ZODIAC 'Pay 2 play'

[raven]

Why would it be a problem to pay for an emulator? Emulation itself is not illegal ( this has been taken to court several times ) and doesn't necessarily damage game-companies: I don't have a Playstation but I do have original Playstation games, bought to play on my PC with EPSXE. Thanks to emulation I can use all my consoles without stacking them up in my livingroom, I think that's worth some money

When you buy an emulator you are simply supporting a programmer for his hard work. If you think this is unethical then by that same logic all hardware/ software that enables you to copy anything ( DVD-RW, CD-RW, VCR's, MP3-converters etc ) ought to be either free or illegal. In all these cases it is not about what CAN be done with the hard/ software, it is about how you decide to use it.

I do have one problem with the Palm-OS software: it seems like anything that's any good at all is shareware. Even software and emu's you couldn't give away on any other OS costs money on the Palm ( I am being a bit harsh here: there are some very nice things available for free on the Palm but this is quite rare ). I don't have a problem paying for good software but a lot of shareware for the Palm is simply not worth the money IMO.

Of course this may all change if, maybe thanks to the Zodiac, more software and emu's will be developed but until then I think I will stick with the GP and wait. ( maybe for the next generation handheld? )

 

[moora101]

Actually Sony didn't win against Bleem, Bleem closed down simply because they couldn't shift enough units of anything.

They did win against bleem, by causing bleem to build up huge legal fees which they just couldn't afford to pay.

It also didn't help with Sony telling game shops such as Electronics Boutique that if they stocked it- Sony would refuse them the right to sell any PS2 games. When Bleemcast was released, could you see it for sale anywhere? I certainly couldn't, the only place to buy it was online.

Maybe it's more accurate to say that Sony "bullied" Bleem out of existence.

There were some interesting quotes from the guys behind bleem on www.dcemulation.com. If you search the message boards then you'll probably find them..

 

[pip]

Of course the authors are free to charge for their work if they so wish. We are however not forced to buy it. One thing should be noted though, almost all emulators for the gp32 and zodiac are ports of an original emulator. If anyone deserves money, it is the author of the original emulator, since he is the one who actually did all the emulation and most of the work.

When it comes to emulation, imho giftware is a way better way to go than shareware, for a number of reasons.

 

[DGTi]

It comes down to... I paid about £150 for my GP (which is alot of money) then should I have to pay another $20 for every emu I want to try!! I do think the great coders should get our support ie god like status/money. But $20 a go.. where is the fun in that Thanks for the reply guys thats what makes owning a GP great. Keep up the gud work :rolleyes:

 

[Kungfucheez]

Thank god cause Im getting my GP ina few days and I dont want to hear now about a system thats better then the GP right at this moment

 

[generalnmx]

First of all - it's not true commericial emulators are better then freeware emulators. I have a commericial emulator for my mobile phone, and it's not nearly as good as it should be (sound is all screwed up).

Note that emulators these days are mostly written or partially written using GPL/GNU code. While it may not be illegal to sell the emulators (just like it is not illegal to keep it private, aka SNES9xGP), it is certainly not ethical. I will stand firmly behind the belief that zealotous enough to understand and emulate the toughest spots in these emulators are also zealotous enough to keep them GNU/GPL. It's like the Internet - we experience freedom because the inventor(s) (whose name escapes me), were the new gods of freeware by keeping it PD.

Personally, I think it's rather silly to release a commericial emulator. People shady enough to download ROMs are probably shady enough to download cracked versions of the emus (which are already probably released).

Bad ethics defeats bad ethics. Two wrongs don't make a right, but when dealing with emulators, what is "right" is rather grey.

I think the best solution is to setup a donation system - there are probably at least the same number of people who would donate compared to the number of people who would buy the emu. At least that way, the author can release the source code and no one has to worry about downloading cracked emus.