Talk:Emulator List

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Colours

What do you think about using the gentler colours from the Will X run on the Pandora? arricle? The red colour in particular is hard on the eyes when you try to read the text written under it. Esn 01:24, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

I agree, probably not worth changing the green and yellow though. Will update it. --Cheese 02:37, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

Multi line items

I'd like to suggest that we try to keep the number of lines an entry on the list takes up to be no more than 2. With todays widescreen monitors theres really no sense in forcing someone to see something over two lines when it could easily fit on one. And for people stuck with smaller monitors, spreading out over multiple lines can happen automatically. Let me know if you (Esn) mind before one of us changes it. --Cheese 02:54, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

How would you fix this? I can see only a few that take up more than 2 lines right now (at a resolution of 800px wide). One is Winbox, because the "Notes" is longer than others (but necessary, I think), and the others are Mupen64 and SNES9x, because a few different coders are listed. Oh, and 2 more: one of the "Vice" versions because it emulates so many things ("Commodore CBM2/C128/PET/Plus4/VIC") and PicoDrive (same reason). Please tell me what fix you have in mind. I think, though, that the wiki must be kept compatible with the Pandora screen resolution. If you just mean not putting every port author on a separate line (using commas instead) if there are more than 2 of them, then sure. Esn 07:50, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

All I had in mind was to just not add new line breaks to the items. The browser can sort out the line breaks. While were on the subject of conserving width, is there a way to have the notes be "collapsible" or hidden? I know this can be done through html/css/javascript/etc, but what about through the limited wiki markup? Right now it's not really an issue, but I think it would make the list much more readable if the notes could be hidden. Do you think that's a good idea? --Cheese 10:18, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

Yeah, that's fine. Collapsibility for long notes seems like a nice idea. I haven't studied the "hide" feature too much, but there's an article on Wikipedia describing how it works over here. Esn 10:30, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

Also, do you have any thoughts about the discussion here? Have you had a chance to use Dosbox on your Pandora? Esn 10:36, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

Dosbox doesn't really interest me that much. I was pretty young when DOS was still in it's prime, I learned to read by playing Word Rescue, lol. As for the wiki compatibility list... people seem afraid to edit wikis for some reason, if using Google docs means were not the only people maintaining it then I'm all for it. I'm finding it hard enough to keep up with the new games and emulator releases at the moment, and I'm trying to put more energy into the other sections of the wiki as well.

I'll look into collapsing tomorrow, I'm already up way later than I should be (2 am here). --Cheese 10:50, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

Heh... DOS was my childhood, basically. I never owned any consoles that hooked up to TVs. Apparently most other people did, so the games I loved back then never really entered popular culture (Commander Keen 4-6, Jazz Jackrabbit... most things by Apogee, actually. And Star Control 2 & 3). So as this is "relevant to my interests", I'll try and create a compatibility list and hope that more people get to updating it (how many people edit the Google Docs documents, anyway? It's probably never more than a few people doing the upkeep, no matter what you use...) Esn 15:05, 16 July 2010 (MEST)

To clarify the line break issue a bit, my issue was more specifically with the author names and download links. If you think adding a line break will make it look better, go for it (like what I just did with the SUPA entry on Software projects).

I don't know about the number of people maintaining the Google docs list, but I do know they're not the same people maintaining the wiki. If there's a DOS game you're curious about I can load it up and tell you how it's running, as long as it doesn't require me using the nubs that is, I'm now completly nubless :(. --Cheese 05:45, 17 July 2010 (MEST)

Hide/show

When I click on "show", a "#" gets added to the URL: http://pandorawiki.org/Emulator_list# and I'm redirected to the very top of the page, so that I have to scroll down again to see what it says. Esn 23:30, 20 July 2010 (MEST)

Yes, I know about this, just haven't had a chance to look into it yet. --Cheese 03:19, 21 July 2010 (MEST)

OK, I've got it sorted out. ED has the changes and will apply them when he has time. --Cheese 07:40, 21 July 2010 (MEST)

easy rpg

easy rpg isn't an emulator. It's an unreleased game engine. Could you please move it to unreleased games maplesugarlover 18:48, 7 February 2011 (MET)

I moved it for now, but I'm not sure if that's right, actually. It seems similar to ScummVM and FreeSCI, which are listed as emulators in the File Archive (subcategory "interpreter"). I've also seen it called "RPG Maker emulator" here and here. Esn 01:54, 8 February 2011 (MET)

The website says this "Create a free RPG Maker 2000/2003 clone, featuring game interpreter, game editor and art replacement" . If trying to be a clone of proprietary software makes it an emulator, then you should move Paintown to emulators, as Our goal is to be 100% compatible with M.U.G.E.N 2002.04.14 beta as well as supporting any new updates in the 1.0 version. If your definition of emulator includes software and not necessarily hardware then you're on a slippery slope. For example, are you saying that this quake 1 mod is a half life emulator ? Is Transfusion(on port requests) a emulation of blood ? Also scummVM is is a collection of game engine recreations. . The distinction between emulator , interpreter, and virtual machine is not much. Lastly, big problem is where to put emulators, the free-desktop standards do not have an emulators category. So while most emulators are of game machines, where would you put an emulator like mess , which emulates computers, video game consoles, and calculators ? In conclusion,I believe that easy rpg is a game engine and all the software should be on one page/ list which could then have sub categories like game engines and emulator. Then we wouldn't have this problem. maplesugarlover 04:01, 8 February 2011 (MET)

I think having everything on one page would create an even bigger problem, since one of the best things about listing emulators separately is that you can have specific columns such as "console emulated" and "compatibility list", and you can have the colour shades for ones that work well/poorly... because of those benefits, I feel it's best to keep things as they are, even if the distinctions are sometimes a bit fuzzy. Anyway, all of the places which keep Pandora downloads distinguish between the "game" and "emulator" categories, in fact Freedesktop is the first one I've seen that chooses to place "emulator" as a subcategory of "game". Esn 04:40, 9 February 2011 (MET)

I wasn't suggesting to merge all the lists, I was just trying to vent my frustration with Freedesktop. Other than not having an emulator category it seems to make sense. Then again, I could see how emulators are classified as games if your not knowledgeable about them. They do more than play old games , but that is a common use. Sorry, for going on a tangent. Also do Canadians use British spellings ? Americans spell color , Brits spell colour maplesugarlover 04:53, 9 February 2011 (MET)

Canadians use a mix of British and American spellings, yes. ;) Esn 03:55, 10 February 2011 (MET)

I redid the colors

Now there are five levels instead of three (unless you count Not Enough Info). However, this means that we're back to square one in marking down colors. I also made it easier inside the Edit Page to add colors to entries. Let's see some action here! Blue Protoman 20:47, 19 February 2011 (MET)

Where would something like DOSBox fall in? Almost all games are playable, but even for a 386 PC, they all require overclocking to be really fullspeed with no skipped frames. Esn 00:23, 20 February 2011 (MET)

VisualBoyAdvance is another one like that. Very good (or perfect) compatibility, but quite slow, needs heavy overclocking to run well. Maybe "yellow" should be changed to reflect those? Esn 00:31, 20 February 2011 (MET)

I'll think about that. Blue Protoman 00:38, 20 February 2011 (MET)

Basically, the issue is that compatibility and speed can be totally unrelated. For now, I added a line to yellow saying "OR compatibility is good, but most games don't run smoothly even with maximum overclocking." This is up for discussion. Esn 00:39, 20 February 2011 (MET)

Good move, though I changed it to be worded less awkwardly. Blue Protoman 00:49, 20 February 2011 (MET)

Thanks, that does sound better. From what I've heard, P-UAE is in this category as well. Esn 00:51, 20 February 2011 (MET)

Any chance there could be a different shade of yellow or green? may just be my partial colour blindness, but they seem pretty hard to distinguish on the table. A darker, forest green would probably work well, rather than a pastel yellow and green Rukal 16:52, 18 June 2011 (CEST)

Well, then the text would be harder to read. Which green do you have in mind? How does colour-blindness work... for example, if we changed the shade of green, might it become difficult for you to distinguish it from the blue? Esn 08:14, 24 June 2011 (CEST)

Game And Watch simulators?

You can't emulate a Game & Watch game, in its strictest terms. You can only simulate them; basically, remake them with the explicit intent of sticking extremely close to the original. This is because there's nothing to emulate; the game's done entirely analog. Closest you can get is the Game and Watch Gallery series. Also, there are no ROMs to dump or load; ever try to emulate an egg timer? Therefore, I am moving Game And Watch simulators to Games. Blue Protoman 01:14, 20 February 2011 (MET)