Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Mame 0.142u3 made big strides towards the MAME/MESS codebase merge, however, unsurprisingly the move has since hit political roadblocks, and the majority of the work I put into doing this for the release has once again been reverted.

It’s a shame that in this day and age there are people involved in the teams who have no interest in progress, no interest in advancing the project, but just want to block changes and prevent progress being made entirely for political reasons, and personal grudges.

At least one member of the ‘team’ (if you can still call it that) has stated, explicitly, that he’s opposed to the changes because they would allow me a way back into the project somehow. This isn’t even logical, the official team is meaningless, and there is no reason to be a part of it anymore anyway! The real MAME development is determined by who actually contributes, who actually writes the code and improves the emulator, which is something I’ve continued to do for years even with certain idiots holding grudges against me, acting like I only do anything for personal benefit.

So yes, once again.. Emupolitics, fun, it’s the bane of the scene, and as one other wise person, who has also stopped contributing due to similar political nonsense once said, a huge cancer on the MAME project.

I hold a little hope that common sense will prevail, and that everything will actually be moved to a single, public SVN, with single, public mailing least, and clear public plans, but it seems too many people involved want to hold on to some sense of elitism for that to happen.

If nothing changes then unfortunately the leadership changes will have been nothing but a false dawn, which leaves me at something of an impasse.

If I continue to contribute, I’m doing nothing but feeding a political machine, giving the ‘official’ team a false sense of value, if I don’t contribute, actual arcade games are at risk.

I’ve tried hard to get the project to be more open, for everybody’s benefit, I spent the majority of the time in charge of the project doing the very same thing, bringing source updates, news, progress, and the ability to contribute much closer to the average user, however it seems here my efforts are in vain. There simply will be no progress towards making things better for everybody as long as people on the teams wish to spite me, and go against things, not for any logical reason, but instead just because they were my ideas, or somehow reduce their own personal ‘status’ (meaning they would have to actually contribute to still be considered a part of the project rather than just being on a list)

I’ve tried to encourage people to contribute, the last 3 updates here point out ways in which the project could be improved, ways in which people can contribute directly, but again, I’ve got actual devs saying that they won’t work on the things listed because some of them are ‘skeleton’ drivers I’ve created, that I created them to steal all the fame, and all the glory, and that if they get left in their current non-working state it serves me right for creating them in the first place. Nonsense. Again, it just comes back to the same problem, once the driver is public, at all, it’s no longer ‘elite’ to work on it, they no longer have some kind of exclusive right to work on it because anybody could do it. Again, it’s just political nonsense, and a way to try and spite me and make me look bad for doing a good thing. Are these really people who should be involved in the project anyway, let alone making decisions on it’s direction?

The same people continue to make claims saying that I overstate my own contribution, that I don’t really do anything of note, yet I’m not even sure what more I could be doing to counter that argument? I’ve still involved heavily from day to day, from the smallest changes, to some of the biggest ones, working with huge parts of the codebase, picking up and updating long abandoned drivers, adding new things, getting people involved, and trying to get things moving forward again (albeit evidently failing at that part)

There are a lot of people who don’t contribute to the project because they see it as some kind of political machine, not what it should be, an emulator which emulates whatever it can. Unfortunately times like this simply highlight that they’re correct, for some it’s just a political power game to feed their own egos, regardless of what would actually be best for the project in the long run such as making it more open and making decisions more transparent.

Some food for thought there anyway. All I can say is, I’m sorry guys. I tried.