UK University Making Universal Game Emulator

Techradar reports that researchers at the University of Portsmouth in England are working on a project to create a game emulator that will "recognise and play all types of videogames and computer files from the 1970s through to the present day." One of the major goals of the project is to preserve software from early in the computer age. David Anderson of the Humanities Computing Group said, "Early hardware, like games consoles and computers, are already found in museums. But if you can't show visitors what they did, by playing the software on them, it would be much the same as putting musical instruments on display but throwing away all the music. ... Games particularly tend not to be archived because they are seen as disposable, pulp cultural artefacts, but they represent a really important part of our recent cultural history. Games are one of the biggest media formats on the planet and we must preserve them for future generations."

Comments

So basically

[abigsmurf]

It's going to be a GUI that just links dozens of different emulators?

Re:So basically

[cayenne8]

So, are they trying to recreate MAME?

Re:So basically

[Stellian]

It's gonna be a refrigerator-shaped device containing the actual hardware.

You will never see, in your lifetime, successful emulation of the latest generation of consoles. The decryption keys, internal architecture and DRM protections are virtually impossible to reverse engineer.

Re:So basically

[Antique Geekmeister]

Would you care to bet on that? While decryption capability is fascinating, its use for DRM is not its strongest use. The keys are consistently handled quite badly. Witness the failures to protect the keys for DVD's and the very swift cracking of Blu-Ray protection for examples of how quickly such technologies can be cracked.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

My quantum computer AI overlord disagrees with you!

Re:So basically

[courseofhumanevents]

Wrong. Dolphin is already playing two or three Wii games perfectly.

Re:So basically

[syntaxglitch]

DRM still has the awkward flaw of giving the user both the key and the lock and hoping that they won't figure it out.

Modern encryption is computationally intractable for solid, mathematical reasons, but that doesn't really apply to smoke and mirrors DRM schemes. The keys and everything else are in there, and a university probably has better access to stuff like high-end hardware analysis tools vs. your average basement-dwelling w4r3z guy.

Re:So basically

[zappepcs]

Isn't this the line taken by people that think DRM works? I think those people have been proven rather wrong on nearly every occasion. "virtually impossible" ? Now that's the kind of phrase that helped Sony decide a rootkit was a good thing to put on audio CDs. Awesome.

Archiving software and hardware is a concern for more than games, and I think it's a very good effort whether for games or old MS Office formats. Some day they are going to get a call from some government needing 2.7345TB of tape archives translated to whatever the newest format is... or... or... Vger will show up looking for the creator of some Atari game and give Earth 24 solar hours to produce him before destroying the Galaxy.

Re:So basically

[damaki]

It's more like Mame and MESS together.

Re:So basically

[infalliable]

DRM is not all that hard to decrypt, in the great scheme of things.

It has the fatal flaw of giving you the code and the key and saying "Dont put them together." Granted, they hide it and obscure the connection as much as possible, but you still have both and just need to put them together.

Real encryption schemes hide one portion from the individual. It's insanely harder (or practically impossible) to decipher codes if they don't give you the key.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Gah. I just checked the compatibility list on that site, and their "green" (perfect) and "yellow" game status icons are virtually indistinguishable to me thanks to my (mild!) form of colour-blindness.

Worse, the site does not even provide the information in any other way: no easy-to-recognise symbols (green checkmarks vs. yellow exclamation marks, say), tooltips for the icons, textual representations - nothing at all.

About the only way for me to find out what a game's status is is to select "View image" from Firefox's context menu and check out the filename in the URL.

You'd think web developers would not commit basic blunders like that anymore in 2009...

Re:So basically

[tepples]

The downloads page states that you have to register and log in before you can download Dolphin, and the registration page states that you have to agree to a non-disclosure agreement before you can register. Why is that?

Re:So basically

[ultranova]

You will never see, in your lifetime, successful emulation of the latest generation of consoles. The decryption keys, internal architecture and DRM protections are virtually impossible to reverse engineer.

And yet those consoles already have modchips or other cracks, which kinda implies that someone has managed to reverse engineer said protections.

No, the real problem is that current generation of PCs simply don't have the horsepower to emulate the latest generation consoles. Moore's law will take care of that problem in a decade or so. And even if console X would turn out to have a truly uncrackable security, given enough time it can be emulated at the level of individual transistors, given the chip blueprints; for a machine containing 1 billion transistors that would take about 30 Moore's cycles - or 40 if you want to do it in Python, 39 for a Bash script ;).

Re:So basically

[stonedcat]

MESS has really crappy support for a lot of games, it was a great idea but quite a let down from my experience.

Re:So basically

[s13g3]

No, I think the point here is not to just recreate MAME, but to create a legitimate system of emulation that can can be used for valid historic archive purposes and with the proper corporate and social legitimacy perhaps be able to obtain licenses to otherwise copywritten, trademarked and DRM'd material - something not just meant to allow gamers and pirates to play old games and validate seemingly obsolete trademarks, but rather to allow museums and the like to preserve these works, and perhaps commercial ventures to place these systems in arcades, Wally-worlds, malls, etc. and perhaps earn some licensing profit from these sorts of ventures off of software that otherwise only costs them money to enforce trademark on, yet has likely not returned any real profit in a long time.

Re:So basically

[tepples]

I don't know, given the Google Code page has no such requirements.

And no binaries either ("See the news on the Dolphin Official Site"), which hinders my ability to evaluate Dolphin. Nor is the build process compatible with MinGW or capped Internet connections.

Re:So basically

[funkatron]

They probably also have access to lawyers who will tell them when not to use those hardware analysis tools.

Re:So basically

[tepples]

with the proper corporate and social legitimacy perhaps be able to obtain licenses to otherwise copywritten, trademarked and DRM'd material

What is "copywritten"? People keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

perhaps earn some licensing profit from these sorts of ventures off of software that otherwise only costs them money to enforce trademark on, yet has likely not returned any real profit in a long time.

The profit comes from the fact that the work is out of print and therefore does not compete with the publisher's latest and greatest works. It's the same reason Disney puts movies "back in the vault" after they've been on DVD for six months.

Re:So basically

[Hurricane78]

Not if he has a botnet... Possibly made out of those exact computers. O:-)

Re:So basically

[drinkypoo]

And even if console X would turn out to have a truly uncrackable security, given enough time it can be emulated at the level of individual transistors, given the chip blueprints

Which raises the question, where do you plan to get the netlist for the part, which is what you really need to emulate it? And for that matter, are you getting the PCB layout? No? Okay, so how are you planning to get the design of the multi-level circuit board figured out? Since you're not getting the netlists, what electron microscope are you planning to put the chips in? And what technique do you plan to use to convert the imagery into a netlist?

They want to be able to emulate current-generation consoles, so they will fail. Period the end.

Re:So basically

[Tuoqui]

Maybe... or they'd have enough clout to ask a company 'We're trying to preserve your game for future generations in an archive. Can you please hand over the keys?' naturally they probably have some sort of immunity being a public institution and/or library. I think even teh US DMCA laws permit libraries to break DRM for archive purposes.

Re:So basically

[DrWho42]

Hmm, I've already done something similar. I wrote a GUI in python using pygame for system/game selection. 47,000 ROMS including MAME, 14 or 15 consoles from the atari 2600 up to the N64, 7 home computers, and 4 handhelds. I haven't created any website for it because it really needs to be an integrated system - making it all run on a different machine/OS would take a lot of work. Almost all of the emulators have been modified to work seamlessly. All of them except one (for the Lynx) is compiled from source. It's all running on Fedora 8, 64-bit. MESS doesn't really cut it for a lot of the systems; see: http://nonmess.retrogames.com/ I also lead the mupen64plus project: http://code.google.com/p/mupen64plus/

Re:So basically

[jellomizer]

So they are going to polish up the Website and the UI a bit then? And purchase rights to run these games from the game designers if they are still around.

Re:So basically

[ericrost]

Wow, you're a douche! I'm not color blind, but there's basic accessibility issues addressed there even if you're not. Don't make the same icon two different colors to represent two different things. Its a lot easier at a glance if you do exactly what the GP indicated, even if you can see the colors.

You're probably the same douche who expects everyone in a foreign country to speak to him in English.

Re:So basically

[hobbit]

Get over yourself. He never said that government ought to mandate anything. Designing websites for accessibility gives you a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Re:So basically

[Jesus_666]

So in the end, itÃ(TM)s actually a loss.

So is giving away an emulator for free. Yet they still do it. Amazing.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen a traffic light? The only difference between the red, yellow and even the green light is: guess what.

Position?

Re:So basically

[Who Is The Drizzle]

A negligible. At the cost of not being able to use the money elsewhere for a much more effective advantage.

Actually it's not. In most cases, designing your websites to accessibility standards actually makes your websites easier to use for everyone and almost always have cleaner designs.

So in the end, it's actually a loss.

Loss of what? Subpar website designs? I don't really think that's much of a loss of anything.

Re:So basically

[TheP4st]

Get over it. I'm fat, but I do not get something specially done for me, and demanded by the government.

Y

Overweight/Obesity = Self inflicted (except in very rare cases), can be fixed by the affected person with a bit of will and determination
Color Blindness = Not self inflicted, can not be fixed.

And rightfully so.

Indeed, see above.

Re:So basically

[tuffy]

No, I think the point here is not to just recreate MAME, but to create a legitimate system of emulation that can can be used for valid historic archive purposes

MAME is a system of emulation for valid historic archive purposes. Its whole purpose is to preserve classic video games with the greatest accuracy possible. If these guys don't leverage the MAME team's work, they have no chance of success because systems like the CPS-2 or DECO Cassette System will have degraded out of existence while they spend 10 years reinventing the wheel.

Re:So basically

[s13g3]

I am aware of the differences between copyright and copywriting. My usage, it could be debated, in some cases, could actually apply to the subject at hand, though I perhaps should have instead said "copyrighted": "copywritten" isn't necessarily entirely wrong as the past participle of "copywrite", such as when referring to material that was in created by a copywriter for the purposes of advertising or story or what have you. However, starting a semantics debate on the usage of term which you so very obviously understood what I meant by my usage of it is not my purposes here, and I admit my usage could have been better - I was in something of a hurry to beat the rush and get my response in early.

Your view that a dearth of old, obsolete software somehow being the primary or even a considerable impetus for newer and better software is in this day and age is... flawed. Disney puts movies "in the vault" in order to artificially create a demand by eliminating supply of something that would continue to remain in demand, even if the trend of demand on a long axis of time might be relatively low, thus making regular production, marketing and distribution costs less than efficient - Disney is a somewhat patient company at times and known for taking a long view on such things. When a new format or new process to update old media comes out, and when there is a void created by years of a lack of one of their "classics", they can then profit from it by re-releasing these materials with the knowledge that a number of people are going to purchase them just b/c it's available now, Large initial sales over a short period of time and a limited but large production run is often more efficient than producing, distributing, and all the other costs of making 10000 DVD's once every year or three, as opposed to making 1 million DVD's for a low-per unit cost, shipping and marketing only once in a big blitz, and selling until they're out. Wait 10 or 15 until that generation is now old enough to remember it with nostalgia or want it for their own kids, and do one more simple large batch. It makes sense for their business model.

Old games and programs are completely different. Excepting companies or programs with very specific niche markets like perhaps the code that runs a 20 year old CNC machine off an old Packard Bell 386, software and especially game companies often find themselves fighting legal battles and employing people with the specific purpose of trying to find and stop infringement of their IP rights - if they don't do so actively and cannot show that they are at least trying to contain these abuses they can lose their rights to the work in question. Do you REALLY think that I'm going to go buy Left4Dead just because I can't play Pac-Man? Not a chance. On the other hand, would I decide not to play CoD:5 just because I could go buy an old copy of Doom for $2? Also not a chance. Old software simply has almost little to no value except in property rights for a franchise of rereleases or sequels, etc., which of course costs initial money to produce another profit from. Otherwise it's just another cost

No, Namco and others have found that by relicensing old products, like Pac-Man and R-Type and Galaga, etc., as mini-games and the like on new consoles or in other games, they can continue to receive some profit on these now old works while offsetting the cost of continuing to maintain their rights to those works. I am sure that if a legitimate business or organization with real funding, etc., approached the current holders of the last 20+ years worth of game and console producers that many would choose license their product to such an enterprise, especially if there were a potential commercially available product in the works that might allow them to continue to receive money indefinitely in the form of licensing for a product that now only costs them money to keep the rights to but doesn't cost anything to develop or distribute, and even if it is for historical purposes only in things like museums they may still choose to

Re:So basically

[blincoln]

MESS has really crappy support for a lot of games, it was a great idea but quite a let down from my experience.

What did you run into trouble with?

I've thrown a bunch of Atari 5200, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and Sega Master System games at it and they all worked great. I haven't tried some of the more obscure consoles though.

Re:So basically

[Who Is The Drizzle]

So to back up my point lets go to the W3C Web Accessibility standards and see exactly what they list and let's see if such things are actually require such a huge cost to implement.

Text Alternatives: Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.

Oh noes! An alt tag! Such a difficult thing to implement. Not only does this benefit disabled people but it also helps people who still use Lynx or other text based browsers who aren't disabled. The extra time spent on this is a few seconds at most.

1.2 Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media.

Oh noes! You might have to provide a link to a transcript of the media. While this can sometimes be a bit of a tedious process in most cases it's not as many websites have content that averages maybe a few minutes in length.

1.3 Adaptable: Create content that can be presented in different ways (for example simpler layout ) without losing information or structure.

Oh noes! Using CSS properly! Again, people should be doing it this way anyway and the only loss by having to put in this extra effort is the loss of subpar designs. Again, this doesn't just benefit disabled people.

1.4 Distinguishable: Make it easier for users to see and hear content including separating foreground from background.

Oh noes! Text should be of a color that sets it apart from the background! Oh noes the horror of not being able to put grey text on a black background! Again, this is a trivial thing to do and is also beneficial even to those of us who don't have poor vision and don't want to get eyestrain reading your shitty web page.

2.1 Keyboard Accessible: Make all functionality available from a keyboard.

Oh noes! This means using HTML controls and links! Again, another trivial thing to do.

2.2 Enough Time: Provide users enough time to read and use content.

Oh noes! One might have to put a checkbox or something else that allows people to be able to change or turn off session limits on viewing content. Again, trivial to implement.

2.3 Seizures: Do not design content in a way that is known to cause seizures.

Oh noes! One can't design web pages with annoying flashing content! I don't know of any person who would think this is a bad thing.

2.4 Navigable: Provide ways to help users navigate, find content and determine where they are.

Oh noes! Designing pages that aren't cluttered and so people can actually easy navigate and use them. This just boils down to actually designing things properly and should be a negligible cost to any decent web page designer. One doesn't have to be disabled to benefit from not having to attempt to use over-cluttered pages.

3.1 Readable: Make text content readable and understandable.

Oh noes! You actually have to make sure the content you put on your website isn't gibberish or in some sort of weird alignment or other such stupid things that dumbass website makers do because they think it's cool looking.

3.2 Predictable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways.

Oh noes! You actually have to make your website actually work in the way that makes logical sense based on the way it was designed. Oh the horror!!!!

3.3 Input Assistance: Help users avoid and correct mistakes.

Oh noes! This is as simple as doing things like highlighting fields if a user missed a required input in a form. Trivial and useful for not just disabled people.

4.1 Compatible: Maximize compatibility with current and future user agents, including assistive technologies.

Oh noes! Designing your web page to standards and avoiding using deprecated features in your web page. How horrible it would be if more people actually were properly coding their web pages.

Re:So basically

[blincoln]

Since you're not getting the netlists, what electron microscope are you planning to put the chips in?

You don't need an electron microscope to reverse-engineer ICs. Have a look at the interesting photos over at Flylogic. Once you know the physical design, even in a worst-case scenario someone could manually inspect the photos to figure out exactly how it worked.

Re:So basically

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the lights appear in different places. Therefore, all you have to do is see which spot the light is coming from and associate that with what you should be doing.

Me having pointed out the enormous flaw in your argument, the guy wasn't issuing a call to arms over the horrific mistreatment of his kind, he was lamenting a decided inability to have an alternate way to distinguish compatibility.

It's a shame that you are capable of being such a craven douche in four languages, but kudos to you all the same.

Re:So basically

[corky842]

Because they suck. Get the latest build here.

Re:So basically

[kalirion]

You are not. Get over it. I'm fat, but I do not get something specially done for me

So you won't mind paying for multiple seats on an airplane? Or not being able to get through doors in a bus / metro?

Re:So basically

[Hatta]

No, the real problem is that current generation of PCs simply don't have the horsepower to emulate the latest generation consoles. Moore's law will take care of that problem in a decade or so.

I'm not worried about Moore's law, or processor speed. I'm worried about developer time. The more complex these things get, the more code it's going to take to emulate them, and the longer it will take to write these emulators. There are hundreds of people working on Wine, it's not even an emulator, and it has pretty low compatibility for the most part. How are you going to get that kind of community working on an Xbox 360 emulator?

Re:So basically

[Who Is The Drizzle]

Why do we have to care.

Because designing to these standards makes decent web pages for everyone to use not just the disabled? If you don't care about making good websites, then I guess you have no reason to care.

Why on earth every business and person on the face of the planet must spend extra time, effort and/or money to create the illusion for you that all people are equal is bullshit.

This is rather amusing because the same thing could be said for why for should any business or person spend any extra time, effort and/or money to create a web page that works in Firefox or Opera when they can just take the easy route and avoid the W3C standards and just code for IE. In fact, to follow this logic why should anyone follow any standards at all? All that just does is requires businesses and people to spend extra time, effort and/or money to follow them. Is there anything actually in that list that I posted that is really all that unreasonable to follow other than if you are a completely lazy website coder? Pretty much all of those things are them asking you to follow conventions that any decent website designer/coder should be doing anyway. Pretty much anything in that list is beneficial to everyone regardless of if you have a disability or not.

Coding a web page properly and coding a web page so that a colorblind moron that is deaf, mute and without any fingers and only understands Latin are not the same thing.

Actually in many cases just simply coding to the normal W3C standards, which are basically mostly just reiterated in their accessibility standards list, is enough to make it far easier for anyone disabled to use your website.

Re:So basically

[ericrost]

Given that I deal with them on a day to day basis when dealing with displays for the control systems I implement, I'd beg to differ. As many have pointed out, there's a positional difference between the colors of a traffic light. That would be a wonderful implementation in this case that would allow even those not blessed with the ability to discern the difference between red and green, or green and yellow to gain an intuitive graphical understanding of the representation of the data they are choosing to present.

I would get my ass hauled into court if I allowed something like that to go out the door. I have to make choices in symbology that will be understood by someone in any language given that the products I work on are used in every country on the globe.

Have fun pulling your foot out of your mouth :)

Re:So basically

[ConceptJunkie]

Wow, I hope you're never disabled in any way.

Re:So basically

[Who Is The Drizzle]

I don't know. I don't expect other people to be competent or to cater to my specific needs or preferences, so I like being able to fix things for myself.

Following the standard convention of alt tags on images isn't asking to have someone cater to anyone's specific needs or preferences, it's just good practice that any web coder should have been following for years.

Re:So basically

[drinkypoo]

Since their website didn't work even after I enabled javascript for their domain, I'm not sure what flylogic actually does. Perhaps someone can make a wikipedia page explaining them one day. Are they the ones with the microscope, or what? I mean, presumably someone has to pop the head off a chip to get the ball rolling.

Re:So basically

[russotto]

The decryption keys, internal architecture and DRM protections are virtually impossible to reverse engineer.

Yeah, because DRM has always held up to attack in the past.

And because there's no chance hardware, say, 20 years from now, will have the power to emulate stuff which is state of the art today.

Re:So basically

[Who Is The Drizzle]

Designing a "good" website takes a lot of time.

Well yes, it does. Just as coding a "good" program, a "good" OS, etc takes a lot of time. The whole point is that these basic standards that the W3C puts out for accessibility are no more effort than what would be put in if you were just designing the website properly from the beginning. Outside of things like "1.2 Time-based Media: Provide alternatives for time-based media." pretty much everything in that list is just them reiterating good practice conventions for the web that people should have been following for years anyway. The only reason to not follow pretty much anything in that list (with a few exceptions) is basically due to sheer laziness as most of them are trivial to implement.

Re:So basically

[Zencyde]

Oh, nevermind the fact that colorblindness affects over 10% of the population in a direct manner.

Yeah, I've become fascinated with this topic ever since I found out about my red/green colorblindness.

Re:So basically

[commodore64_love]

MESS is okay, but in my experience it's better to go with dedicated programs like Stella 2600, NESticle, CCS64, and so on. Just as a PS1 game runs better on a PS1 versus a PS3, so too do ROMs run best on programs dedicated to one hardware device at a time.

BTW:

Anybody figure-out how to emulate N64's Resident Evil 2 yet? So far I've been able to run all games except that one, probably because it uses MPEG2-encoded videos. Whenever I want to play it, I have to dustoff the old console which is too much hassle. ;-)

Re:So basically

[sorak]

You're probably the same douche who expects everyone in a foreign country to speak to him in English.

No, there's more than one of those, and they work in shifts.

Re:So basically

[default luser]

You know, there's a point at which developers stive too far - the complexity gets so high that not enough people are willing to do the work. What you end up with is something unusable after years of effort, and no end in sight.

I recently witnessed this when I decided to try-out ReactOS. I was thinking about developing for it, depending on the state of the project. I loaded up their pre-configured Qemu image, and gave it a look; despite years of development, the OS felt clunky. In Explorer, the display refreshed every time a folder was scanned, which made it very slow. In an application as simple as Wordpad, the cursor disappeared, and the application would revert to the default 6-point font size every time I pressed Enter!

As I looked deeper into the project, I was up fro more disappointment. First, I tried the Live CD just to see how fast it was on real hardware, and didn't get very far - the OS crashed while loading. Second, after reading their FAQ carefully, I noticed that they were never planning to support NTFS. I can understand them saying this five years ago, when read-only NTFS was still touchy, but TODAY? Not a good sign.

It's sad to say, but doing entire system emulation is going to become this complex, so I think you're right to say that the emulation scene is going to die-off. That said, there's simultaneously a limit to how complex the console makers can design a system while still making it affordable for users (and an inexpensive platform to develop for). I think the Wii is an indicator of this, and I expect we'll see less great leaps in hardware complexity/horsepower in the future.

Re:So basically

[sorak]

As a web designer, I think it is interesting how that, by taking a few minutes to create an icon with a new shape, you can open your product to a wider audience.

Now there is the greater issue of whether businesses should be required to take special accessibility measures, such as building wheelchair ramps and having handicapped parking (which I think the two of us may disagree on), but I want to get across the point that GP could have just closed the web browser and walked away. At least by explaining why the site was not helpful to him, he is giving site developers a chance to learn to produce better sites.

And one last thing. He isn't telling people to boycott the site, or have it shut down. He's bitching about something he doesn't like about it. If he had said "gah, the color scheme is ugly" or "gah, the site is disorganized", then would it have been as much of an outrage to you, as it is when he brings up his disability?

Re:So basically

[Jesus_666]

So... they have economic loss when building/modifying the website for their FOSS application to better accommodate handicapped people but not when giving away that software for free?

That's my point here: They already stand to make no money (except for possible donations) from their project. They do all the work because they want people to be able to play Wii games on a PC. Making the website more accessible - even if it's as simple as replacing a single image - enables more people to do so, thus making the project as a whole slightly more effective.

If you want to bring in economics, you can only calculate something like people entertained per time spent. While making sure the website is usable by colorblind people does not lead to a great number of additional entertained people, it also doesn't take a lot of time. For example, the "red-green blind people can't distinguish the 'works' and 'works partially' icons" could even be remedied without touching the icons - just repeat the status next to the icon in text form or set the icons' title and alt properties. A change like that takes about ten minutes to implement.


Accessibility does not neccessarily require a great investment and it does not necessarily cause you great financial harm. And the costs (if applicable) it does incur have to be weighed against the expected influx of additional clients the change enables.
If you make an effort to make your site/business accessible you can even get some good PR out of it; catering to handicapped people does give you points toward a "good guy" image. Conversely, citing Darwinism as a reason to refuse to do business with certain people is usually frowned upon - negative mouth propaganda might very well destroy your image if people find out your business argues that way.

Re:So basically

[Who Is The Drizzle]

I was going to read you post, but I encountered a "Oh noes!" and my LOLCAT detector kicked in and I immediately discount anything you have to say because of that.

"Oh noes!" has nothing to do with lolcats. It was mostly just a sarcastic way to mock the idiot who was trying to claim that using trivial things like alt tags were a huge cost and burden to a website developer.

If you would like to be taken seriously, be serious.

I was being serious. The fact that you have a 1 second attention span isn't my problem.

Being "cute" or 7eet in writing is akin to saying "like" every third word when speaking.

I was being neither cute or "1337" in my post.

I originally hoped that email and the web would be the savior of The English Language as reading and writing properly were falling by the way side. I was sadly, sadly mistaken.

Awww, poor baby. I'm really going to lose many hours of sleep lamenting your extraordinary burden.

Re:So basically

[Zerth]

And would "go" be on the top, bottom, middle, right or left?

I've been in towns with the horizontal kind that weren't even consistent in the same damn intersection.

Re:So basically

[geminidomino]

You might also consider, on top of the alt option, the even faster fix of using different icons. Say, a check mark for green, a bang(!) for yellow, and an X for red. This way, users who can't discern the colors correctly can scan the list rather than mousing over every one.

Just an honest suggestion that I've seen works well in the past. Once you get the icons, it's a quick fix because you can just replace the icons in-place. :) Doesn't help the lynx users though. ;)

Re:So basically

[Orestesx]

He said the latest generation of consoles. The Wii, being two gamecubes duct-taped together is clearly a last generation console.

Re:So basically

[clone53421]

About the only way for me to find out what a game's status is is to select "View image" from Firefox's context menu and check out the filename in the URL.

Or... you could just adblock one of them.

Re:So basically

[Mister_Stoopid]

This post has basic accessibility issues. WTF happened to your apostrophes and quotes?

Re:So basically

[Who Is The Drizzle]

Just an honest suggestion that I've seen works well in the past. Once you get the icons, it's a quick fix because you can just replace the icons in-place. :) Doesn't help the lynx users though. ;)

That's why you still remember to give it an alt tag :P

Re:So basically

[ravyne]

Eh, its hard to call the Wii "current gen" though -- just because they still sell it hardly makes its technology current, and in fact its hardware is little more than a gamecube that's been overclocked 50% with some fancy controllers thrown in.

What that spells is a single-core PowerPC G3 with a subset of Altivec running at half-width (2 floats) at around 730Mhz and a GPU which doesn't support programmable shaders, be they geometry, pixel, vertex or otherwise.

Now, Nintendo and others did some great games on that hardware, but its an entirely different ballgame than trying to emulate the 3Ghz, 6-thread PowerPC cores and (practically) Direct3D 10-level programmable graphics hardware in the 360, or the Cell CPU and GeForce 7-series GPU in the PS3.

Emulation of consoles with leading-edge technology are usually a generation or two behind before we see *any* compatibility, and 2-4 generations before we see *good* compatibility. With console hardware becoming more and more purpose-built and employing exotic architectures, that lead time is only going to grow.

Re:So basically

[Ihmhi]

Top down it's red, yellow, green. Even with "turn arrows" and whatnot, green is on the bottom and red is towards the top.

Sideways it's red, yellow, green, left to right.

I've been all over America and I haven't seen it any other way. Maybe in other countries its different, but not that I've seen.

Re:So basically

[Mozk]

What emulators have you tried? It looks like it should work for the most part in Project64. If it doesn't, try Mupen64. You might try different graphics plugins as well to see if it works with those. NGEmu should have everything you need, including plugins.

If that all fails, try the PlayStation version, which I know works. Aside from running at a lower resolution and some other minor differences, it's pretty much the same. Get it from Emuparadise if you can't find a good torrent.

Re:So basically

[commodore64_love]

The N64 has the higher 480i resolution versus PS1's 240i resolution (as you mentioned), but also better controls. When you push your N64 joystick in a direction, that's where you character goes. The PS1 has the tank-like controls which are frustrating.

Re:So basically

[clone53421]

Uh, yes. Without reverse-engineering the chips in the console (which I suppose would be theoretically possible, but probably illegal), that's how you design an emulator: treat the console as a black box, put something (a game ROM) in, and see what comes out. Then, design your emulator so that it gives the same output for that input. Test it with enough inputs, and you'll eventually come close to emulating the full system, but there's still always a possibility that a new game could create an input condition you've never encountered and your emulator might react incorrectly.

Re:So basically

[Mozk]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that, and that was one of the things I hated most about it. Man, that was horrible.

Re:So basically

[badkarmadayaccount]

from the command line:

rpm -i /path/to/source/directory/rpmfilename.rpm

Re:So basically

[dmneoblade]

Have you tried sending the team there an email? Its very easy when making a website to miss such nuances, especially if the person who created it trained themselves via googling, rather than took a college course.
In fact, I appreciate the comment you left, as I would likely use green/yellow/red dots or backgrounds to show this information, but now would consider other colours. I know red/green colorblindness isn't too uncommon, but I didn't think of green/yellow.

mess, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

mess is just that for home systems (consoles and computers), while mame is for the arcade machines... so where are the news except that someone just decided to invent the wheel once again?

btw mess and mame are excpetionally well documented... http://mess.org/ for those too lazy to google it up

Re:mess, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

mess is just that for home systems (consoles and computers), while mame is for the arcade machines... so where are the news except that someone just decided to invent the wheel once again?

You've already answered your question right there. The article specifically mentions that they won't focus on certain emulator types. This is FAR more reaching in scope than MESS or MAME are. Also, it's entirely possible that they're getting permission to use MESS and MAME code in their project. The article doesn't go into enough detail. But to pretend that these guys aren't aware of the emus that are already out there (since they mention them in the article) is disingenuous.

Re:mess, eh?

[F-3582]

You know, MESS could easily be expanded to any of these systems, as well, looking at the the way it is structured: Every IC, be it a CPU, a graphics chip, you name it, has its very own emulation core which get linked together by so-called 'drivers' which basically provide additional info like memory map, crystal clock speeds etc. Every system/arcade PCB class has its own driver which avoid much redundancy. MAME and MESS basically create a virtual recreation of the PCB.

It would be a lot more efficient if those two teams pooled their resources, because it'd take the Brits aeons to catch up with the work the MAME and MESS devs already did. Imagine having to break that CPS2 encryption - AGAIN!

Re:mess, eh?

[UnknownSoldier]

MESS sucks, especially their license as it is not a true Open Source license.

Isn't this MAME (the Mutli-Arcade Machine Emulato?

[nurbles]

Why would anyone bother to do all that again rather than just enhance/improve/contribute to the existing project, which already does an amazing amount of running old computer games?

Early computer music

[troll8901]

Sometimes, I'm still blown away by the music in early 1990s LucasArts and Sierra games.

Monkey Island 1 and 2
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Leisure Suit Larry 5 ... and so on.

They're making music sound good on a Yamaha OPL3 FM chip.

Re:Early computer music

[omeomi]

I don't know why you got downmodded for this... There's a lot of really cool music in early games, especially considering the hardware and software restrictions of early devices. Take the C64 SID chip for instance. Composers had to learn some pretty interesting techniques for making music in those days.

Re:Early computer music

[Lumpy]

I understand that.

put the copy of Red Alert III that I rented in the Xbox360 and had a big smile when the theme music started. Same song as red alert 1.. that rocks!

too bad EA destroyed the awesome programmers and games at Westwood studios. red alert 3 sucks.

Re:Early computer music

[Compholio]

It's actually a bit different, but it is very reminiscent of the original. If you buy the Premier Edition the soundtrack has the different versions of the theme music from all three games.

Re:Early computer music

[Threni]

> I don't know why you got downmodded for this... There's a lot of really cool music in early games, especially considering the hardware and software restrictions of early devices. Take the C64 SID
> chip for instance. Composers had to learn some pretty interesting techniques for making music in those days.

I think it's because only computer nerds like computer game music. It's generally dreadful (largely until CDs became available for in-game soundtracks and they got proper musicians in). Lets face it - there's a good reason why the people who did computer game music in the 70s-90s are only known for doing computer game music.

Re:Early computer music

[Yvan256]

If you think the music from those games sound good on an OPL3 you really should get yourself a Roland MT-32, CM-32L or CM-64.

And if you run those games on an old PC with an ISA slot, you can also the LAPC-1 to your options.

The soundtracks for the LucasGames and Sierra games of this era were made for these synths.

Re:Early computer music

[Samah]

Sometimes, I'm still blown away by the music in early 1990s LucasArts and Sierra games.
*snip*
Leisure Suit Larry 5 ... and so on.

I'm somewhat worried that you were paying that much attention to the music in LSL. Needed something to amuse you while trying to answer obscure American references for the "parental lockout"? ;)

Re:Early computer music

[clone53421]

Maybe that's why GP is so impressed by the fact that...

They're making music sound good on a Yamaha OPL3 FM chip.

It's sort of like those chaps who can whistle Beethoven's symphonies or play Bach by blowing air through their cupped hands.

DRM + DirectX

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Good luck trying to beat the various forms of DRM through an emulator (without using a crack).
Also DirectX is also a bitch, specially the earlier versions (4-6) have various compatibility issues.

Re:DRM + DirectX

[infalliable]

Historically speaking, many games have not come with complex DRM schemes. The complex ones are pretty recent development. Up through the 90s, the most common were simple code lookups in the manual.

The game still runs, which is probably all that they're going for. You just need a txt file with the code lookups to get past the initial launching.

Re:DRM + DirectX

[tepples]

Historically speaking, many games have not come with complex DRM schemes. The complex ones are pretty recent development.

O RLY? Look up "Spiradisc" here. You see the beginnings of things like enumerating the components of your computer, which Microsoft rediscovered when designing Windows Product Activation.

Re:DRM + DirectX

[pla]

Good luck trying to beat the various forms of DRM through an emulator (without using a crack).

Which leads us to one nice aspect of emulation - You can pre-crack the DRM of the image, and just don't implement it at all in the emulator.


Also DirectX is also a bitch, specially the earlier versions (4-6) have various compatibility issues.

Emulating a known API takes far less work than emulating actual hardware at the per-chip level - Thus the reason it took a decade and numerous speed hacks to get decent SNES emulation, while we had PS1 and N64 emulators fairly stable (if slow) even before the EOL of those consoles.

Re:DRM + DirectX

[ericrost]

Maybe YOU can't:

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=3498

Others have been quite successful.

Re:DRM + DirectX

[EvilIdler]

DirectX 4-6 problematic? There was a certain terror named DirectX 2 which I seem to recall Microsoft dropped real fast. It was barely better than what existed for Win3.x, with new and interesting problems.

Re:DRM + DirectX

[Renegade Iconoclast]

The problem is that sometimes the DRM was very very closely related to the hardware, in fact, some of those games banged the hardware so hard, later revisions of the hardware broke the games. For example, see the commodore 1541 drive, vs the 1541-II.

Commodore emulators still have to emulate the 1541 as a separate computer, because of the stupid hardware-banging copy protection. That's why games even load slow in the emulator, and if you turn on fast loading, it doesn't always work.

There's simply no way to remove the copy protection from commie games except on a case-by-case basis. There's no magic 1541 emulator that can do it.

That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[Alarindris]

What? You guys are just gonna mash up a bunch of emulators? That's so stupid!!
I could just download a bunch of different ones doing a bunch of research and do it that way!!
I hate that you guys are just putting all that together for me, cause I could just do it myself!!

That's why you can't have nice things assholes, you don't appreciate it.

Why do people have a problem with this?

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[drinkypoo]

I don't have a problem with the idea, but they are doomed to failure. They will NEVER be able to get up to present day. We still don't have perfect emulation for N64, for example. Saturn emulation is as I understand actually somewhat working now but still highly sketchy. We're talking about systems from the last generation that are poorly documented, and always will be. And I might point out that there are tons of SNES games that don't work right in ANY emulator. We can't get SNES emulation 100% and they want to come up to the modern day? IMPOSSIBLE. Or at least, so improbable (you'll never get the information you NEED out of the manufacturers) that it might as well be impossible.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[OolimPhon]

So you're saying that the study of history is a pointless thing to do?

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[drinkypoo]

Seriously? Are we talking more than tiny glitches? Name one or two that you'd actually want to play.

Hmm, comment not totally stupid, guess I'll reply.

Lots of games won't load at all (so yes, more than tiny glitches) so I don't know if I want to play them or not. They crap themselves at initialization. Genesis is just as bad. Hell, Sega themselves made a Genesis lots of Genesis games won't play on (the Nomad.)

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[Who Is The Drizzle]

Lots of games won't load at all

Such as? The GP was asking for you to list specific games that don't load.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[Kankraka]

Zsnes took everything I ever threw at it. Every rom I tried to play -worked-, even the StarFox II beta was fully playable, and really, really fun. Snes9x choked on it, but zsnes came through. The only SNES games I've had trouble with were using an emulator on my DS, and I believe it's largely because the emulator is still under development. Kirby's superstar doesn't work at all, Link to the Past is playable but has sprite layering issues. Aerobiz Supersonic works awesome, and I wish Koei would pump out a modern version for the ds; given the hours I've put into it recently because I can now take it with me very easily, they'd have my 40 bucks.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[Who Is The Drizzle]

The GP can do their own fucking homework. I'm not going to go fire up the emulators and run through SNESRen. I'm not some AC dipshit's bitch.

So basically despite claims of "tons" and "lots" of SNES games not loading you can't even name a single game? That leads to the only natural conclusion was that you were being hyperbolic and just making shit up.

If I had made a list, I probably would have provided it. But I have better things to do. I can come here and rant, for example, which is more amusing.

No one was asking you to make a list. Just for you to provide 1 or 2 examples because we are curious. I'm sorry if you get so hostile over polite questions but I think that's your own character flaw.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[Evanisincontrol]

I think the OP asked for an example because, in his experience, every game he has ever tried has worked correctly (with maybe minor problems).

I have the same experience; that is, I've played literally hundreds of SNES games with the emulator ZSNES (both on Windows and on Linux systems) and I've never had a game not play.

Consequently, we're asking for an example of one game that doesn't work, mostly out of curiosity. I certainly don't believe your broad, sweeping claim that "lots of games won't load at all". Getting defensive and acting like a prick isn't a good response to an innocent question.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[geminidomino]

In my experience (haven't tried them recently) but games using the "add-on" technologies (Super-FX microchip in Starfox, e.g.) are/were rather evasive to emulate. I don't know if they ever got around them. I seem to remember Donkey Kong Country having issues too, but I don't remember what they were. ICBW.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[Krakhan]

snes9X and zsnes run most games fine. Also, for nearly perfect emulation accuracy on the SNES, look at bsnes.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[thanuk]

(you'll never get the information you NEED out of the manufacturers)

You're average hacker won't - but an academic institution like the University of Portsmouth might have more success.

Re:That's so easy I could do it! But I didn't.

[supertusse]

This must be proof that we are not living in The Matrix!

The acceptance is important.

[Max Romantschuk]

Accepting games as a cultural artifact is very important. This will in the long run open up a legal way of running abandonware, which is a great thing both for history as well as entertainment.

When credible, tax-funded institutions start highlighting the legal problems with running and copying old software the law will eventually adapt.

Software bugs are to be archved too

[h00manist]

The historical archives would be quite one-sided documenting only the neat and legal aspects, without including the surrounging context thrills of the game technology, including fumbling with config.sys, autoexec.bat, system.ini, winecfg, video drivers, directx, opengl, drm cracking, keygens, patched binares, virtual-to-real money scams, cheats, hacks, etc.

Not going to help with on-line stuff, is it?

[Mathinker]

This is cute, but just think about the problem of trying to preserve the gameplay of various MMO games, without the servers. I'm not thinking of a real preservation, but of how you might attempt to reconstruct the graphics and the movement and battle models from captured screen video + synchronized keyboard + mouse inputs.

To be more concrete, say we have as many players as we want playing WoW using a real time KVM-over-IP setup and we record the IP streams. How could we use the information to produce a single-user "game" which would give a cursory impression of what WoW was like, minus all the social interaction?

Now this is a real research-level problem, I think.

Re:Not going to help with on-line stuff, is it?

[pla]

This is cute, but just think about the problem of trying to preserve the gameplay of various MMO games, without the servers

Reproducing the social aspects of them, no. But the actual gameplay part, that just takes a suitable AI player - And in MMOs, lets face it, "suitable AI" means "shout random boasts of your latest kill/find" and "go to dungeon X, clear it out, teleport home if you get hurt too badly, rinse wash repeat".

Re:Not going to help with on-line stuff, is it?

[geminidomino]

Wish I could find one for guild wars. Every time they talk about GW2, I die a little inside...

Re:Not going to help with on-line stuff, is it?

[Mathinker]

I agree that once we've semi-reverse-engineered the gameplay paradigm from the KVM streams, all we will need to do is add AI's; but I think the hard problem is the reverse engineering itself.

Long live the future

[CarpetShark]

Obviously because, by putting all of these games into a museum, no one will ever be able to experience the gameplay properly, so they'll compare graphics/audio, and we'll continue to think the future is wholely superior to the past. Isn't that what museums are for, after all? ;)

Preservation

[MobyDisk]

I'm glad someone is taking preservation seriously. These are a part of our history. I wonder what the government will do about copyright, which is the usual counter-argument. Especially now that copyrights last for 6 billion years or so.

Re:Preservation

[Anonymous Coward]

--Especially now that copyrights last for 6 billion years or so.

Um... the sun will explode in 5 billion years.

Re:Preservation

[horza]

No reason the government can't just buy a copy of the game and let people experience it in the museums, much as they do with books for libraries. Where there is nobody to pay then assume it's abandonware until an author reclaims it and asks for it to be removed. No retroactive compensation but a fixed small sum that can be paid for future use.

Phillip.

Re:Preservation

[CarpetShark]

Tip: they're not taking it seriously, if this is what they're coming up with.

Re:Preservation

[agnosticanarch]

--Especially now that copyrights last for 6 billion years or so.

Um... the sun will explode in 5 billion years.

And no one will be able to make another one like it... because it was copyrighted!!

One would think that preservation of material in a museum would be beyond copyright law, but I doubt it. So long as there is money to be made...

~AA

Re:Preservation

[tepples]

Especially now that copyrights last for 6 billion years or so.

Um... the sun will explode in 5 billion years.

Which is entirely the point of making the copyright term obscenely long: so that the work is worthless by the time the copyright expires, while getting around the constitutional "for limited times" restriction on copyright law in the United States and other countries.

Re:Preservation

[Oidhche]

They might be able to buy a copy of the game, but I'm pretty sure someone's gonna have issues with them allowing people to play it.

And when it's no longer possible to legally obtain a copy, it gets even more problematic. AFAIK, there's no legal concept of abandonware. The developer might have packed his toys and gone home, but that doesn't mean you can "pirate" his software.

Which only shows how asinine the law is.

Re:Preservation

[MobyDisk]

Lots of these games can't be bought. That's a big part of why we need preservation.

Also, that media companies think that if I buy a game, I can't play it on an emulator. And if I buy a movie, I can't watch it on my computer. And if I buy a CD, I can't listen to it on an mp3 player.

Re:Preservation

[Nursie]

Not only that, but what happens when the hardware breaks?

Having an emulator, and the source for said emulator, is an important part of the archive.

Re:Preservation

[F-3582]

There is already a team of highly skilled developers being very busy at this exact same task. And there's another team of highly skilled developers being very busy at making all torts of computers work on that platform.

The ascent of man

[fscrubjay]

There must be a 1x4x9 monolith rising from the earth near Portsmouth.

Loading...

[PhilJC]

If they really want to emulate systems of old are they going to add the loading screens to the tape loading computers?

The countless hours I lost of life watching the eplieptic fit inducing loading screen of my Spectrum 48k really made you appreciate the game once you did finally start playing (oh and then when you did get them loaded up a speck of dust would land on the power cable or you had the temerity to press a key a little too hard and the whole system would reset)

Re:This counts as valuable university research?

[mkavanagh2]

All research must be of the same intellectual magnitude?

shutup lol

Public key crypto

[tepples]

Real encryption schemes hide one portion from the individual.

Which is why the major consoles all use public key crypto. All consoles have the public key, but only the console maker has the private key. This allows console makers to prevent individuals or small companies from developing for the console.

Re:Public key crypto

[Nursie]

Whilst that *is* evil in and of itself, it doesn't have much bearing on the original premise - that using DRM to prevent copying of media is futile because the decryption key is available.

Whether the same hardware will then play the copied media, which hasn't been signed with the private key, is another matter I guess.

What about business apps and utilities?

[linebackn]

Preserving games is nice and all, but it seems to me to be only part of what should be preserved. I feel it is just as important to be able to look back at old word processors, spreadsheets, desktop shells, disk utilities, programming environments, obscure OSes, and more. They may not be as glamorous as preserving games, but they are just as worthy of preservation.

Re:What about business apps and utilities?

[Al Kossow]

There is some preservation of these going on at the Computer History Museum. I am the Software Curator there, and am responsible for building CHM's collection of software artifacts.

This is NOT the reinvention of a wheel...

[RaigetheFury]

I find it interesting how the only "reasonable" comments about this are responses like "Why do this I could just download a bunch of emulators instead of this!!"... that's the whole point.

Download 1 emulator that is a singular source to play all the older games. instead of having multiple emulators for multiple game system formats etc... such a pain in the arse.

Don't get me wrong, I am concerned that they might just screw up a lot of good parts of many emulators out there (save state etc). I think this is a massive undertaking not only because they are trying to consolidate things but they have a GREAT opportunity to improve upon original design.

Currently the emulators out there are pretty limited simply due to how emulators work. There just isn't anything for ps2 games that's worth a dam. You can argue with me but there is a tremendous need for optimization here. There are a lot of games I'd love to play again that I lost due to a flood, and one of my ex dorm-mates stealing from me. You just can't find them anymore or you have to pay $20-$30 again for them. (screw that noise).

I'm no pirate, but I miss the nostalgia that came with many of the games from my youth. Downloading 15 emulators and finding one that doesn't suck, supports my gamepad... and managing them all when i want to switch games is a pain in the ass. The GUI's are also TERRIBLE (to each their own opinion). I think it's a rule that if you make great emulators they have to look like trash or a clown shit on them.

Controllers

[EdgeyEdgey]

How are you going to play the games?
What is pong without the rotary control?
Imagine (in 50 years time) playing Wii bowling without the wiimote.
How are you going to get a light gun to work without a screen that does a full refresh.
etc.

Re:Controllers

[cerberusss]

How are you going to play the games?
Imagine (in 50 years time) playing Wii bowling without the wiimote.

It's been taken care of. You just use a DataMold. I can't talk about it. Well I could --- but then I'd have to kill you.

Re:Controllers

[geminidomino]

Imagine (in 50 years time) playing Wii bowling without the wiimote.

You have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy.

Re:Controllers

[dmneoblade]

Making legacy controllers compatible with current systems would be a great way to fund these goals.
$10-20 would get you any controller you want, that connects to USB version n, or w/e.

Re:This counts as valuable university research?

[Anonymous Coward]

Few things.

(1) Portsmouth, like many "universities" in the UK, is only so by name. It was historically a polytechnic until Thatcher renamed them all to universities in the late '80s. A polytechnic is more for vocational than theoretical activity. The unfortunate thing is that polys and unis both had different non-competing roles in society - now the ex-polys are considered second-rate unis.

(2) Cambridge is probably the most highly regarded university in the country. Of course, Microsoft also managed to build a "research" campus there to suck up graduates, so obviously they're not selecting quite the right candidates. I assert that no-one lacking a passion for a particular subject should be selected at a top university, and that no-one with a passion for computer science will work for the stifling Microsoft. MS opened their campus there around the time I was applying to uni, and for that reason, among others, I applied for Oxford and Imperial. Cambridge seems to commercialise its comp sci efforts too much for my liking - if you're bright and want to make big $, fuck off to America.

(3) Don't overestimate Xen. As with many of today's computing fads, virtualisation's all been done before by IBM at least two decades ago. Xen is not a theoretical or engineering breakthrough (nor is VMware, nor is "cloud computing", ...).

Another Project

[fartrader]

They should do the same thing with beer - I would happily volunteer as a test subject.

Entertainment industry owns the news media

[tepples]

Governments create law.

Governments do nothing; elected people in government create law. And people aren't going to change the law if it won't help them or their party-mates get elected for another term. It starts with a conflict of interest, where that the movie industry owns all major television news outlets except PBS: Disney owns ABC; General Electric/NBC Universal owns NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC; News Corp/20th Century Fox owns Fox News and several newspapers; Time Warner owns CNN; and CBS, with historic ties to Viacom, owns CBS News. Then the news media can bury a candidate that doesn't scratch the entertainment industry's back.

Re:Isn't this MAME (the Mutli-Arcade Machine Emula

[internerdj]

I would suspect it has to do with the fact that they want to play nice with the current holders of the copyrights, so if they need help they can at least ask. If they look like they are going to hand out any of the information to the public, the companies who have had a nostalgia revolution with the latest gen consoles through online distribution are going think they are going to lose some profit.

Waste of tax money

[Randy Savage]

Okay, we all pay for that, by paying tax, and by paying university fees. Surely those resources could find something equivalently challenging, but that would have a tangible output for those who are paying!!!

Re:Waste of tax money

[JustNiz]

Just because you think this isn't a worthwhile project doesn't mean others don't.
I actually like seeing stuff like this being done instead of propping up some bank-managers million pound bonus.

dependency oversight

[hovercycle]

Each game is going to have to be classified or examined for exceptions and then made into a package with updates... I've been wanting to make a bootable dos/win95 gaming image since the eee pc came out. I always wanted a little computer just for dos games...Now I got one. BTW The main FPS games I play are old (JKII and RF).

Re:dependency oversight

[clone53421]

I've successfully got some old DOS games to run in DosBox. I don't think it'll run Win95, though.

But they're preserving our cultural history!

[elrous0]

They're not making a emulator for playing bootleg and pirated games, they're doing it for museums and archives. It's about preserving our cultural heritage for our kids. It's about our hist...

Wow, I can't even type that with a straight face. Whoever bullshitted their way into a grant for this deserves an award of some sort. Is there an award for bullshit artists, I mean besides political office?

Tennis for Two?

[Ambitwistor]

But can it emulate Tennis for Two? (These guys did it...)

Re:Isn't this MAME (the Mutli-Arcade Machine Emula

[Trent Hawkins]

Isn't this MAME

SHHH!!! Keep it down, can't you see that they're going to get an A+ on their finals, and all they had to do was change the word MAME to MESS.

What about the game companies?

[Yvan256]

If we take for granted that preserving history includes videogames, shouldn't game companies that don't disclose specifications, ROMs, etc. be considered as targets for some kind of anti-history-archiving laws, if such a thing exists?

And if such a law exists or ever exists, we get in the same "differents countries, different rules" and "how much time to we give them before asking for the specs", etc.

I bet Tecmo would apply to have a Disney-esque protection on Pac-Man, for example.

Re:This counts as valuable university research?

[xorsyst]

Cambridge is probably the most highly regarded university in the country.

Yeah, and then Bath. Oxford's a shambles.</blackadder>

Alt option

[DrYak]

I'll see what I can do about this.

You could use an ' alt="blah" ' option inside the IMG tag.
With this you can display the color's names (Perfect, Ingame, etc.) when the user hold the mouse over the image.

That can help any form of colour blindness (like the parent poster) or even people like me who sometimes browse in text mode only to spare bandwidth. (It will simply display the alt's text content in the last column).

Depends on the country - probably legal in Europe

[DrYak]

They probably also have access to lawyers who will tell them when not to use those hardware analysis tools.

Depends on the country. In the USA, probably.
In most other country :
- As it is a university (doing it for educational purpose - one of the "fair use" exceptions to copyright law)
- As it won't be used to distribute (it's going into an archive, not onto Pirate Bay. Only the distribution is prohibited in copyright laws)
- As it is used for archival purpose (another of the "fair use" exceptions to copyright law)
It should be therefore legal.

And as DRM stands in the way to some perfectly legal usage, they have the legal right to crack the DRM.
(Here in Switzerland, it is even explicitly stated in the law - I don't know about England, tough. But I hope that they didn't get such an asinine law as USA's DMCA that blocks usage that are explicitly authorized elsewhere in the law).

Remember, the fact that USA politicians were dumb enough to vote the DMCA doesn't mean that the rest of the world will be similarly clueless.

Gamer equivalent of American Film Institute?

[peter303]

The AFI is a hybrid government-industry organization charged with identifying and preserving key Hollywood films. It started in the 1960s when the fear was television would decimate Hollywood and original film negatives lost. Each year they choose 25 classic films for special preservation. Since then movie technology and economics has changed considerably. But there is still the chance that even digital films can be lost.

KEEP initiative

[Al Kossow]

This is part of a 3.5 million euro project over three years.

http://cordis.europa.eu/fetch?CALLER=FP7_PROJ_EN&ACTION=D&DOC=1&CAT=PROJ&QUERY=011f37a73b31:61ba:091d22f8&RCN=89496

I wish someone would spend that much money on the preservation of OTHER software.

Instruments... wtf?

[Samah]

From the summary:

...it would be much the same as putting musical instruments on display but throwing away all the music

What an awful metaphor. Unlike old games that may become difficult to acquire, how the hell do you "throw away all the music"? You can still pick up an instrument and play whatever you want on it, existing or original. Also, there are few instruments that "become obsolete" like game systems.

So no, it wouldn't be "much the same" at all, actually.

Re:Instruments... wtf?

[clone53421]

That's not a metaphor, it's a simile, and in any case I suspect you meant analogy.

Anyway, it's not that bad as far as analogies go: putting consoles in a museum, but discarding the games that bring them to life, is very much like keeping a valuable antique player piano and throwing away the paper rolls that it plays from.

Re:Instruments... wtf?

[Samah]

Yeah I had a feeling metaphor was the wrong word, but I cbf looking it up.

That's a relief....

[DrStoooopid]

..that I'll still be able to play Battletoads in my mylar diaper when I'm 125. ...though I do digress...sounds like they're trying to reinvent the wheel.

Re:You moderators are hilarious!

[clone53421]

Third, you mean. And the 2nd comment also mentioned MAME, and the replies to the first comment talked about it quite a bit. End result: by the time anyone gets down to your comment, they've heard all they care to hear about MAME.

Anyway, if you'd replied to the first post instead of the topic, you'd have posted before this guy, getting much better page placement and probably avoided the redundant tag. Just saying.

Re:You moderators are hilarious!

[clone53421]

Damn it, I re-wrote part of my sentence and ended up screwing up the verb tenses...

Retro Computer Museum

[AndyRCM]

Rather than do some emulator (which like has been said here has been done) - open source emulators virtually emulate every system anyway - what is the point in doing a new one that would try and encompass system! Sounds crazy! - why not try and do what we am trying to do . . . I am currently the curator of an online museum. We aim eventually to have premises so that we can have a hands on computer and console museum. This along with several arcade machines will hopefully be a good place for children and adults alike to either learn from new or play systems that they did 20 or 30 years ago. If you would like to support what we are doing please go to www.retrocomputermuseum.co.uk