This is the Future of RU discussion group.

[Kong]

There will be a few different components.
1. MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) and MESS (Multiple Emulated Super System). Combined they are called UME (Universal Machine Emulator). I will use the name UME.
2. A cloud hard drive that functions like local thumb drive and contains the games
3. A website that contains the game menu and handles logging in, settings etc.
4. Own Cloud which is similar to dropbox. It will sync save states, configs, etc.
5. A program that causes all of those to communicate with each other.
6. Code inserted into UME that tracks security settings for score submission?
7. Other emulators that we use for Full Mode.

Supporting all browsers is done by default. That means Chrome is treated the same as IE.

Windows will be the system that is perfected and focused on first and the most. I have not spent much time yet looking at the other OSs. But..

1-4 above are almost identical on all platforms. There is little effort required to port them to any OS.

#4 costs each user $1 to install on Android, iPhone and iPads. That dollar goes directly to own cloud and is for syncing your saves, configs and scores with the server and your other devices. The dollar is just to enable those features. You can play with out it.

#5 has to be re-written for each OS but it is very simple code. On Windows it is about 20 lines. I will need to get someone else to port it to other systems but it is not complicated.

#6 I have not looked into enough yet. It should just come along with #1 with little additional work but will need lots of testing and since I don't have those devices the testing will be difficult to do. Which means score submission will probably not be added right away.

#7. I wont focus on this much right away. Which means UME only until it is perfected. Which means things like N64 and 32x wont be supported at first.

[Tails]

Well from what I see I like the idea.

[Kong]

Recap.
The roms will be handled similar to drop box. They will appear to your computer as an external usb hard drive. You will have instant access to all roms as if they are on your computer but they will be in the cloud.

The rom cloud drive will be a separate site. RU will have zero roms.
RU will be the emulator.
New site will be the roms.
New site needs a name.

I've spent this week trying to set the entire thing set up as a malaysian company for copyright reasons. Which is why my first choice of new name is "roms.my". But this is difficult and I'm still unsure if I can do it or not. Should know in a few days.

If I can not do a .my domain then a new name is needed. Our users will not need to go to this site, but they will see the name. Kind of how they can see we are using MAME, they will see that we are using this new site.

Currently I'm leaning towards.
airArcade .com
airRoms .com
romHD .com
arcadeHD .com
dropRom .com
romDrop .com
noRoms .com

( Click to show/hide )

air is reference to cloud.
HD = Hard Drive or High Definition
drop is reference to drop box.
noRoms as in you do not need normal roms

[Tails]

Why not airetro.com?

[Kong]

I've spent a lot of time this week researching international domain name laws.

Let's assume we become hugely popular one day and at that point Nintendo or whoever decides they no longer want to be friendly with us.

I think I can keep the site running no matter what they do with one exception.

The area we would be most vulnerable is the domain name. The US government can easily confiscate domain names it controls without due process. The USA controls all domains that end in .com, .net, .name, .gov, .cc, .tv, .info, .mobi, .org, .edu, .gov, .asia, .aero, .ag, .bz, .gi, .hn, .in, .lc, .me, .mn, .sc, .vc, .au, .ca, .nz, .uk, .us. So to be extra safe I want to avoid using any of those.

If they seized the domain then the site would still exist but you would only be able to find it if you knew the ip address. If that happened we would have to get a new domain, email all users and hope people find the new name.

The main site won't host roms so it should be safe to keep the current RU domain name.

With that in mind I have come up with these options for the rom site. The number after is how much they cost per year. Not too important but a small factor to consider.

arcade.vg $40
arcade.im $15

arcades.vg $40
arcades.at $18
arcades.cat $10
arcades.dk $12
arcades.gg $57
arcades.im $15
arcades.my $90
arcades.no $65
arcades.so $14

rom.gg $57

roms.vg $40
roms.cat $10
roms.gg $57
roms.im $15
roms.my $90
roms.so $14

retro.cat $10
retro.gg $57
retro.so $14

score.cat $10
score.so $14

scores.vg $40
scores.cat $10
scores.gg $57
scores.so $14

champ.vg $40
champ.cat $10
champ.gg $57
champ.so $14

champs.vg $40
champs.cat $10
champs.gg $57
champs.im $15
champs.so $14


My favorites in order are

( Click to show/hide )

score.cat
retro.cat - pixilated cat as logo/mascot.
arcade.vg - vg = video game
retro.gg - gg = good game
rom.gg
scores.vg
champ.gg
champ.cat

[ZedIsDead]

I'd go with Retro Cat.

[StarfoxFan2009]

i also like Retro Cat

[Kugyince]

Love it. Can we have Caturdays?

[Dudebro]

This should be our new logo-

[Tails]

As long as it'd not that Nyan cat..

[Kugyince]

Best idea yet, Tails!

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZZ7oFKsKzY"]Nyan Cat 10 hours (original) - YouTube[/ame]

[Tails]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV0sK65PyVI"]Daniel Bryan No! No! No! - YouTube[/ame]

My reply.

[Kong]

unimportant trivia.

.cat domains are very unique. It is the first of only 4 tld based on language and culture. Catalonia originally wanted .ct but was denied because 2 letter domains are reserved for countries only and Catalonia is not. So they asked for .cat or .ctl. Most people that make the top level domains thought it shouldn't and wouldn't happen but 1 guy fought for years and eventually won .cat which is obviously way better than ctl or ct.

It is controlled by a company in Catalonia, Spain. Much better for us than USA but not as good as say Russia or Malaysia. There is not much info on how Catalonia would handle domain seizures. I don't think it has been tested yet. For our needs it should be good enough.

The one weird rule they have is I have to make at least one page dedicated to Catalonia.

[QAOP Spaceman]

I live in Catalonia, Spain.

The .cat domain name is used almost exclusively by Catalan separatists. Everyone else uses plain old .es

It therefore doesn't surprise me in the least that they insist on you having a page praising their beloved piece of turf.

I know rojadirecta.es was taken down by the authorities here, but rojadirecta.me appeared almost instantly and has been up ever since.

I think Malaysia might be a better bet than the EU.

[Kong]

Cool that you live there. Do you speak Catalan?

When that domain went down it was in the top 1,000 websites in the world and is designed to steal pay per view tv. Roms will never be that big and they wont ever piss companies off as much as stealing pay per view subscriptions does.

As far as domain seizure goes. Cat is better than .com but not as good as .my. I think it sounds better, is cheaper and requires less effort to register. For our purposes I think it's good enough. Other names that are on par with .my are .is, .sx, .ch, .cn, .hk, .ru. Most of those don't make for great sounding names.




I'm just about done setting the account stuff up. In end it will all be registered anonymously. All roms will be legally stored in a country that is ok with roms. Users will not download roms, they will be played online and physically stay where they are legal. The main site will not host or link to roms. Instead it will offer an emulator that connects to the legal rom server. If any companies try to cause copyright issues there will be warning first and it will take them time. During that time everything can be easily moved. They could file a complaint with google to try to get us banned from search results for hosting or linking to copyrighted files but since the rom site doesn't need google love and the main site doesn't link to roms that will never cause an issue. So it should be all pretty secure and legal. Also was able to set it all up for about the same in hosting that we already pay.

[Kong]

I ran into a huge time/energy suck problem that took all of March to fix and looking back I don't think it was worth it. I should have done things differently. I should probably still do things differently.

I did not realize these problems existed until I thought I had nearly finished everything. Before fixing the problems I should have stopped and asked myself why fix them. I was attached to finishing the same way I started and did not realize how much effort that was going to be.

mame = arcade emulator
mess = consoles and computers emulators
ume = combo of mame and mess.

All 3 of those use the exact same code. Make a change to one and it is automatically added to the others.

For now on I will refer to all of those as UME. The official MAME/MESS code is UME.

mameui = mame with a gui
messui = mess with a gui
umeui = ume witha gui

MAMEUI is part of the official UME code. First mistake: I assumed MESSUI and UMEUI were also part of the official UME code. MESSUI source code brakes MAMEUI and UMEUI is outdated, broken and I'm not sure if it ever worked right.

For our purposes the UI part is unimportant. Our average user wont use it. I only added it to my base code because I thought it would be easy and would add some small benefit in a few special situations. I have made a working version of UMEUI. It was totally not worth the effort and is missing one MESS feature but it is working. Huge waste of time.

Also before I realized all of that I chose to use MAMEPPKUI as my base code. MAMEPPK automatically added some features I thought were nice and I thought it was being actively developed. I chose it because I thought it would save me time. That was totally wrong.

First I'm no longer sure it is being actively developed. It is developed by one guy in Japan and is hard to get info on.

Second and bigger problem. MAMEPPKUI completely breaks MESS.

Before I knew that I added all of my work to MAMEPPKUI which means I had to rewrite it for MESS and for the UI part. It took all month to do that. It is done now but I should have started from scratch and worked with the vanilla official UME release.

mameppkui adds the following features.

1. Netplay through Kaillera - This was the main reason I choose MAMEPPKUI but it is not working smooth enough and I'm going to have to use a different option. Which means my #1 reason for doing this is a dud.
2. Scale Effects like Super Eagle. Makes games look less pixelated. - Kinda neat. Not a huge deal but cool. It is working but not sure if it will work when porting to MAC, Linux, Android.
3. Volume balance so all games are roughly the same loudness. - I like this.
4. Record to compressed AVI. - Not working right now. I haven't messed with it much yet though so might be an easy fix. Might not. Would make creating youtube videos much easier if it works. Might even be able to partially automate youtube uploads from submitted scores.
5. Currently when you watch score movies the buttons pressed are displayed at bottom of screen. MAMEPPK has a better display for this while playing a game. If I can get it linked to the movie playback it would be nice. Having trouble with that so far though.
6. Autofire in full mode.
7. Display time in full screen. Not that big of a deal.
8. Let's you add comments to specific frames of an INP/movie. Would be cool if anyone uses it but probably wont be used often.
9. Improved syncing of audio
10. Hacked arcade games and some arcade games not supported by official mame. Probably wont use any of them.
11. Display combos in game. Example Press a button and get a pop up that tells you how to make Ryu through a fireball. Pretty cool. Mostly used for fighting games.
12. Save personal high scores on your computer in full mode. Not very useful since our scores are not based on full mode.

So I went to all of that effort because I thought I was going to use Kaillera and now I am not and while some of that other stuff is cool, it mostly is just bloat that will make future updates more difficult. It will probably be easier and faster to start over with plain UME which means the past couple months were a waste of time. Right now I am going to think about that before doing anything else.

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by Kong

vanilla official UME release.

FYI, UME is not officially provided by MAMEdev, it's a project by Haze.

[Tails]

That went over my head sadly.

[Kong]

@tails, if you just read the bold part, you will probably get the gist which is I just wasted a bunch of time.

Originally Posted by Seahawk

FYI, UME is not officially provided by MAMEdev, it's a project by Haze.

It is included as part of the official base code though. All you do is change target from mame to ume when compiling. MESS is also part of base mame code now, again jut change the target.

[Dudebro]

You can now embed and play MS-DOS games directly in a tweet | GamesBeat | Games | by Paul Sawers

This is cool and kinda worrying, should we be worried?

[Seahawk]

Originally Posted by Dudebro

You can now embed and play MS-DOS games directly in a tweet | GamesBeat | Games | by Paul Sawers

This is cool and kinda worrying, should we be worried?

It takes only a trivial amount of effort to download any emulator for any system you want to play, as well as the binary image or ISO file for the game you want.

Nothing happens on this site anymore. What's there to worry about?

[Dudebro]

Originally Posted by Seahawk

It takes only a trivial amount of effort to download any emulator for any system you want to play, as well as the binary image or ISO file for the game you want.

Nothing happens on this site anymore. What's there to worry about?

Well besides your negative attitude about RU we could be worried about this kind of thing catching on and making RU obsolete.

[Seahawk]

My implication is that as far as access to old games goes, RU is long obsolete.

[Kong]

I took summer off. I'm back. I think/hope I can still hit the original Back to the Future target date.

Official MAME changes
MAME changed their license to BSD3 which is more favorable to us.

MAME used to be the multiple arcade emulator. Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator
MESS used to be the computer, console and handheld emulator. Multiple Emulator Super System
UME used to be a combination of the two. Universal Machine Emulator

Now UME (a combination of everything) is the only version that officially exists but it has been renamed MAME. The name is confusing but the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator now emulates consoles and computers, not just arcade.

Even more confusing, the old arcade only emulator and console/computer only emulators still exist but they no longer have an official build or name.

Abandoning the old MAME and MESS and focusing on UME is good. Renaming UME to MAME is strange.

I have named my fork/version RUME. RetroUp's Universal Machine Emulator.

RUME includes everything from MAME, MESS, MAMEUI, MAME Plus Plus, Kaileria, WolfMAME, and GroovyMAME.

We are jumping from MAME version 0.135 to 0.164. This jump includes many changes that I wont list.

MAMEUI

• It's features WONT be used by default. It was easier to include it than to not. Advanced users can use it if they prefer it's interface.
• At first, score mode WONT work through MAMEUI
• At first NetPlay will ONLY work MAMEUI.

GroovyMAME

• Improved video and audio synchronization that achieves truly smooth scrolling, tearing-free video and hiccup-free sound.
• Automatic generation of custom video timings for CRT monitors. (probably only advanced users - I'll try to make it default setting but as of now, turning it on screws up LCD screen ratios)
• Reduced input latency
• Remove motion blur on 120hz monitors (advanced users only - this is mostly just high end TVs)
• For best results use a monitor with variable refresh rate (very few laptops can do this, old CRT monitors are best), use an ATI Radeon video card from 7000 to the HD 4xxx family, and manually set the GroovyMAME settings (advanced users). Defaults should be good enough for all but the most die hard frame rate counters.

WolfMAME

• Disable most pauses in score mode.
• Disable fastforward
• View inputs and record speed in inp playback.

MAME Plus!

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_scaling options, NONE, SCANLINESTV, EPXB, EPXC, SCALE2X, SCALE3X, 2XSAI, SUPER2XSAI, SUPEREAGLE, 2XPM, HQ2X, HQ2XS, HQ2XBOLD, HQ3X, HQ3XS, HQ3XBOLD, 2XBRZ, 3XBRZ, LAST (default will probably be 2XSAI)
• Fixed some broken neo geo dipswitches
• Autofire
• Custom buttons: Assign a button or combination of buttons to a different key. This method is slightly easier than the default way to do this but the main benefit is having single game button assigned to a key for autofire and another key for regular fire.
• Command list: Example, display key combination to make Ryu throw a fireball in Street Fighter.
• Compressed AVI recording (through MAMEUI - advanced users. I'll eventually try to automate this so high scores are automatically uploaded to youtube)
• Option to display current time when in full screen.
• Additional arcade games (mostly homebrew and hacks)
• Volume normalizer so all games have similar volume levels.
• Ability to add comments to specific frames in movie playbacks. Can be useful in making walkthoughs. (currently only for advanced users. Later I'll add an easier user interface and try to add controls to jump, rewind, slow and fast motion etc.)
• Auto pause game when recording playback ends.
• Display button presses while playing. This is similar to WolfMAME's input viewer in recordings except it is better but only available while playing, not when watching recordings. I'm trying to replace WolfMAME's inputs with this, but it isn't easy.
• Save your personal highscore table when in full mode. This is the in game table where you enter your initials. I might eventually make this publicly shared so in full mode everyone shares the same in game high score table. I'm experimenting with adding it to score mode, probably wont happen but I have an idea on how to maybe make it work.

Kailleria

• network multi player. Works well in certain situations but I'm disappointed in how it turned out. I put a lot of work into it and it only barely works. Our previous beta version was better but too difficult to maintain between version upgrades. Will try to improve it but losing hope and patience in this ever being perfect or even decent.

If nothing else read this
RUME: This is the completely original stuff only available here.

• Disable all pauses in score mode. Including the window resize/drag pause that is in WolfMAME and the previous RU score mode. This took so much time and effort but is finally perfected. This was a huge challenge for me.
• Removed force direct inputs. Force direct inputs allows the use of macros, a huge cheat. By default it is off but the code is there and could easily be enabled through source or a hex editor. There are instructions online for how to use this to cheat at MARP. Verifying it's complete removal is the only way to ensure macro cheats are disabled.
• Skip boot screens. Boot screens are the gibberish that appear before you can insert a coin. Two possible skip methods. 1) pre-made save states jump the game past bios. Instant but doesn't work in every game. 2) disable throttling and most emulation until game is playable. Works in all games, is fast but not instant. Both are a huge time savers/annoyance reducers. (still working on this but mostly done)
• Most files live in cloud. roms, ini, dat, samples, cfg, inp, sav, nvram, etc. (still working on this but mostly done)
• Increased responsiveness. Decreased lag. Most response improvements come from GroovyMAME but RUME is actually slightly better.
• Improved layouts for games with multiple monitors.
• Enabled better support for more than 3 simultaneous key inputs.
• Improved default joystick deadzone and saturation. Improves analog controls like steering wheels, peddles, yolks, trackballs etc.
• Press button 2 (x) to reload light gun instead of firing off screen.
• Reduced default volume to 50%. You can still turn it up to 100. TODO: save user preference.
• Removed many games. Fruit machine, pinball, mechanical, mahjong, casino, non working, most computers, foreign trivia, and many more that we will never use.
• Increased overclock options. Reduces lagging that would have occurred on original hardware.
• Button to display the current high score. (mostly done)
• Improved fonts, colors, transparencies and messages. Some of this comes from MAMEPP.
• Removed many menu options and warning messages to make it less intimidating, confusing, annoying.
• Key to toggle mouse input.
• Key to toggle score and full mode.
• Confirmation request before resetting game.
• Disable dipswitch, configs, saves, cheats, autofire, custom buttons while recording a score
• Added a toggle mute button.
• Change "press left then right to continue"" to "press any key"
• Actively monitor framerate. If below 90%, display a warning and enable auto frameskip. If still below 90%, pause, display an error, switch to full mode and disable score submission. Impossible to submit a score if frame rate below 90%.
• Todo: Increase window usb polling to reduce latency even further. (mostly done)
• Todo: Change default language to English in several games.
• Todo: Upload screenshot and recording to server when you submit a score. Prevent time out errors that sometime happen in the current version.

Originally Posted by Dudebro

You can now embed and play MS-DOS games directly in a tweet | GamesBeat | Games | by Paul Sawers

This is cool and kinda worrying, should we be worried?

It uses JavaScript which if it could play at 100% framerate would be the absolute best language for the job, however it can not. It is meant as a proof of concept or a game demo, but too slow to play for fun.

However the good news, Archive is one of the largest websites in America and they are hosting ROMs. I think that's a good sign.

---------- Post added at 02:22 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:21 PM ----------

If anyone is interested in testing out the beta AND knows how to use MAME from command line, I'll upload a demo.

[Kugyince]

Don't you talk your dirty hippy talk to me. I have the same issue with the software engineers at work, using their fancy pants, $5 word-a-day jibber jabber.

Is the software simpler for both the customer and customer support to use? A.yes or no will suffice.