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So how is ME 1.0 FINAL progressing?
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KingHanco
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 24, 2006 10:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

dmichel wrote:
No sorry, this is closed beta testing. ^^;

We are a team of about 12 persons.


Oh ok. Team testing it only. Got it. Very Happy
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denzilla
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, its been 2 weeks.....Show me da money! Laughing
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KingHanco
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PostPosted: Tue Dec 05, 2006 8:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

denzilla wrote:
Okay, its been 2 weeks.....Show me da money! Laughing


Give them some more time to test. Very Happy
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denzilla
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 22, 2006 6:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, I see that FX will be here on the 25th. Hope ME gets some love after that Sad
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Kaminari
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 5:49 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Right now the priority is to iron out the major remaining bugs in MEFX, but many features of the FX emulator (custom resolutions, multires, PCM interpolation, mouse support maybe) should make it back into next versions of ME.
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denzilla
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 3:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm seriously not angry or trying too be a troll, but the priorities seems to change every time a post is made regarding ME and MEFX. Not too long ago it was said that once FX went out the door, ME would get some more work. You can go through a plethora of old posts, some of which date back years to see the pattern. Its extremely frustrating to be told time after time to wait just a little longer only too be let down yet again by another change in direction. A lot of other people here probably feel the same way but don't want to create waves by expressing it. The people inside David's "circle of trust" will no doubt come to this thread, bash me and tell me to go get some sun and be patient. Its easy to tell others to sit tight when you get a new beta to play with every couple of weeks.

All I want at this point is to be told the truth. If David wants to take 5 years off between versions of ME, no problem, just be straight. Don't tell people that something is coming, wait months, come back and say everything is on hold while the site is being massively updated only to make some little change in its appearance, and then finally change the focus to something else.

Hopefully, none of the few friends I have here will take my post the wrong way and be angry with me. Although I do have a life, I've been following the progression of ME 1.0 since about 2002. As a fan (and paying customer) of David's work, I just felt like it was time to call this to attention. ME was cheap, so its not like I was expecting anything, but the constant steak dangling needs to stop. With all due respect David, please finish something!
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dmichel
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 5:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The priorities didn't really change but things don't always work like planned, and problems can happen.

Let's go back in time. Very Happy

ME-FX was planned to be released like two years ago, at about the same time as ME 1.0, or a bit after. When I released ME 1.0, ME-FX was not ready but it looked like it didn't need much work to be completed. At that time I had tested it with about half the games, compatibility was 60-70% so all seemed good, but when I started to test the other games things started to look bad, compatibility went down to 40-50%, so I had to go back to work... As months were passing I saw that progresses were slow, the task was harder than what I had expected, but what could I do? If I stopped to work on ME-FX to make a new version of ME, this would delay again the release of ME-FX... I didn't really have choices, so I worked as much as I could to finish ME-FX.

This is when I started to have problems with e-mails, at first it was a minor problem, from time to time one or two e-mails would not reach their destination, but quickly this became a big problem, at the worse time I calculated that about 20% of the e-mails I was sending to ME users were blocked, this means that 20% of the people who were buying ME would have troubles to receive their keys, I could not accept that, so again no choice... I stopped to work on ME-FX and started to work on the web site support page... but I had never developed a web application before... this took me six months to write it, I had to learn PHP/SQL and tons of new things. The web update may seem small from the outside but there is a lot of code running inside.

Once all that sorted out back to ME-FX, after not too long the compatibility was looking good again so I started the final beta test. After one full month of hard work things finaly looked great, compatibility was excellent and Christmas was coming... the ideal time for a release! Very Happy

In the end what was supposed to take a few months ended up taking nearly two years. I understand your frustation but my plan didn't change it's just taking a lot more time than what was expected.

My original plan was :

* ME 1.0 release
* same time or a bit after ME-FX release
* 2-3 months after ME 1.0 for OS X
* 2-3 months after an update for ME

I'm still following that great plan, no 5-year vacation at Tahiti (I would need it though Cool).

What may happen though is a small ME update before the OS X release, to add the new features of ME-FX (custom res, ADPCM interpolation, etc... ) to ME. If it can be done quickly I will do it else this will happen after the release of the OS X version.

You know all now. Smile
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denzilla
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 6:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fair enough. I appreciate you taking the time to explain things more clearly. Have a great Christmas and Happy New Year! Smile
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Kaminari
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 7:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

denzilla wrote:
Its easy to tell others to sit tight when you get a new beta to play with every couple of weeks.


With all due respect, I think you seriously underestimate the amount of effort put into beta testing, which is not all that fun (stricto sensu, I didn't "play" at a single FX game during the beta phase). Secondly, the MEFX beta testing started less than two months ago, which means for most of 2006 the members of the beta team only had the old tech demo to play with, like everyone else.

Truth is, David announced four years ago that he had started working on a PC-FX emulator besides ME 1.0, and there's only so much one man can do in his spare time. ME 1.0 was out two years ago, with a number of fixes released now and then. Today is MEFX 1.0's turn. I don't see any particular change of focus here. The long waits are frustrating indeed; but as we know, later or sooner, David delivers the goods.
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denzilla
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 23, 2006 7:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Three things:

1. I fully understand what beta testing means as I've done it for emulators as well as Windows Apps.

2. ME 1.0 wasn't released as final. It stopped at PR10

3. David resolved the matter with post #2

Thanks for replying though.
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Kaminari
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 9:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

denzilla wrote:
ME 1.0 wasn't released as final. It stopped at PR10


Release numbering is a very subjective matter, no two developers number their projects the same way. ME 0.99 stopped at beta 5 while being fairly complete. ME 1.0 PR10 could actually be named ME 1.10.

Just out of curiosity, what do you exactly expect from a "final" version? I know what I personally expect from future releases: better compatibility of course (but that's an everlasting on-going process for any project out there), multires support, interlacing support, mouse support, MB128 support, selectable ACD/SCD support... But these features can certainly wait a little longer, can't they.

The only frustration I can really sympathize with is the lack of MacOS support. But then again it's a closed-source project and the man's plate is full already. I don't know what David's plans are for a future OS-X port of ME and MEFX.
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denzilla
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 4:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think if David himself considered the last release of ME final, he would've labeled it 1.0 instead of 1.0PR10. We can agree that software such as ME/FX are evolving projects, so the term final is rather misleading. When a dev signs something off as "Final" they're satisfied that its primarily free of show stopping bugs and is stable. Thats not to say it doesn't have bugs, just that it won't format someone's HDD when executed Wink Basically what I myself expect in 1.0 is further improvements to the controller config, and the ability to change all the settings from the GUI. The current implementation of the controller config is un-intuitive compared to 9.9 and I still have some button detection issues that linger (already reported). Greater accuracy is always welcome but thats a given.
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Joel Schmidt
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PostPosted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 11:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kaminari wrote:
The only frustration I can really sympathize with is the lack of MacOS support. But then again it's a closed-source project and the man's plate is full already. I don't know what David's plans are for a future OS-X port of ME and MEFX.



To quote that helpful Moblin in the original Legend of Zelda:

It's a secret to everybody.

Wink
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tisurame
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 12:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
many features of the FX emulator (custom resolutions, multires, PCM interpolation, mouse support maybe) should make it back into next versions of ME.


About custom resolutions...I hope it works like MagicEngineV0.9.9 beta 5, and not like the FX emulator, since with this one you can't select resolutions below 640x480 and there isnt a auto resolution switch option.
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dmichel
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 1:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

MEFX should detect lower resolutions than 640x480, it works like the old MagicEngine, minimun size is 512x448. What are the resolutions that are not seen by the emulator?

About auto resolution, yup that will be back in MagicEngine, in the FX it's not really needed, the FX doesn't have as much resolution choices.
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