Date   : Sat, 19 Jun 2004 07:43:37 +0100
From   : Kris Adcock <kris@...>
Subject: Re: Fragmented Emulators was RE: BeebEm under Linux?

Jules Richardson wrote:

> 
> Maybe there's too many options in terms of hardware spec to consider it
> though? What minimum hardware spec works for one person doesn't work for
> another. 
> 
> I expect ego does play a part though. People *generally* don't want to
> be a little part of somebody else's project, they want to own it
> themselves or not bother at all. That's just human nature.
> 

A scarily intelligent chap I work with wrote almost an entire Beeb 
emulator in a week, running under DirectX. I think he used a lot of 
BeebEm source for inspiration and kept tinkering away. Then he separated 
out the machine-specific sutff and to prove it worked, did a PS2 version 
(we work for a computer games company for a living). I certainly had 
visions of fame and glory when I wrote the X-Box code - I was expecting 
beautiful women to throw themselves at my feet because they could play 
Chuckie-Egg on the chipped X-Boxes that no doubt all supermodels own.

But when you've done the interesting code - getting the emulators video 
RAM to display, and the sound code, and reading the controllers - one 
does tend to lose interest. I was suddenly left with the boring job of 
front-end, an interface for controller remapping, picking disk images, 
and so on - and thats when you get bored and do something else.

Cheers,

Kris.