O2em - What's the official word?

[samscudder]

What's happening to O2em? Is it still alive? Does anybody have any idea who is running the show these days?

The sourceforge page hasn't been updated since April 2013.
Manopac made up version 120b5 which was never published officially.
lutris forked O2em but that's been dead since 2014.

Regards

Simon

[manopac]

well ... I do have a work in progress version on my notebook, but that is as far from finished as it could be ... not even run-able at this time ... and not really time to finish it now (there is a certain game that I would want to finish first ...) - is there currently a need for a new version ? any features missing or not working on some platforms right now for anyone?

[samscudder]

Well, before anything else, I'd like to volunteer my help.

I found this page:

Code:

http://guttenbrunner.com/videopac/o2emPort.html

with info on how to compile O2EM, but I couldn't find the referenced Direct X MingW file, and haven't been able to compile from source.

Heres a short list of what could be addressed:

• there are still some games that aren't working correctly, like Wall Street and Frogger
• sound needs tweaking (I'm guessing correcting the noise recycle in the 8244 emulation should hopefully fix that)
• voice emulation is sample based and some samples are missing (I don't have a Voice to grab the correct samples - MAME uses SP0256 emulation instead of samples)
• there are timing issues, so the compatibility with the actual console is flaky: software that runs on O2EM doesn't always run on the actual hardware, so it's not much help for game development.

[manopac]

Unfortunately I once wrote those instructions for compilation (more for myself than anyone else ), and never updated them after, so the MingW referenced is definitely not the current version used ... to be honest I am not even sure I can compile O2EM on my current workstation ...

about the list of things to be addressed: agree 100% - most important would be to improve compatibility by removing all the hacks currently in the source code (they are the only reason a lot of games work at all ...) - that would make it also a lot easier for all the homebrew developers to test their code ... and sound and voice emulation is definitely a problem with the sample based emulation ...