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Out of the blue
Every once in a while, some random person out there will discover MAME, take the time to figure out how it works, and then submit something totally unexpected. This happened just recently.
When I originally added Shrike Avenger to the Bally/Sente driver, I didn't get very far. The basic game came up, but there were a lot of problems with it, and I didn't have enough interest in it to actually motivate myself to dig into solving the problems. Suffice it to say, they weren't easy problems to solve.
Last week, a submission came in through mame.net with a patch that actually made Shrike Avenger playable, albeit with messed up graphics. Yesterday another patch came through with the graphics fixed and the game fully playable. This is totally awesome, and literally came from out of the blue.
So, my hat is off to Peter Sealy, who sent in the patches and fixed the longstanding problems with this game. Here's hoping you'll find some other interesting tidbits in MAME to surprise us with in the future! :-)
Line of Fire revisited
I've been spending some time trying to understand what's going wrong with Line of Fire. The game randomly hangs at various points. When I went back to look at it, I noticed that I recently made it worse. Which is strange because I did not adjust the CPU interleaving factor recently.
What I did adjust was the behavior of the divide chip when doing a divide by zero. Turns out this game is very sensitive to the behavior of the divide chip. In order to track down these problems I will need to work with Charles MacDonald again to track down some of the edge case behaviors of the divide chip. We tried to figure some of this stuff out before, but did not come up with any useful results. Hopefully this time around things will fall into place!
Some basic answers
A lot of the worrying and questions on the previous post are silly. I'm closing down comments on that for now.
Answers to the obvious stuff:
1. You can discuss MAME all you want without putting a (tm) next to it. You'll notice that you don't have to put a (tm) next to Windows if you talk about it on a message board, now do you?
2. If you currently sell ROMs or ROM distribution services, you're already breaking the law. There is nothing new about the trademark apart from the fact that you can't use the name "MAME" to advertise your illegal services.
3. There is currently discussion going on around the MAME license. Getting the devs to agree on something like this is like herding cats, so it will take a while for some clarity to prevail there.
That's it for now. Go about your lives. Stop the hand wringing over what this all means. When official information becomes available, a lot of this will be made clear. Unfortunately this stuff takes time. Be patient.
MAME Trademark Update
I know a bunch of folks have been itching to know what's going on with the whole MAME trademark issue. Well, with the help of several prominent friends, we consulted a trademark attorney and decided to see if David Foley was up to his word.
Last week, Nicola's application began showing up in the USPTO database. Once that happened, I contacted Mr. Foley and asked him to abandon his claim to the trademark, which you can see he did.
So, what does this all mean? First, it means that the MAME trademark is in the hands of the people who really ought to own it.
Second, it means you can all end your hate mail campaigns against Ultracade and David Foley. Comments here which attack either will be deleted and users will be banned. There's really no sense in yelling and screaming; let's just all be adults about the matter (I realize that it's hard for some in this crowd, but please try).
Third, however, it means that some responsibility comes along with owning the trademark. In order to use the trademark, we are going to have to set up some rules under which it can be used. This is likely going to come in the form of, simply, "You must request explicit permission to use the MAME trademark."
Of course, permission will be given to many legitimate uses (still have to ask, though!) But there is indeed a growing commercial sector that is abusing the MAME name to make claims that aren't true without violating the law ("Play 1000s of arcade games!" -- yeah right, show me your license for that), and quite frankly, many of the MAME team members are as against that as Mr. Foley is.
We'll be announcing more details shortly, but the most likely end result is going to be: if you want to use the MAME name, you've got to get rid of your illegal ROM links, your information on how to buy/download illegal ROMs, and your claims that anything you sell will let you play 100s or 1000s of games (unless you've legitimately licensed them).
Panic Room
Now this was an intense little movie! I've been a big David Fincher fan since Se7en first came out. But for some reason, I never got around to seeing Panic Room in the theaters. The trailers pitched the movie as a bit more ... mainstream than his previous movies. I guess it just wasn't enough to get my butt into the theater.
At least I didn't miss out on seeing this movie altogether. I always enjoy seeing claustrophobic movies like this, where all the action takes place in a limited setting, and the cast list at the end is barely a page long. (One of my other favorite claustrophobic thrillers is Dead Calm.) Of course it helps when there is a top-notch cast and good acting all around. Jodie Foster is excellent as the mother trapped in the panic room, and Forest Whitaker brings a very real human side to the invaders who are trying to get into the panic room.
Of special note is the amazing cinematography in this movie. Which really shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone who has seen Fincher's other films. Some of the long camera shots through this giant four story house leave you wondering where and how they used CG to make it all look so seamless. The lighting and mood are perfect, and the suspense builds from the very beginning.
Overall, I was quite impressed. Not a perfect movie, but a darn good thriller. 3.5/4 stars.