Difference between revisions of "FAQ:Goals"

Latest revision as of 03:56, 16 September 2017

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What are the current technical goals of the MAME project?

Global

Use modern C++ to replace macros and platform-specific code wherever possible
Eliminate remaining static variables in drivers and devices
Replace global_alloc/auto_alloc/pool_alloc with smart pointers

Drivers

Rewrite older drivers to modern standards
Rewrite the 2 or 3 drivers still outstanding from the license change
Convert more shared custom chips and function boards into devices
Convert the remaining devices that use the old floppy system
Substitute proper IRQ acking for HOLD_LINE
"MAME doesn't really provide a way to run with no machine loaded. Changing this would be a huge amount of work. It would be nice as a long-term goal, but in the short term it isn't realistic to be considering changing it." - Vas Crabb

CPU cores

Remove fake port addresses from MCU memory maps (use callbacks instead)
Provide and improve emulation of MCU on-chip peripherals (timers are generally the most critical)

Slots

Come up with a clean way to allow devices to have multiple slot connectors

Input

Decouple input port updates from video frame rate
Make natural keyboard cooperate better with matrix scanning keyboards
External files for defining button names

Continue to modernize and untangle the UI code so that the business logic is separate from the presentation

Rendering

Note: in order to make the rest of these points feasible, the BGFX rendering path is the preferred implementation. The existing D3D9 and OpenGL renderers and the HLSL and GLSL features are deprecated and should not be the target of any new features unless those features also target the BGFX path.

Drivers / the core need a way to tell the renderer to run a specific shader pass or passes (such as NTSC or PAL filtering, YUV conversion for laserdisc, etc) on each submitted bitmap
Drivers / the core need some way to do GPU rasterization. This will involve drivers needing to submit polygons, textures and texture atlases, and custom shaders to the renderer.

Lua

Offload more secondary frontend/UI functions to Lua scripts
Add tools necessary for TASing
Add scripting hooks for autopatching ROMs/image files

@@ Line 4: / Line 4: @@
 * Use modern C++ to replace macros and platform-specific code wherever possible
 * Eliminate remaining static variables in drivers and devices
+* Replace global_alloc/auto_alloc/pool_alloc with smart pointers
 '''Drivers'''
-* Remove deprecated direct_update_handler functions from the remaining drivers that have one.  This will facilitate speeding up the memory system, which in turn will improve all drivers
 * Rewrite older drivers to modern standards
 * Rewrite the 2 or 3 drivers still outstanding from the license change
 * Convert more shared custom chips and function boards into devices
-* Convert the remaining devices that use the old floppy system.
+* Convert the remaining devices that use the old floppy system
+* Substitute proper IRQ acking for HOLD_LINE
+* "MAME doesn't really provide a way to run with no machine loaded. Changing this would be a huge amount of work. It would be nice as a long-term goal, but in the short term it isn't realistic to be considering changing it." - Vas Crabb
+'''CPU cores'''
+* Remove fake port addresses from MCU memory maps (use callbacks instead)
+* Provide and improve emulation of MCU on-chip peripherals (timers are generally the most critical)
 '''Slots'''
 * Come up with a clean way to allow devices to have multiple slot connectors
+'''Input'''
+* Decouple input port updates from video frame rate
+* Make natural keyboard cooperate better with matrix scanning keyboards
+* External files for defining button names
@@ Line 30: / Line 43: @@
 '''Lua'''
-* Add tools necessary for TASing.
+* Offload more secondary frontend/UI functions to Lua scripts
+* Add tools necessary for TASing
+* Add scripting hooks for autopatching ROMs/image files