byuu on ars

[sweener2001]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011 ... ulator.ars

interesting-ish read.

he does like to point out faults in zsnes, but that's probably because it's still the most popular.

is there a particular thread somewhere or log or quick summary someone can give about the rift between byuu and most of the rest of the scene?

[grinvader]

or quick summary

Here you go:

He sucks. Game over.


Quick enough for you ?

[sweener2001]

i suppose that will have to do.

[Gil_Hamilton]

Grinvader's just sore about the bzsnes source leak. Don't let it get to you.

[paulguy]

He makes some good points bbut he seemed to completely ignore the fact that his emulator has a much lower requiremennt performance core; instead he went on about how everyone should have a 3ghz core 2 duo or newer, which is still not terriibly reasonable to assume, yet, especially with a lot of people who only have laptops.

I am mostly sick of seeing let's plays where they're playying a game that's buggy in zsnes or whatever and won't try a different emulator, though. They just go on complaining about the game beiing buggy, but won't do anything about it.

[grinvader]

Grinvader's just sore about the bzsnes source leak. Don't let it get to you.

hehehe :)

[paulguy]

He was wrong about that DICE emulator. It runs flawlessly full speed on here.

[mudlord88]

He makes some good points bbut he seemed to completely ignore the fact that his emulator has a much lower requiremennt performance core; instead he went on about how everyone should have a 3ghz core 2 duo or newer, which is still not terriibly reasonable to assume, yet, especially with a lot of people who only have laptops.

He also completely misses the point that you don't really need a 3Ghz Sandy Bitch for SNES emulation. It should be a worse case scenario, not the best one.

blargg, Sinamas, AamirM, and Marty have proved its possible to make emulators that are super fast *and* cycle accurate. Seems byuu is just butthurt due to his emulator design.

Hence why he is not well liked. His views are toxic.

[Gil_Hamilton]

I may not NEED a sandy bitch, but I'd sure LIKE one.

[paulguy]

He makes some good points bbut he seemed to completely ignore the fact that his emulator has a much lower requiremennt performance core; instead he went on about how everyone should have a 3ghz core 2 duo or newer, which is still not terriibly reasonable to assume, yet, especially with a lot of people who only have laptops.

He also completely misses the point that you don't really need a 3Ghz Sandy Bitch for SNES emulation. It should be a worse case scenario, not the best one.

blargg, Sinamas, AamirM, and Marty have proved its possible to make emulators that are super fast *and* cycle accurate. Seems byuu is just butthurt due to his emulator design.

Hence why he is not well liked. His views are toxic.

I see. That makes sense. Though isn't his philosophy to make his code understandable and readable (assuming you care about C++0x..)? So it could be used as more of a documentation? I'm not much of a programmer so I haven't read much of his code, and I also don't know much about computer/electrical engineering so I'd have nothing to really go by, but in that case, it'd make sense to sacrifice optimization for code readability.
I'm not entirely defending him, really, I'm just mentioning things I've heard. On the other hand, his intention with the article is that his emulator is something to be "used" rather than just a documentation of the hardware in software, which is a bit of a conflict of what he's said in the past. If his emulator was to be used by gamers looking to play games or even developers looking to make games or hacks, then he would be better to go the optimization route.
So yeah, as you said, I guess he's just butthurt that people aren't using his emulator. Thing is, not enough people even use snes9x or stuff that's at least better than zsnes. :p

[Gil_Hamilton]

I think he wanted someone ELSE to make an optimized emulator based on his research, and his emu would remain "documentation" like MAME claims.

But no one did. So in the absence of OTHER options, he wants peopel to use his(ESPECIALLY for development), because it actually emulates the SNES accurately.

[Nightcrawler]

I have to laugh a bit when I hear people talking about code as a substitute for documentation. Un-commented code like BSNES (I haven't seen MAME) will never be a substitute for documentation. First, it's useless to anyone who isn't proficient in the language it was written in. That means it's useless to anyone in the world interested in the SNES, but not proficient in C++. You know, people who 'just' read English or any other written language. Programming languages are an extremely poor choice for communication between humans. Also, people who 'just' know 10 other programming languages, but not C++. Or, they know C++, but not to the level of byuu. I'd guess that eliminates the majority the interested parties alone.

Secondly, these guys seem to think they write and organize such perfectly clear code that it would be trivial for any other person to look up any part of the system quickly and determine it's functionality. Your organization and/or code is never as super as you think when seen from the perspective of another. Nobody's is. A written document with pages and a table of contents will always be far more efficient and informative than raw source code ever could.

I am fearful of a bleak future where we preserve and communicate information via raw source code only... Ugh... Source code is not documentation!

[paulguy]

See: APIs where the only documentation is header files and source, and even asking for help gets responses like "oh just read the source code.".

EDIT: Then when you think that's ridiculous they're just like "Well, why don't YOU write the documentation.". That's complete nonsense.

[Deathlike2]

I am fearful of a bleak future where we preserve and communicate information via raw source code only... Ugh... Source code is not documentation!

If he stops reprogramming it after a few months, he'll forget half of what his code will do... or maybe he'll redo everything again.

Reminds me the days where my college professor talked about javadoc... useful in theory, pointless in practice (that's not what he said, that's just my interpretation years later).

[mudlord88]

Nobody's is. A written document with pages and a table of contents will always be far more efficient and informative than raw source code ever could.

I am fearful of a bleak future where we preserve and communicate information via raw source code only... Ugh... Source code is not documentation!

Or in BASS's case, do both. Source code examples on API usage, as well as commented headers and a manual.

[badinsults]

That article is nothing new for anyone here who has been following the development of bsnes over the years.

Essentially, despite statements stating otherwise, byuu is still jealous that people still use zsnes and snes9x over bsnes.

Also, I can't agree more about Nightcrawler's assessment that source code is no substitute for documentation. Even though I sometimes write novels in my code, I sometimes have to go through things line by line to understand code I haven't looked at for months. I think one of the biggest weaknesses with computer science (in my experience) is poor documentation. As an example, I've scanned through the Fortran ISO standards documents, and I think that it would be nearly impossible to create a compiler from the documents because they do not detail every case of how to implement intrinsics, leaving it up to the interpretation of the programmer.

[sweener2001]

i certainly do remember many of the arguments that he used in the article.

something interesting for me was that while i was reading the article, i just got more excited for zsnes 2.0.

[badinsults]

Ultimately, the best form of documentation would be to create a circuit design to replicate the chip. I guarantee if someone did that, there would be pirates all over it creating clones. Hell, there already are clones out there, so someone must have figured out most of the hardware already. A software emulator is probably not the appropriate means to do a 100% simulation of a silicon chip, given computing requirements. You are already handicapped by the fact that there is a latency of executing computer commands versus the direct execution within a physical transistor.

[michealPW]

Reading these comments here reminded me of Slashdot, where nobody bothers to read the featured article before commenting.

Most of the article is comparing bsnes to an emulator from the early 1990s called "Nesticles". It worked around PC hardware limitations and the emulator's design by modifying the actual games. The result was a tonne of games that could only run on that emulator, not even on the original hardware the game was developed for. It then compared bsnes to another emulator ("DICE") that when created, couldn't be run by any traditional PC available on the market. It also went on to mention Nintendulator, Nestopia and even UltraHLE among other emulators.

It's important to remember that this is not a zero-sum game. In order for Byuu to make a high-accuracy bsnes, zsnes does not have to go away or become irrelevant. There's no reason why Byuu can't work on bsnes while the zsnes team continues to work on their emulator. In fact, my family uses both. On a low-end desktop my kids use zsnes. My brother's PC is low-powered and uses zsnes as well. I personally have a very powerful PC and I also like to play old NES games, which is why I use bsnes.

Direct from the article:

I see no reason why we should not be utilizing every last ounce of power that we have available today—or perhaps even a little bit more in anticipation of faster hardware in the future. The older emulators are not going away: they are still there for folks with older, slower hardware.

So what's with all the attacks against Byuu here? In English, this is known as "Argumentum Ad Hominem" where you cannot dispute the facts so you resort to attacking the person who is presenting the facts, in a desperate attempt to discredit them. Even high school graduates would have learned, this is a fallacious argument

Another common theme in this thread is "Argumentum Ad Populum" where you try to imply quality through popularity. So when you see people trying to imply the superior quality of zsnes here 'cause "nobody is using bsnes", that's just "Argumentum Ad Populum" and it's as equally fallacious as Ad Hominem is

My question is, why can't we all just get along? The work being done by Byuu, Dr. Decapitator and many others are invaluable in my personal opinion. It certainly shouldn't be met with ignorant hostility.

I say ignorance not as an insult, instead I use it because it's quite obvious many of the opinions voiced here are rooted in profound ignorance. Ignorance of software engineering, ignorance of the hardware engineering that went into older consolers and ignorance of the work that goes into reverse engineering integrated circuits. Ignorance of the commented-doc. that is found all over the object-oriented C++ source that makes up the entirety of bsnes... Most importantly, ignorance of the mixture of structured C and inline, imperative Assembly found in zsnes' source.)

Lastly, but certainly not least... A Core 2 Duo is != Sandy Bridge/"Bitch", (That's NOT equal to..) contrary to the confusing wording of the two product names. Core 2 Duo is the old multi-core CPUs from Intel based on their low-power Pentium M architecture, including but not limited to the dual core 3ghz E8500. A Sandy/Ivy Bridge is Intel's latest product which uses a completely different architecture from the old Core 2's, the "Core" architecture. This provides up to 8 cores, each of which are hyper-threaded for a total thread count of 16, compared to the Core 2's 2 threads as each of it's 2 cores are not hyper-threaded... In addition to this huge difference in thread-capabilities (Read: parallel computing capabilities) the old Core 2's Pentium M architecture does not have an on-die GPU like the Ivy/Sandy does.

Now that we've got those inconvenient facts out of the way, how unattainable is a dual-core processor in 2012? That's what byuu is talking about when he says "Core 2 Duo", not a rippin' 16 thread Ivy Bridge. Granted, I'm posting this to an old discussion before the new Ivy Bridge was out, however the difference between a "Core 2 Duo" and even a now-aging "Sandy Bridge" cannot be overstated

[Gil_Hamilton]

Now that we've got those inconvenient facts out of the way, how unattainable is a dual-core processor in 2012?

Less than it was in 2011, when the last post to this thread was made.

You've resurrected a 15-month dead piece of flamebait and sarcasm. Congratulations.

[mz]

where nobody bothers to read the featured article before commenting.

an emulator from the early 1990s called "Nesticles"

Yeah, "Nesticles"... It's NESticle, you fucking retard.

Go back to Slashdot and never leave again. I bet you're a fag like byuu.

[adventure_of_link]

Yeah, "Nesticles"... It's NESticle, you fucking retard.

Go back to Slashdot and never leave again. I bet you're a fag like byuu.

Less than it was in 2011, when the last post to this thread was made.

You've resurrected a 15-month dead piece of flamebait and sarcasm. Congratulations.

Gil called it... but in any case, at least this activity is somewhat better than the spam tsunami we're getting...

[michealPW]

where nobody bothers to read the featured article before commenting.

an emulator from the early 1990s called "Nesticles"

Yeah, "Nesticles"... It's NESticle, you fucking retard.

Go back to Slashdot and never leave again. I bet you're a fag like byuu.

More ad-hominem attacks. Ignoring the facts you're too ignorant to properly vet, wooO you sure showed me

[adventure_of_link]

where nobody bothers to read the featured article before commenting.

an emulator from the early 1990s called "Nesticles"

Yeah, "Nesticles"... It's NESticle, you fucking retard.

Go back to Slashdot and never leave again. I bet you're a fag like byuu.

More ad-hominem attacks. Ignoring the facts you're too ignorant to properly vet, wooO you sure showed me

Uh... I don't care if an attack is ad-hominem or not, at least try and get the name of the emulator right.

[michealPW]

where nobody bothers to read the featured article before commenting.

an emulator from the early 1990s called "Nesticles"

Yeah, "Nesticles"... It's NESticle, you fucking retard.

Go back to Slashdot and never leave again. I bet you're a fag like byuu.

More ad-hominem attacks. Ignoring the facts you're too ignorant to properly vet, wooO you sure showed me

Uh... I don't care if an attack is ad-hominem or not, at least try and get the name of the emulator right.

Right... 'cause my profound mistake in pluralizing the name is an impossible impasse, right?

After what, ~15 posts of complete nonesense, you're going to try and grill me about incorrectly pluralizing a name? That's priceless.