WiiMednafen

[nodtveidt]

Leaving the command-line stupidity asside (some people like to pretend they were in the movie Hackers before they play Bonk, I can accept that) another thing that pisses me off about PCE emus is how HuCards and CDs are treated separately. This is just annoying bullshit. My Duo R plays everything but SHu Cards. It has a power button and a door switch. Why the f*ck are PCE emulators so much more complicated than this? SNES9x is faultlessly idiot-proof and has been for a decade. Same for Genesis, Neo Geo, CPS. Even systems like PS1, N64, and Taito Type X are light years beyond PCE in usability. I don't get it.

OK so my response wasn't very nice. They're treated differently because THEY ARE DIFFERENT. It's that simple.

[SignOfZeta]

But to the user they are the same. You put the game in and hit "RUN". The only configuration a user should have to perform is mapping the controller.

There are only two logical reasons I can think of to explain why Mednafen is such a f*ckin pain in the ass:

1) The developer is incapable of making their program behave as if it were designed for human beings.

Unless the programmer is seriously autistic this is almost inconcieveable. Making an emulator is serious business. Making a GUI is Intro to Programming 101. Unless you were home schooled by robots you know how to make a GUI.

2) The developer has some sort of agenda to alienate regular users.

People who cannot find the time or brain power to devote to learning an arcane set of instructions are deemed not worthy of using the program. This keeps "stupid a$$holes" like me from ever enjoying their work. It works really well. I failed the pre-screening without them even knowing what an a$$hole I am!

If there is any other explaination, I can't see it.

[nat]

The hoops you have to jump through just to download a copy of the Mac version would seem to support #2. To this day I still have never tried mednafen for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post. To be honest, I'm not even sure a Mac version actually exists as I've certainly never seen it or talked to anyone who had.

[Duo_R]

How is the pc-fx emulation on this one?

[nodtveidt]

mednafen bonk2.pce

^^^ ooh, hard.

mednafen sapphire.cue

^^^ damn, how complicated.

[Necromancer]

But to the user they are the same. You put the game in and hit "RUN". The only configuration a user should have to perform is mapping the controller.

That's not the way Kega Fusion works either.  Just like with Magic Engine, you select load cart or boot CD.  The only thing more difficult is selecting a system card and needing a physical disc or mounted disc image; the former is necessary since different games need different syscards, and the latter was a conscious decision to support people with real games and not cater to freeloaders.

PS - It's not really the way a Duo works either; you choose load huey or boot cd when you insert the media.

[Burnt Lasagna]

Mac users have to compile there own version of Mednafen using MacPorts.
http://www.macports.org/
You can get the latest source of Mednafen on there official website.
http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/releases/

[SignOfZeta]

Mac users have to compile there own version of Mednafen using MacPorts.
http://www.macports.org/
You can get the latest source of Mednafen on there official website.
http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/releases/

Yes...but WHHHYYYY!?!

[Burnt Lasagna]

Yes...but WHHHYYYY!?!

Mednafen is just weird like that, deal with it.
If you don't want to bother with Mednafen then use Ootake in Wine.

[Necromancer]

Yes...but WHHHYYYY!?!

I suspect it's because she'd rather spend her time improving accuracy, fixing bugs, and adding new system support than doing something that most people won't care about.

[nodtveidt]

Building from source is no big deal. it's pretty damn easy.

[Arkhan]

Building from source is no big deal. it's pretty damn easy.

To someone who is a programmer, its easy.

To someone who's not, doing command line compiling of sourcecode is scary enough.

and then when it doesn't go as claimed in the readme, they're assaulted with a ton of errors.

We've all been there:

you type MAKE INSTALL and it goes
LOL 4928ERRORS, GO DIE.

etc. etc.

It's standard lolopensource procedure.   Someone should just build the Mac version and distribute it to the 3-6 people who will use the Mac version.

I get what Zeta is saying.  I prefer going *click click click!* and seeing results.  To the end user, a game is a game.  They go in the system, and it does the work for you.  It would be really lame if you had to do something special to make your Sega CD or Duo boot CD as opposed to Cart/Card.

and Rover, you left out the part in Mednafen where you have to setup the bios/point to system cards, and all of that crap.  It'd be easier for someone who's not really into text based configuration, if they could just pick the bios file or the sys card image from a familiar gui.

Ootake does that like a champ.  The menu couldn't get any simpler really.

Kega Lazarus, or whatever its called now, does that too!  So does WGens.  Just pick the Sega CD bios, and then pick either "Load cartridge game" or "Load CD game" from the dropdown.

Mednafen involves making sure you put it in a good spot, and then telling the thing where it sits at, either by using the interactive crap on screen (which requires looking up the instructions online), or you can manually diddle around with the config file and find the parameter you want.  This sucks, since the file is effin' huge.

So, I get where Zeta is coming from.

Why doesn't mednafen have a gui?  Probably because it's cross platform.  That is my guess at least.

I'd make a GUI for it but I have 2 reasons why I don't.

1) I hate making GUIs, it annoys me.  I hate trying to lay out buttons and crap like I like them.
2) Because of 1, my GUIs are often about as user friendly as a NASA Space shuttle.
3) I have other crap to do that's more important, like all the game-stuff I am working on... (and school).


Someone else with alot free time might be able to help though.

[nodtveidt]

Oh noes, a config file. The world is ending.

I've considered making a frontend for Mednafen, but there's PCejin which is basically Mednafen + GUI for the Windows users. However, it's also as dumb as a box of rocks.

[SignOfZeta]

Most people who download Mednafen eventually give up and and trash the files before they get it to work. This is just a fact. If that's the kind of software she wants to develop then...I hope it's fulfilling.

Most people who make something usually have some hope that people will actually be able to use it rather that just throw it away. If I make a web page and people can't read it, I'll try to fix it, rather then go tell the people they need to download some fringe browser they've never heard of. When I make music I don't encode it in APE format, etc.

[geise]

Don't know what the problem is.  There's a GUI with the Wii version of Mednafin.  Works great!  Thanks to the original poster!