Just a quick update on the whole “JSMESS is now just something MAME does and so we should theoretically be able to update the Internet Archive’s emulation quickly” front.

It works.

MAME, that lovely thing, went from version 0.174 to 0.175 yesterday. It was pointed out to me pretty soon after the program dropped. Taking notes for later instructions, I began a process of compiling the new versions of the in-browser emulators for the Internet Archive. I used a “weighted library” approach, where the emulator with the most individual items in it (that would be the ZX Spectrum, at a svelte 20,000 items) gets compiled first, and then the next largest set of emulated items, and so on. There are roughly 700 emulator drivers on the Emularity at the Archive, but only roughly 30 have more than 1 item.

So, what this means is that within about 90 minutes of being informed about MAME 0.175, the Emularity on the Internet Archive was upgraded to match for 99 percent of all the items. 

The other hundreds of emulator drivers look to take about 12 hours in total to compile and install, but it’s pretty much 100% automatic, so it’s not taking a lot of time.

So consider that process doing extremely well.

But more than that, it’s definitely going to be a case of pushing for more and more people to contribute to the MAME project, because as proven here, if someone makes wholesale improvements to emulation support for something, the Archive will reflect it within 30 days. If the word comes down that the new thing is so amazing it can’t wait, it’s possible to declare that driver to be done immediately and updated to an in-beta version. Really, this is when I hope the advancements come. I hope it’s just a case that really talented programmers looking to make the world better just don’t know how easy it is to contribute to MAME now, and that it’s in github and open licensed, and once they find out, amazing optimizations and expanded work will make itself known.

We can hope! But until then… upgrading is definitely a snap now. Enjoy the new versions of everything.

Categorised as: Internet Archive

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