Interview d'Atani Software, développeur d'émulateurs

Voici une interview d'Atani d'Atani Software

First of all, could you present yourself, your name, age, job, hobbies ?

My real name is Mike Dunston, i am 22 yrs old, working for Oracle Corporation in Redwood Shores CA as a Build Engineer (i maintain the nightly build process for the JDeveloper product). I dont really have many hobbies that are different than playing around on the computer, but i do love model trains :)

What is your P.C. configuration ?

On my development machine i have:
AMD K6-2 300Mhz
128MB Ram
20GB HD
WinNT 4.0 SP5
DVD Drive, 4x CD-R
SB Live

On BBS Machine:
Intel P-233 Mhz
64MB Ram
about 13GB HD space
Win95 OSR 2.1
4x CD-ROM

Have you got any console ?

Yes, i have the following systems:

Sega:
Genesis (Model 1)
Genesis (Model 2)
Genesis (Model 3)
SegaCD (Model 1)
2 SegaCD (Model 2)
CDX (US)
2 32x (US)
SMS (Model 2)
PowerBase Converter *
*(Allows SMS games to run on Genesis) Nintendo:
NES (Model 1)
SNES
Virtual Boy
Gameboy (US)
Gameboy (JA) Playstation (Model 1)

Nice collection ! BTW what do you thing about Sega32x ? And its shorts live ?

The system has (had) lots of potential, it just never had very many developers or companies willing to port their software to this "new and unproven" system. This would account for the lack of games (i believe there are less than 50 total US and JA).

Which is your favorite game ?

I dont really have a favorite game as i dont play that many games anymore. I spend most of my spare time working on the computer or doing something else and i dont use my consoles (or emus) that often :(

How did you know about emu scene ?

About 4 years ago, before Sega Genesis emulators became really popular i was introduced to a few of the Nintendo Emulators of long ago.  Nesticle was one of the first emulators i used, I thought it was pretty dang awesome to do what it could.  After some time i ended up getting a Sega Genesis and my first Sega CD system and games.  Then i stoped the EMU scene for a while and about 2 years ago i jumped back in and have been in it since.

You code Atani Software - Cheat Codes, SegaEMU (SEMU), Generator32 ... Could you explain your ambition ?

Well i am striving to have perfect emulation of many of the older Sega Systems, This is the main driving force of SegaEMU (SEMU).  Generator32 is more of a fun project that i am doing to help the EMU Scene.  As of right now the Original person to port Generator to a Win32 platform has lost the source and has decided not to re-port it at this time.  Thats where i came in, i decided why not just do it, and in about 3 hours i had things working really well in a full screen mode.  The Windowed mode is still in progress.

Cool ... but, are theses your first project ?

Not completely first project, but first for the EMU scene as of right now. You might remember my old projects from about a year and a half ago when i started working on my emulator that has migrated through many changes and is now part of what i have in SegaEMU.  These old projects never really saw the light of an end user, and were not released because they pretty much sucked.  SegaEMU however not much better is a lot closer to where i want things to be.

What core will you be using?

In Generator32i am using mz80 for the z80, and the DynaRec 68000 core that is used in the linux Generator sources. In SegaEMUi have many more options. I am working on my own 68000 core that will use a DynaRec approach for some of the core, I should have the information about this core available on the net in the next few weeks.  This new Core AT68K, will be available in a source form for others to use in their emulators as they choose. I may do similar for the z80 core in here as well, but for right now i am using mz80. Other cores for either 68000 and z80 have been worked in as well, i have StarScream, Raze, and a couple others that do work well in place of my cores.

How did you manage to port Generator from Linux into Win32 ?

Well the first part was to figure out what needed to be changed when porting it to Win32.  The biggest amount of the code that needed to be changed was already seperated out of the main code for the emu, this greatly helped with the porting of it (Thanks James).  So there was only the UI and how to render the graphics to the screen, and sound.  Most of the other code was pretty much ready for Win32.

SegaEMU (SEMU) is a great project ! (SegaCD, Sega32x, Cheat Code, Net Play etc.)  What are you looking for ? Do you need information ? How could we help you ?

Always looking for more cheat codes to be entered into the CheatCode DB Atani Software - Cheat Codes: Home Page. I am looking for more information about a few of the game systems i am working on emulating in the next release of the emu.  Here are the systems in question:
° SG-1000
° SC-3000
These are ones i want more information on before i implement things in the
° emu:
° System16
° System24
° 32x
° SegaCD/MegaCD
° Saturn

The Sega32x was built on 2 Hitashi SH2 32 bits RISC at 23 MHz ... The same Sega Saturn structure. is That the big problem to emulate it ?

Could be part of it, one problem that would face any emulator author tring to do this would be how do you keep the various CPUs in sync.. Just for the 32x and Genesis there would be 4 CPUs not including the two for the VDP (one in the 32x and one in Genesis). And if you add the SegaCD/MegaCD then you have 2 additional things to deal with, the CD and another 68000 CPU running at a faster speed than the Genesis.

Or maybe is it the VDP (Video Digital Processor) that process 40 MIPS (Million d'Instruction Par Seconde) ?

Very likely, i have not seen very much information about the VDP for the 32x, but i do know that all of the information is calculated by the SH2 CPU(s) and then pushed to one of the VDP units.

What do you thing about AGES screenshots - The Official AGES Page- ?

The AGES emulator is looking very promising in emulating the Sega 32X architecture, i just hope that it is up to all that the wait has been for it.

BTW, why we don't have an emu 3D0, Amiga CD32x yet ? are they very difficult to emulate or we don't have enough  doc. ?

Not completly sure on this one, i would imagine it is a little of all of those reasons.

Which console/computer do you love to see emulate one day ?

SegaCD/MegaCD This would be really awesome since i have many game that i would love to play on this machine and i know others would love it as well.

You are right. Thanks a lot for this interview ...

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