nesdev.org

hap posted this in another thread:

hap wrote:I take it you don't like those 2 emulators being mentioned everywhere as being the best of the best. That brings me to an interesting question, and not just to you, but to anyone on this forum.

What do you think of your grown/diminished/non-fame or attention inside the small world of NES? Does it motivate or demotivate you? Or perhaps even make you feel jealous or wanting to belittle other projects?

I'll start off. For me it's probably non-fame; I'm pretty sure a few friends of mine and I are the only regular users of my project (NES emulator). Every time I release a new version, it's nice to see the news spreading through the internet without me announcing it to anyone. But, seeing it mentioned by emulator news site authors as 'just another basic NES emu', and most of the comments by potentional end-users being the likes of 'it's no Sega emulator then?' demotivates me a bit. I acknowledge and look up to people who are better at their projects than I am, the thought that it's close to impossible to be the best at something with 6 billion other people in this world kind of satisfies me; I actually wouldn't want to be the best... though I'm probably the best Finnish-Dutch-mixbreed NES emulator author in the world

I don't really do what I do for fame. (Although it certainly wouldn't hurt...) I do it for the good feeling I get seeing my creation running on a real or emulated machine. Seeing others' accomplishments does motivate me, and I'm a little envious of their skills, but that just pushes me to learn more.

Well, the NES scene is incredibly samall. I mean not more than about 50 people on the world inside of the current 6 billions are really devolted to homebrew NES developpement, and maybe something like 300 people have been a bit interested about it (my numbers are big approximations).

I'm not willing to be the best at anything, but I just want to do my best in doing what I do. That is somewhat different, I mean. Also, I really hope the release of my first complete game that should happen until not so long will be a big event in NESdev scene. I mean, very few complete homebrew NES games have been completed.
There is at least Solar Wars and NES Snake 2, and a dozen of others, but the others are definitely too small and repetitive to be really considered as complete games (that could have been comercial). I'm not to that point yet, though, even if I have ideas for several other homebrew games to do later, I hope I will be completing them with other people as partners.

I don't really expect fame (though it would be nice....) since the heyday of "Hey, somebody's making demos & programs for the old NES" reactions is long gone...

But, hell, I started programming for the NES simply because it is my favourite system ever, I have good memories of playing games on it, and I wanted to know what made it tick. Plus it was cool to think to myself that the same chip that had once displayed Super Mario Bros. on it is displaying my own graphics.

If this makes any sense to you guys...

But, hell, I started programming for the NES simply because it is my favourite system ever, I have good memories of playing games on it, and I wanted to know what made it tick. Plus it was cool to think to myself that the same chip that had once displayed Super Mario Bros. on it is displaying my own graphics.

This seem to be the case of most people, but this isn't my case at all. My first videogame system was the PlayStaion 1. The main reason I got interested by the NES is early Final Fantasy games, but some other games interest me as well on the system (MegaMan and Dragon Quest especially). I cannot say it is for remembering the old days or anything, since I was way to young when the NES was in its glory to play games. I cannot determine my favourite system, because I like games prety much regardless of the system, but I think NES is one of my favourites just because I know so much things about it. I like the SNES and both Playstaions pretty much too, because that's all systems I have. Heh, what's the point to have systems you don't like ?

The NES has got some sort of appeal, doesn't it? My first system was a Sega Genesis/Megadrive (wich came with Sonic The Hedgehog), and I love it until this day. Actually, the first was an Atari 2600, but that was way before the Genesis and I actually went a few years with no videogame at all.

I was a hardcore Sega lover. I even got a Master System later on, just because it was also Sega's (and it had a few different Sonic titles - hey, I even bought a Dreamcast because of Sonic). All my friends had famiclones by that time, and I just hadn't any interest in those. Then, during the boom of emulation, I couldn't believe I was playing the classic Sonic games on my PC! And soon after that, I developed an inexplainable interest for the NES. I didn't know anything about it before there was emulation, but suddenly it had become my favorite gaming system. I guess I'll never be able to explain why. Now here I am. I have a general interest in 8-bit computers and videogames now, but the NES started it all.

Now, as for devoloping NES-related stuff, I feel that the fun is in coding stuff that has never been done before for the platform. I believe that finishing a game can bring a sense of accomplishment I'm yet to experiment. But I guess this is it, something personal. I don't think anyone gets any kind of status just for coding something cool. I mean, it's just an old 8-bit system to the eyes of the world. The ones that make the news are the ones inventing new stuff, not the ones that are trying to extend the life of old technology.

I also always wanted to program emulators (and in fact I tried that before coding for the NES itself, back in the days of Nesticle, but didn't get very far). But I don't see the point anymore. There are a few great NES emulators around, and a TON of little ones that bring nothing new to the table. Since I don't have any ideas that will actually make emulation better, I don't even bother trying.

Overall, I feel that game programming is more rewarding than emulator programming. When you're done with an emulator (wich never really happens, there are always little things to change, add or fix!), you can load some games, start playing and... it's like, "now what?"... Those same old games are there running, as they have been for the last 15-20 years. There is nothing really new. And you keep aiming for perfection, wich will never come. Even if you emulater all existing games correctly, there will always be someone trying to find hardware quirks...

By making a new game, on the other hand, you can express a lot of your ideas at once. You can show your music talents, your art talents. All of your creativity. And you can show that you are able to gather all those things and put together a form of entertainment that will actually amuse quite a few people for a while.

Now, I'm not diminishing the work of emulator authors. Without you guys, all game developers would be pretty much screwed. What you guys do is pretty hard, and the fact that you achieve a great level of accuracy is admirable. But, as a personal choice, I stick to game programming 'cause I believe I can express more that way, and that once I finish something I'll have the most incredible sense of accomplishment! =)

I guess I mainly released my NES emulator because of its unique movie features. If I have a neat idea, I like to implement it and share it. I wouldn't want my emulator to be popular, because it exposes me to stupid pressure from the masses to add feature X. I'm happy to recommend Nestopia as an emulator that is actively being developed and is written in a maintainable programming style. Even if I wanted to compete, I wouldn't see the purpose since there are several NES emulators whose authors are already attempting maximum accuracy and features; any other NES emulators are best developed to fill some niche, like low processor usage or new features. I guess it comes down to obligation: making a mainstream emulator means that I am obligated to fix problems in a timely manner. I'd rather experiment with new things rather than be tied to one program.

As for ego and fame, I do enjoy seeing some success in my NES emulation-related library projects. Those don't require near as much time to maintain, so I don't mind some pressure there. In the end my drive for experimenting still takes priority, so I end up releasing less than I could if I focused only on pleasing users.

hap wrote:Every time I release a new version, it's nice to see the news spreading through the internet without me announcing it to anyone. But, seeing it mentioned by emulator news site authors as 'just another basic NES emu', and most of the comments by potentional end-users being the likes of 'it's no Sega emulator then?' demotivates me a bit.

The endless emulation news sites are kind of lame, in my opinion. They mainly get in the way of Google searches, and like you say their summaries are often hastily written and incorrect. If were a small closed online community of people serious about emulation, I think I'd privately release things there and never to the general public.

hap wrote:What do you think of your grown/diminished/non-fame or attention inside the small world of NES? Does it motivate or demotivate you? Or perhaps even make you feel jealous or wanting to belittle other projects?

warning: crude honesty ahead

As a whole, I am disappointed with the status of NES emulation and my inability to keep up with the best of the best in general.

Although I admit that sometimes I have let my jealousy get the best of me, I've learned better and things are different now. See below.

hap wrote:Every time I release a new version, it's nice to see the news spreading through the internet without me announcing it to anyone. But, seeing it mentioned by emulator news site authors as 'just another basic NES emu', and most of the comments by potentional end-users being the likes of 'it's no Sega emulator then?' demotivates me a bit. I acknowledge and look up to people who are better at their projects than I am

You hit the nail right on the head there, hap. But I also try to remember that, while seemingly gifted, these are people just like me. If I can't equal them in skills or accomplishments, I try to equal them in friendship and humor. I try to be a good presense amoung the NES development and emulation communities...

long boring post follows:

I find emulation kind of boring now, honestly. Not completely of course, but it's not as exciting to me as it was in 1997 (wow, almost 10 years ago..). I guess since I'm pretty happy with all the emulators that exist now (except that I am still curious to try the Atari Jaguar and Falcon), and I do 90% of my development/testing on my NES instead of emus. So I never notice new emulator releases, though years ago I used to visit EmuNews (remember that site?) and Zophar's every day for the news.

I very rarely even followed the discussions in the NESemdev forum (I'd always read them, but often wouldn't know what most of it's about or just not be too interested unless I could help). Though it did help me a bit with learning C.

I do still find it impressive though when someone writes an NES emulator. Since i know what all is involved. I might not ever use it, but I'm still impressed.

I know I wouldn't write one unless there was some great feature that's missing that noone else will do. Like how I'm considering writing a PIC emulator for Squeedo. Pretty much why I made my NSF player, besides the idea that it was cool to do on SNES, I wanted a decent info display with it. The only other one I liked the display of was the original version of Nosefart, where it displayed the registers. That was great. But noone would do note detection and stuff, in fact I think I emailed Matt Conte and asked if he'd add it. Good thing he didn't then, or I possibly might not have made mine. Was cool as hell to see my NSF Player mentioned in ZD's news when I released it, though the description the person wrote was a bit.. over the top. heheh.

But I've pretty much always been of the opinion that it'd be a lot cooler to see people writing NES stuff, rather than emulating it. If you're not up for the creativity, just port a simple game. I don't mean to sound hostile to it, because I'm not, but I made this site for NES development. And made the NESemdev forum (back on the old bbs) to get the emulation crap out of the interesting stuff, heheh. But I'm really glad it's all been useful. But I know everyone's got their own reasons and motivations for being involved in any aspect of the whole NES R&D thing. Seem that in the last couple years more people have been joining here to get involved with the NES coding side of things, so that's been cool.

I do it (did it?) because ladies find C++ programmers extremely sexy.

I don't like the way some people talk about their emulators, as though as if they are the best. If you are one of these people, get a life. If you're gonna write a program do it because it's something that interests you, not because you expect to be rewarded in terms of worldwide recognition.

I work (worked?) on my emulator because I enjoy emulation / video games / programming in general. Trying to make something that will change users' favoritism over Nestopia and Nintendulator is just plain stupid.

Writing an emulator is extremely fun, rewarding, and educational. Modeling hardware in software is an excellent way to expand your knowledge and hone your coding skills. You write a 6502 emulator, and then you realize writing a VM is cake.

Releasing an emulator is where it starts to get crappy. Unless you do as blargg has done, quietly aiming for a niche and not trying to be the uber-emulator, it's very difficult to target the audience that will actually value your work. I'd say, if you have an amazing cycle-exact debugging masterpiece, it's in your best interest to attach the most user-unfriendly nightmarish GUI possible to filter out the mainstream morons. Amen.

Memblers: thanks for the nosefart props.

baisoku wrote:I'd say, if you have an amazing cycle-exact debugging masterpiece, it's in your best interest to attach the most user-unfriendly nightmarish GUI possible to filter out the mainstream morons. Amen.

Better yet, release your emulator only as a DLL so that other people can put GUIs on top of it.

Bregalad wrote:Well, the NES scene is incredibly samall. I mean not more than about 50 people on the world inside of the current 6 billions are really devolted to homebrew NES developpement, and maybe something like 300 people have been a bit interested about it (my numbers are big approximations).

We've had 5300 downloads of our DEP: NES Edition so far.

Wow, that's a kinda high number from what I'd exept on the first look. However, that's mostly DCdev people or just DC gamers with a modified console showing a bit interest in the NES that would download this, and not much NESdev people. I know nothing about the DC personally.

However, that's mostly DCdev people or just DC gamers with a modified console showing a bit interest in the NES that would download this

Both I guess.

I know nothing about the DC personally.

It's a very powerful but unlucky console. New games are still produced to this day (and probably on to 2008 or 2009) tho.

And not to forget one doesn't need a modified console for homebrew on DC


Anyway, one feature that didn't make it into that DEP release was the Windows Autorun menu which would enable you to browse the disc's content without a Dreamcast on your PC. That's been part of the dual concept from the start so it's sad the menu itself didn't make it.

In the update I am working on the menu will be featured though