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2004-02-12 12:43

Cupid

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 83

Emulator Awareness Campaign - your help needed

Evening Ladies and Gentlemen,

I want your help and support for an idea I had when I saw the emufuxxor of Krill/Plush a year or so ago.

The Emulator Awareness campaign.

In a nutshell, it is a small program that you can link to any release (or allow it to load the main part) that will show a "nag screen" in emulators, explaining that the user is using an emulator and has to be aware of the experience he will get not being the real thing.

This can prevent a lot of wrong criticism and bug reports, and, at least in our book, is a more mature and efficient way to deal with the emulator phenomena than not caring about "emulamers".

Read about it here:
http://www.cupid.de/eac/

What I need from you now, is a list of problems that emulators have, what bad experience users get and that there is not a way around them for the developer.

This data will be used to fill the "where emulators fail" section on the site, which will be featured in the nag screen.

Thanks for your attention, flame away

... 47 posts hidden. Click here to view all posts....

2004-02-12 18:27

cadaver

Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1160

The nag screens will disappear when the emulator behaviour difference, that the fuxxor routine uses for detection, is eliminated. Depending on the routine and encryption used, bypassing it by a "cheat" as you suggest can be hard..

Btw. another question, if the nagrequester acts as a loader, will the program to be loaded be heavily encrypted? People will perhaps reverse-engineer this, just for the challenge if not otherwise.

Urgh.. I hope Rich doesn't get into the defuxxoring business (possibly with a fakelabel), if this becomes popular :)

2004-02-12 18:44

Dane
Account closed

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 421

Emulators are very useful tools.

TDJ - Yeah, I somtimes wish I'd go for trades instead. Bit too lazy to end my subscriptions, I suppose. However, having said that, my hopes are up for the Reload-event supposed to take place after Morrison's run ends. If it results in CC bringing back Betsy in XXM it can't be all bad!

2004-02-12 18:49

Derision

Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 69

I've got Power64 on Mac. I haven't had any problems with smooth scrolling... it even leaves a trail on the screen. I have noticed that the sound and video aren't exactly synchronized. And as for the actual image on screen... that's more the fault of higher-quality monitors than it is an emulator. If you've got a video card that supports RCA-out, hook it up to a TV and run the demo there. THAT will look nice again.

I'm not sure how I feel about having a nag screen, though. If you're going to do one, maybe have it detail the best way to view the demo ON the emulator. For instance:

"You're using an emulator. To get the best experience, turn SID filters OFF, run in PAL mode at exact CPU cycle with full 1541 emulator ON."

Nothing irks me more when I get halfway through a demo and it starts using some IRQ loader that totally baffles the emulator, and forces me to restart. Ergh.

AJ

2004-02-12 19:20

hollowman

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 474

i wouldnt even spend 30 minutes on such a pointless idea

i'd like to get my hands on some of grant morrison's
older stuff, like st swithins day and new adventures
of hitler.
but atleast theres been a new print of stray toasters
by bill sienkiewicz

2004-02-12 21:48

TDJ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879

@Dane: I've gone from 30 to 3 subscriptions (New X-Men, Planetary, Powers) within a year. New X-Men & Powers are both almost done for me, Planetary will also end within the year I guess. I kinda miss going to my lcs every week but the joy of reading a story in one go makes up for it. Plus all those tpb's look really cool on the shelf :) I'm thinking about starting to collect some other stuff though of which I'm not sure it will be traded (Wanted, Demo).

@Hollowman: Grant rocks, he is my fave writer. I've got the complete Invisibles collection in trades, his Animal Man in trades, all issues of the Filth and I even got his Doom Patrol & Flex Mentallo stuff, bought it on E-bay a few years ago :)

2004-02-12 22:01

Dane
Account closed

Registered: May 2002
Posts: 421

Check out Zenith. Probably one of the best.

2004-02-12 22:29

Twoflower

Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 434

Morrisons "St.Swithins Day" is a really great one. Love the neat style of the inking, and the idea of scaring Margaret Thatcher is just great. "Neurotic Boy Outsider". :-)

2004-02-12 23:13

TDJ

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879

I heard many good things about Zenith but I've never seen any issues or tpb's of it yet. Same for St.Swithin's day and his other older stuff :(

Btw, check out this thread about Morrison: http://www.millarworld.biz/index.php?showtopic=20698

I used to be on Barbelith.com, they had some real good discussions there, but a while ago they closed all the lurker accounts .. and a lurker I was.

Say, is anybody interested in my Invisibles rap?

2004-02-13 12:19

Krill

Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2970

Quote: The nag screens will disappear when the emulator behaviour difference, that the fuxxor routine uses for detection, is eliminated. Depending on the routine and encryption used, bypassing it by a "cheat" as you suggest can be hard..

Btw. another question, if the nagrequester acts as a loader, will the program to be loaded be heavily encrypted? People will perhaps reverse-engineer this, just for the challenge if not otherwise.

Urgh.. I hope Rich doesn't get into the defuxxoring business (possibly with a fakelabel), if this becomes popular :)

The check routines used are actually quite hard to come by. According to Graham who started working on a really really sophisticated emulator, to emulate the things some of those check routines test (i.e., sprite display bugs in extreme sprite positions, register update each cycle instead of each line, etc.) would slow down the emulators massively.
yet, there will be the time when pc's are fast enough to run such an emulator.
at that point, it might be hard to find things that are not perfectly emulated. still, reaching this point will take years, imho. but then, when the hardware emulation is that sophisticated, all demo effects should work on that emulator. together with the already implemented pal emulation, the experience will be close enough to the real thing to prevent us from inaccurate demo reviews, imho.

but things like bad display timing emulation and inaccurate sound synchronicity due to the non-real time environment and the pc monitor's refresh rate not being exactly the one of a c64, resulting in dropped or double frames here and there, will always remain. yet, these are problems common to pc demos, someone regularly watching demos on the pc won't even recognize that. real 50 fps effects without frame drops and with synchronous sound is a thing only a real c64 nerd pays attention to, and such a person does most likely possess a real c64 and knows the difference.

as for encryption, i won't use that feature again. a nag screen is something different than blocking an emulator, it's easy to press space. and removing such a screen that is just plainly linked in front of a program would be rather ridiculous than challenging, in contrast to removing the emu protection emu-fuxx0r imposed on a program.
fenek/arise succeeded in coding an automatic un-fuxx0r, which is quite an impressive thing to do. but then, having a look at the source code of that, i once more realised that you only have to find that one single weak point of the protection chain and break it there. very similar to cracking a copy protection or hacking into a network computer =) trying to code a protection hard to overcome, you'll always only end up with playing cat and mouse with the crackers while you could rather code stunning demos.

2004-02-13 15:10

Cruzer

Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1048

Instead of wasting valuable effect-coding time on emu-detectors, how about just writing a message in a scroller or something, explaining that IF you run it on an emulator, you're missing out because of this and that.

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