ZSNES board

[Nach]

Okay, at long last, I think I finally completed all the SPC7110 programming and tweaking (famous last words). If you find any issues, let me know, and I'll try to fix it (sigh).

Windows: http://zsnes.sourceforge.net/zsnesw-spc7110-5.zip
DOS: http://zsnes.sourceforge.net/zsnes-spc7110-5.zip

Changes:
_Demo_ and I optimized the code even more, to the extent that we don't think there's anything else significant we can do.
Fixed a bug with save states/rewind that Deathlike found.
Removed the gfx packs stuff from the GUI and config file.
Added to the config file an option to turn off the graphics cache.
The cache isn't used if there's not enough free memory, but you can play SPC7110 games anyway.
Cleanup.

Post results of speeds with the cache on and off (changing the setting requires ZSNES to be restarted). I'd appreciate if people with sub 1 GHz machines can post some FPS and CPU info with and without cache.

Todo:
Post source changes for people who want them.
Coordinate with some translation teams to get the 4 SPC7110 games translated. If you need a special build of ZSNES for something, or some info which I can provide, let me know.
Party?
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May 9 2007 - NSRT 3.4, now with lots of hashing and even more accurate information! Go download it.
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Insane Coding

[Agozer]

I don't know about a party, but we could definitely drink to this.
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My site with random stuff

whicker: franpa is grammatically correct, and he still gets ripped on?
sweener2001: Grammatically correct this one time? sure. every other time? no. does that give him a right? not really.

[Nach]

Source changes for anyone who wants them:
http://zsnes.sourceforge.net/spc7110-changes.tar.bz2
_________________
May 9 2007 - NSRT 3.4, now with lots of hashing and even more accurate information! Go download it.
_____________
Insane Coding

[byuu]

That license is too onerous for me. I'll stick with neviksti's code, as I prefer PD/BSD licensing over speed. Feel free to revert it to pure GPLv2 for simplicity's sake if you like.

The code itself does look really good though, excellent job on that!

[odditude]

[mnk]

Just to clarify, those changes are on top of
zsnes151bsrc.tar.bz2 (from around 15.05.2008), right ?

Well, at least it seems to work with that one.

[mudlord]

[Deathlike2]

[byuu]

It's really very simple. The key words: "too onerous for me."

My license is infinitely worse, yes. I'll release bsnes as PD when I discontinue it, but I'm not going to legally sanction someone else to compete against me with my own code, ala bsnes-Cloud or bsnes PP SE XD SD++. Period. It's not a debate. If they want to do it illegally, well I can't stop that. It's a risk I take by posting source at all.

If you're not happy with that, I'm sorry, but I owe you nothing.

The SPC7110 license is not a problem for me now, but it would be in the future. I want my PD release to be unencumbered by any GPL code, and I want anyone to be able to close source my work at that point if they so choose. Right now, that means I only have to disable JMA for that release. I don't want any part of the core emulation to be copylefted if there's an alternative.

Giving credit is great, I'm happy to do that; but forcing the source to be released is a problem for me.

But you guys want copyleft, and that's fantastic!! I would much rather you license the code the way you see fit, since you wrote it, than to cater to me by changing your license. Hence why I didn't ask you to change your license before. In this case, I have another decompresser I can use that works just fine.

It's win-win. There's nothing further to discuss.

[mudlord]

[byuu]

Thank you for being understanding in your reply. Sorry for throwing the thread off, by the way. We can take the license discussion over to /dev/null from here on.

[ZH/Franky]

[byuu]

Sigh, sorry. Mods may want to at least split this off, then. But I have to respond to this:

[ZH/Franky]

Well, that's fair enough. But even so, I still think it's bad when someone releases an emulator without the source code.

If an emulator programmer doesn't release the code though, but allows other programmers to see the code so they can help out, with the promise that they'll respect him/her and not release the code but still look at the code and offer improvements, I suppose that's acceptable.

My only real problem with closed-source is that you then have to choose to trust that the developer doesn't put in any malicious features. If the developer releases the code, you can at least feel safe because you know that if s/he puts malicious features in there, someone else can take them out (but then, s/he'd know that since someone will take it out, s/he won't bother putting it in in the first place). But without the code, you simply don't know. I understand that this won't be as prevailent (if at all) in emulators, but it's possible. Just look at the emulator called "MagicEngine". They not only keep the source closed, but you have to have a special key to make full use of the software.

Also, what if the developer finds a technique that will improve the emulation quality in his closed-source emulator, and doesn't share his/her findings for whatever reason. This is prevailent in the Sega Saturn emulation scene, and somewhat prevailent in others aswell, such as Sega Master System emulation, Nintendo 64 emulation, and others. It only slows down progress of that system's emulation as a whole.

Personally, if you don't like the GPL, I think that rather than releasing your final version to the public domain, yuo should keep it licensed under your own current license, the BSNES Reference License, but assign others the right the licensor (i.e. the part in your license where you say "The licensor" means the copyright holder of the software, byuu.").
You could maybe keep the rights to this license, but maybe modify it and allow others to have that "main developer to which all code goes to" right, through asking you for permission. That way, even if only one person gets a certain peice of code from someone, they with the "developer" rights can still pass the code that's offered to other people that you've granted "developer rights".

Still, answer this: zsnes is under the GPL, and has that done it any harm?

PS:
You may be reading this and be thinking "he's trying to convince me to change my mind". Well, I'm not really doing that at all. If you release your software to the public domain, I still respect that since it's your software, and you have the right to decide what you do with it. I'm just stating my own opinion really; you obviously don't have to agree.
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I'm a sad little tool.

[mudlord]

[ZH/Franky]

[Nach]

[mnk]

Just to make sure, all of those
'signed byte value exceeds bounds' warnings nasm spits out
are safe to be ignored ?

[Nach]

[I.S.T.]

[mnk]

[Rashidi]

[Nach]

[mnk]

Never mind, it looks like those warning, while
not bugs, are simply aftereffects of a certain bugfix
in nasm, so they seem to be safe to be ignored.

[TheManuel]

Thank you.
That's it.