rxd Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 I don't get the Mess emulator at all. It seems to me that bugs are never really fixed in this emulator even though they keep coming out with new versions. I mean there are a bunch of bugs in the Atari 5200 emulation that have been there that were reported 8 years ago. 8 years? Really? What is the point? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R.Cade Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 It is a big project, dependant on MAME, and someone has to take ownership of a bug in order for it to be fixed. Free is free, you are welcome to fix it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rxd Posted February 17, 2012 Author Share Posted February 17, 2012 But what's the point? What does it emulate well? Am I missing something? Mame is very accurate on tons of games. Mess? Am I just looking at oddball systems that it doesn't work well with? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 You might want to move over to a different emulator that is more actively developed for the platform you are interested in. For example, Altirra has 5200 emulation and its author is an active AA member. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 (edited) Even though there are a lot of people on the MESS team, each system drivers tends to be "owned" by a single person who works on it. If they loose interest in it someone else may or may not pick it up. I am personally guilty of this, I haven't toched the 7800 driver in ages. Edited February 17, 2012 by DanBoris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 (edited) I haven't toched the 7800 driver in ages. I know Any chance, if not under the MESS code, you would revisit 7800 emulation perhaps in an update to V7800? Seriously though...Thank you Dan, I've said it through the years, but still have to continue to mention it. If it weren't for you and your V7800 emulator, MESS would likely contain little to no 7800 emulation. Your contributions - including areas outside of the 7800 are greatly appreciated. Edited February 17, 2012 by Trebor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 17, 2012 Share Posted February 17, 2012 I haven't toched the 7800 driver in ages. I know Any chance, if not under the MESS code, you would revisit 7800 emulation perhaps in an update to V7800? Seriously though...Thank you Dan, I've said it through the years, but still have to continue to mention it. If it weren't for you and your V7800 emulator, MESS would likely contain little to no 7800 emulation. Your contributions - including areas outside of the 7800 are greatly appreciated. If I were to continue work on 7800 emulation I would do it in MESS. My v7800 emulator has just fallen to far behind. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rxd Posted February 18, 2012 Author Share Posted February 18, 2012 What are the systems that Mess emulates best? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trebor Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 (edited) My use includes: -Vectrex -ColecoVision -Atari 7800 (See my posts here: http://www.atariage....ost__p__2449122 ) Edited February 18, 2012 by Trebor Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 I think the name describes the product just perfectly. It's a bit of a "MESS"... Kinda of a jack of all trades, master of none. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 My use includes: -Vectrex -ColecoVision -Atari 7800 (See my posts here: http://www.atariage....ost__p__2449122 ) There are also some things that are only emulated in MESS. For example the Entex Adventurcision can only be found in MESS. I am also guessing some of the more obscure computers are only emulated in MESS., Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rxd Posted February 19, 2012 Author Share Posted February 19, 2012 Mess just seems like such a tease to me. So many systems are close to being emulated really well, it just always seems to fall short. Sometimes in kind of silly ways, like the Atari 5200 second fire button not working. So close yet so far.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JL Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 What are the systems that Mess emulates best? I'd say Colecovision, TI 99/4a, and Vectrex. The 99/4a has got a lot of attention from mizapf [+anna and others] the past several years and it's now my go to EMU for that system. Colecovision has been near perfect for almost a decade. Even though some improvemnts have been made, after all these years one would think Intellivision would be near perfect. Alias it is not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GroovyBee Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 Even though some improvemnts have been made, after all these years one would think Intellivision would be near perfect. Alias it is not. I use jzintv for my Intellivision game development. I haven't found any problems with it so far. Unfortunately MESS isn't the be all and end all of emulators. In some cases better solutions exist, so you might as well use them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 19, 2012 Share Posted February 19, 2012 Mess just seems like such a tease to me. So many systems are close to being emulated really well, it just always seems to fall short. Sometimes in kind of silly ways, like the Atari 5200 second fire button not working. So close yet so far.... I just looked at the MESS code and it appears to support both fire buttons. What 5200 games use the buttons for separate functions? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rxd Posted February 19, 2012 Author Share Posted February 19, 2012 Mess just seems like such a tease to me. So many systems are close to being emulated really well, it just always seems to fall short. Sometimes in kind of silly ways, like the Atari 5200 second fire button not working. So close yet so far.... I just looked at the MESS code and it appears to support both fire buttons. What 5200 games use the buttons for separate functions? I just checked several Atari 5200 games in Mess to make sure I'm not crazy. I can't get Moon Patrol to jump using the second fire button like it should. Countermeasure doesn't work with the second fire button either.... I then tried Defender and discovered something really wierd. The second fire button does not do the smart bombs like it should, rather it does Hyperspace, which should be mapped to the numeric keypad not the second fire button. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rxd Posted February 25, 2012 Author Share Posted February 25, 2012 Why are there so many releases of Mess though? I hardly see any fixes. And why is it based on Mame? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanBoris Posted February 25, 2012 Share Posted February 25, 2012 Why are there so many releases of Mess though? I hardly see any fixes. And why is it based on Mame? Looking at the release history there were four releases last year and five the previous year which isn't very much for a community project like this. Back in their heyday MAME and MESS would often do a release every month. Looking at the release notes I see numerous fixes in each release. For example version .145 fixed issues with the C64, Lynx and N64 among others. As to why it is based on MAME, they are both multi-system emulators, MAME does arcade games, and MESS does consoles and computers. There is a lot of functionality that is common between emulating arcade games and emulator consoles/computers so MESS and MAME share a lot of the same code. A big benefit of this is that if something is fixed in one, it can benefit both. For example if someone on the MAME team fixes an issue with the 68000 CPU emulation code, the consoles and computers in MESS that use the 68000 also get the benefit. As for the 5200 button emulation, the code that makes the second button work is in the driver but is commented out. Based on the notes in the driver it appears that fixing the 5200 button broke something in the Atari 8-bit computer emulation (the 5200 hardware is almost the same as the computer so they are part of the same driver.) I need to study this code a little more to figure out how to properly fix this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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