2003 - Greatest Emulation Events

[emuLynx]

I haven't found general EMULATION discussion topic in forum so I post it here, sorry.

I would like to mention most important (IMHO) events in emulation of 2004. I'm not mentioning most computer emulators, there were some nice things. Consoles and arcades... I would also like to hear "ROMs of the year" from somebody who was playing, not emulating. They follow in no particular order.

1) In January 2003 Cal2 announced Virtual <b>Jaguar</b> after the autumn 2002 death of Jagulator which never succeeded in running (there were only screenshots which seem to be a fake) a commercial game. This became a main Jag emulator of the year, Project Tempest, it's main competitor is too unstable (yet/still) for real gaming.

2) PCSX 1.5 appeared in mid-2003 ending <b>PSX epopee</b>. Nothing 'awesome' was added in ePSXe 1.6.0 too. These were final releases called "Let's move to PS2". Nice work, Linuzappz & Shadow and calb & Galtor.

3) Nebula <b>M2</b> made a serious debut proving that Sega 3D arcade emulation with unknown hardware is possible. ElSemi, the guy who stands behind Dreamer (thanks for discontinuing it) and Nebula made this Model 2 discovery.

4) <a href="http://www.sega.com/games/pc/segaclassics.jhtml">Sega Classics</a> appeared early 2003 proving that legal emulation makes money. RealOne Arcade was quite a hit in our area for late 2002 and appearance of Sega titles brought our attention there again after Diamond Mine and Arcanoid clone Rebound. Thanks goes to Stéphane Dallongeville, also known as Stef.
Stef also opened sources for <b>Gens</b> 2.0 and now we have perfect Genesis emulator for BeOS and Linux.

5) <b>PCSX2</b> proved that PSX2 emulation is real. Featuring member of Incubus (well-known on demo scene for it's world best GBC demo), Alexey Silinov aka Basara they significantly speeded up the emulation, added dynarec and ran the first game! In February 2002 we wrote on our portal "Please wait a year until it will publicly run commercial game with good gameplay" with PCSX2 0.2 release. Here it is

6) Microsoft acquires <b>VirtualPC</b> from Connectix. Connectix site is down forever. Microsoft now produces "Virtual Servers".

7) <b>GiriGiri</b> is extracted from another "gaming-on-demand" service called <a href="http://cyberdisc.zaq.ne.jp/">CyberDisc</a>. As far as we can see, Japanese market demands far more complex games than just a Sega Genesis emulator. Satourne is not "almost" required anymore.

8) <b>Russian emulation</b> makes solid progress and aims high. RbPSE and HLPSE, GBEmu, first Gens and ZSNES patches, HQYx effects and of course Dolwin plus dozens of tools like iMage. Don't forget finished Zelda64 translation and commercial twStwo PC VM.

9) <b>Nintendo 64</b> emulation gained full power this year.
UltraHLE 2064 release on 2002 christmas didn't make much expected noise and didn't last long. It's not dead though.
Glide64 ressurrected Voodoo power and proved that UltraHLE is not the only emulator which can take full advantage of Glide (well, not counting Pete's job). eVoodoo became requested again. 2004 will bring us Voodoo 5 power!
Nemu 0.8 didn't become what we expected.

1964 christmas release proved that nothing else can be done. And it's opensource. Enjoy.

There was a dozen more plugins, but most of them are not worth mentioning after Jabo's and Rice work.

10) <b>PPC emulation</b> became a reality after GameCube emulation and early Mac-model emulation which ressurrected Basilisk II.

11) Futhermore, it's in <b>MAME</b> now. Next year will be 3D MAME year and I'm sure that all the exciting 3D work done in MAME this year (Atari 3Dfx hardware, different PSX-based systems ported from different emulators like Zinc, Viva Nonno and even ST-V) plus migration to Direct3D (which broke sync in MAME while Haze was handling it) will soften hearts of MAMEdevs. Their decision to include all testdrivers in MAME was a tough choice but it's a major step forward for emulation since everybody can contribute. Let's hope to see Winding Heat anytime soon. And Super Monkey Ball CHD became a defacto standard for harddrives. Let's hope that 2005 will be a HLEMAME year.

11) <b>FreeDO</b>, the most inadequate emulator of 2003. Well, after my chats with author emulator I had a strength opinion - he's too self confident. He said that releasing binary of emulator will be legal and source of it will be... NOT. That was the main reason of my "non-attention" to his <b>3DO</b> project.
Overall, while having such slow processor, fine emulation requires OK computer. Well, it's the same "ARM" problem as with GBA. He did great job while confusing everybody with private releases with different numbering leaked/released at different time.

12) Nuon emulator. It's like emulating 3DO M2.
Platform has couple of games but it's worth emulation. And it's tough.

13) Icarus. No early winter release with NAOMI emulation, no summer beta-release. Dozens of perfect screenshots in PNG format, proofs of couple gfx plugins in development and other mysteries. No release and no significant progress from other authors. Our hope in <b>Dreamcast</b> emulation is Cal2 from Potato Emulation who regularly supplies beta versions of his emulators. Don't count on ChooDO, we saw what happenned with FreeDO.


<b>Comments</b>
I've expected a bit more from that year. I hoped that MagicEngine author will release PC-FX emulator. I understand that he's doing it not for fun, but for money. And he's probably really lacking them so he has to spend more time on other REAL $$$ thingies.
My expectations were wrong about FakeNES from ZSNES authors. The emulator is almost stalled. And I also wanted to see ZSNES style GUI which some FakeNES-derived project promised.
I wanted to see BGB ruling the GB/C earth and hoped that author will move to GBA. His low-level skills are awesome.
I was hoping that we'll see new Zinc but everybody got crazy about MAME and said - screw fast inaccurate emulation.
Same thing with Raine. Our luck that by the end of 2003 there were more 68000 dumps so RAINE is becoming more active now.

Satourne takes AYBABTU prize.

I also have "took-so-long" prize. I'll give it to CXBX. Well, author is a kid so don't cry
Xeon proved that my words about X-Box wrapper done in-a-month is not a myth. It's proven, I'm right.
Second place is SDL for GP32. Their community is very closed and sometimes blind. It took them couple of years to understand simple thing - SDL is a way to hundreds of games and apps (I mentioned that YEARS AGO) on their child which was NOT RELEASED this year in europe. Probably germans, who planned to distribute it, understood that it's useless.

Emulation hardware of the year: <a href="http://www.kurusugawa-ele.co.jp/product/pci/romeo/index.html">Romeo</a>, Ancient FM sound card aka YM-blaster. Figure this out yourself, it's fun.

The most annoying request of the year: Virtua Racing on Sega Genesis emulation. I remember at least 6 requests on our portal forum about that.


To finalise year 2003... I proclaim it the golden year of N64 and PSX, almost nothing can be improved in that area.




This is my slightly edited crosspost from our LiveJournal community *deleted*.
You can agree or disagree with that, I don't mind blaming, but that's a look of a guy, who emulates for 8 years and runs biggest russian national emulation portal.
I'm not mentioning any kind of tools here - they can be created in days of work by any kid. They can't be a breakthrough until they have monthes of routine work like GoodTools have.

Thanks for all the blame, Lynx of *deleted*.

[FLaRe85]

As interesting as it sounds, I don't consider this emulation news. It's more suited for open discussion.

Moving...

[emuLynx]

Emuforums.com > Off-Topic Discussion > Open discussion

Emulation report is an "Open Off-Topic Discussion" on emulation forum from now on?

[hushypushy]

well it's not news...i think it belongs where it is now, misc console discussion.

btw, you included jabo's and rice's N64 plugins, what about Pete's OpenGL2? that was my favorite thing of the year, i sure used it a hell of a lot more than PCSX2 or any of that other stuff.

[emuLynx]

Pete's OpenGL2 plugin does not introduce any new extra compatibility which N64 plugins brought.

It is not innovative. 90% of emulation world thought that it is 2.0 version of OpenGL plugin and every new user download it instead of OpenGL1 plugin. It brought more confusion than real use. Most of the users can't even use it because they have lower-end cards.

[Kane]

Pete's OpenGL 2 is more compatible. Framebuffer effects are far better emulated just for starters, and it's more stabl in most games I've tried. Low end cards can use it, they simply can't take advantage of the shaders in it.

[Betamax]

Right. I told you last year not to link to that rom site of yours again, and you've done it not once, but twice in this thread AND restored the link in your profile. Seeing how your position is perfectly clear, I am going to make ours perfectly clear. Your banned.

[FLaRe85]

Ahhh... I see it has been replaced by the real version.

[The Captain]

I would have to disagree on a number of points made by EmuLynx. Even though I can't even use the extra shader stuff in Pete's OpenGL2 plugin, I still have to bow down to THE MAN, Pete, for all his hard work.

Nemu 0.8 didn't become what we expected.

Sorry, but Nemu really impressed me. The compatability and the video plugin that came with it showed some amazing progress since the last version, and the speed increase of Nemu overall was insane. However, most people wouldn't notice the speed increase with their uber-fast computers, but I sure can with my P3 500mhz proc.

[takwu]

yeah, emuLynx's post is full of crap...
read my thread instead, hehehe
http://www2.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46565

[Guruma]

I dont agree with emuLynx about Felix work! FreeDO is excellent emulator, a little bit slow but in every emulator first comes compatibility! And ChooDO is very promising DC emulator! This emu is running now first demo with textures and this is only the beginning if his work!

[Quatro]

tsk stk tsk... too bad...

all I can say is that 2003 is the year for PS1 emulation and the birth of the highly anticipated PS2 emulator...

[Xeven]

yay, finally

[Riff]

At least my Nuon emulator made his list, wa-hey!

[tonyyeb]

He mentions PPC emulation but doesn't mention the emulator that has been the real catalyst... sheepshaver. This IS a real HUGE step forward in emulation!!!

[ready2rumbelX]

emuLynx has been banned....hmm, I wonder why.

Anyway, I donno about you...but I get the distinct notion that he is bringing some of these emu authors down...I really don't think that's fair, as programming is a very difficult area to learn...and in the slight case he does know how to program, I wonder why he writes this....

...ignore me.

r2rX