, I just mainly meant this whole thing was a fabrication in general. I guess that is where the "seeing is believing" part comes in.

 

[Jaguarandine]

edit: deleted first paragraph.

And to defend Felix a little, I think he has good intentions, it's just that things don't always work out as he planned. His actions look strange to many because they aren't as transparent as other developers are. He never got any kind of deadline on the gp2x port for him to meet (I thought and still do think such a thing would've been totally unfair). Obviously I didn't think it would take this long either. Don't worry about it, in the next few months we'll get an answer about it one way or another.

 

[Squidge]

I think what has happened is that the main developer had already decided on what he was going to do and how he was going to do it, wrote about that on this forum, and then when he received his gp2x, he found out it was actually going to be a lot harder than he imagined.

Also, some people feel pressured when given a gp2x to port some emu or something, so maybe he felt obliged to say he had completed it, when in fact, he probably hardly started it?

Only time will tell, I suppose.

 

[kevcal]

Oh well time will tell -= it did sound too good to be true, but we had our hopes..
He may of course be in '99% done' hell like many of us find ourselves in (I'm in that position at the moment).
Fingers crossed anyway

 

[Exophase]

edit: deleted first paragraph.

And to defend Felix a little, I think he has good intentions, it's just that things don't always work out as he planned. His actions look strange to many because they aren't as transparent as other developers are. He never got any kind of deadline on the gp2x port for him to meet (I thought and still do think such a thing would've been totally unfair). Obviously I didn't think it would take this long either. Don't worry about it, in the next few months we'll get an answer about it one way or another.

He said that he was done that it'd be in people's hands very soon and that never happened. Barring extraordinary circumstances that are not likely to have happened (considering he seems fine now and has never mentioned anything like this) there's really no excuse for this. It's just dishonest, and it isn't the first time he's done this. No one automatically deserves to have an emulator done for them for free, but people do deserve to not be lied to.