Retro games and emulation - Discuss retro shit in case you're stuck in the past or a hipster

Celebrate Nite said:
what is it with dev companies loosing their old stuff!?
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to their defence, when insomniac had to change offices, the moving was a bit of a mess due to the rush, at least from what I can understand.
I don't know if this video was already posted here, in which case feel free to call me all sorts of names, but there is a very interesting video by DidYouKnowGaming about Crash 5 and how Activision screwed both Toys for Bob and Vicarious Visions over. And how both Activision (and now Microsoft) deserve to be broken up, i really hope Antitrust steps in and fucks Microsoft and Google up.


Computer Guardian said:
could you elaborate on how Duckstation isn't exactly done "from scratch"?, surely it wouldn't be as mind-numbingly retarded as the Yuzu devs using the offical SDK for thier emulator.
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I'm fairly sure he uses a fork from PCSX-R or another Open Source emulator or SDK, most of them stem from the bleem emulator. I read a bit more about how all PS1 emulators are derivate from bleem (except a couple), but I can't find that post anymore, I'll need to dig up some very old blog whose name I can't recall. But I think the gist of it is that emulators originated from a NetYaroze or something.

Also, someone explained me the reasoning behind him trying to fuck up the FOSS:
- Many forks of the project make small changes to fix one game or another but don't get contributed upstream, which then end up dead or unmaintained and fragment progress.
- Many forks of the project do not properly attribute stenzek and other contributors.
- Many packagers do not mark their builds as modified, but their users still expect upstream support for issues caused by improper packaging.
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Don't let Stenzek into GNU/Linux development or he will have a stroke at seeing how much of this shit is common place.
(the first point is also basically the Goo Engine in a nutshell. They forked blender, paywalled it, and added 4 nodes used for Non-Photorealistic/3D Anime stuff. Thankfully most of that shit can be done in vanilla blender too)

Bonesjones said:
Japan has a culture of not really valuing old work / archival purposes as much as we do. The reason every rerelease is just a rom and emulator in a cute wrapper instead of just a redevelopment is because they just toss it all afterwards. You've also got old tape drives and other old storage methods rotting out in storage because no one is checking them.
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Honestly this applies to the rest of the world too. Just a reminder that the Strife Source Port wasn't a source port but a remake of it with the aid of a couple of Raven Software employees because they too displaced the original source code. Spyro is an American-made series from Insomniac, another american developer, and they lost the source code too.

Realistically, the only way to get source code from old games is through usage of emulators that aren't retarded like Post-Stenzek PCSX2 or Duckstation (But rather something like Bizhawk) and do the decompiling of the game of interest. More people, even the ones lurking these forums, should do it, it's the better way of preserving games since emulating roms are always a hit or miss.
 
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Bonesjones said:
Japan has a culture of not really valuing old work / archival purposes as much as we do. The reason every rerelease is just a rom and emulator in a cute wrapper instead of just a redevelopment is because they just toss it all afterwards. You've also got old tape drives and other old storage methods rotting out in storage because no one is checking them.
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This isn't really true, copyright laws are just much more strictly enforced there and fans cannot flagrantly ignore en masse so you don't see as much archiving online. People there care deeply about their past and honestly they do a much better job with books than we do, their book stores are amazing and everywhere and the quality of the books is very high both new and used.

In this case what you're looking at is the reality of old software repos succumbing to decades of migrations until we all eventually hit git and abundant storage. Teams may have gone from sharing floppies to CVS to SourceSafe to Subversion to P4 to Git and different constraint along the way with licensing or hosting or performance caused older unneeded code to be deleted, not to mention acquisitions and complying to new corporate IT rules. It's not unique to Japan, I've seen it first hand in American companies. You have to remember that until pretty recently storage was expensive and servers used by a team could get really bogged down just from having too much stuff on it (it was very common with Perforce).
 
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Has anyone looked into either Gaseous or RomM?
Both are web based ROM management apps you install on a server, and can run emulators inside your web browser directly. Both are allegedly working on emulatorss you can install on your phone or PC that will ause the server like your personal eShop/store where you can download your ROMs to your device and back up your game saves.
 
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Bonesjones said:
Japan has a culture of not really valuing old work / archival purposes as much as we do. The reason every rerelease is just a rom and emulator in a cute wrapper instead of just a redevelopment is because they just toss it all afterwards. You've also got old tape drives and other old storage methods rotting out in storage because no one is checking them.
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Same reason why a lot of HD releases of anime are often just shitty upscales. Once it's been out on the market and served its purpose, it's on to the next money making scheme and throw out everything that came before. That's also why Ninja Gaiden Black and several other games stuck on old consoles will never be properly ported unless the companies or fans reverse-engineer them. Their copyright laws are also much more cutthroat and draconian than in the west, so ROM downloads and reverse-engineering fan projects (by virtue of needing the ROM) are a no-no and any nip found guilty of the unforgiveable crime of downloading Super Mario Bros. may enjoy up to 2 years in prison and a 2 million yen fine. If they uploaded it, that's 10 years and 10 million yen.

The only choice nips have for playing old games is scouring through Akihabara shops and blowing all of their cube pod rent money on overpriced plastic, or paying financial tribute to the IP holders, after which they may enjoy the privilege of owning having the ROM leased to them that the company lifted from some skeezy website recovered from deep within their archives and playing it with emulators they found on github an Officially-Licensed Port™ on their Bing Bing Wahoo tablet or Paystation 5
 
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SSj_Ness said:
Never played Wii nor 7, but among the 3D entries I did play, 8 is easily the worst in this regard. I can't see anything coming and the better graphics actually works against it because things are less easily distinguishable.
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Wii is way worse than 8, it's like looking at the back of the kart the whole time and nothing else. The Graphics feels like everything is covered in Vaseline.
 
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Koi Fish said:
I read a bit more about how all PS1 emulators are derivate from bleem (except a couple), but I can't find that post anymore, I'll need to dig up some very old blog whose name I can't recall.
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That sounds really questionable considering Bleem! was a commercial software product and I can't find anywhere where the source code was re-released in an open format.

Bleem!, contrary to popular belief, wasn't involved in legality of emulation, that was Connectix Virtual Game Station. Connectix was the one that released Virtual Game Station and fought Sony (and won), which was the actual big emulation case (and unlike Bleem!'s developers, had money—their other product Virtual PC did well and they had some cash from selling a webcam line to Logitech). VGS was clean room reverse-engineering and Sony ended up just buying VGS from Connectix to kill the product.

They went after Bleem! for the screenshots they used (I guess Bleem! got more press since the market was so much wider than the Mac-focused VGS) and also lost but unlike Connectix, Bleem! didn't have cash reserves. Obviously VGS is out of the question since Sony snapped them up, but Bleem! was written in low-level assembly code which would make it difficult to port to other systems.
 
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Computer Guardian said:
could you elaborate on how Duckstation isn't exactly done "from scratch"?, surely it wouldn't be as mind-numbingly retarded as the Yuzu devs using the offical SDK for thier emulator.
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Sorry for the double quote, but checking again it seems like Duckstation is based on PCSX, and old PS1 emulator by PCSX2's team.
Xarpho's Return said:
That sounds really questionable considering Bleem! was a commercial software product and I can't find anywhere where the source code was re-released in an open format.
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Yes, I forgot Bleem's source wasn't never made public at least officially. If I haven't wrote this before, I read this a very long time ago.
The rest of your post is very interesting, thanks
 
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Bonesjones said:
Japan has a culture of not really valuing old work / archival purposes as much as we do. The reason every rerelease is just a rom and emulator in a cute wrapper instead of just a redevelopment is because they just toss it all afterwards. You've also got old tape drives and other old storage methods rotting out in storage because no one is checking them.
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The Japanese "roms in wrappers" coming out are almost always much better than western-made ones, and sometimes better than free emulation options, and the releases are focused on the Japanese market. It does seem like there's a lot more source code of western games floating around out there, but I thought a lot of that was leaks... the current legal IP holders dgaf. I'm particularly salty about Warner absorbing all the old Midway properties and sitting on them for the sake of trying making Woke Kombat a multimedia brand. Even the last round of klassic MK re-releases sucked.
 
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Calandrino said:
I'm particularly salty about Warner absorbing all the old Midway properties and sitting on them for the sake of trying making Woke Kombat a multimedia brand.
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Even before MK went woke they were trying this. Nothing ever really catches on outside the core games.
 
Cubanodun said:
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is not Stenzek a troon?
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Also, I don't appreciate the threats. If you are not a copyright holder, then you are not in a position to make any demands. I find it especially ironic, considering when the GPL was actually violated on multiple occasions, even as recently as a few months ago, nobody ever takes issue with that.
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If this turns into harassment, then I'll just shut the whole thing down, because I'm way too busy with my actual job to be dealing with unsubstantiated drama from a hobby that is supposed to be fun. Please consider how the community would benefit from that.
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Goddamn what is it with modern game devs/emulator heads and being big-ass babies?
 
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So a game collection that I figure was never going to come out (since it was announced in 2017) is coming out tomorrow: UFO 50


Basically a collection of 50 NES style games from a theoretical system called UFO that ran from 1982 to 1991. What is find interesting is that the games cover a wide range of genes along with development through line of following the advancement in graphics/gameplay/etc you saw in the NES if you play them all in release order. Looking at the reviews they are not even Warioware small bit games either but full fledge 5 to 8 hour games.
 
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Vyse Inglebard said:
Goddamn what is it with modern game devs/emulator heads and being big-ass babies?
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Friendly Primarina said:
Don't forget restricting comments, because he is also a coward.
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Fucking schizo.
Source-Available, reads: OpenSource Turned Closed.

Good thing there was already a fork of this PCSX-R emulator, its called Duckstation 3D Screenshots. It's also still available under SwanStation on Retroarch.
Stenzek, you need to chill.

All I hope is that more people download NoCashPSX/No$PSX and start decompiling the whole PS1 Library to make this retardation obsolete.
 
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Baraka Obama said:
Me happily continuing to use an actual PS1 in 2024
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well it's not that the copy duckstation or retroarch is going to disappear, if you ignore the retard's attempt at stirring up drama, it's still an enjoyable experience. unless you're trying to decompile shit in which case, in the ever relevant quote of old:
lol, lmao even
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in reality, he got angry not at retroarch since they forked it and called it a day, but from what I understand it's because apparently at chinese/pajeet cheap consoles repackaging his emulator and selling it. Pretty much making a PlayStation Classic with Duckstation rather than PCSX-Reloaded.

Because making this cretin move that will most likely kill the Linux version of Duckstation is totally gonna stop unscrupulous retards that were already packaging this emulator for a quick buck. Of course, extrapolating this information from Stenzek requires a level of patience that only a Saint can phantom. And even then, I don't even know if it's the truth. So, take this post with enough salt to give you a cardiac arrest.

also, seriously, all this shit for just the PlayStation while the PlayStation Arcade Boards (like that Namco board that runs Time Crisis) are still bullshit to emulate, from what I heard. (and you're still not including a way to properly decompile shit, from what i heard from the same source)
 
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