best Emulator

124

Comments

  • edited September 2012
    Ralf wrote: »
    I agree, you ask a "simple" question and get 6 pages of people arguing :)

    The argument mostly being that the question isn't a "simple" one. ;)

    By the way there are statistics what people are downloading:

    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/emustats.html

    Scroll down to PC/Windows (which I assume you're using) and choose something from the list top.

    Except that it isn't accurate as it only applies to emulators that can be directly downloaded from WoS. So, if people are downloading emulators from the author's site (Zero for example), they won't show up in the list at all.

    Incidentally, the emulator list at www.worldofspectrum.org/emulators.html is ordered from old to the newer when reading from the top. Personally, I would have preferred it the other way around to make it easy for the layman to find emulators that are currently "in vogue", so to speak.
  • edited September 2012
    joefish
    >Since FUSE is open source, is someone out there who understands it and has the time (hah!) and inclination willing to make a better Windows port of it?
    for what reason? m$ threatens FOSS movement with "patents" and other ****, and we should support their pseudo-OS nevertheless? no wai.

    of course, some enthusiasts can provide windoze builds, but I can't see why FUSE developers should devote time to support m$ crap.

    p.s. sorry to all windoze users. nothing personal to you, only to m$.
  • edited September 2012
    guesser wrote: »
    This requires someone who's good at arty interface design. It's also hard to do this so that it compiles from the same source as all the other ports. This isn't an absolute requirement, but if you don't do this then it means you have to maintain it more or less as a fork. Fuse's UI building is basically automatic for all the different UI libraries but the Mac UI port/fork. This does contribute to some of the clunkyness that creeps in but it's also the only way to keep all the different interfaces consistent and up to date.
    To be honest, I thought it was forked. I can see why the UI would be kept simple if it works across all the platforms. Programming a GUI by hand on one platform is bad enough.

    I suppose you'd have to have a fork that builds under something with a visual IDE to let you layout the necessary option screens, which then leaves you tied to that IDE and its iterations.
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • edited September 2012
    joefish wrote: »
    To be honest, I thought it was forked. I can see why the UI would be kept simple if it works across all the platforms. Programming a GUI by hand on one platform is bad enough.

    I suppose you'd have to have a fork that builds under something with a visual IDE to let you layout the necessary option screens, which then leaves you tied to that IDE and its iterations.

    To be honest, I think that any "pretty UI" should be done in GTK+ then it'll be multiplatform*. You could hand craft a win32 UI without using any proprietary gubbins but presumably that's horribly painful to do.

    *the problem with doing that is that everyone is trying to move over to GTK3 now and deprecating GTK2. Unfortunately a convenient windows port of GTK3 could be some time away still.
  • edited September 2012
    The main point is that the UI code is auto-generated from lists of what options go in which menu etc. Without this each UI would have to be updated individually when new options are created or old ones removed.

    Certainly the way the menus are organised are far from perfect but that should be fixed at the source as it were. Sort out the design of the menus once in one place and then they will be generated the same for all the ui options :)
  • edited September 2012
    fog wrote: »
    I use spectaculator , which I'm happy with..

    but winvice is a good emu :D

    http://www.viceteam.org/

    Winvice is great, as it's the only emulator to accurately replicate the colour 'brown'.
  • edited September 2012
    Winvice is great, as it's the only emulator to accurately replicate the colour 'brown'.
    Aye, all 15 shades of it...
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • edited September 2012
    aowen wrote: »
    Not sure. But let's face it, Spectaculator doesn't even emulate ULAplus. :)

    spectaculator is a very polished emu, there is also a free version of it, but it doesnt let you save wav files
  • edited September 2012
    also i hate the emus that dont hve the bios's in there, you have to search for them as well, whats the point in that? i understand that there could be new improved versions but you think there would be the default ones already included!
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    also i hate the emus that dont hve the bios's in there, you have to search for them as well, whats the point in that? i understand that there could be new improved versions but you think there would be the default ones already included!
    Oh, don't called them bios!!! That'll upset a few people!

    They're called ROMS. Any emulator worth it's salt will have a folder with all the ROMS in it as part of the installation.
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • edited September 2012
    Unless he's referring to the software. If that's the case, calling them ROMs would also be terrible. :D

    The only emulator I've used that required me to provide the ROM was one for my mobile phone. Can't remember which one.

    All the emulators I've mentioned in this topic are ready to use without having to search for anything. The only thing you have to look for, if desired, is the program or game you want to use.
  • edited September 2012
    karingal wrote: »
    Oh, don't called them bios!!! That'll upset a few people!

    They're called ROMS. Any emulator worth it's salt will have a folder with all the ROMS in it as part of the installation.

    roms are usually refered to the games that are ran, certainly is the case with most emus, mabe calling a speccy game a rom though would be quite inacurate
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    calling a speccy game a rom though would be quite inacurate

    Very, that would upset people equally :)

    I suppose a commercial cassette tape is a ROM unless you put sticky tape over the hole. :D
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    roms are usually refered to the games that are ran, certainly is the case with most emus, mabe calling a speccy game a rom though would be quite inacurate
    That would isolate you almost immediately, a rom to other emulators is normally cos the software was cartridge based.
    In the ZX Spectrum world they're normally snapshots or tapes.
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
  • edited September 2012
    karingal wrote: »
    That would isolate you almost immediately, a rom to other emulators is normally cos the software was cartridge based.
    In the ZX Spectrum world they're normally snapshots or tapes.

    or roms :-D

    http://www.fruitcake.plus.com/Sinclair/Interface2/Cartridges/Interface2_RC_G13R.htm

    *runs off*
  • edited September 2012
    Couldn't find any pictures but we used to have those arcade machines over here sometime back in the early 90s, which I'm fairly sure were essentially ROM-based Speccys... Just saying. c:
  • edited September 2012
    Hikaru wrote: »
    Couldn't find any pictures but we used to have those arcade machines over here sometime back in the early 90s, which I'm fairly sure were essentially ROM-based Speccys... Just saying. c:
    I bet you refer to the Foton-IK02 range of arcade coin-ops manufactured by Foton in Penza at the beginning of the 90's. They came in three flavors:
    • Brodjaga (Inspector Gadget And The Circus Of Fear);
    • Č?rnyj Korabl’ (Black Beard);
    • Povar (Cookie)/Sobrat’ Buran (Jetpac)/Agronom (Pssst) (multi-play configuration).
    All of these games are emulated by MAME from version 0.140 on.

    If you can read Italian ;) you could see my Spectrumpedia at pages 397-398 for further information, the Foton-IK02 board is listed among the USSR/CIS clones. Russian source material is here.
  • edited September 2012
    Wow, I'd never heard of these before - arcade units with speccy clones running hacked games?
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • edited September 2012
    I bet you refer to the Foton-IK02 range of arcade coin-ops manufactured by Foton in Penza at the beginning of the 90's. They came in three flavors:
    • Brodjaga (Inspector Gadget And The Circus Of Fear);
    • Č?rnyj Korabl? (Black Beard);
    • Povar (Cookie)/Sobrat? Buran (Jetpac)/Agronom (Pssst) (multi-play configuration).
    All of these games are emulated by MAME from version 0.140 on.

    If you can read Italian ;) you could see my Spectrumpedia at pages 397-398 for further information, the Foton-IK02 board is listed among the USSR/CIS clones. Russian source material is here.

    I wouldn't know tbh, I was like 7 at the time. ^^; But yes, that's probably what they were. At least, I do remember the one with Ultimate games and a game selection menu (the time limitation thing does ring a bell too).

    However, assuming this was the same type of machine everywhere, there clearly were more variants of it. For instance, I first played Rolling Thunder on one of these, and the same cafe also had one with Batty in it, both with the same (pretty annoying) time limit scheme. The way that wiki article is phrased sort of seems to imply the same thing; these are likely its only games/ROMs that people could find and dump so far.
  • edited September 2012
    Has anyone wrote any games in assembly or even basic and are available for download?
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    Has anyone wrote any games in assembly or even basic and are available for download?
    Erm. Yes. Lots of people have, over the years...
    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/games/1.html

    This is just a list of stuff from this decade, which will include a lot of things done by people round here:
    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekadv.cgi?what=1®exp=&yrorder=2&year=2010&type=0&players=0&turns=0&memory=0&language=0&country=0&licence=0&feature=0&publi=0&release=0&format=0&scheme=0&scorder=1&score=0&have=1&also=1&sort=1&display=1&loadpics=0

    And there's always the link in my sig...
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • edited September 2012
    joefish wrote: »
    Erm. Yes. Lots of people have, over the years...
    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/games/1.html

    This is just a list of stuff from this decade, which will include a lot of things done by people round here:
    http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekadv.cgi?what=1®exp=&yrorder=2&year=2010&type=0&players=0&turns=0&memory=0&language=0&country=0&licence=0&feature=0&publi=0&release=0&format=0&scheme=0&scorder=1&score=0&have=1&also=1&sort=1&display=1&loadpics=0

    And there's always the link in my sig...

    thanks, what i really meant to say was has anyone on these forums wrote any kind of speccy programe, in either assembley or basic, preferably a game
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    thanks, what i really meant to say was has anyone on these forums wrote any kind of speccy programe, in either assembley or basic, preferably a game

    Yes...
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    Has anyone wrote any games in assembly or even basic and are available for download?

    Of course! Scroll down the WOS forum a bit and check out the Brand New Software section.
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    thanks, what i really meant to say was has anyone on these forums wrote any kind of speccy programe, in either assembley or basic, preferably a game

    cgc.zx.gen.tr :)

    you may be suprised to learn that spectrum community is extremely creative. I think it's one of the zx spectrum's properties. it's very, extremely accessible machine.
  • edited September 2012
    guesser wrote: »
    To be honest, I think that any "pretty UI" should be done in GTK+ then it'll be multiplatform*. You could hand craft a win32 UI without using any proprietary gubbins but presumably that's horribly painful to do.

    *the problem with doing that is that everyone is trying to move over to GTK3 now and deprecating GTK2. Unfortunately a convenient windows port of GTK3 could be some time away still.

    Just a thought when I came across this - it seems like Qt is further along than GTK for cross-platform GUIs, though admittedly I know little of such things:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28framework%29
    Joefish
    - IONIAN-GAMES.com -
  • edited September 2012
    joefish wrote: »
    Just a thought when I came across this - it seems like Qt is further along than GTK for cross-platform GUIs

    Yeah, a couple of apps I use use Qt for their GUI and certainly integrate well on windows. Really it's a case of either a developer who does Qt learning their way around the fuse source, or a fuse dev learning Qt though...
  • edited September 2012
    that crocadile game is fixed, when you get to the end of the screen it does not let you go ant further
  • edited September 2012
    buzzy wrote: »
    that crocadile game is fixed, when you get to the end of the screen it does not let you go ant further
    *applause* Stirling work, sir! ;-)
  • edited September 2012
    ccowley wrote: »
    *applause* Stirling work, sir! ;-)
    Is that Stirling, Scotland?
    I wanna tell you a story 'bout a woman I know...
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