I would also love to say that this project, especially done mostly with a low budget, is incredibly impressive. A lot of people would claim that the developers don't read the forums simply because every single game does not work properly on the emulator. Most of the time, these are trolls, but sadly it also seems like some actually believe that it is simple to make a great PS2 emulator.

I would also especially like to thank Cottonvibes for his attention to making a game I just felt like ripping and not exactly playing, playable.

(05-21-2011 05:37 AM)MyDreamName Wrote:  I would also especially like to thank Cottonvibes for his attention to making a game I just felt like ripping and not exactly playing, playable.

haha, well tbh i'm happy that bug report was made because i was able to fix an old bug in mVU that improved some other games as well.

sometimes bugs are hard to track and are a huge pain to figure out what pcsx2 is doing wrong because you have no leads. in these cases i think its generally better for us devs to ignore the bug and work on something else (unless we're sure we'll be able to find out the problem).

other times you kind-of get lucky and already have an idea of what is causing the bug. in these cases its nice to fix the problem since it could fix other games who's bug wasn't so obvious.

so generally i wait for bugs reports where i have enough information on the problem to try and fix it.
we would love to fix all the bugs people mention, but some are just too hard to debug because we have no leads, and therefor even if we try to find the problem we'll most likely end up wasting our day chasing after a bug we're not going to fix.

the most annoying bug i have left in mVU is this one in Radiata Stories where mVU causes some flying petals on the title screen to flash in a weird way. This also seems to cause some minor effect problems in Valkyrie Profile 2.
i kind-of have no idea what is causing this bug, if its floating point precision problems, bad flag handling, bad double-branch handling, a pipeline bug, etc...
i've spent many different nights trying to fix this problem (or find out whats causing it) but i never get anywhere...
i'm hoping someday one of my bug-fixes will end up fixing those games as well.

Being bored having read through the thread I realized I never really stopped to thank the PCSX2 dev crew.

Thanks a ton for all the work ya'll do !

Around the time when PCSX2 really started to support a wide range of games is when my old PS2 was getting to the point where it took a lot repair and hackery to keep it running.

As a game developer (programmer) I wind up learning a whole lot about the hardware. I dread the times when I have to simulate a function on one system which takes some serious hacks to do on another. It would drive me crazy to base an entire project around that sort of thing.

(06-08-2011 04:35 PM)siferion Wrote:  As a game developer (programmer) I wind up learning a whole lot about the hardware. I dread the times when I have to simulate a function on one system which takes some serious hacks to do on another. It would drive me crazy to base an entire project around that sort of thing.

well for the most part emulator programming is about reading system specs and different documentation, and then implementing through software the behavior your read. it only gets hacky when things are documented wrong, or there's undocumented features, or things are just implemented wrong and more hacks are added to get it semi-working.

i think though its just about experience whether you feel more comfortable with emu programming or game programming.
in my case i have more experience with emu programming so i basically know how most stuff should be done. but i want to get a career in game programming and i feel its overwhelming how much different stuff there is to learn. and when i look at modern games i think its amazing how people are able to make games look and react the way they do. and i'm kindof scared a gamedev job might end up being so much work (due to the advances in technology and gamers demanding more realistic games) that i won't enjoy it.

Sometimes, being a game developer is not about making the engine or the optimizations, but making a game work, coding the game logic and other things that can get boring. Or it can just be being a user of the tools for some engine the company has bought. And thus, it's not really demanding and you don't have to care about lots of technical details.
From what I've seen in the industry, there are some competent people that know the hardware and all the tricks to make a game right. And then, there are lots of SDK users that don't know/care about the details. I think you're way above them and you'll do just fine.

(06-09-2011 10:56 AM)Orphis Wrote:  From what I've seen in the industry, there are some competent people that know the hardware and all the tricks to make a game right. And then, there are lots of SDK users that don't know/care about the details. I think you're way above them and you'll do just fine.

thanks, i hope so

(02-14-2011 04:10 AM)cottonvibes Wrote:  I believe I have seen someone who owns emulator-related websites send a resume to nintendo as a joke to see what they would say, and they told him that although his experience met the requirements, they did not approve of his projects.

pretty ironic if you consider that Nintendo release games from the NES and SNES era that are emulated.

(02-14-2011 04:10 AM)cottonvibes Wrote:  When I started hacking around with pcsx2's sourcecode i didn't even know c/c++, and now I know more about the languages than my uni professors.

That's pretty inspiring cotton; so your path of learning started by just poking around pcsx2's source despite not knowing c/c++? I know it's off topic but could you elaborate a little on what you've done to get where you are now?

Honestly that's not too abnormal for programmers. There's a whole world of technologies and there's always a high chance with any project of encountering at least one you are not familiar with, so being a fast learner is the most important trait I can think of for a programmer.

Indeed that and being able to focus and work on a single problem for hours or days without driving yourself into a looney bin