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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"?
That's funny, running MAME on the Xbox... kind of defeats the purpose of it's design :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
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!
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.
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.
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Unless X-Box is running IIS, it might be pretty hard to hack.
'Same speed C but faster'
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?
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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
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.
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.
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
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
So, who's going to port Stella to PS2?
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?
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.
Well, back in the days of early arcade games, not all games were racing simulators that lasted 1 minute, or fighting games. I'd say bring on the classic arcade games of yesteryear for truly innovative(at the time) and creative games.
Mind you, it had its share of Space Invaders ripoffs and Pac Man ripoffs, but there were plenty of others that have yet to be duplicated today.
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?
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.
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...
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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
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
> 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