6 replies to this topic

[Artlover]

Mostly, this thread is inspired by MagicEngine, but a few others qualify as well.

Who here has a problem paying for an emulator?

What is the real point of emulation? Obviously emulating whatever system is is. But more over it's for preservation. To allow someone who never saw/used a system to be able to do so. To keep the knowledge of the systems around. You don't do that by severaly limiting who can have/use your product.

Who is going to pay for an emulator when chances are there are several good FREE ones already avaialble. What are they doing any different then anyone else? What makes them so special that they think they can turn their back on the scene.

Ultimatly, it's their product and they can do whatever they what. No one really has the right to expect free software. But I question the validity of the products as they contribute little to the emulation scene on a whole. I for one refuse to pay for any emulator. I simply wont use it if thats the case. In the end their hard work gets lost & forgotten, while I'm happily emulating along.

Comments?

[liquid_sky]

problem is, magic engine is the only decent PC engine emulator out there. Google around if you dont want to pay for it, im kinda undecided on the whole idea of paying for a legal program that runs "grey area" roms.. its kinda like paying to download arguable legal/illigal mp3s

[Rhindle The Red]

Artlover said:

Who here has a problem paying for an emulator?

While I wouldn't actually pay for an emulator (I'd just buy the system) I have no problem with people wanting compensation for their time and efforts.

Quote

What is the real point of emulation? Obviously emulating whatever system is is.  But more over it's for preservation. To allow someone who never saw/used a system to be able to do so. To keep the knowledge of the systems around. You don't do that by severaly limiting who can have/use your product.

The much bally-hooed notion that emulation is for "preservation" is, of course, nonsense. While there are always those who really do believe in that noble sentiment, most just want to play the games. Preservation (meaning making sure that the game itself, its code, is not lost) does not require emulation at all. If I have the only copy of a book and I copy it to my computer and save it somewhere safe, it's preserved. No one else may be able to read it, but it's preserved. So "playability" is irrelevant. As for preserving the experience of playing the system, that too is wrong-headed. Playing a ROM on a computer in no way gives someone a sense of what it is like to play the actual system itself. The only way to preserve hardware is to actually save the hardware itself.

Quote

Who is going to pay for an emulator when chances are there are several  good FREE ones already avaialble. What are they doing any different then anyone else? What makes them so special that they think they can turn their back on the scene.

Why is it so many people think that of you don't give your hard work away, you're "turning your back" on them? I often have less faith in a program that is given away than one that is commercial. To me, how good can it be if they're just giving it away? If it has value, there's nothing wrong with asking a price for it.

Quote

Ultimatly, it's their product and they can do whatever they what. No one really has the right to expect free software. But I question the validity of the products as they contribute little to the emulation scene on a whole. I for one refuse to pay for any emulator. I simply wont use it if thats the case. In the end their hard work gets lost & forgotten, while I'm happily emulating along.

Well, you're obviously not "happily emulating along" if you felt the need to write this. It's clearly something that bothers you, but I don't see why. I also disagree that being a commercial product will mean they are "lost & forgotten" just because you're not buying it. Bleem was a commercial product and is still considered one of the best PSX emulators. (And it was so many people refusing to pay for it that helped drive them out of business.)

If emulators are going to become more and more mainstream, it was inevitable that commercial ones would appear. They will stand or fall on the same basis that other programs do. Are they worth their cost? If they can maintain a legitimate advantage over their free contemporaries, then they will succeed.

The question of legality is moot. The emulator runs the software, it doesn't acquire it for you. Almost every system that's being emulated has freeware/homebrew software available for it (even the Virtual Boy!) that you could run without being guilty of bootlegging. A better comparison is to an mp3 player. There are lots of free ones out there and lots of commercial ones, too. The vast majority don't actually download the files, they just play them. No problems there.

The only time that emulators run into legal troubles is when they use copyrighted code in order to work. Let's go back to bleem. One of the things that allowed bleem to win the lawsuits against it was the fact that it didn't use the PlayStation bios, like most PSX emulators do. It was coded from scratch. As long as MagicEngine doesn't use code owned by NEC, they aren't in a grey area at all.

[EricBall]

Artlover said:

Who is going to pay for an emulator when chances are there are several  good FREE ones already avaialble. What are they doing any different then anyone else? What makes them so special that they think they can turn their back on the scene.

There may be times where a good free emulator does not exist, while a good commercial product does. (Where good may mean several things including the ability to play certain games, or play them at normal speed, graphics/sound quality issues, or even simply documentation & support.)

Commercial emulators are often bundled of embedded with licensed games. Examples include the Microsoft Arcade and Activision Anthology series.

And even if a good free emulator does exist, there are many cases where a commercial product can make money if they can find customers who are not aware of the free alternatives.

[raindog]

Since I run Linux, I obviously prefer open source emulators because there's a chance in hell I'll be able to run them eventually. Even under Windows, though, I found most "freedom software" and open source emulators would (after a slow start) eventually surpass their proprietary/commercial counterparts after a while. It comes down to whether your primary goal is good emulation or profit: rather than spending time and effort putting in registration systems and cracker traps and crippled functions and stuff like that, you can concentrate on why you're supposedly working on the project in the first place.

I don't remember if it was open source or not, but I liked Hu6280 better than Magic Engine. I don't even know if either of them is still in active development....

[NE146]

Magic Engine is definitely the best PCEngine/TG-16 emulator out there. But it's gotten to the point where there are so many pirated copies out there, it'll take anyone 5 minutes to find a licensed copy. It only becomes a point of concscience whether you want to pay for it or not

[DanBoris]

Rhindle The Red said:

The much bally-hooed notion that emulation is for "preservation" is, of course, nonsense.  While there are always those who really do believe in that noble sentiment, most just want to play the games.  Preservation (meaning making sure that the game itself, its code, is not lost) does not require emulation at all.  

It may be nonsense to alot (maybe even most) emulator users, but it's not nonsense to a lot of emulator authors, myself included. Hardware will eventually die. A good way of preserving the hardware is to document it's functionality, this makes it easier to repair, or even re-create the hardware. Do you need emulation to document the hardware? No, but it's a very good way to do it. Here a few reasons:

- You could document it through a written description, but even the most carefully written document is open to mis-interpretation. Program code on the other hand is not open to interpretation. Ask any C programmer what the line i++; does, and they will all tell you it increments the variable i by one.

- Schematics and technical descriptions are usueful but can, and often do contain errors. But if an emu-author writes some code and the output behaves like the real system then he knows the code has no errors.

- Emulators not only document the operation of the hardware in thier code, they can be run to actually demonstrate the behavior of the hardware.

Rhindle The Red said:

If I have the only copy of a book and I copy it to my computer and save it somewhere safe, it's preserved.  No one else may be able to read it, but it's preserved.  So "playability" is irrelevant.  

But what about this situation:

I get a dead arcade board from a prototype or extremely rare system. I dump the roms to "preserve" them, but have no way of knowing if the code in the roms is still good or not. If I run the roms on emulated hardware and they seem to work ok, I can be more sure that they are good dumps. The arcade emulator MAME has actually been used in this way.

Rhindle The Red said:

The question of legality is moot.  The emulator runs the software, it doesn't acquire it for you.  

Unfortunetly with today's legal system (especially in the US), and laws like the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), this is not a safe assumption. The legality of certain emulators could be called into question if a company really wanted to go after them.

Dan