My guess is the name bsnes was changed when the emulator became a multi-system emulator and the name no longer seemed appropriate.
At first he added the first full support for the Super Game Boy (one emulator emulating the SNES and GB at once. Though last I tried it the GB core was still a work in progress, particularly sound. This allowed things like the SNES mode in the US/EU GB Space Invaders.) Then when cracking the ST018 expansion chip, it was discovered to have an ARM-based CPU, so with the help of a GBA hacker he added GBA support. He was also took the next logical step and and began work on DS emulation but dropped it once he realized the DS was too different to continue supporting it. Not sure how the NES got added in.
byuu was working on Far East of Eden Zero, so he renamed his emulator after the main character of that game. Maybe he had other reasons, though, I can't remember.
Ah, that makes sense. I wouldn't completely disregard an emulator because of the name given to it, however, I do disregard bloatware. I wouldn't download and use a file compression utility that doubles as an internet chat messenger. That is an outrageous example, but the same principal applies.
Too much is too much.
I wouldn't recommend Higan for casual users to use. I'd recommend SNES9X instead. Higan is made exclusively for accuracy-enthusiasts who have the hardware and technical know-how to deal with the quirks of using it and configuring everything properly. They also have to be willing to not bother sending suggestions to byuu and stick purely with noting bug reports if they want to contribute to development (or fork the code if they can do programming).
People can complain about Higan but it is under GPL so just fork it and stick it up on GitHub and change the stupid UI/folder system to something better. Perhaps use the 'Performance' core by default and integrate all 3 cores as a menu option instead of seperate executables.
Good point.
It just gives me peace of mind in knowing that the author put real care and thought into development, as opposed to those who've attempted the same for the sole purpose of bragging rights. It's nice knowing that when I boot a game with Higan it will work as the original developers intended, and that's something that other emulators can't guarantee.
I do recommend Higan for ROM hackers, though. All too often, people have designed hacks using something like ZSNES as a base for testing, without even putting any thought towards whether it will work on real hardware. On the emulation side of things, Higan is as close as one can get to that. I will respect a hack that works on real hardware much better than one that doesn't, no matter the grand scheme of said hack.
...and I can write c/c++ programming language just fine and have a pretty decent understanding of video game programming and such, I just don't feel the need to take it that far.
The thing with byuu is they always march to the beat of their own drummer. That's just how it goes; their emulator their rules in a way. Not that I agree with it but that is how they decided to do it. They never made Higan for the community; it was always a personal passion project. I find it ironic that byuu expects the wider emulation community to adopt Higan as a standard when he's so openly hostile to anyone that doesn't agree with them.
I
totally understand the passion project aspect, I have a few of those myself. When it comes to presenting my results to the public, I can also handle constructive criticism, though... and that's where I begin to lose respect -- byuu doesn't even begin to consider that what he's done with the file/folder thing is just flat-out absurd, especially when he expects everyone to accept it.
Sometimes, the concept just isn't acceptable. It sounds good in theory, but is absolutely horrid in standard practice. It sucks to let go of these kinds of ideas, I've had to do it myself, but if one expects everyone at large to adopt, exceptions have to be made -- not the other way around in the case of the folder/file ordeal. There are much better ways to handle the situation and telling everyone to piss off most definitely isn't the right way to go about it when you're trying to get everyone to love you.
Topic: Emu Accuracy analysis: FCEUX vs. NEStopia (Read 35211 times)