tokumaru wrote:
I'm not against putting a new format out there, but instead of forcing people to use it, the format's superiority should be enough to convince people to use it.
Deficiencies in old formats aren't large enough to affect popular games, ergo popular opinion. So what you're suggesting is impossible at this point. People looking for a quick fix have always downloaded ZSNES anyway, and that's fine.
You're basically contradicting yourself on the prior page, accepting that different emulators are good for different things, but only if the rom format stays universal. Sorry, but that's ridiculous. If a rom format's inability to accommodate multi-rom results in a broken game, then being the most compatible emulator necessitates changing the rom format. Is being the most compatible emulator a valid goal? Of course it is.
tokumaru wrote:
it's messy and just plain confusing.
Personally, I think trying to use an arsenal of emulators to dodge bugs is confusing. Speaking of confusing, it must have been awfully confusing for ips patches to have the success rate of a coinflip thanks to ZSNES "supporting" vitally important copier headers. Oops!
tokumaru wrote:
My gripe with databses is homebrew. There must be an easy way for homebrewers to describe their own games.
I would rather maintain an unlicensed internal db than dick with thousands of external files every time we realize we underestimated something. But that's just me.
tokumaru wrote:
Can you imagine how much more work that would be if you used multiple emulators for the same console, each with its own custom format?
No one is saying we shouldn't strive for standards, but higan is essentially the only active SNES emulator anymore. Pardon the lonely attempt at initiative.
tepples wrote:
I think we solved in FitzRoy's old fc.zip/ZapFC. A homebrew game's folder or zipfile would contain a database entry representing just that one game.
Yes, and we essentially did this for higan 0.94 (as folders) with each rom and board as its own file. But the board file was just referencing designations like iNES. So unlicensed boards would still have to be supported within the emulator. Naturally, we ran into the same problem as iNES. Pinout variations, oem discretes, and unlicensed discretes were too numerous to be given their own designations. So now there's talk of a scripting format.