bad x accurate emulator

Zepper · Post by **Zepper** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:39 pm

- A few times, I was fired about developing a crap emulator, with no specific or technical reason given. I remember of have wasted hours of tracing and debugging to make a certain test ROM to pass with no hacks. With this new NES reset behaviour thing, I wonder what defines a crap emulator: because of a bad GUI? Because it doesn't run at 60Hz in your machine? If it passes through all test ROMs, why do someone still fire "crap"?

- Perhaps not important to discuss, since many of you develop an emulator but don't share to the public domain. Anyway, here's the thrill.

kyuusaku · Post by **kyuusaku** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:58 pm

Fired meaning you were angry? Who's calling your emulator crap? Remember that guy that hacked RockNES and passed it off as his own? That alone proves people like your emulator ;)

Honestly, I don't think RockNES or most other emulators are crap, even inaccurate emulators have their place if they fill a niche like that BASIC emulator.

Also just because an emulator is not Win32/DirectX based doesn't make it less of an emulator, though some people may believe so. I think if you want recognition, Win32/DirectX is the only way, but then you'll never achieve Nestopia's dare I say unwarranted success and you'll be another "imitator".

In fact, I'm happy that you continue to work on RockNES because it bridges the world of "old world" emulators that I fondly remember using on a Pentium 1 and new ones that my Pentium 3 can't even run. Also personally I enjoy the personal feel of the custom GUI emulators such as the "crappy" Nesticle, FwNES and LoopyNES, but I guess most people don't anymore.

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:05 pm

First off, don't let users decide the level of accuracy for your emulator. Do whatever you're comfortable with and whatever is interesting. Aside from the benefits to the author, the only reason I see for multiple NES emulators is for each to add unique features, or to implement emulation in a novel way. If you're trying to make another accurate emulator like Nestopia or Nintendulator, you had better outdo them or you're not adding anything of value. If your users are expecting you to compete with them, your users are displaying the same level of intelligence as a sports fan for his favorite team, and you're wasting your time by listening to them.

Many things I research about NES behavior are very obscure and only of interest to someone fanatical about accuracy. Attempting to emulate them all accurately without an industrial-strength design will probably result in chaos and lots of wasted effort. Unfortunately not much work has been done on ranking the findings based on importance to normal NES programs (games).

Dwedit · Post by **Dwedit** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:07 pm

The only stuff important to games is stopping them from shaking the status bar.

Zepper · Post by **Zepper** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:27 pm

Dwedit wrote:The only stuff important to games is stopping them from shaking the status bar.

- It has appeared after my sprite core rewrite. I don't know what's up.

hap · Post by **hap** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 3:55 pm

They flame you because they're ignorant, jealous, or just like to hurt people sometimes, don't let it influence you

MottZilla · Post by **MottZilla** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 4:26 pm

You shouldn't worry about people who say nasty things about RockNES. Clearly these people have their own stupid opinions, and winning them over isn't worth your time anyway. I've used RockNES myself and I like it. I think it is a good emulator. I like the classic old style GUI, though I'm sure there are other people that don't.

Basically you should ignore anyone that says something negative about your emulator unless they actually will describe to you what they don't like about it and why. Most importantly don't let people like them get to you.

Bregalad · Post by **Bregalad** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:47 am

Well, I've heard RockNES is the most popular emulator among Mac users. I might be wrong, tough.

Dwedit · Post by **Dwedit** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:57 am

On Mac OS 9, your choices are Rocknes and Graybox. Rocknes is the much better one of the two.

Zepper · Post by **Zepper** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 6:49 am

- The MacOS side isn't "nice", and I barely want to discuss it. Anyway, there's another emulator for Mac much better.

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Sat Mar 15, 2008 11:43 am

On Mac OS 9, your choices are Rocknes and Graybox. Rocknes is the much better one of the two.

Just want to correct this, there's also the much more recent QuickNES, which runs on OS 9 and OS X.