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- by Mouser X at 10:58 AM EDT on July 22, 2005
- Well, I'm no coder, so my say in the matter is mostly superficial. Nonetheless, there's 2 ways I view it. Does it work? Yes. Then why change it? The second view is "Geez, this is a mess. I know I could do better than that!." As I said, I'm no coder, so I tend to go with the 1st viewpoint the most. However, I have heard of many complaints about 64th Note over the past. Yes, most, if not all, of them have been addressed, fixed, worked around, or soemthing. However, that can potentially leave the source code a huge mess (from what I understand, it was a mess (more or less) in the first place, let alone after you started using it). As such, a huge cleanup may be a good idea. The problem with that is, sometimes to clean it up properly requires rewriting it. If that's the best course of action, then I say go for it. But keep in mind a few things. How long did it take 64th Note to get where it is now? How much can you improve on what you've got?
Because you've been developing 64th Note for some time, I would assume you could do better now because you've learned from previous experience with the code. On top of that, a rewrite would probably make it more manageable for when there are more problems later on (as there seems to be with 64th Note, currently (meaning, something seems to turn up now and again that causes problems. Ex: Mischief Makers, or the PD and Pilot Wings bug (data not saved in the savestate dealy))). Also, a rewrite would potentially mean less of those problems later on as well.
To reiterate and simplify, do what you think best. Just weigh the pros and the cons (on a side note, if pro is good, and con is bad, what's progress when compared with congress?). Anyway, good luck with whatever you choose. I'm sure the result will be better than before. Mouser X over and out.
- by hcs at 12:17 PM EDT on July 22, 2005
- Are you sure you're not a coder? Your nested parentheticals say otherwise...
I've been splicing stuff into the original code and commenting at random for a year now, and as you noted it was a mess before and now it's a disaster. What's spurring me to do this is the Mischief Makers and Bust A Move '99 problems, but the whole thing could use a rewrite. Knowing what I do now about how it's structured I'm sure I can do a much better job, and I know about the bugs in PJ64 that need fixin'.
It's said that just about anything written (be it a story, essay, or code) is better the second time around. In my case it'll help make up for the fact that, when I started out, I had very little idea what I was doing. For instance, I'll be incorporating the plugins into the main module from the beginning, even before I wrap it in Winamp's API, so the redundant code and multiple DLLs issues will be solved when they're easier to track.
It's a good idea, now I just have to get myself motivated to go through with it.
I was also considering writing my own CPU core as a learning exercise but I decided against it. Maybe later.
- by Prokopis at 10:53 PM EDT on July 22, 2005
- I'd say, go for it.
I mean, the way I see it, it's really a no-brainer: at some point you'll decide the code's too damn garbled you can't even look at it. You might as well do it early on, be happy with the rewrite and maybe save time in the long run compared to doing it later (assuming you wouldn't stop working on 64th soon after releasing v0.10).
Realistically though, it's probly just a matter of available free time and desire to do it when that comes around.
PS: The habit of nested parentheses can soon lead to the dark side that is LISP and insanity (the two being interchangeable).
- by Anonymous at 3:34 AM EDT on July 27, 2005
- Whoo man... crashes aplenty when I turned off the recompiler. The only thing that DOES play properly would seem to be Mario Party.
(And if you want my personal opinion, rewriting is never wrong. :))
- by Mouser X at 6:49 PM EDT on July 27, 2005
- Taking into consideration your current problems with the sets in existence (Bust a Move; Mishief Makers; Mario Party; Conkers Bad Fur day; ect.) it would seem that either a rewrite, or a cleanup is in order. Chances are good that a cleanup would require a rewrite...
In other words, let us know how it's going! Oh yah, and good luck. From what I understand, you'll be using the same core for the player, but you're looking to see if there's other options available. Also, since the Bust a Move set works with plugins other than Azimer's, I assume you're looking at using something else for that as well. Or that you're at least looking into it.
Obviously, it sounds like (to me) that it's best to do a rewrite now. The plugin has gone through numerous iterations and updates, and it's been treated pretty well (considering). You have more knowledge, and insight about its inner workings. Chances are, you can easily fix what's wrong, once you have a clean slate to work from. And, since you've already gotten this far once, it should go faster the next time around. Roughly, how long did it take for 64th Note to reach a (fully) releaseable version? Apparently, 0.5 (or 0.7?) is where it reached reasonable solidity (before that, there was almost a new version every time ripped sets were released). And it had been in development for what, about 2 or 3 months before that time? Oh yah, based on Darkpulses USF mirror, 0.5 came out roughly on 10/5/04 (and v. 0.7 on 10/16/05?).
Anyway, I'd think it would be available fairly quickly, once you started getting the ball rolling. And then perhaps 64th Note would reach the elusive 1.0 stage! Oooh. Ahhh. Okay, I need sleep. Mouser X over and out.
- by Mouser X at 7:30 AM EDT on July 28, 2005
- You were thinking about what core to use, right? Well, though you probably knew this, 1964 is open-source (or so I gather, based on what it says). Have you looked into that? Is it any better/worse than the Project 64 core you're using? Those are some ideas I have. Hopefully that helps. However, seeing that you used PJ64 core in the first place, chances are that it's probably better than the 1964 one.
Just out of curiousity, what's the differances, and why would you prefer one over the other? Thanks in advance. Mouser X over.
- by Mouser X at 7:36 AM EDT on July 28, 2005
- P.S. It would seem that Project 64 got an update in June 2005 to 1.6 (but the source is not available). The source for 1.4 is dated at 12/25/01, correct? Where as the source for 1964 v0.9.9 is dated at 1/1/04. It seems to me that 1964 is newer, and therefore possibly better. Of course, you're the one doing the research, so you'd know best. I was just wondering if 1964 might be a viable alternative, if you needed one.
By the way, the dates I posted are from zophar.net, in case you were wondering. And, I'm not sure of the date for the 1.4 source, but that's what it looks like. K, I'm done now.
- by hcs at 12:05 PM EDT on July 28, 2005
- The trick is that neither Project 64 nor 1964 have the sources to their latest versions publicly available.
The 1964 source is here, and it is dated 9/22/02, version 0.8.5.
The Project 64 source is here and dated 12/22/01, version 1.4 build 52.
Both are quite out of date. For reasons which aren't at all clear to me the authors seem to prefer not to release their latest versions. From what I've heard it's had to do with the fact that although thousands of people have downloaded the source to PJ64 no one has done anything useful with it. There seems to be a lot of disgust towards the people who just recompile things with the official XBox SDK to run the emulators on XBox (especially those who hack arcade emulators to play new games that the authors don't want publicly available yet).
This is something I tried to clear up when I contacted zilmar about the possibility of using the 1.6 source for my rewrite, demonstrating that I fixed numerous bugs in the source and wrote an entirely new interface for a special application of the CPU and RSP cores. He seemed willing enough to let me use it, "I have no issue with giving you the source code for pj64," so hopefully in the next few days I'll have some code to work with.
- by Mouser X at 3:22 PM EDT on July 28, 2005
- Well that's cool. Hopefully, the source you get from Zilmar will be greatly improved over what you currently have (well, any improvement is going to be good). That does pose a question though. When/if you get the 1.6 code, and make 64th Note 1.0 (or whatever), will you release the source to the player? I would assume that you will (that way people can get it running on Linux, Mac, Foobar2000, ect.). However, when you do, do you have permission to release the updated core code? Or will that be a separate deal? Or what? I'm just curious. I realize it's not a big deal (and not really my concern, for that matter), but considering their sentiments on releasing the most recent source, Zilmar might not like the idea of it being released with your player code. Just a thought.
Anyway, good luck with that. Hopefully all goes well. I know that I look forward to a potentially more efficient 64th Note. Mouser X over and out.
- CPU by ninninetynine at 3:45 PM EDT on July 28, 2005
- I'm not sure how much USF stuff is done on the main CPU or RSP, but you might be able to use the CPU core from MAME. It has a MIPS III/IV core(C interpreter and x86 dynarec), and works well enough to run the R4600 KI arcade games with no crashes(like U64emu does) and a few other MIPS games using R4700, and R5000.
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