|
DCEmu Interviews Go back to Main Page
Interview with: James Surine
Homepage:
Date: 2001
The Interview
Wraggster: Can you tell us where you live and where do you come from,and
where
you went to school,college etc?
James Surine: I recent moved from San Francisco CA to St. Paul MN (my home
town) with
my family. Had enough of the high rents and home prices in SF. With the
recent dot com bust I think I made the right decision.
Wraggster: What made you get into computers and what qualifications do
you have?
James Surine:I started on the Apple II in high school and I have been programming
ever since.
Wraggster: What made you get into the Dreamcast Homebrew scene?
James SurineI was really impressed with DreamSNES and figured I could do
some of
the things I did with the camera on the DC. My first attempt using libdream
was not succesful, Multipac didn't emulate correctly due to complier bugs.
It wasn't until I stumbled onto toodles gcc/kos how to site that I was
able to get a working compiler that could compile the z80 emulator in Multipac.
Ithen started working on porting MAME. The biggest obstacle to developing
on the DC right now is the availbility and ease of tools.
Wraggster: What projects are you working on at the moment?
James Surine:Well MAME for Dreamcast is kind of the main focus right now,
it's not
too good an idea to start too many things at once, you end up not finishing
anything. That's a big problem with homebrew stuff.
Wraggster: Do you see an update to your great project?
James Surine: Well I'm still merging stuff in the mame core so it will be
a little
while.Maybe a week or two, I don't want to release something too often or
I
get compaints about people wasting their CD's. The standard answer is "it's
done when it gets done"
Wraggster: What emulators would you like to either try or see comeout on
the
Dreamcast?
James Surine:I'd like to try and get Handy working on the Dreamcast. One
of my
favorite games was Crystal Mines II on the Lynx. But I'll probably get MESSD
working first.
Wraggster:With Bleemcast being released and the great success at getting
a
playstation emu on the Dreamcast,what other high end systems do you see
being emulated?
James Surine: I have bleem and VGS for the PC and I was very impressed with
what was
accomplished. I don't have GT for the playstation so I haven't seen it on
the DC but I hear its very impressive. I'll try and buy the next dc release
of bleem so I can play MGS on the DC. As for other stuff like the N64 on
the DC, who knows.
Wraggster: what is your favourite game for your emulator?
James Surine:I guess Xevious, because I own the actual machine. It ran
a little too
slow on the camera but on the DC it really shines. When I get the 68K stuff
working I'll be playing a lot of Outzone, which should run reasonably
well.
Wraggster:How do you see the future as regards to which system will be
the
main one for homebrew coders like your self?
James Surine:Hard to predict the future, but currently DC is the place to
be.
Wraggster: Mame is one of the biggest emulators out there with support
for
thousands of games how far do you see emulation on dreamcast
progressing ,will it see neo geo games and cps1 games be emulated on the
dreamcast through the mamed emulator.?
James Surine:The main problem with these modern games is speed and memory.
I think
the MAME neogeo emulation will run at a respectable speed but only 2-3
games will load into RAM. I have some ideas on how to create a system to
swap
roms in and out of RAM but it will probably be a while before I could get
anything working. On the camera I swap cpu, sound, & game drivers in
and out of ram so I guess if anyone can figure it out, I might.
Wraggster: With two of you coding emus for mame at the same time does it
help when you run into problems?
James Surine:Well Christophe's code saved me a little time during the intial
release,I hadn't added the input and sound code to MAMED yet when Mamedc
was
released.I paid him back by fixing the sound code and a few bugs in KOS.
I
haven't heard much from him lately but it doesn't hurt to have someone else
looking at the code. We both kind of took a different approach, I'm trying
to
get the whole ball of wax working and Christophe is doing a few at a time.
Wraggster:What is your opinion of the dreamcast emu/dev scene and the many
great sites that support it?
James Surine:Well there seems to be quite a bit of grief in the DC emu/dev
scene
flying around at the moment, and the newbies and lamers don't help much
either
but I think things will settle down eventually.
The DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network
Welcome to the DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network. This Network of sites is
owned and ran by fans of the retro consoles and the latest next-gen consoles,
we post news on all the consoles we cover about hardware aspects, gaming and
Homebrew. Homebrew and Emulation are software thats made using free and legal
tools to play on games consoles. This Network is the only worldwide network
of sites where coders can upload and post news of their own releases and get
the credit and comments they deserve for all their hardwork. We have a Network
that currently supports Nintendo Wii, Xbox360, PS3, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, Nintendo
DS, PSP, GBA, Dreamcast, Sega Saturn, Gizmondo, Nokia N-Gage, Tapwave Zodiac,
GP32, GP2X and also Mobile Phone Emulation. When new consoles appear we will
expand to cover those consoles.
Please help DCEmu become stronger by posting on the forums every day and make
our community larger.
|
