Some donation questions...

[teknomedic]

I've been considering donating to the PJ64 team but have a couple of questions.

If I donate, I understand I get access to the v1.7 beta and all recent updates... if say v1.7 public is released in a week or 3 years... do I also get access to the v1.8 betas at that time?.

How much improvement is there between v1.6 and the latest v1.7 beta?... have more games been added to the working section?... or are they mostly updates to v1.6 almost working games?


What kind of protection (if any) is there after I donate if say Nintendo gets a hair up it's butt and files actions that would require PJ64 to hand over information on the people that donated??


Lastly... is there anyway I can donate right now?... it seems the donation page is down right now... can I contact them through email and pay that way????


Thank you,
TK.

 

[Trotterwatch]

Well I've no authority on this but I think I can answer the questions pretty accurately:

If I donate, I understand I get access to the v1.7 beta and all recent updates... if say v1.7 public is released in a week or 3 years... do I also get access to the v1.8 betas at that time?.

Yes, but 1.7 ain't being released for quite some time. Certainly I know of no plans to release it, then again I was shut out of the loop years back.

How much improvement is there between v1.6 and the latest v1.7 beta?... have more games been added to the working section?... or are they mostly updates to v1.6 almost working games?

Lots of fixes for games, the graphics plugin has been improved a lot too and now supports texture packs. Having an input into the process of creating the emulator is nice too. LLE is included in the graphics plugin too which gets some other games working - Dark Rift, SW Rogue Squadron/Naboo, though the latter 2 are far from perfect. Dark Rift seems playable providing you have a fast machine.

What kind of protection (if any) is there after I donate if say Nintendo gets a hair up it's butt and files actions that would require PJ64 to hand over information on the people that donated??

Total, you aren't committing any offense by donating. And Nintendo aren't going to be doing that anyways.

Lastly... is there anyway I can donate right now?... it seems the donation page is down right now... can I contact them through email and pay that way????

According to a post on the site from Jabo, tentative plans for limited period donation windows are afoot.

 

[teknomedic]

thanks for the fast reply....

so I'm convinced... but I have to wait to donate? Is my $20 worth nothing?, lol.

Is there anyway I can donate tonight or is it more than just giving up the $20... do they need to mod a version for my info?


Normally I don't care much, but I'm neck deep in emulators again and I always find ways to get out of the scene for awhile when other interests take priority and I'd hate to miss one of the day or week long donation periods.

As you can tell I have bad timing already... I haven't touched PJ64 for years, and then I get back into it in the last month and I find I can't donate, lol.... I suck.

 

[squall_leonhart]

Well I've no authority on this but I think I can answer the questions pretty accurately:

Yes, but 1.7 ain't being released for quite some time. Certainly I know of no plans to release it, then again I was shut out of the loop years back.

1.7 is still a long way off, infact Zilmar has said he is still on the fence about releasing it as a 1.x number or just going straight to 2.0, with all the major changes that have been made.

At this point in time, 1.7 is not really a viable replacement for 1.6 as of Application build 48, a whole lot of recompiler/interpreter issues were introduced, as well as having a few minor regressions from 1.6.. 1 of which is the ability to load a savestate made using the 8mb NRAM in the default settings of 1.7 which is usually 4mb,..

another is that during certain scenes, and also when certain plugins, or options in the plugins are selected (rumble or mempak in jabo's input) can cause a game to crash at a certain point.... one crash that seems to not be effected at all by plugin settings is occuring in JFG during the opening cutscene, though, with the combined game libraries of all the current donators, im sure we can weed out most of the bugs.

Lots of fixes for games, the graphics plugin has been improved a lot too and now supports texture packs. Having an input into the process of creating the emulator is nice too. LLE is included in the graphics plugin too which gets some other games working - Dark Rift, SW Rogue Squadron/Naboo, though the latter 2 are far from perfect. Dark Rift seems playable providing you have a fast machine.

Jet force gemini and Pokemon snap, to name a couple, have been intently looked at, and Jabo's latest plugins have got FBE's working on both these games, Pokemon snap now has the Album always working... though he also has unfortunately introduced a couple of regressions with the newest build, the Master Quest H1C rom for instance, has broken Status Screen FBE.. where as the others don't.

also games that may have required D3D Clear mode, in 1.6, may no longer need it in 1.7.. some examples are Pokemon Stadium 2 and Neon Genesis, which no longer have the white lines around boxes and where alpha should be.

there is one mega downside to the additions, which is it will require a beefier system to perform at the same level as 1.6,.. this is the cost of near perfection (not that its perfect)


finally, just to point out a few things which aren't fixed and i dunno how they will be.

Photo activated events in Pokemon Snap
Clipping issues in Body Harvest

another point is that Jabo is looking for input on whether he should support the Rice Video texture pack format,... although i would think it better if the plugin was capable of loading and converting it into the Jabo format.