We can make him better than he was before....

better..... stronger..... faster....

Ok folks, my new TG MAME is up with the new unbeatable (yeah right) encryption. Gone is the pause "feature". Time will tell what the MARPians think of this new version.

Mark

-- Mark Longridge (cubeman@iname.com), November 02, 1999

Answers

I posted my message in the other thread, before reading this one.....so, sorry for me bothering again with the pause matter (now it's gone.....yeah!!)

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), November 02, 1999.

Mark, I wanted to say "thank you" for your efforts. It's nice to see somebody trying to provide a solution to our particular dilemma here at MARP. I know it will probably take a few revisions, but hopefully we'll see a more secure method of recording inps that will lead to fewer uproars over cheating. Keep up the good work!

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), November 02, 1999.

I got a few things to ask :

1. Where is the source of this tg release ? - The Mame license is clear, If you make modifications to the mame source, you have to release the source. This is ver disrespectfull to the Mame team,and as members of the devteam Mark and Chris,should be the first to obey their rules.

2. Why the heck does everybody say "everybody else is cheating but me"

MARP IS TOO ELITE, and we are a few people that i know that has that opinion,and i am sure there are alot more.

Regards, Stig Remnes

-- Stig Remnes (sremnes@samsen.com), November 02, 1999.

I think this represents an exception to the all other Mame releases, and I agree sources are not to be distributed.

On the other hand, a kind of "permission" from the MAMEdev to allow Mark not to distribute sources should be given, and I doubt Mark will have any difficulty in getting it.

Cicca

-- Cicca (cicca@writeme.com), November 02, 1999.

I will agree with Cicca - there shouldn't be a distribution of the source code in this case. If there was... welcome back cheating... and that's a nono.

Regardless, this will be quite a controversy... the groups will probably be literal(those who stick to the license) vs. logical(those who think it should be bent for this case.) It is possible that this could expand beyond the MARP.

As for this tournament - when complete testing has been done, I will permit TG MAME 35 FINAL(not the official MAME DOS 35 FINAL, or WIN 35 FINAL) to be in the tournament.(I haven't allowed TG MAME yet... it's still just any MAME 34 FINAL version)

I alluded to not WIN 35 FINAL - the reason that is is because people can record using the DOS version of MAME 35 FINAL, and possibly play it back on WIN 35 FINAL.

Now what I'm hoping is that somebody can come up with a TG MAME32 .35 FINAL - then after the testing is done on that, then I can put that version into the tournament. It would certainly make at least 5 people who want to play in the tournament happy.

-- Gameboy9 (goldengameboy@yahoo.com), November 02, 1999.

I like the new TG version of mame if it helps alliviate fears that other people are cheating. I do not think anyone is personally. I wuld like to make two comments though.

While disabling pause will make it more arcade like, I don't recall ever having a doorbell, a dog, 2 kids or a wife at an arcade. :)

Also, is there going to be a unix version or will I be left out of future events if this becomes a MARP version also?

-- Dave Kaupp (info@kaupp.cx), November 02, 1999.

Eventually there will be a TGMame that we CAN distribute the source code for (including having an xmame patch), since the key (or a time sensitive key generating function) to the encryption need not be stored in the executable or source. I also propose not to assume the TGMAME version Mark is presenting should not be used for the tournament or any other garaunteed mame play untill the source has no key to the encryption located with in it.

I'm sure the encrypted TGmame will be just a bit more harder to hack than reversing the words in the fields of the inp file! :) Please someone with disasembler knowlegde (or a link to a good hacking dissasembler) mail me so we can "try" to hack the new version of tgmame.

-- Chad (churritz@cts.com), November 02, 1999.

Stig Remnes - you do nothing but moan. Virtually all I see are complaints from you. Of course the TG source can't be released until everything is verified, or it'll just get ripped apart and someone will cheat just to make a point.

You think MARP is too elite? Don't you think something has to be done to sort out some of the connection problems we've been having? I had hardly been able to reach the server for a week until about 2 days ago. Surely if it's all broken no one can even attempt to run a competition? Where does this Elite idea come from? Are you a "warez pup" or something? An "oldskool scener" who thinks anyone who does anything you don't like is "lame"?

I agree with any measures that are taken to protect the server, and Zwazy has said it's a temporary thing to prevent millions of crap uploads until it's all working again (though maybe N.Kosaka doesn't read the announcements?). Then when it's all working again things can go back to how they were.

I don't like crap scores being uploaded, and in a way I'm glad some of my old bad scores were wiped out, as to get my points back, I now have the incentive to do better. Isn't that a good thing? How does encouraging better scores make things "Elite"?

I don't see mass accusations of cheating anywhere. Where are all these people (everyone) who thinks everyone except them is a cheat? In fact I don't see more than the odd recording being questioned on here occasionally. Weren't you in fact the person complaining at the end of T1 th someone recorded a game too late, when in fact they were in another timezone? See? It's only human nature to accuse others, isn't it?

Didn't you have problems with T1, when the votes weren't updated in time? Didn't you suggest block voting for T2?

Anyway, it's nothing personal, since I don't know you, but shouldn't you be a little less suspicious of everyone and realise that this whole site, and MAME, is really only fun for us????

Regards,

Crash.

-- Crash (crash@tcp.co.uk), November 02, 1999.

I gotta admit that Crash has made some valid points. Stig, I'm not quite sure what you're basing you "elite" comments on. Last I looked, no one is "elite". Everyone has a right to voice their opinions, everyone has a right to submit numerous scores to climb up the "elite" leaderboard and as far as I know no one has the "elite" power to dictate how MARP is run. The closest one to have that power is Zwaxy himself and I'll tell you something...he could do whatever he pleases and the heck with the rest of us! However, he has gone to great lengths to appease the whims of MARPers and has shown nothing but admirable attempts to make fair decisions that will please most of us. Your input into issues that arise here at MARP are just as important as anyone elses. Problem is, you spend more time with negative commentary than helping us find an equitable path towards a solution. I know you could help us if you focused your energy to the positive instead of the negative.

Where the TG MAME issue is concerned. I'm not an advocate of releasing the source to this particular version as it would serve no use to do so. I'm hoping that Mark gets the OK to proceed with this version and cannot see a reason why he couldn't even without source distribution. It's more than obvious why this is a special case. It's not like this version will be wildly popular and cause further "muddying of the MAME waters" as we MARPers(as well as contributors to other sites) are but a small part of the MAME users. This is an EXTREMELY specialized version that will get very little notice outside of our realm. The average user could care less about the modifications, in spite of what they mean to us. So, don't sweat the small stuff and learn to relax and enjoy this form of entertainment more!

JoustGod

-- JoustGod (pinballwiz1@msn.com), November 02, 1999.

Ok,i think i see the difference between myself and most Marp users, I been part of the emu scene for 2.5 years, i am not only into playing but have interests in coding etc. I wathched as emus have come and gone, most people on Marp is just mame users for the games not to contribute for anything, thats why i think most of you dont want to respect the Mame License, i understand your points, but if this version is allowed without source, i can tell you we will see Mame with 1999 NeoGeo games,and other "illegal" versions of mame. I myself have a version wich saves hiscores even when recording and even when cheating, i will spread that one too :).

My point is : Show respect to the MameDev Team by following their rules,dont try to make them alter the rules for you,or make some stupid excuse for doing so.

btw. I was not the one that suggested Block voting.

regards, Stig Remnes

-- Stig Remnes (sremnes@samsen.com), November 03, 1999.

Stig, ok so you didn't suggest block voting. For that incorrect assumption I apologise. However, you were one of its biggest supporters, and tried to vote Pacman in, with the promise of "more votes coming from us today". So Pacman didn't get in... shame.

So anyone who doesn't agree with you is accusing you of cheating for block voting? This is why the random game selection method was chosen, so that block voting would be discouraged. Block voting IS cheating if the final votes select the game(s), since you can manipulate the games to suit your choosing if your voting is done properly. Moot point, as it won't happen now anymore.

As for respecting the MAMEdev team's rules for releasing sourcecode, surely as members of the MAMEdev team people who are responsible in part for sorting out the TGMAME can decide to sort the rules. Rules cannot be 100% fixed in all circumstances, as they can only be a guideline, and if they are wrong they must change. In the case of TG, the source issue MUST and should be an exception and members of the MAMEdev team can submit to have the rules changed accordingly. What if a copy of the sourcecode was kept with Nicola Salmoria or something. Then he can best judge how it should be treated.

A version of MAME which saves hiscores when you record/cheat is really only of any use on someone's personal HD, since .inp files would show the cheat for what it is. That version of MAME only really serves to allow you to cheat yourself, as you know that's not a genuine hiscore and wouldn't achieve the same in a real arcade. Personally I wouldn't see anything wrong with saving hiscores when recording a .inp file, since my personal bests were all made during recorded games, so my only record is the .inp file, which is not always compatible with a new MAME version.

There's no overall disrespect on MARP for the MAME license; I'm sure we just feel that there can be exceptions to any rule, and TG is the best case for one so far. I'm sure if a PGP-style encryption was made for the .inp files that the sourcecode could well be released anyway.

Crash.

-- Crash (crash@tcp.co.uk), November 03, 1999.

Well, that's part of why I didn't really want to say much. I've got to enough coding experience to at least be properly amazed by MAME, even with the high score issues. I want a protected edition of some emulator badly enough to want to force the issue, but I'm not particularly attached to any ONE emulator. What this means is if I was Mark the email to MAMEDEV would have read "MAMETG, or welcome to TG is Retrocade, your choice." This sort of undiplomatic attitude isn't what MAMEDEV deserves, and it's not very productive, but it is a pretty clear summation. Odds are some emulator author would say yes, or we'd find an abandoned project to "adopt", and the days of MAME being the emu arcade score standard would soon be over ... if that's what everyone really wants.

Note: I am kicking ideas around in my head for how to make a secure version with open source.

-- Aquatarkus (aquatarkus@digicron.com), November 03, 1999.

Maybe I should have started a new thread for this one, because it doesn't really belong in the current thread, except that it is a response to a few lines by Crash. It's regarding the high scores not being saved when recording (or playing back!) an .inp:

I wouldn't like them to be saved when playing back an .inp of course, because every .inp I'd watch would do this then, which includes .inps created by others, and which also includes multiple entries with the same score when watching the .inp more than once.

As far as I understand, the main problem is that some games use the scores currently in the high score table as a seed for their random number generator, which means that, for those games, recordings would only play back correctly if you have a copy of the high score file of the person who recorded it (and right BEFORE he recorded it, not after!). That is why the high score file cannot be loaded when recording and playing back.

Anyway, to get to Crash's line: I didn't like it very much either that my best scores are only available in .inps and not in the high score tables on my hard drive. So I wrote a little program that I can use to insert scores into my .hi files. It probably is not of much use to anyone but me since it only supports (some of) the few games I play. I think at this moment it supports 35 games or so, which sounds a lot more than it actually is since this includes clones. It would be a LOT of work to have it support all games in MAME that save high scores, since just about every game has its own format, so every .hi file has to be analysed separately. I guess the only thing that was useful to others as well that resulted from this is that I found some .hi files in which there was something wrong, and so I pointed this out to the MAMEdev team, including a full explanation exactly what and why it was wrong, and including a few replacement lines of source code to fix it. Those fixes have been (silently) applied to MAME now, so I am glad I was able to make some tiny contributions to MAME.

Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that if you really want your high score to be in your .hi file, it isn't that hard to analyse the .hi file usually, and put it there manually. OK, so you can cheat this way. Big deal. It's not like we're submitting .hi files, and since we are no longer submitting screenshots (or at least not just by themselves), a screenshot of such an edited high score table is pretty useless too as a cheat. Besides, it's probably just as easy to use some image editor to change things on a screenshot.

FWIW, Ben Jos.

-- Ben Jos Walbeehm (walbeehm@walbeehm.com), November 03, 1999.