Emuforums.com - View Single Post

seph29 · January 17th, 2008

From a developmental standpoint, it would certainly seem to be unsupported. And yes, there are bugs that will never be fixed, but anything that has the community of support of ePSXe can't truly be considered "dead", in my mind. The plugin system still allows new features to be developed from time to time and for some bugs to be fixed (Pete's OGL2 plugin comes to mind as a good example of this, and some of the newer shader effects are pretty cool). However, I will admit that the plugin development scene is also pretty quiet lately, and the only major project with any significant noise is PSx. Anyway, it's really beside the point which projects are better or worse than others, the point here is which programs are actually being used and supported in the community.

The thing with emulators for consoles as old as the PSX is that they aren't going to go "stale" and suddenly stop working. There aren't new games being developed for the PSX with new programming techniques. Whatever games don't work now are still not going to work in the future and no new games will be added to that list. Thus, the massive amount of community support for ePSXe is really all that is needed to keep it alive on the scene. Are there emulators with better compatibility for certain games? Yes, but many of them have their own problems as well. Until one emulator provides all of the functionality of ePSXe and does so with better compatibility/speed/etc, the community will probably still exist and the emulator will not be considered dead even if its development has ceased.

When everyone stops using it, the forums for it go dry, and the website turns into one of those beautiful ads you get when you visit a dead domain, then I'll agree with you and say that it's officially a thing of the past. Until then, it's still an active community. PSx Emulator certainly does seem to be pushing it towards the way of the dinosaurs, but since PSx Emu doesn't 'improve' graphics, it doesn't appear that will be sealing away ePSXe anytime soon.

In any event, I guess my point is that we're talking about two different definitions of 'dead' here. You're referring to a dead project, in that it is no longer being developed, whereas I am referring to a dead community, in that people have abandoned the program for better alternatives and support and distribution has ceased.

January 17th, 2008	#18 (permalink)
seph29 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2004 Posts: 90	From a developmental standpoint, it would certainly seem to be unsupported. And yes, there are bugs that will never be fixed, but anything that has the community of support of ePSXe can't truly be considered "dead", in my mind. The plugin system still allows new features to be developed from time to time and for some bugs to be fixed (Pete's OGL2 plugin comes to mind as a good example of this, and some of the newer shader effects are pretty cool). However, I will admit that the plugin development scene is also pretty quiet lately, and the only major project with any significant noise is PSx. Anyway, it's really beside the point which projects are better or worse than others, the point here is which programs are actually being used and supported in the community. The thing with emulators for consoles as old as the PSX is that they aren't going to go "stale" and suddenly stop working. There aren't new games being developed for the PSX with new programming techniques. Whatever games don't work now are still not going to work in the future and no new games will be added to that list. Thus, the massive amount of community support for ePSXe is really all that is needed to keep it alive on the scene. Are there emulators with better compatibility for certain games? Yes, but many of them have their own problems as well. Until one emulator provides all of the functionality of ePSXe and does so with better compatibility/speed/etc, the community will probably still exist and the emulator will not be considered dead even if its development has ceased. When everyone stops using it, the forums for it go dry, and the website turns into one of those beautiful ads you get when you visit a dead domain, then I'll agree with you and say that it's officially a thing of the past. Until then, it's still an active community. PSx Emulator certainly does seem to be pushing it towards the way of the dinosaurs, but since PSx Emu doesn't 'improve' graphics, it doesn't appear that will be sealing away ePSXe anytime soon. In any event, I guess my point is that we're talking about two different definitions of 'dead' here. You're referring to a dead project, in that it is no longer being developed, whereas I am referring to a dead community, in that people have abandoned the program for better alternatives and support and distribution has ceased.