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MAME Released Under OSI-Compliant, FSF-Approved License (mamedev.org)
New submitter _merlin writes: MAMEdev just announced that MAME (formerly Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is now entirely available under OSI-comliant, FSF-approved licenses. The project as a whole is available under the GNU General Public License, version 2 (GPL-2.0), while individual source files are available under BSD-3-Clause, LGPL-2.1 or GPL-2.0 (all compatible with GPL-2.0). Over 90% of the code, including core functionality, is available under the BSD-3-Clause license.
Having one open source license to rule them all?
Can anyone clarify what the status of it was before this announcement?
You eat every day only noodles? Always same brand?
I realize the people who contribute to MAME are entitled to whatever priorities and purpose for the project they want, but over the years I have been totally pissed off by them for breaking working games in the name of making a 'more perfect' replica of the emulated game, or switching to a more complete ROM set, or whatever that means to them. ROMs that worked for years suddenly are no longer accepted by the latest build of MAME. I'm sorry, but whether they like it or not, people want MAME to actually play games. Not to be a fucking science fair project. I've pretty much given up on them.
Using it is a GPL violation: you can't load closed-source blobs within a GPLv2 program.
Just wait until the SFC hears about this!
That's what all the other emulators are for. And quite a few of them exist, even MAME spin-offs designed for nothing more than performance, ease of setup, and game compatibility.
I don't know where you've been looking, but they are everywhere. It's like complaining that Debian is too "pure" when there are a million spin-off distros based on it that aren't, and some of them more popular than the original.
MAME have always stated that their aim is preservation and accuracy of emulation of old games. Not for you to have a quick blast on a ROM that you're not technically licensed for anyway. There are other MAME-based things for that, many of them with "MAME" in the title, even.
It's like complaining that some museum scanned in their ancient texts at far too high a resolution that you can't comfortably read them on your Kindle. Their aim was never for you to do that, but for the original texts to be preserved in as much detail as possible.
We're doing plenty to improve the user experience of MAME. We recently integrated the MEWUI user interface code, giving better system selection and configuration from within MAME. MAME now supports UI localisation. We added "autofire" features.
New APIs are supported depending on your host OS including CoreAudio, Xaudio2 and Xinput, for lower latency and support for newer peripherals.
The Direct3D renderer has supported CRT simulation for a while, and the OpenGL renderer supports pluggable filters. But the new cross-platform BGFX renderer will support all that and more with a clean, data-driven approach in an upcoming release. We're also looking to integrate code from GroovyMAME to support people using MAME in arcade-style cabinets and with CRT monitors.
But most importantly, the emulation keeps getting better, leading to more playable games and usable emulated computers. For example recently MAME became the first emulator to properly support the Zaccaria classics Cat and Mouse and Laser Battle (licensed to Midway as Lazarian) with correct colours, full video effects and sound. MAME also recently added the very rare Korean games 96 Flag Rally and Philko Lock On. MAME's support for the historically significant Osborne 1 computer got a lot better last year, including proper memory banking and support for the SCREEN-PAC add-on.
MAME's slot system allows emulation of many peripherals and add-ons that other emulators can't handle. Things like add-on procesor cards for the Apple II, or the IBM PGC.
This is only possible because MAME has a flexible emulation core and a huge library of well-tested cores for emulating CPUs, video hardware, sound chips, and other devices.
I'm not entirely sure you answered AC's question. Your examples for the emulation getting better were about things I've never heard of. Personally, I'd be more interested in Naomi, Naomi 2, Atomiswave, late 90's namco (Tekken 3), AM2 (3? for Virtua Fighter 3-4b) and whichever one had the original Die Hard Arcade (I think it was the same as Daytona USA). I was really excited to see the initial support of those architectures since there are a number of great games on them. However, there doesn't seem to have been any noticeable improvement on them for the past 4 years.
Is there any legal/licensing issue with emulation of these architectures?
Really? Lots of emulators for actual arcade systems? Examples please. I search online and I can find front ends for MAME everywhere, but if the backend has broken compatibility with a particular ROM that doesn't make a difference, does it? Let's be specific. I want to find a non-MAME Namco emulator to play the -arcade- version of Pacman, as well as several other ROMs I've downloaded over the years. Ok, I'm searching "arcade emulator alternatives to mame". If you think this is a poor search then give me a better one. Here's the first result:
http://alternativeto.net/softw...
And what's the top result here, RetroArch. OK, that looks promising. Download. Unzip. Figure out the needlessly obtuse UI (Seriously, a main menu with no fucking mouse support? I am supposed to magically know to use the arrow keys and X and Z to navigate? What. The. Actual. Fuck.). OK, did a Goggle search, got the secret info, past that, let's play a game. Oh, first I need 'cores'. OK, wait, the core is fucking MAME. RetroArch is a front end. Why the fuck is it then the top choice on a page for ALTERNATIVES to fucking MAME. Pacman plays, but for quite a few of my ROMs Retroarch just bombs back to the desktop. Even if I try all FOUR MAME core options. No error message. No log file. No fucking shit at all.
And people praise open source to high heaven while the user experience is total shit.
BTW: I did also make several attempts to search -specifically- for Namco arcade emulators, and found nothing useful at all. The 2nd and 3rd links from my original search didn't product anything useful either, and the fourth matching result from Google is "Why does MAME suck so bad". That says something.
If you just want to play NAOMI/Atomiswave games, you're better off using DEmul. It attempts to map PowerVR onto D3D and has a recompiling SH4 core. MAME doesn't come close to that performance. However DEmul uses the MAME CHD format for GDROM images and uses MAME-documents disc/ROM dumps, and the DEmul developers share findings with the MAME team and vice versa. MAME research/technology contributes to non-MAME emulators all the time.
There are issues with encryption/protection blocking progress on some of the later Namco games. There has been some progress behind the scenes, but it hasn't got as far as making anything playable.
There are dedicated Sega Model 2/3 emulators which, once again, are heavily dependent on the documentation from MAME.
As for MAME emulating things you've never heard of, that's one of the big benefits of MAME: ensuring these things aren't lost to future generations. Without MAME's preservation efforts, a lot more of our digital heritage would be lost.
From http://mamedev.org/?p=422:
From the /. story pointer:
Digital Citizen
However, there doesn't seem to have been any noticeable improvement on them for the past 4 years.
I think that is because the people who are interested in what you listed off are not really working on the MAME project right now. I think most of them are fairly focused on the dolphin or DEmul projects.
The license change was specifically sold as a way to incorporate the info those other groups have been finding into MAME and the other way around. You can not just plug in their systems into MAME and the other way around. But some small bits here and there can help each other. Basically instead of the groups having to rediscover information over and over they can share more.
Also many of the people who have the ability to do the emulation you are talking about have day jobs. In some cases they can not actually contribute anymore because of NDA or not being interested anymore.
MAME is pretty good at a lot of things. But it is a project that gets better as more systems are added in. The past year has been one of major cleanup and fixing of 'leftovers'. Basically gutting out the old Cygwin build chain and getting a decent cmake like system in place to build it. Going thru and modernizing the codebase from something closer c99 to more C++14. Also reaching out to the hundreds of people who have contributed and finding out what sort of license they are ok with.
I have watched MAME grow from ~5 games to well over 100k games playable. That it can not play a few games here and there is not that interesting to me. As _merlin comments you would be better off with a different emulator if you want a specific thing like that. The 'easy' stuff is pretty much done. They want to keep to as few 'hacks' as necessary to get something to run. They want to understand why that hack is and if so how does the hardware do that particular thing they are hacking around. In many cases making it more accurate to boot. As usually the hack does not fully understand what is going on. Many times it will be a missing dump or an actual bug in the core code they are fixing. Which has nice side effects of fixing other systems or causing their hacks to suddenly break and a better solution is found for the other systems.
If you just want to play NAOMI/Atomiswave games, you're better off using DEmul.
Better still. Buy a Naomi and a NetDIMM.
I had a friend pick up three Naomis for under $100, I repaired two of them over the weekend, and the third one had a shitup GPU so was put away for spare parts. A NetDIMM is more expensive but not much more than a single game on ebay.
Better yet, buy the actual games, then you have a license to publicly perform them and recoup your investment. With Naomi games selling for mostly under $300, you can recoup your investment in a few weeks of renting out the cabinets to Birthday parties.
So update your romset, you stupid crybaby bitch! It's not hard.