xZabuzax wrote:
I understand that this feature might not be useful to you but some users could find it useful even if they don't say anything about it here, there's hundreds (or thousands) of users that are lurkers and never engage in conversations in forums.
Three things:
1. In no way shape or form am I attempting to diminish the level of importance those users feel this feature would provide them. Rephrased: I totally acknowledge that this feature is important
to you, but thus assuming that it is important
to others[u] (or [u]to everyone) is a bit of a stretch.
2. We've had 20 years of emulators across a myriad of consoles/systems developed, many (most? half?) of which support save states. There have been, oh I don't know, probably hundreds of thousands of people involved in emulation at this point. Yet, despite that, it is a very rare feature. What does this tell you? (I am legitimately asking you this question. :-) )
3. A user being silent is their choice. Just because they are silent it does not mean that they support this feature, or that they are against it. They effectively choose to have no voice, which is 100% legitimate.
xZabuzax wrote:
In emulators is important to have all the necessary features to make it easier for the user but some emulators can also focus on being "eye-candy" to look pretty with features like this and some users will still find it useful. This is the same as the video filters, what's the point in having so many video filters in an emulator if the majority of the users will only use 2 or 3?
Filters are a slightly different situation, but for what it's worth, I am part of what you might call the "anti-filter" crowd. That said, I do find things like blargg's NTSC filters useful when doing things like developing or testing how visual graphics might look on actual hardware (other than doing real-world tests). But I'm not a graphics artist, so this tends to rank extremely low on my list of interests. To graphics artists, it may rank very high, and I think that's legit.
There are some "visually-focused" emulators -- for example,
nemulator -- that offer this type of aesthetic in their UIs. But you will find by and large this to be extremely uncommon. Mesen and Mesen-S, as two other examples, offer what is called "Game selection screen", which shows a kind of preview of a game you previously were playing, and you can flip between those ROMs/games clicking or moving left/right (you can currently disable this in Mesen (and I do, via Preferences -> Advanced -> Disable game selection screen) but cannot in Mesen-S). Some people like these features/styles, which is great, but some don't -- which is why I'm glad it's a configurable option. But on the flip side, I find
things like this abhorrent, and similarly about HD packs. But that's just my opinion, and mine is worth no more or less than someone else's.
The point I'm making: if users want this feature (save state screenshot previews), then those users should speak up (as you are!). Those users should also be aware that if they want this feature, and the emulator is open-source, it is most likely that they (the users) will have to write the code to do it, including extending the save state format for that emulator to support a screenshot of sorts (thus discussions with the emu author(s) will be necessary because backwards compatibility will need to be ensured). I encourage people wanting this feature to do exactly that. Just please be aware there is probably a reason why this feature is not commonplace, and as someone in these scenes since their inceptions, I can safely tell you that it's because most users don't find it useful/of value and most developers don't see the point in spending the time to write the code for it. (Respectfully, remember that you did ask for opinions on this subject, so...) :-)