MagicEngine

[jammaniaclord]

from september 19th 09, comes this blurb that shocked me;



'Turbo Duo emulation
This, on a PC, generally sucks. Or at least it did before I jumped ship to the Xbox. Maybe it's improved. For a start the emulator hailed as the best for several years, Magic Engine, the author requires purchasing of the emulator for full use, which I object to for numerous reasons. So I cracked it. Charging for a program which allows you to freely and illegally play games is hypocritical, and goes against the spirit of the emulation scene. Plus other authors do it for free. I say boycott Magic Engine. Then there’s the fact that it won’t load ISOs or any kind of CD rip (perhaps newer version do). My CD drive broke, so I bought an external USB one, and then it wouldn’t recognise that, thereby leaving me unable to load any CD games. Other emulators thankfully came out, but these were either in Japanese, required mounting via virtual drive (a messy business), or required exact rips with correct audio track lengths and an annoying text file listing the order of tracks and when they start and stop. Why? Sega CD emulators don’t need TOC files or virtual drives for CD rips, just load and go. Those things will run anything. I just want to click on an ISO or a BIN and have it work without question. Eventually I gave up on emulating the Turbo Duo on my PC, having gone through several emus, and switched to the latest Xbox emulator (I think it was MednafenX-PCE - it has the Bonk's Adventure skin/theme with it). Regardless of the format or the quality of the rip, it loads stuff, and every conceivable TOC was included, saving lazy people like me the hassle. Hell, it loaded everything. I hear Hu-Go on the PC is very good, but I can’t face returning to the world of emulating the Duo on a PC. Turbo Duo emulator authors needs to start focusing on ergonomics and ease of use – virtual drives? TOC files? What the hell. Just make it work.'




respectufully i would have to say you were lazy, granted it would be nice to have a click and run bin or whatever, but i have never found it to be an issue doing it the daemon tools route with a cue sheet, and comes on pretty easily.


charging for an emulator may be a gray area, but this is the best emulator i have ever tried for pc engine, and the authors work hard as you can see in the fine work displayed when you fire it up with the nice gui and easy layout, and its efficiency to be compatible with almost every single game. when i see quality from private citizens like this, i feel compelled to help them for their time.........most people will not even donate on those sites that have a donate button, to help the people who have kids and a wife, and school/job, who sacrifice their time from their families here and there with late nights, just so some lazy old slob, or young file leecher, can enjoy some games, un-thankfully. so charging a monetary 1 time fee for the emulator is a small sacrifice for for all their hard work/many sacrifices, is excusable in my book.



respect.
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The J'lord!

[David Shadoff]

The author should have published the original article in a magazine called "Hardcore Piracy", as his goals are clearly not the same as the goals of MagicEngine.

MagicEngine (and in truth, many emulators from the dawn of the emulation scene) was written for preservation of the games that people owned and loved, not for wholesale thievery.

The reason it doesn't facilitate cue/mp3 rips are several, but basically it's because the intent was to allow people who actually owned the games to run them elsewhere. If you have the original disc, it's dead easy.

Well, couple that with the fact that bad rips are too plentiful, and cause more serious problems with PC Engine games (and the fact that the MagicEngine authors would rather not spend the rest of their lives providing free support to people who often aren't grateful), and you have no good reasons for supporting any other format.

I despair the fact that this was even published; it speaks volumes about the state of editorial and publishing in the world today: the author freely admits that he's lazy, can't be bothered to pay for something, or even to understand the technology he's dealing with. He freely admits to a crime, and tries to legitimize it with a non-sequitur ("goes against the spirit of the emulation scene" - What "scene" ? What "spirit" ? Why is this view supposedly legitimate ?). He doesn't actually evaluate any features, pros/cons, quality of emulation, or actually anything about the program. He simply lets loose with a some complaints based on a questionable view of the universe. Sad.

The only good thing that this vapid article has done for anybody, is to dissuade lazy 'freetards' from wasting the time of David, Cedric, and the supporting community. And perhaps it will help justify a piracy conviction later in his life.

[bernielindell]

I agree with you 100 percent David. This is a sad rant of an article. I was shocked to see it. 19 dollars people! 19 freaking dollars. Its a small fee for such a great emu. The whole thing was opinion based, and negative. I for one, love the emulator. Its the best thing since the Turbo Duo. It has brought back lots of good memories!

[jammaniaclord]

In the famous words of comic book man from The Simpsons, best emu... Ever!
_________________
The J'lord!

[Validus]

Wow i never read that.

Anyways, There is no doubt ME has the best quality out there by far and the authors do work hard, not to mention 100percet compatibility.

But if the authors did not intend it to be a free emu than one has to respect that.
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soon2 be famous rapper - myspace.com/vallabillz

[stevek666]

[adam]

screw that guy and screw the "scene".

[bigcitynights]

[NightWolve]

Yeah, bravo David! I really enjoyed reading that! Nail on the head.

jammaniaclord, where did this take place, in a thread or in one of their blogs?

This thread caught my attention because I too was essentially flamed (well, it was more like an op-ed hit piece having been written about you) 3 weeks ago by some lame flame brain there on their staff (Sketcz), but not in some hidden, tucked away thread, rather on their blog frontpage.

It was originally right here:

http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/
http://blog.hardcoregaming101.net/2009/10/ys-iv-dawn-of-ys-fan-dub.html

A few weeks back, a fellow shows up that wants to continue the dubbing project for Ys IV and I ran into him on youtube. So, I make contact with him to try to work together to make it happen. I later told Arjak it would be a good idea to make some more threads about this to help him recruit voice actors on say the PC Engine FX forums and what not. He did, but he also made a thread on the HG 101 forums right here... This Sketcz douchebag sees Arjak's thread, and then decides to write up mostly a hit piece about me using the annoucement aspect of this dubbing project as cover.

Ostensibly his article/post/entry was about informing the public about a possible Ys IV dubbing project, but then when you would click into it, you see the whole thing and find that it was mainly about "sticking it" to the big, bad NightWolve. Yess, little ole me... He made up wild accusations that I had taken all my patches down, and was trying to keep the world from getting them, even though he posted a link to my blog/site which if you clicked, you would find a download panel with all the patches available. He made other wild accuations, but the best of it all was that he made an image with the communist hammer and sickle symbol on it, his angle being that I naturally thought of him as a commie-pinko, which he was actually right about! Heh-heh. Communists as a whole apparently haven't racked up enough of a body count so it's still "cool" and "edgy" to use their symbolism unlike say the Nazi swastika. The fool probably has a Che Guevara t-shirt somewhere.

Anyway, at this point, I'm wondering what to do. Do I ignore or combat? So I posted my rebuttal to his post, but it was never approved for public viewing. I contact Kurt Katala because I've spoken with him before. He's the guy that made the awesome Ys review and I was under the impression that he ran the place or was one of the admins. I made my case, told him this fool has made blatant, wild accusations that are easily disproven, and asked action be taken. Long story short, he apologizes, erases the guy's post, and adds a minor retraction. I haven't responded back to him yet, but I intend to because it's like, why did you allow this to happen in the first place along with the fact that you know me ? Ever since, you only see the 5 comments others made that were the result of his original post.

So yeah, my opinion has also soured of HG101 somewhat. I knew Kurt from Deuce and his awesome Ys review, so I'm kinda disappointed he, let alone the fool that made the post, didn't bother to speak to me first about any of it. As far as Sketcz is concerned, the mission was accomplished. There's a certain percentage of viewers that'll never see the retraction/apology, cause they'll never click back into that post... I actually made a comparison in my rebuttal to how the news media behaves in that regard. They target an enemy, start up a firestorm by completely lying, distorting, smearing, slandering, making up wild accusations, with no source links, no original quotes, etc. nothing... Pulling "facts" off of a vandalized Wikipedia article even. Then when the dust settles, the smoke clears and it becomes clear their "facts" were not actually true, they spend 5 seconds issuing a retraction/apology, then quietly move on to something else... Almost EXACTLY what happened here.

At any rate, I thought I'd share all that because there were so many similarities to the person that jammaniaclord is talking about and it was HG101 again. Same mentality. Sketcz also played the "It's supposed to be free" card with regard to my patch software. "It goes against the spirit of the 'community'!", "It's illegal!", or "Hey, others do it for free, so haha, I'm cracking it!" Another reason I agreed with his use of "commie-pinko" for himself. Heh-heh.

[AmigaHeretic]

[jammaniaclord]

Nightwolve,

I was just perusing google's search results for pc engine related material, being that i have been mildly active in it since i married and have children and the responsibilities tied to this lifestyle, and was interested in seeing something possibly new. I saw this site and started to reAd, and was awestruck at what was unfurling before my pixel-strained eyes.

I had never stumbled across this site, and the impression bequeathed unto my brain prompted me to post this rant here, due to its infantile entity.

I respect freedom of speech, and each individuals right to it, but this same freedom allows THIS individual the right to refuse rubbish.

AmigaHeretic,

Cool screen name btw! I have seen ur name before and thought it was creative. Anyway.....

I didn't write that quote you posted inyour reply, this was from an article taken from hg101, that i felt needed to be procured in the halls of the ME forums for all to analyze and interpret for their own amusement.

Just wanted to make sure you didn't get the wrong picture of me, is all.

= )
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The J'lord!

[AmigaHeretic]

@jammaniaclord

Yeah, I knew you were just posting it from someone else, rereading what I posted it could look like I was talking to you though.

Yeah, as you can tell from the nick I like Amigas too Ah the good old days!