Road Hog Mad Posted September 28, 2020 Report Share Posted September 28, 2020 My response was mearly answering a question with a bit of speculation thrown in, we all want the best outcome, we all feel for the loss of Chris and the sadness his family feels. I can't obide programming it irratates me as much as the X, my stance is clear.. I enjoy what was given to me for free, I won't hack it or attempt to do anything with it and will continue to enjoy the FME scene, its been quite interesting over the last 20 years! More so than Brookside, and I liked that. They do that doh don't deh 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zippy Posted September 28, 2020 Report Share Posted September 28, 2020 Wasn't having a pop mate I assure you, it is something that is and isn't on my mind (still a little disorientated if you know what I mean) I know you are feeling it mate still we all will for sometime but as I have said elsewhere baby steps. Hope everyone is well. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reg Posted September 28, 2020 Author Report Share Posted September 28, 2020 1 hour ago, Road Hog Mad said: No disrespect intended, just some research in relation to Danno's original question and some possible outcomes/solutions etc. Nobody said you were being disrespectful - but simply put the last line was simply not needed and it was easier to delete it all as I was on an iPad. You didn't get a PM, all is good and we leave it at that as far as I am concerned. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopaholic Posted September 28, 2020 Report Share Posted September 28, 2020 My 2p's worth on this is Chris most likely wouldn't want anyone mucking about with his code, by all accounts he never shared any of it with anyone over the years (I stand to be corrected on that if anyone knows different), and kept it very close to his chest. If his family hand over his computers or something at some point to a trusted person then fair enough I suppose, although I can't help but feel that his code will be so bespoke and unique that no one else will be able to do much with it anyway. (There's also the question of how locked down his equipment/drives was in terms of logons, encryption and suchlike.) My gut feeling is that V20.1 is the last version of MFME, which is an incredible legacy and something which emulates the overwhelming majority of fruit machines released in the last nearly 40 years, which is quite remarkable. I can't think of any significant historical techs that are missing, some more recent ones are missing such as MPU6 and is there HEBER and PLUTO or something? MPU6 is a bit of a shame as that's the tail end of Barcrest's output on the £70 jackpot, (and I believe some Reds too), and Barcrest are one of the major, long standing fruit machine companies. In terms of gaps in the fruit machine canon, they pale into insignificance when compared to the truly massive boost FME got with the release of V5.1 in Nov 2016 (so many new techs added), and everything Chris did with the releases since then up to V20.1. As for MFME breaking at some point in the future with a new version of Windows, I'd imagine it'll always be possible to run it in a virtualised environment even if it doesn't run natively on Windows at some point, it's pretty trivial to get old DOS and Windows 95 stuff running on modern PCs even now, for example. It is a worry though I admit, I mean, there's no guarantee that Microsoft won't release some sort of update for Windows 10 next month that breaks MFME in some fashion. However, on balance I'd hope MFME will work trouble free for many years to come yet, the original V5.2 of MPU3/4 from 2001 still runs fine in Windows 10, for example, and that's without even mucking about with compatibility mode. I agree with what Reg said in his original post, that the best way to carry on is take V20.1 as the line in the sand, and see what can be done as a scene to flesh out what's missing in terms of resources, ROMs and artwork for the missing machines, of which there are many. Most of these will probably work in the emulator as it is, some may not, and in those cases we will just have to accept they'll remain non-runners or partial runners. I think it's fine to have this conversation, I don't believe having the conversation in itself is disrespectful, in a way it's the more considered, less emotional version of what was expressed in The Saddest Day and Virtual Wake threads. 7 Fruit machine emulation content from the artist previously known as Degsy Degworth and the odd new thing here and there too - https://www.youtube.com/c/DegsyDegworth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted September 29, 2020 Report Share Posted September 29, 2020 14 hours ago, Reg said: It’s Delphi. Thanks Reg, Apologies if my original question took the thread off topic, not intentional. Also to be clear it was never my intention to suggest hacking or changing MFME. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miroslav22 Posted October 7, 2020 Report Share Posted October 7, 2020 Hi all, I was so sorry to learn of Chris's passing. MFME did help me through some tough times in my life, mainly addiction. For that I'm extremely grateful to him. He almost certainly saved me thousands of pounds over the years and possibly even a worse fate. I've been a member over at fruit-emu for nearly 20 years (killcrazy). Some may remember I wrote an Epoch emulator a few years ago that I was unable to finish due to changing circumstances and other commitments. I'm a professional senior software engineer so would have the required expertise in principle to make changes to, or maintain MFME. I've only ever dipped in and out of the scene really over the last 20 years so I don't have a good understanding of the politics and what's gone on over the years. From what I understand the pros and cons of trying to continue with MFME development are: Cons: By far the biggest is that no one apart from Chris had access to recent source code, as far as I know. Without it anything other than miniscule changes to MFME is next to impossible. This is assuming MFME is built and released as optimized and has no accompanying debug files which is almost certainly the case. Even if we could access it, it is unknown if Chris would have wanted anyone to continue with development. He always saw MFME as 'his baby' and was very protective of his source code. I completely understand this as you definitely want to stay in control when you've devoted so much time to something. I would have done the same thing. However, if it was me, in the event that I died I would definitely want someone else to have it and continue with it if possible. As far as I can see, MFME is in pretty good shape in terms of what it can emulate and lacks any major issues (correct me here if I'm wrong) Some recent techs from the last 10 years or so most likely use some kind of hardware encryption. If this is the case then emulating them is actually technically impossible without keys which would likely be almost impossible to obtain. This is only an assumption however. My point is - is there even anything else significant that's technically possible/feasible/worth adding to MFME? Lack of expertise. Is there anyone else with experience of C++/delphi/emulator development? The only others I've known over the years are Tony and Nick who I'm guessing are both long gone and almost certainly wouldn't be interested. I've not played a 'real' fruit machine for something like 13 years (around the time they moved to £35 jackpots), so everything I'm interested in is already emulated. Therefore there's not really any motivation or desire for me personally to emulate anything new. Pros: My opinion is that it would be a bit of a tragedy if development of MFME couldn't continue in some form. From my own professional experience I know Chris must have devoted thousands of hours of his time over the years to reverse-engineering and implementing these techs and it would be such as shame for this to come to an end. It probably took me at least 4-500 hours of work to reverse-engineer and implement Epoch with only a main board, a magnifying glass, a H8 manual and a few technical details to go on! I can only imagine how long he must have spent painstakingly reverse-engineering the proprietary encryption of ccTalk and other aspects of certain techs. A select few people have told me in the past that Chris did give them the source code for MFME5, although I've never seen any evidence of this. I've never really been part of the 'inner circle' so my knowledge of the politics of this is very limited. But perhaps this suggests he wouldn't totally be against someone continuing development, giving the circumstances. There are a few features I think it'd be very cool to add to MFME: * More advanced display engine (such as HDR). * Ideas that Nick tried such as RAM images stored/retrieved online so multiple people can play a machine consecutively without knowing its state, fixed credits, friendly competitions, monthly leaderboards etc. * As a hobby I've always fancied the idea of porting my Epoch emulator to linux so I could run it on a Raspberry pi and via its G/P IO pins basically build my own cabinet with a proper light controller, hopper and coin mech integrated. If MFME could be ported to run in a similar way that'd be unreal! These are all ideas I'd be interested in adding and certainly have the expertise to do so. I guess everything comes down to: Would Chris be okay with someone else taking over and maintaining his project in the event of his death? Personally I'm not sure but I'd certainly lean more towards yes than no. Can the source even be gotten hold of? It'd be incredibly insensitive and inappropriate to pester his family so soon, especially over something that is probably fairly meaningless to them. Anyway just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still around and have the expertise. If you guys decide that it's appropriate and somehow manage to get hold of the source code then please do get in touch. ps. I don't want to give false hope but there's a tiny chance he may have had some kind of "dead man's switch" which would automatically forward details of anything he wanted someone to have in the event of his death. I have one that auto forwards important things like details of Bitcoin accounts and passwords to relatives if a trigger timeout of 60 days expires without me resetting it. I think this is probably very unlikely however. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dondplayer Posted October 7, 2020 Report Share Posted October 7, 2020 Regarding the initial issue of the Donate option in the help screen: I had a quick look with a hex editor and the link is not obviously there in plain consecutive text - the theory being a mod to this would stop the link pointing to where it does. Think you would need a debugger on it (I don't have a current one on this PC) to trace and alter the code to stop the donate link working. As for any major changes you would need the source code I would think. Your box will be CASHPOT Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serene02 Posted October 8, 2020 Report Share Posted October 8, 2020 Even though the intentions are good, I don’t think we should be talking about hacking mfme, let alone releasing a hacked version on the forums. It just doesn’t seem right to me, personally. J 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zippy Posted October 8, 2020 Report Share Posted October 8, 2020 (edited) After listening to all that Chris's MFME should be left alone to go with him, he wouldn't want anyone tinkering with his work especially when no one can code like him. Even if his family gives the green light someone would mess with it and fuck it all up, nah, rather keep the status quo. He lost his life and we lose the updates, so what to updates, besides there is lots more to work on too. I'd rather have Chris back with no updates to MFME than the other way around. We have been given a precious gift and that should be cherished not desecrated or hacked. Who here truly speaking can put all the 1000's of hours into something like Chris did AND stay committed to such a mountain of tasks, that is what you have to truly ask. Edited October 8, 2020 by Big J 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chopaholic Posted October 8, 2020 Report Share Posted October 8, 2020 Yes that's where my sentiment with this lies. My personal feeling is Chris would want us to keep FME alive, to keep his flame burning through the scene he made possible, via all the means Reg outlined in his original post to this thread. But, honestly, I don't think he'd want people mucking about with the code he worked on for 23 years. He never shared the source code in all that time, and I think we can draw a pretty simple conclusion from that. V20.1 is a magnificent, amazing piece of software, that brings us all such joy on a daily basis. We should be grateful for that, and respect Chris's legacy. I understand where miroslav is coming from in his post above, but for me, MFME ends at V20.1, where the scene goes from here, with V20.1, is up to the rest of us. 4 Fruit machine emulation content from the artist previously known as Degsy Degworth and the odd new thing here and there too - https://www.youtube.com/c/DegsyDegworth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
serene02 Posted October 8, 2020 Report Share Posted October 8, 2020 My only worry is that his family have no emotion invested in his life work and worst case scenario is that they could just sell mfme source code to the highest bidder. I'm not saying that will happen but if it did then you can bet your bottom dollar that someone would monetise it somehow. Which would go against all that Chris stood for with his 'free' emulator. If it's an option then I'd rather it be here at it's spiritual home, in the hands of respectful coders that we have here at present. We have a couple of actual coders on these forums. One is a life long friend of mine who is actually creating a 3D wrapper of sorts for mfme and pretty much got proper FME into MAME by creating an MFME layout converter tool. I can vouch for JP 100%. He is a coder so understands the actual time involvement on such projects. J 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clo06 Posted October 8, 2020 Report Share Posted October 8, 2020 My feelings are that MFME V20.1 should be left as it is. It is the last version Chris gave us before he sadly passed away, let's leave as it it because Chris lives on in the emulator he created by himself, and it is something we have to remember him by. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wearecity Posted October 8, 2020 Report Share Posted October 8, 2020 I agree I don't think there should be any more versions of MFME. I think here we are talking about not hacking MFME but improving it with the code legitimately gained and in someone's hand who could possibly do that. But I don't believe Wizard would want that. Things that work with it like game managers or tools that work to improve layout design outside MFME tools fair enough. It's actually a shame Wizard, won't get to see that stuff, being done to work in conjunction with MFME. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zippy Posted October 9, 2020 Report Share Posted October 9, 2020 It is a "rock and a hard place" scenario but it is just plain obvious though, Chris didn't want it diluted by anyone and only relied on himself with coding (with the odd flag or idea from his followers) but I would only go with what his family thought was best, a best mate, you know, someone who was very close to him. To put it in the hands of anyone else definitely goes against his wishes, all those years asking for nothing in return (thank the stars for WFW before he left us as obviously that was written, what a lovely shock for him) what a truly unselfish soul, we should take a leave out of his book and stop thinking of ourselves. From a very thorough man if he wanted to leave his emulator with us would he not of made that in a statement, think about that one too as he would of been coding a new emulator long before its official release and never gave us a heads up, it was always BANG here is a new version, sounds like a very planned individual and I think that says it all. Love and peace everyone 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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