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MAME on X-Box
wht writes "Mame successfully running on an X-Box dev kit. The same guy also did a port for Playstation 2, which I'd love to get my hands on. I do have to say, I'd buy an X-Box if it makes a good, cheap Mame machine, with quality controllers easily available." Having mostly completed My MAME Cabinet I'd tend to agree that its all about controllers. And stuff like this is why the x-box is going to change things. Well, that and DOA3.
Sure it looks cool and I'll buy it, but must everything (c.f. Enlightment story earlier) "change things"?
MAME has been running on X-Box for a few months now. I saw some screenshots somewhere from someone that has used the DevKit. Although, they worked for some commercial company. (probly did it on company time without the company knowing it :)
:)
At any rate, it's obviously a sure thing that it's gonna be available to all the hobby hacker/developers as soon as the X-Box is out. There will be so many people doing it just for fun (porting it MAME to X-Box) that a few people will probly give out their changes or maybe even get together on it.
WHEEEEEEE! hehe
Here is my MAME machine.
James
http://james.nontrivial.org
That's funny, running MAME on the Xbox... kind of defeats the purpose of it's design :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
For $500 to $1200 you could get yourself a decent computer which also happens to run mame.
I'm an avid supported of the open source movement, so I can't wait to see the X-Box - it's meant to be really impressive, and the change to stick something open-source on it is just too much to resist.
I know someone who's developing for the X-Box and it's meant to be, like, *so* impressive, all these really cool built-in functions that address the chips without any effort from his programs (which are all written in perl, naturally).
My only problem is that I don't exactly agree with games-playing - I think that there are so many other ways to spend your time that sitting in front of a computer screen is all rather sad. This is what annoys me most about the whole open-source movement, is that you're expected to give up your own free time to write code. Why do that ? I'd rather be down the pub or going out for a walk. Leave it to those who get paid for it is what I say.
Yeah, Mame rocks!
So what's new? Microsoft products are constantly getting maimed . Just type iis or windows into the search box here , for starters.
And stuff like this is why the x-box is going to change things. Well, that and DOA3.
Pfffft.
Only for those who are too lazy to get a decently sized monitor for their dvd-enabled computer, place it somewhere where you can sit on the floor and still see it, and then buy a $20 gamepad from any computer store.
My power mac g4 right now makes a better gaming machine than 99% of the x-boxes owned by the persons reading this comment one year from now, and that's despite the fact that i have NO games other than emulators and roms (and i don't even have as many ROMs as i had before my recent hard drive crash..! yeh, hard drive crash. maybe there are some downsides to having a g4.)
OK, maybe it will "change things" because the people with no attention span or creativity whatsoever will finally be able to play pc games with a controller.. but i for one don't really care about how those people's lives "change" much.. Sheesh.
Anybody know where I can find a copy of that? This guy says he won't distribute it online, only in person. That would be an extremely cool piece of software to have, given that the N64 has some sweet-ass games (Kart64 and Smashbros come to mind). Dang, he makes it all sound so easy.
Would that stand for Dead On Arrival, 3rd time? - Now, why does this suddenly ring a bell...
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
Really, who thinks of doing stupid stuff like this? *not meant to be a troll/flame or whatever, things jsut start to get ridiculous after a while*
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
If you think about it, the last few major systems (save Nintendo) have been capable of running MAME simply because people have been able to hack the box. Since the X-BOX is basically an x86 box running some variation of Windows (read: not entirely difficult for the MAME32 development people to port), it would be surprising if it didn't work.
Regardless, not that I own any "modern" consoles (last one I bought was the NES), I am glad to see MAME available on it. Beats playing Zoo Keeper on my laptop screen
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
I've been playing Street Fighter Alpha 2 on my Athlon system for several days now. (I can almost beat Ryu with Rose...)
At any rate, one would expect Microsoft to be seeking relationships with Capcom and many other game developers. I *know* they've been courting Square. If Mame X-Box kits that can play the arcade versions of Capcom (and other) games are available on the internet... and let's be honest, despite the fact that they constitute copyright infringement, it's so easy to get Mame roms its laughable... Capcom might not be so willing to do business or release new games for Xbox.
Even if the good folks at Capcom could care less, MS has proven that they're willing to fight copyright infringement every step of the way.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
So, does it sing "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas" as it's booting?
Again, more coffee needed.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Unless X-Box is running IIS, it might be pretty hard to hack.
'Same speed C but faster'
I knew it! People are going port stuff to X-box..and look at this. Come on, the X-box is a computer. Maybe someone can have a console cluster. You have Playstation 2 running Apache, and X-box running something else..maybe not IIS because you don't want to get rooted while playing a game like street fighter or something.
Hmmm, I still think I want a HotRod SE. The price is a bit high (they can be found for ~$150) but what you get in return is a very nice rig, for fighting games especially. It would definitely make those Street Fighter battles on Kaillera more fun.
"The screenshots below were taken with a Kodak Digital DC240 camera in very poor lighting conditions in a hurry."
Too bad he wasn't using a DC 290, otherwise he could've just played Ghosts 'n' Goblins on his digital camera using MAMED.
Still, a cool hack. I'd particularly enjoy the idea of playing all those SNK fighters on the XBox. He only mentions "out the bug was in beta 14 of the M.A.M.E. source code that has since been fixed in the beta 16 release, so my M.A.M.E. source is up to date, and a few latent bugs got fixed automagically.", so I presume that he's using MAME 0.37. Wonder how it works with CPS2 emulation...
Mmm...Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the XBox...
Wait, um...did I just say that? I meant "I love Linux!".
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I felt that the XBox could be a perfect medium for retro gaming because since it is based around the Windows PC it would be easier to port emulators across to it.
Imagine the possibilities, you could have MAME, Magic Engine, possibly even Amiga emulators running on a console which can sit plugged into your lounge TV.
However this could all be scuppered if Microsofts licence prevents this sort of thing, or the XBox won't read CDR's.
Personally I'm not a big games fan but if I can run Amiga, PC Engine and MAME games under it then I would be very very happy.
What do others think? Will we see a resurgence of retro gaming should there be no problems with unofficial porting of applications?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Open Source fans might not get to close to this one. MAME loses a great deal of its appeal without mostly illegal ROMs to use on it. (There might be some legal ones, but the majority aren't.) And although most of the ROMs might seem like 'abandonware', it is taking away modern-day money from some commercial releases. (No one thought circa-1995 machines could do arcade emulation til the Williams Arcade Pack came out.) Some of the coolest things I found for my "new" ps one and my Dreamcast are multiplayer classics like Gauntlet, Super Sprint, and arcade Warlords.
Something like MAME for Xbox is a double threat, bridging the PC/Console divide.
<karmawhore>On the other hand... mame.dk is a helluva resource.</karmawhore> It's almost as good as Killer List of Videogames for screenshots, and better for other reasons...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Just buy a real arcade game. They cost almost nothing and games cost from $10-$100. With a Jamma cabinet you can put most games made after 1986 in it without changes and you can get converters for most games made before 1986.
I have 6 cabinets that can hold 7 games at a time total and about 30 boards for less than $400.
Having a real arcade monitor and having the game run without color problems and many many other glitches that mame has is much better than mame in my opinion.
-- Proud member of the Jello Sex Cult.
Heck, if MAME ran stable and I could get easy access to early '80s game ROMs on the X-Box, that would be reason enough for me to buy one. Forget the new games, I'd prefer to play classic games.
Right now, using my laptop with TV-out as a stopgap measure.
Presently, dreamcast is starting to run many MAME supported games rather well.
/.'ed. :)
MAMED
(Hope it's not
I too was not planning on X-box, but if it can do MAME, It's mine. With a 733 CPU to run most games at full speed, hard drive to store the roms.......
This is great news all in all....
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Although I've never actually had one in my hands, I honestly think the controllers of the Xbox are going to be horrible ! :
;-)
;-)
It comes short on many features in my opinion
4 Analog buttons are just not enough and I feel all uncomfortable just by pondering how I'm gonna fit that Xbox monstrocity in my hand
And the left analog joystick should be in one line with the left one, especially if you're gonna play something like quake3.
Just look at the picture and start to wonder how in earth you're gonna cope with the 'thing'
And when there are perfect examples of how 6 trigger buttons ( and the 4 normal buttons plus 2 buttons incorporated in the analog joysticks) can be fitted on a gamepad without needing a second index finger, it's really a shame the Microsoft guys are gonna put such a bad ( but funky ) designed pad on the Xbox.
It's okay for MAME to have only 4 buttons , but imagine trying to play Xwingalliance with the 'thing'
Check out this gamepad. In my opinion the best gamepaddesign available ( for its cheap pricetag compared to available MS pads )
You get 12 programmable buttons (which means that almost any free finger could be on a button in an instant), forcefeedback, and a very good design.
It's basic design was copied from the PS gamepad , but it sits much better in your hand than that one.
blaah !
The controller that comes with the X-Box looks like it's going to be a pain to hold. Seems like your hands would have to angle in at odd angles to hold the controller comfortably. Other controllers look a bit better (onscreen, at least), but I wish that there was some object shown with the controller (a hand, perhaps? would that have been too hard to include with something that you'd use with your, dare I say, hands?) to show some sort of scale.
I have been playing MAME for years and would love to see it on the Xbox. DT will prolly talk about this soon too.
If you're looking for Quality Controllers, go for GameCube. The X-Box controllers are huge and clunky, and the buttons are too small. They are nothing like the terrific SideWinder series Microsoft makes, which is baffling.
... You could run it on a cheap pentium computer with a cheap sidewinder controller.
The GameCube controller is like Butter. I mean, it is extremely comfortable, and every button is easily accessible and has good tactile feel. Ok, every button except the inexplicibly hard to reach "Z Button".
What I really don't understand is why someone would pay $300 to play emulated games on a cutting edge console
On the issue of controlers, a company known as Kernel offers an adaptor that allows various console joysticks to be used on a Mac using a USB port. While it is marketed towards the Mac, there should in theory be nothing stopping it being used with any other USB aware operating system. There may be other companies selling such adapters, but I am not aware of them.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Xbox will be great because we can now finally play 10 year old games?
Uhhmm... Why do I feel that's bizzare?
--
JonasH (rasher)
psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Dreamcast runs MAME games like a dog. Paperboy is a long, slow deathwish when it plays at 10fps. You will buy an Xbox... all of you will.
acx
AntiChristX
Daring to remain below 5 karma indefinitely
I've been looking for a dev kit for a system w/ 4 controllers for a long time.
Here's Allegro. If you use DirectPad Pro to plug two Super NES controllers into your parallel port and then you plug in two USB controllers, you have four pads, enough to make a Mario Party clone.
NES also supports four controllers through the Four Score adapter. Read More on how to develop for NES.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now this comments page works but the home page has no stories on it.
Mame cabinets are really fun. Seeing as you can
pick up a duron 900 for $50 or so these days,
they're also cheap!
http://www.beimborn.com/mame
is my project, soon to be linuxed
If you want to see other ports, check out these whacked ones:
http://digita.mame.net/ MAME on a Digital Camera(!), this guy's also working on
http://mamedc.kaillera.com/ MAME For the Dreamcast(!)
For portability there's
http://www.mamece.com/ (site down) MAMECE for the PocketPC and
http://www.mameworld.net/imame/ iMAME for the iPAC
Then there's
http://www.amidog.com/emu/ AmigaMAME (Newsflash! The OS is dead guys, Just let it go already, damnit!)
Or
http://emuos2.vintagegaming.com/ (site down) Os/2MAME (see Amiga comments. Rinse, Repeat.)
And of course,
http://games.lasers.org/index.shtml Laser MAME. Play Tempest & blind your neighbours all at the same time!
Excuse me, but I am legally permitted to download MAME ROMs for any arcade machine that I currently own.
WRONG. Title 17 USC (copyright law) does not provide a "second copy exception"; it does provide a "backup exception" if you dump your own older ROM sets. But programs newer than 10 years old stored in ROMs are subject to additional mask work copyright restrictions that apply only to semiconductor ROM chips. You can't even backup recent ROMs you own unless you perform bona fide reverse engineering on them. In other words, the MAME developers can dump them, but you can't.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Hmmm... Actually, how many just plain USB sticks could I get going on a PC?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
You can't play N64 games with MAME. It stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. Arcade only. kthx :)
Some arcade games such as Killer Instinct and Cruis'n USA ran on "Nintendo Ultra 64," an arcade system very similar to the N64 console. It wouldn't be that hard to emulate N64 if you're already emulating U64, just as it wouldn't be hard to emulate NES if you're already emulating Nintendo's VS Unisystem and PlayChoice (both essentially NES with a coin slot).
Will I retire or break 10K?
So, who's going to port Stella to PS2?
So that Natalie Portman and I can have something to do other than screwing like rabbits
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine." -- RFC 1925
only among the people who own (heh heh heh) the original roms
Some authors have released their arcade and console software either as proprietary free(beer)ware or as free software. For instance, Elite for NES is free(beer), and GNOME vs. KDE is GPL'd.
Will I retire or break 10K?
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
There's no point in raving about this until somebody develops an alternative to the official Microsoft X-box developers' kit. Under the developers' kit license, there is simply no way Otaku could release his port of MAME to the world. Probably the company he works for wouldn't like to see their expensive and NDA-affected devkit being used in such a manner either.
The MAME open source license -- although not GPL (but comparable) -- also requires the release of all port-relevant source code, which I very much believe Microsoft's X-box developers' kit license forbids even if he was able to release it in binary form. Hint: You do not want to get into trouble with the MAME mafia by forgetting the release of source code.
Not to mention that MAME can already be considered as a violation of DMCA in terms of the decryption algorithms that are in the source code, so the less attention there is from big companies, the better.
Besides, X-box is beginning to be underpowered in MAME's case. You can get a cheap Duron setup for a MAME cabinet for much less effort and pain than getting an X-box -- with the force-bundled games worth of hundreds of dollars -- and waiting for a MAME port to get released, which really is not going to happen for a while. Microsoft has gone to some lengths to prevent homebrewn stuff, for example by changing APIs and executable file formats.
Since we're still on-topic, I see mame.net just added a nice MAME development history chart which makes for a good Windows and/or Linux background too. Enjoy.
xbox is a slow cpu machine with a screaming graphics card. For mame you want a screaming cpu with a 5 year old 2D graphics card. I've got a faster machine than xbox and a lot of the new mame roms run choppy. get a T-bird instead.
Is it legal to own ROMs?
In the United States, software stored on semiconductor mask ROMs has additional copyright restrictions: for ten years after December 31 after the initial release of the software, you can't make a backup unless you're reverse engineering the game for interoperability.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but X-box uses USB ports for their controllers. I'd imagine that would allow for a large array of controllers and keyboards and the like.
The Xbox system uses controller ports electrically identical to USB but speaks not the standard USB Human Interface Device protocol but a proprietary encrypted protocol. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act provides security through obscurity: even though 17 USC 1201 gives an exception for reverse engineering for interoperability, Microsoft has an unlimited legal budget to bring baseless lawsuits against any independent vendor of Xbox-compatible hardware and filibuster them as long as possible to drain the little guy's legal fund.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'd love to see those screen shots, but they're being pulled off a Cable Modem box in San Diego, and @home must be having problems. Maybe the first sign of the end... (sigh)
/. checking the link and previewing...
BTW - this is taking way too long to post - I've received two 500 errors from
db
Cig:
ôô
Quick question for CmdrTaco (or anyone who knows the answer...)
On the picture of your MAME box, there's some kind of plug (?) right about the top four button of the control panel (I circled it in red). Just out of curiousity, what the hell is this thing? A power cord?
Anyone know? Thanks.
Are obviously not married.
I have one arcade cabinet in my home, and I can tell you now, the wife is less than happy about it's presence.
This space for rent.
and then buy a $20 gamepad from any computer store.
I had a SideWinder PNP Game Pad and a SideWinder Game Pad Pro. They both had the same glaring flaw: a directional control not aligned to the primary axes of the controller but instead rotated 20 degrees clockwise, making it hard for this 10-year console game veteran to consistently push straight down.
If you want a USB joypad, get a $20 Gravis GamePad Pro USB. If you want a non-USB joypad, get two Super NES controllers and a parallel port adapter and use them with DirectPad Pro.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I heard that recently @home (at least in San Diego) has begun blocking various ports, including port 80. That would explain the problem.
Ah, perhaps now with a stronger long-term memory Video Gaming will be able to be classified as an art form along the lines of that which gave us the Great Train Robbery and Mario Brothers the Movie. It's always been hard to share classic gaming experiences because no modern system would stoop to playing Gauntlet or Crossed Swords. Now, perhaps with a system powerful and compatible enough to run MAME, and probably NESticle, GenSX, and the rest of the modern emulators, classic gaming won't be relegated to simply those computer users who don't mind using keyboards instead of joypads and scavaging the web for viable rom download sites. Now classic gaming can be extended to all people with connections in Hong Kong or friends willing to burn copies of compliation CD's, along with the mod chips required to play them. Which, unfortunately, is not exactly a sizable portion of the population at large. While the idea is fun, this is not exactly going to change the gaming world.
How much do you suppose it would cost to buy licences from older gaming companies for their titles, get a Microsoft developer's licence, and sell the results to a publisher?
The ______ Agenda
... someone put Linux 2.4.x, or FreeBSD 4.3 on XBox. Lokigames would have fun with that. :)
I'm no punk bitch !!!
The Linux xmame port to the iPAQ:
http://www.handhelds.org:8080/wiki/xmame
You might run into some driver problems, but USB supports uo to 127 devices. So if you got a hub using 4 game pads shouldn't be a problem. The only question is does DirectInput have any limits.
Various Joypads from Microsoft are recognized in numbers of up to 16 devices. Most games that allow any kind of control customization allow you to select the device. Mame32 is no exception.
One of the best controllers for use in MAME on Windows is current the Sidewinder Gamepad Pro. There are others that are very good as well, but this one works very well with most MAME titles, features eight fire buttons and 1 shift button, and the D-Pad is both proportionate or digital which allows it to be used for just about any type of game.
In fact, I also use it with just about every other DirectInput powered emulator.
So a more useful answer is that if you had 4 of these controllers, you could very easily play Guantlet with 3 of your friends provided you had enough USB ports.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
No, you not da man. q99t!
AC
Alright, so you have MAME on the X-Box. Oooh, the unhackable X-Box gots an emu... While that's a great thing look at the obvious.
X-Box is how much at launch? $300 or some sh*t?
Dreamcasts are much less, I bought mine for $60 (refurb)
Anyway, the DC can emulate the NES near-perfectly (NesterDC), SNES well (ngine or DreamSNES), Game Boy/Game Boy Color well (Boob!Boy), MAME okay/well (MAMED or MAMEDC), and a bushel/barrel/ton of other emu's for other systems... and thats not including the ports of other games (DOOMDC and QUAKE are the firsts) you can emulate many systems, for only $60 and the cost of a few CD's.
So if anyone is looking for a cheap alternative to a new system, and wants good emulation on your TV, go get a dreamcast.
http://www.angryburrito.com/ The best, completely unfinished software review site ever.
There is none.
"it is taking away modern-day money from some commercial releases."
So if I'm spending all day playing Galaga on MAME, and don't buy WunderGameX because of it, it should be illegal for me to play Galaga unless I buy the rom myself? And how exactly would whoever made Galaga be compensated should I obtain a ROM and use it 'legally', considering it's so old it would probably come from a non-working unit in a warehouse? Why should my choices be limited and the benefits of the electronic age be denied to me because of some corporations potential to profit by selling me something I clearly don't need anyway? Screw them. This whole 'potential sales' thing as an excuse to cripple the digital age is bullshit. If they don't want us using the software and A/V they're making today 20 years from now, they had better put in some kind of killer, uncrackable expiration. Aint gonna happen.
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Running on the devkit is one thing, and a cool thing, but it's not the same thing as running on an actual X-box.
Unfortunatley, the X-box doesn't read CD-Rs. You need a DVD burner, still prohibitively expensive for most people. For that matter, Windoze won't read the proprietary file format used on the X-box...
What, me worry?
Is it just me or is this just another old piece of news. This news is from June 7 (or perhaps June 20) of this year so everyone's hyped over this 2 1/2 months later?
liB
Does anyone actually own any arcade ROMs for legal use with MAME? If not, getting the emulator to work for whatever platform is a moot point. Please don't tell me it's ok because everyone's doing it; just tell me why the fuss over something only a few people can stand up and claim to be doing fully within his or her legal rights. Are the games so much fun that they make it worthwhile to become a dishonest person? I doubt it--there are many freely available games of similar or higher quality.
Malda, you would solicit microsoft you KDE using jerk. Maybe you can get Dragon Ball Z games for it too. Hey, Malda, why dont you run a banner ad for Mickeysoft?
Gotta hand it to the sexless loser, he made a huge website, everyone comes. Then he and his cronies like John Katz (total jerk), timothy and hemos pretend they are the first donkies to submit stories when this community knows we did it first. Even rusty on k5 has the balls to put his stories in the selection queue.
And this new slashcode is buggy as hell, and guess what, one of the bugs i reported duing test. Like the stories you submit, the dont even read your bug reports either.
And one has to wonder if things like the PSX and N64 emulators would ever have gotten to the point of being distributed at all before the hordes of lawyers got a chance to show up, if the DMCA had been in effect back then. Much broader protections for "copyright holders," much more restrictive limits on the potential for reverse engineering. A clickable license agreement and/or ROT-13 level encryption instantly becomes the legal equivalent of an unbreakable Fort Knox vault.
;-)
Thanks for your MAME work, BTW. You've got millions of fans, even if most of them don't know it.
Oh, and CmdrTaco had a great idea in his pages, linked in the story above. It *would* be nice if MAME had an option for the Tab key to pause the game as it brings up the menu. Not much reason to keep the game running while the menu is blocking the screen, but plenty of reason to have it pause while the menu is blocking the screen. *cough*
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I've had tons of fun with MacMAME.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Strange... cmdrTaco's site was blocked by the websence firewall nazi's at work with a reason code/category of "adult content"...
Now that I am at home looking at it, i'm truly baffled... Must have been all the talk of joysticks and drooling over old arcade games that did it =P
*shrug*
If this becomes do-able (i.e. source released, etc...) on the commercial X-box putting it in a stand up arcade box may be a solid idea...
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Well, it is open sourced, feel free to add it in...
Complaining about the lack of features in an open source project on SLASHDOT.
:)
For shame.
If you hadn't put that smiley there, I'd have had to tear you a new one. :-) Not complaining about lack of features, as you doubtless know--just pointing out that the Taco had a pretty good idea.
:-)
When I read that part of his pages, I instantly thought--"Ya know, I've wondered myself why it doesn't pause, since there's a menu blocking the screen and all." Just one of those small little things that you never really consciously think about, until someone else notices them too.
Of course, being open-source and all, anyone could write it into their own MAME. But I really think it might be a useful feature in the main distribution. Just MHO though.
Now, complaining about the lack of features in an open-source project would have been if I'd whined about the decision to remove Pong and not accept any more "simulated" games, like the Monaco GP which recently came out. I always thought that it was kind of silly since most of the codebase is dedicated to "simulating" the discrete hardware and processors of the arcade machines so that the ROMs can run on them, so that "simulating" a ROM-less arcade game was really no different on technical terms. I chalked it up to a legal CYA decision, since the old ROM-less games could be played from MAME itself without having to hunt down an external ROM. Of course, I always thought the better choice, and the one which would preserve the oldest games, most in need of preservation and recreation, would be to have the discrete circuitry-based games separated but usable through a sort of module system whereby the code for them would be in separate Zip files just like ROMs.
See, *that's* what a complaint is like! Oh, umm, oops...
Hehe.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Well "Diogenes", there's a difference between dishonesty and illegality. Laws can be arbitrary and change greatly over time, while honesty is usually thought a simple concept--if you do not lie or cheat or steal, convention holds that you are displaying honesty. There are many definitions of the word, but the one given above generally encompasses most of them. Honesty is interesting in that it is usually defined by a lack of certain behaviours, rather than by the presence of certain behaviours.
So whether a person is "dishonest" or not for using ROMs which they may not be legally entitled too, depends on whether one has lied or cheated or stolen to obtain them. Has one lied? Depends on whether the site had one of those silly "You own this Rom, right?" buttons you have to click or not. If you said you owned a copy of the ROM, but didn't, then you lied and therefore have been dishonest. Otherwise, you have not. The next condition is not cheating. While cheating again has a few disparate definitions, it's safe to say that none of the commonly accepted definitions of cheating are triggered by downloading or possessing a few bits of data.
Stealing is really the crux of the matter. Has a person stolen something by making an electronic copy for himself, i.e., by downloading a ROM? Since the entire idea of "intellectual property" did not exist until within the last few centuries, and since it was devised as a kludge "to encourage the useful arts and sciences" [to concisely paraphrase the U.S. Constitution's reason for institutiong copyright] by giving authors and inventors sole right over reproduction of their works *for a limited time*, it is clearly not "stealing". Stealing refers to theft of tangible goods or services, and always has. Electronically reprodicing a copyrighted work and stealing a physical object have many dissimilarities and are fundamentally different acts. Indeed, the right to tangible property is an innate right in Western civilizations, and to steal it means depriving its owner of a real and measurable item. However, the right to "intellectual property," as I said, was created artificially as an incentive for people to invent stuff, and to copy intellectual property does not deprive the owner of any tangible items. It is therefore not stealing, and therefore there is nothing dishonest about possessing or trading in ROMs.
Q.E.D.
And lastly, here's a taste of Thomas Jefferson:
"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possess the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening mine."--Thomas Jefferson
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
If you love Pinball machines - you have to check out pinmame & Visual Pinball.
These allow you to emulate Pinball machines with REAL physics and gameplay - they even use the Pinball machine ROMs.
Here's the stuff:
Visual Pinball
Pinball Tables and other useful stuff)
The MAME license is not comparable to GPL, except for source distribution requirements. It explicitly limits distribution with ROM images, for-profit distribution, and distribution of modified versions that "go against the spirit" of the project (this means things like enabling games that the MAME team has decided are better left disabled, removing the copyright warning screen, etc.). This is quite different from GPL, and does not meet the Open Source Definition by a long shot. Thanks to these restrictions (plus a serious lack of authoritative documentation on any version of the MAME architecture), most of the benefits attributed to "open source" development simply aren't there. I know you didn't capitalize "open source", but you're still using a term popularized by the Open Source Initiative.
Aside from the concerns above, I think MAME is mostly great. Please don't think that I'm saying the MAME team is doing bad work. I just don't like it when MAME is given credit for things that it does not accomplish, because that diminishes the work of other people.
Doing something illegal equals cheating. Cheating is dishonest. Therefore, anyone who uses copyrighted material illegally is being dishonest. The only excuse for doing this would be to find a legal way to use the ROMs, like, obtaining the copyright-holder's permission, or, using it for an educational purpose. Just downloading the games for recreation, even if it deprives no one of any property is still illegal and those who should seek integrity will avoid it.
I have no doubt that you are right, and M$ probably will use the DMCA to try and stop any XBox hack. Exactly how they will justify it will be interesting, though. I mean, what copyrighted material would they be protecting? At best they could claim that they were protecting the BIOS. Such claims would be excellent for DMCA foes, since clearly there is no actual or even potential copyright infringment taking place. Unlike other DMCA cases, where the activities have created the possibility or even a likelihood of infringement, this potential case would have no such tarnish. It would be clear that the DMCA was being applied to enforce arbitrary use restrictions which have no basis in copyright law.
The main problem with the DMCA would be laid open for all to see: It allows copyright holders to legislate what is and is not "legal" use of their product, and summon the executive branch to enforce whatever "laws" they dream up.
You again rely on illegality, and equate illegality with cheating with dishonesty. Illegality and cheating are two separate terms with separate definitions.
The easiest way to illustrate this is to give an example. Laws are arbitrary and can be just or unjust, and following or not follwing them has nothing to do with cheating or dishonesty. Explain to me why it was cheating or dishonesty when my great-great grandfather violated the law by teaching free blacks to read in the South during the period when most blacks were slaves, and teaching any black whether slave or free was illegal in his State.
If you can satisfactorily do so I will concede. If not, I have proven my point--my point being that laws are often arbitrary, not always just, and have no bearing in the final analysis in determining whether something is "right" (just) or "wrong" (unjust), honest or dishonest.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
Well, you could always map the tab key to both pause and menu...
Mame's input configuration is a bit unwieldy, but very cool once you get used to it.
Let me illustrate with an example. My father spent many months of his life and took time away from his family to write a reference book. This was on top of his regular, full-time job and yet the book has only generated a small fraction of the income that he is capable of earning as a contractor. Would it be honest if people took his book and copied it instead of paying for it? If enough people did this, even if most were not going to buy it anyway, what incentive would my father have to ever write another reference?
> Would it be honest if people took his book and copied it instead of paying for it? If enough
> people did this, even if most were not going to buy it anyway, what incentive would my father
> have to ever write another reference?
It is not immoral to "steal" something which belongs to everyone and can be losslessly reproduced ad infinitem. Ideas belong to everyone, and information belongs to everyone.
No one ever said that your father has an inherent right to be given a monetary incentive to create. As I said, "intellectual property" was an artificial construct created to give people an incentive to create. The reason an artificial construct was invented was precisely because there is no "natural right" to have intellectual property. On that point I would refer you to the Jefferson quote I gave.
Are libraries immoral because they spread "intellectual property" without giving a profit to the people who wrote the books? Sure, one copy was sold to the library, but then hundreds or even thousands of people over the years can read those books--for free! How horrible that they don't have to buy them! How immoral and outrageous!
The fact is that the ancient world was so fruitful and full of intellectual life unheard of again until the Renaissance, precisely because of the free echange of ideas, unencumbered from artificial rectrictions like "intellectual property." In Athens, for example, people gathered on the stoa of temples each day to discuss new and exciting ideas. People like Diogenes were willing to devote themselves truly to understanding, without any worthless and stifling "incentives" which in reality encourage writers and artists to cater to the lowest common denominator rather than to truly indulge in art and wisdom. Even worse, the only reason most of the knowledge we still have from the Classical world still exists is because it was freely copied by innumerable people, not allowed to go "out of print" and kept out because of a construct like copyright. The fact is that part of the reason the Renaissance happened was due to the free exchange of ideas and the creation of libraries to enshrine and disseminate that knowledge. If people hadn't had free access to the body of knowledge without having to worry about "intellectual property" most of that period's grat works would never have been written. As just one example, Shakespeare's *Romeo and Juliet* borrows heavily from several earlier works--today, Shakespeare would be sued for copyright infringement or, more likely, would have knows from the start that he couldn't write his great plays. You may be surprised just how many of them were based on earlier, mostly Italian works.
It is honest to read or copy a book you don't own, or a ROM you don't own, precisely because "intellectual property" is artificial and not a natural right. No one has the right to limit the dissemination of knowledge. "Intellectual property" was a kludge whose useful life has ended thanks largely to the corporate greed which seeks to keep "intellectual property" out of circulation even long after its useful life--if a book or article or game even, is out of print or no longer in production, it should be freely distributed in order to preserve it and to share it with the culture which gave so much to its creators in the first place. And then there are "intellectual properties" which have passed into the popular culture yet are stil monopolized by their creators, years after they have turned a very tidy profit and years after they should have been released to the public good. Disney is an example of this--they became the giant they are by using public-domain ideas and characters, like those from Grimm's Fairy Tales, and yet they have contributed absolutely nothing back to that creative pool and indeed fight to extend the term of copyright year after year.
The culture which nurtured people on the ideas which sparked their creations, deserves to have those creations in its own public domain in a reasonable time period. This is no longer the case thanks to greed. Therefore the concept of "intellectual property" must be wiped away for the good of humanity, and we must return to the free exchange of ideas, as Thomas Jefferson would doubtless agree.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
You are speaking of an ideal society. We, unfortunately, live in a real one. A real one in which, incidentally, Shakespeare would be allowed to create his works under the Constitutional protection which limits the time for which an author is granted exclusive right. Also, his plays did not use a substatial portion of the originals, nor did they influence the market value of any works that he borrowed from. That is why we can have spin-off shows on TV like "The Weakest Link", which clearly owes its origin to the popularity of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and countless other dramatized game shows. We also have spin-off books, teenage boy-bands, parodies, and many other types of free exchange of ideas. Copyright laws are meant to protect authors, not hinder freedom of expression or the free interchange of ideas.
You are missing the point about ROMs. They are not "intellectual" property, because they can be easily reproduced without any real intellectual genius. They are games that people like, and for nostalgia sometimes like to play in their original forms. How many freeware versions of "Asteroids" are there? If people want to be entertained, they should look for those freely available games, or cheap games they can afford. Why bother doing something illegal when there are so many fun games to be had freely?
> Isn't all property, then, an "artificial construct"? And if so do you mind if I take your
> house, car, and computer? You have no natural right to your property, only an artificial one
> imposed by our society.
You ignore the most basic difference between "intellectual property" and property. Intellectual property can be freely reproduced, and property cannot. If you take my house or car, I have no house or car. If you "take" my idea, my book (the words, not the physical object), or my ROM, I would still have all of those things for myself as well. So you have not actually *taken* anything in the case of "intellectual property."
> You are speaking of an ideal society. We, unfortunately, live in a real one.
And a real society can be ideal if it tries. Ours doesn't. Ours just bases itself on greed and the lowest, basest of human emotions. That needs to change, and it can if we try. It's our job and our duty to do so. You're not a good person if you live by arbitrary rules instead of trying to make the rules as just as possible.
> A real one in which, incidentally, Shakespeare would be allowed to create his works under the
> Constitutional protection which limits the time for which an author is granted exclusive right.
You seem to have no understanding of the issues. When the Constitution was written, the limited term of copyright was set at 14 years. Reasonable, and after that all copyrighted material came into the public domain, became freely usable by the culture and society which bore it--authors and inventors do not labor in a vacuum, and owe the rest of society as much as we owe them, for all ideas and inventions draw on those which came before.
But today copyright lasts even longer than patents. Tody under many circumstances a copyright can be renewed to last in excess of a century after the creator's death--and so, no, Shakespeare could not have written *Romeo and Juliet* and many of his other plays, for many of them draw heavily upon works created within the two centuries preceding him.
> Also, his plays did not use a substatial portion of the originals,
They used the same ideas, characters, many of the same scenes and plot outlines. As a Shakespeare scholar--and I'm not talking just an undergrad course here--I know whereof I speak. Do some research before you spurt nonsense. If you do not think that is enough for them to infringe, then you are uneducated on these matters--cf. the case Vladimir Nabokov's son made against *Lo's Diary* (not sure offhand if that is the official English title of this translated work).
> nor did they influence the market value of any works that he borrowed from.
This is irrelevent to copyright. If it were relevent then your argument would fall apart, since discontinued arcade games, except for a few "classics" that could be translated into collections like Microsoft's "Return of Arcade" for the PC, have absolutely no market value. But as I said, market value is irrelevant to a determination of copyright infringement. It may have an impact on the size of judgements in civil copyright infringement cases, but no bearing whatsoever on whether civil or criminal charges could be filed and substantiated, or whether a work is infringing. You really *are* completely uneducated on this subject.
> That is why we can have spin-off shows on TV like "The Weakest Link", which clearly owes its
> origin to the popularity of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"
No, you are talking about two completely different shows with completely different occurrences, which are within the same genre. They have absolutely no similarities except that people are asked questions and if they get them right they win money. A concept which has been around since the 1950s to be sure. But if the show were titled "Who Wants to Be Rich" and featured a nearly identical methodology, then the producers of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" would have a very actionable breach of their copyrights. Coming out with one quiz show to capitalize on the popularity of another has nothing to do with "intellectual property" and more than Nike could sue Adidas for making shoes.
> You are missing the point about ROMs. They are not "intellectual" property, because they can be
> easily reproduced without any real intellectual genius.
God you're stupid. This is precisely *why* they are "intellectual property*--they are binary ones and zeros that can be reproduced indefinitely without diminishing the originals. They are in that sense no different from the words of a song or book, which are also "intellectual property".
> Why bother doing something illegal when there are so many fun games to be had freely?
Now that has nothing to do with the subject at all. But to that I'd answer, Why settle for a cheap imitation of the authentic experience, when the original is just as easy to obtain, and without depriving anyone of it since it can be reproduced without "taking" the original from anyone.
Write whatever follow-up you want. I will neither read nor respond to it, since you're an idiot who clearly does not even undertsand the subject matter. Come back when you can actually think like the real Diogenes--again, why should I settle for a cheap knock-off, when it's obvious that the original, coming from when and whence he did and holding the ideas which he did, would have agreed with me.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus