Discussion about future of PCSX2 development

[Arborea]

Dolphin devs invaded PCSX2 forums and there is discussion about future of PCSX2 development maybe someone skilled from here is willing to help PCSX2 project at least a little ?
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-PCSX2-dev...tributions
http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-In-latest...-K1-Jetson

[LordDF]

Since 'he' left, i think PCSX2 progress get a big hit. Wish i could help but i didn't have anything to give about programming.

But man, i never thought those avg thingie is a blasphemy to another developer. O_O

[Arborea]

(07-04-2014 04:05 PM)LordDF Wrote:  Since 'he' left, i think PCSX2 progress get a big hit. Wish i could help but i didn't have anything to give about programming.

But man, i never thought those avg thingie is a blasphemy to another developer. O_O

Are you talking about Gabest or Air ?

[[Unknown]]

Yes, the AVG thing is blasphemy. I wasn't super happy about the whole Gold personal beer-money donation thing, if the official releases of PPSSPP started coming with some toolbar you wouldn't see another commit from me.

Anyway, such a topic as that one on pcsx2's forum is ultimately just a pile of flames. Both sides are saying things that are completely true. That isn't going to get anyone anywhere. At best it will fire someone up, piss someone else off, and end up a wash.

I had been looking at pcsx2 before. It seemed difficult to get a PS2 set up to run hardware tests, and the code was messy. Also, do understand that the hardware seems very complex. Surely much much much harder than the PSP to emulate, which is almost a cakewalk in comparison (can't speak for Wii/Gamecube.)

Anyway, the main reason I didn't contribute to pcsx2 (at the time, now it would be AVG) was the opposite of the reason I did contribute to ppsspp: I don't like fighting users/hacks. When I first saw ppsspp, it could play like 1 game. So, it was really interesting - I'd never worked on an emulator before really, it'd be fun to play around. With pcsx2, I'm sure I could probably figure out some inaccuracies. Maybe make it faster. But I'd definitely break something, people would complain, hacks wouldn't work, it'd just be a mess.

Unfortunately, that's just not a very constructive reason for not contributing. It boils down to me being lazy; if I had the drive, I'd find something in pcsx2, people would complain and gnaw their teeth, and I'd see it through. But I just don't. It's a hard problem. It's simply not interesting enough to fight the battle.

If it had less hacks, this problem would be less so. But at the same time, probably less games would work or run on computers people have at decent speeds, so users would not test the new versions anyway. Catch 22s are not fun.

Point of my post: the situation sucks for everyone. There's no clear win.

-[Unknown]

[Arborea]

(07-04-2014 06:09 PM)[Unknown] Wrote:  Yes, the AVG thing is blasphemy. I wasn't super happy about the whole Gold personal beer-money donation thing, if the official releases of PPSSPP started coming with some toolbar you wouldn't see another commit from me.

Anyway, such a topic as that one on pcsx2's forum is ultimately just a pile of flames. Both sides are saying things that are completely true. That isn't going to get anyone anywhere. At best it will fire someone up, piss someone else off, and end up a wash.

I had been looking at pcsx2 before. It seemed difficult to get a PS2 set up to run hardware tests, and the code was messy. Also, do understand that the hardware seems very complex. Surely much much much harder than the PSP to emulate, which is almost a cakewalk in comparison (can't speak for Wii/Gamecube.)

Anyway, the main reason I didn't contribute to pcsx2 (at the time, now it would be AVG) was the opposite of the reason I did contribute to ppsspp: I don't like fighting users/hacks. When I first saw ppsspp, it could play like 1 game. So, it was really interesting - I'd never worked on an emulator before really, it'd be fun to play around. With pcsx2, I'm sure I could probably figure out some inaccuracies. Maybe make it faster. But I'd definitely break something, people would complain, hacks wouldn't work, it'd just be a mess.

Unfortunately, that's just not a very constructive reason for not contributing. It boils down to me being lazy; if I had the drive, I'd find something in pcsx2, people would complain and gnaw their teeth, and I'd see it through. But I just don't. It's a hard problem. It's simply not interesting enough to fight the battle.

If it had less hacks, this problem would be less so. But at the same time, probably less games would work or run on computers people have at decent speeds, so users would not test the new versions anyway. Catch 22s are not fun.

Point of my post: the situation sucks for everyone. There's no clear win.

-[Unknown]

It seems GSDX is particularly hard to understand can you make anything of GSDX ? . But basing emulation on hacks wasnt good idea there shouldnt be hacks in the first place. PCSX2 can run many games but many them have have terrible bugs, missing effects , shadows even textures etc and code base is mess so I think it would be interesting challenge but I understand many open source developers dont like stuff like bundled toolbars still would be great if you could consider ever making some contributions.

[Some1Else]

The issue of code quality has been an issue for such a long time. Unfortunately, when they actually did have devs constantly working on it, code quality was not actually a focus. Now what we are left with are a few people who dont understand the code so they just add more hacks instead of doing things like rewriting/killing GSDX. Having a graphics plugin that can only be understood by one person is a recipe for disaster. Not only that, but the who arch dependency that prevents like ARM and 64Bit support further hurts development.

[[Unknown]]

Well, the ps2 has iirc 128-bit regs. Personally, I think supporting that on any platform that has less than 64-bit regs is crazy. If it were me, I would focus entirely on 64-bit support and drop 32-bit support entirely. armv7 is probably not going to be reasonable, just armv8 at best (new, 64-bit devices.)

-[Unknown]

[tintinmayo]

Checked the thread and read almost half of it. I've been around since the CPS2/Razoola XOR debacle so I'm fairly desensitized to drama between emulator authors/users/whatnot, but the thread made me cringe when a Dolphin dev started proclaiming their emulator as better - which, even [if] objectively true - is still kind of rude. The PCSX2 devs seem to be avoiding confrontation with their tone but I haven't read all the way through.

EDIT: it seems they've finally gone on a more constructive and civil back-and-forth by page 18 of the thread.

[Arborea]

(07-05-2014 03:33 AM)Some1Else Wrote:  The issue of code quality has been an issue for such a long time. Unfortunately, when they actually did have devs constantly working on it, code quality was not actually a focus. Now what we are left with are a few people who dont understand the code so they just add more hacks instead of doing things like rewriting/killing GSDX. Having a graphics plugin that can only be understood by one person is a recipe for disaster. Not only that, but the who arch dependency that prevents like ARM and 64Bit support further hurts development.

Exactly it seems no except Gabest himself really understand his code so they cant really fix any bugs in GSDX except adding hackfixes which doesnt work correctly anyway and can introduce even more bugs.

---

(07-05-2014 03:51 AM)[Unknown] Wrote:  Well, the ps2 has iirc 128-bit regs. Personally, I think supporting that on any platform that has less than 64-bit regs is crazy. If it were me, I would focus entirely on 64-bit support and drop 32-bit support entirely. armv7 is probably not going to be reasonable, just armv8 at best (new, 64-bit devices.)

-[Unknown]

Emulating PS2 on 32bit doesnt make much sense but no one from current developers is willing to rewrite emulator for 64bit.

[LordDF]

(07-04-2014 04:21 PM)Arborea Wrote:  Are you talking about Gabest or Air ?

Air. The times he left the team, it almost like the time stop for pcsx2. Or maybe it is just me O_O

@unknown

I see. Personally I thought those avg thingie it would be a great idea and will benefit me as a PCSX2 user myself, but look's like it the exact opposite for the developer. I honestly didn't think from developer view before. I'm truly sorry for that.

Edit :

I think the discussion on PCSX2 leaning toward a good way. Hope it goes that way for the rest of it.

[VIRGIN KLM]

This thread just makes me lose my respect about some devs and people from Dolphin and PCSX2 scenes, I'm really disgusted by them right now. This thread should never exist, I bet it's going to hurt both projects. It's even funny to think that something good is going to come out of this thing, and I know for a fact that there are devs and people from both scenes that completely disagree with what's going on on that thread, some reached out to me in a private discussion to tell me that they disagree with what's being said there and that people from their scenes are nuts more or less and they don't want to get involved in the discussion in fear of being outcasted from their projects. This is not going to have a good ending, and when I say a bad ending, I mean a REALLY bad one.

[Bigpet]

(07-06-2014 01:41 PM)VIRGIN KLM Wrote:  This thread just makes me lose my respect about some devs and people from Dolphin and PCSX2 scenes, I'm really disgusted by them right now. This thread should never exist, I bet it's going to hurt both projects. It's even funny to think that something good is going to come out of this thing, and I know for a fact that there are devs and people from both scenes that completely disagree with what's going on on that thread, some reached out to me in a private discussion to tell me that they disagree with what's being said there and that people from their scenes are nuts more or less and they don't want to get involved in the discussion in fear of being outcasted from their projects. This is not going to have a good ending, and when I say a bad ending, I mean a REALLY bad one.

Aren't you a little bit too dramatic? I doubt that either pcsx2 or dolphin maintainers will reject patches based on purely political reasons. Whether either pcsx2 dev agree with the removal of the toolbar or dolphin devs are ok with it, neither is going to "cost them politically". This isn't some high-stakes political game.

They are wise to steer clear from that thread though, those discussions aren't very fruitful when they're out in the open and some stupid white-knights from either side are fanning the flames.

[VIRGIN KLM]

(07-06-2014 02:13 PM)Bigpet Wrote:  Aren't you a little bit too dramatic?

No I'm not and there are way too many people having EXACTLY the same thoughts as me and you'd be surprised to know who these are. This thing expands more than what you can publicly see on the thread which is already a living proof of what I'm saying above.

[Bigpet]

Alright kid, then you can write one of those "insider revelations" book that are so popular in the tech-world right now. Maybe you'll even sell the movie rights and we'll have the next "facebook" movie on our hands.

[KrossX]

It seems the exasperation is spreading. No need to taint another community with it.