DuckStation vs SwanStation

I have more luck with DuckStation, even though apparently it will never be updated again, the games I tested in hardware mode were all fine while with current SwanStation I did saw some buggy stuff that only went away when I changed to software mode.

oh boy, youtubers are on the case. theyā€™ll get to the bottom of it for sure! -_-

Hereā€™s how it goes: Swanstation is just Duckstationā€™s open-source code with the old pre-dropped-core libretroization (i.e., also GPL, just down the memory hole) applied on top.

The harassment/drama stuff is hogwash. Go here, our subreddit, our discord, our github org and search around. You wonā€™t find any of us ā€œweaponizing our userbaseā€ by encouraging interaction let alone harassment of other projects (quite the contrary: we say over and over ā€œdonā€™t go bother them about [whatever], it just pisses people offā€). Now go do the same thing for RA/LR at any project that says we harass them and see what you find.

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Iā€™ve been reading about this all day and the top RA people def harass and say mean things to devs. Its happened beforeā€¦theres even proof of Twin-whatever-his-name is, RA owner calling Byuu all kinds of names and calling Near a autistic bipolar retard. Now that iā€™ve read through alot of threads, reading what devs like MAME creator, and Redream creator had to say about thisā€¦and now Stenzek. Im no longer supporting RA. I just feel like it should be known that RA is not ā€œclassyā€, in reality they accept many donations all from ā€œforksā€ (other people work that the creator made open source). I know what you will say, open source is open source butā€¦to make 10k in donations off other peoples work sounds unfair to me. This whole thing really opened alot of peoples eyes about what goes on behind the scenes.

Twinaphex used do a lot of ranting/flaming and was generally a prick online. No arguments here. It was a big problem and it contributed to the overall toxicity of the scene. He doesnā€™t do that sort of thing anymore, thoughā€“thatā€™s why all of that stuff is from 5+ yrs ago, and much of it misrepresented and taken out of context to make bad behavior seem even worseā€“and we all stick to our own channels these days because the scene is still so toxic. We have also instituted a Code of Conduct that forbids a lot of that stuff because we donā€™t want to deal with it in the future.

Yes, most of what we do is related to forks. We make no bones about that. Thatā€™s why we keep the names of forked projects by default (unless requested that we change them). We donā€™t try to pass things off as wholly our work, though we often do significant work, as well. We also tell people that if they want to donate to the core-makers in addition to or instead of us, they should. Our donations by and large donā€™t go to funding development, they go to paying for hosting, servers, web services, etc. That is, they keep the lights on.

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I mean, you ā€œclaimā€ heā€™s changedā€¦but just yesterday he was accused of the same stuff from ā€œ5 years agoā€. Donā€™t you think thats kind of odd? and seems kind of shady? Alot of people do. And honestly, where does the money go? how would you know that for sure? It seems in that thread i posted that it goes elsewhere and that the accusations still happen today. Thats jus my, and many others opinions on that subject. In reality you shouldnt make a dollar off anybody elses work if that needs to be saidā€¦the money should be shared with those devs at least?

And you should know that i mean no disrespect towards you personally hunterk, your a laid back guy and the stuff you do here, along with Hyper and duimon, cyber, guest, you all are great. Just speaking my mind, iā€™ve been here for a long time ya know, here and there, 4chan, i was there when it started. Back when they were still alive. Bullying in any way shape of form is deplorable, it should not be rewarded. I remeber when we all used to somewhat get along, i miss those times. i miss them dearly.

We give a small bit of money to some emudevs patreons from ours, but like I said, itā€™s not really the purpose of the libretro patreon, to be a collection plate for emudevs. Itā€™s for providing RetroArch/libretro. Can you imagine how salty everyone would be if we tried to put ourselves in that position? Of being essentially the record company for emus?

I donā€™t personally have anything to do with the money side of things. Most of us donā€™t and weā€™re not interested in it. Weā€™re hobbyists, and the project doesnā€™t pull in enough money for anyone to live off of (let alone get rich lol), so itā€™s just noise/hassle for us. However, I very much remember a time when we paid for things out of our own pockets (which sucked) and depended on the kindness of strangers (this very forum was hosted on an old PC in some userā€™s friendā€™s basement lol). I donā€™t miss those days. If the patreon dried up tomorrow, weā€™d have to shut down our online services and go back to that sort of sporadic/flaky service. It would suck, but thatā€™s how it would go.

As for the accusations of continued bad behavior, I havenā€™t personally seen any of it but Iā€™ve seen a lot of bad behavior from the people pointing fingers. Again:

Go here, our subreddit, our discord, our github org and search around. You wonā€™t find any of us ā€œweaponizing our userbaseā€ by encouraging interaction let alone harassment of other projects (quite the contrary: we say over and over ā€œdonā€™t go bother them about [whatever], it just pisses people offā€). Now go do the same thing for RA/LR at any project that says we harass them and see what you find.

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Why is everyone complaining about retroarch? Thereā€™s other frontends that accept payments through patreon and other means, and have their own downstream cores based on open source emulators. Like OpenEmu or GNOME Games (the latter is a libretro frontend.)

The whole point of open source is that you donā€™t have to reimplement everything youself, but instead take other peopleā€™s code and use it in your project. And RA isnā€™t ā€œjustā€ open source. Itā€™s copyleft open source (which is how the GPL license differs from proprietary-friendly open source.) It requires that RA code will always stay open.

Forking other code and changing it to fit your own needs is the single most important point of open source. And the most important point of the GPL license is that those modifications cannot be closed source. This makes sure that the people you copied/forked your code from will always be able to copy your modifications as well back to the original project if they want.

Open source and the GPL has been working fine like that for decades now. This is how you get software that improves on other software. Yet, I only see the emulation scene describing it as ā€œstealing.ā€

And finally, itā€™s clear that most people donā€™t even understand what a ā€œhostileā€ fork is. RA does not have hostile forks. It only has downstream forks. A hostile fork is when a fork is trying to take over development of the original project. Examples of this are the libav project (it tried to take over development of the ffmpeg project,) X.org (it took over development of the XFree86 project) and Final Burn Neo (it took over development of Final Burn Alpha.) The libretro cores are not doing any of that, yet people constantly post about imaginary ā€œhostile forksā€ of libretro.

Thereā€™s valid complaints about libretro out there. Like the past personal insults. But the ā€œhostile forksā€ thing is just nonsense.

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Because of this.

Im angry because i liked Byuu, or Near, whatever you decide you want to call him. I know him as Byuu, he commited suicide because of this type of harassment. It needs to stop, and it will. I miss him alot. I get what hunter is trying to do here, hes defending his opinion. However you jus keep saying to look for harassment it canā€™t be found, and i legit do one google search and have found harrassment, from last year. Iā€™m out tho, as i said i wonā€™t support this anymore. Had fun here guys while i was here tho thank you. i said my piece and it really wonā€™t make a difference. If anybody wants to know what really happened read the thread i posted. It has all the tweets RA deleted, they arent being transparent.

I knew Near for a long time. Longer than Iā€™ve known Twinaphex, who I met on the old bboard. The two of them had beef for a long time over stupid bullshit. Near attributed a lot of harassment to TA that had nothing to do with him (at the time of the infamous screenshot from the bboard, Near thought everything that happened was caused by TA and mudlord; the rest of the 10+ pages of that thread that nobody ever shows is me talking them down). However, they made amends soon after that and were on good terms for several years before Nearā€™s suicide. The two of them commiserated a number of times on the dark side of being horse-famous on the internet and the harassment that theyā€™ve both experienced as a result. They shared greasemonkey scripts for hiding sites from themselves that were/are bad for their mental health. But nobody talks about that.

Itā€™s messed up that people try to use Nearā€™s suicide as an angle to attack someone else in much the same way that Near was harassed. People need to look in the damned mirror once in a while. I wasnā€™t super-close with Near, but they wouldnā€™t have wanted this, I can tell you that much.

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Itā€™s always been a simple thing to have cordial interactions with you, hunterk. I could say the same thing for most other devs Iā€™ve seen involved with RA. Seemingly good folks, the lot. Which is why I feel comfortable asking you:

Are you really OK with the current state of affairs? Isnā€™t there something that can be reasonably done to ameliorate the situation and actually, not hypothetically, avoid any further fragmentation of the emulation community? Because for all the talk of TA mellowing down, these things keep happening. I know thereā€™s a lot of white noise, a lot of herd mentality and Twitter-brain phenomena, just like you mentioned - but something more concrete is also clearly not working. Thoughts?

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Iā€™m sick of it, for sure, but I donā€™t think thereā€™s anything we could do short of nuking our entire org from orbit and going into hiding. Weā€™ve already left r/emulation, since the moderators there not only allow but participate in the frenzy. Looks like Reseteraā€™s doing the same.

Thereā€™s a relatively small knot of people who want to see RA/LR go away, either for their own gain or because they have personal beef with Twinaphex and see him and the projects as one and the same. I donā€™t see any of those people ever letting up.

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Those FPGA marketers sure wouldnā€™t mind at all it seems since they seem to try to attack RetroArch at any given opportunity while promoting sometimes false or outdated advantages of FPGA.

Welcome to the world of cancel culture, where virtual lynching is the order of the day.

I say be strong and ignore them. Once your conscience is clear and youā€™re in the right legally, keep doing what youā€™re doing best.

The ones who are the most vocal donā€™t represent the entire community of users. RetroArch as far as I understand was all about unity. Unifying the emulation mess that resulted from a fragmented environment. It offered one standardized set of controls and user interface for hundreds of different emulators.

Some donā€™t like it when they canā€™t be as popular or recognizable, it is what is. A donation is a donation. Nothing is being sold. You guys do yeoman service to the emulation community - which is not only made up of devs, YouTubers and influencers.

Stand firm and true to yourselves and your mission. Itā€™s interesting as all of this is happening so soon after the very successful Steam release. RetroArch is indeed becoming mainstream and more accessible. With greater and greater success, you just might end up being bigger targets for haters, jealous folks, bandwagonists and the like.

People have differences and falling outs everyday. Sometimes personalities clash for whatever reason. The thing is even people who sometimes argue can still forgive one another and move on or at least have respect for one another.

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This seems like a shaky position to assume. The facts are that the conflicts as they exist right now are between the very same emulator devs that RA is dependent on, and the leading figure of the project itself. Who cares what a legion of randos and salesmen think? The point is that it doesnā€™t seem like those vital devs are very keen on forgiving any time soon, and until that is addressed nothing will improve.

MameHaze pointed out some seemingly egregious problems with the MAME2003 code in the Duckstation thread over at r/emulation, and m4xw indicated that it would get looked at. Now, will that happen, and within a reasonable timeframe? Will the project manager personally make sure that the code is looked over in accordance with the wishes of MameDev, in order to establish good faith and mutual trust? Because if not, how is it reasonable to dismiss the concerns of devs at all, and how are they expected to not grow resentful over time?

Sure. I just saw that post, and thatā€™s a big problem. mame2003-plus is largely separate from the main team, so they just do their own thingā€“that is, we donā€™t sit around and look over their shoulders on what they mergeā€“but if theyā€™re breaking licenses, thatā€™s not something weā€™re cool with and we need to either see it resolved or push them off from the official pipeline (buildbot, etc.).

We canā€™t stop them from doing stuff with their own project (however wrong that stuff may be), but we can at least ensure that weā€™re not a party to it by providing infrastructure.

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It seems like the mission statement of libretro needs some solidification / clarification, specifically when it comes to utilizing other projects code for a libretro core. I honestly donā€™t follow the drama between groups, but it seems like the OSS and emulation community is small enough that you wouldnā€™t want to alienate other developers in the community. The mission statement should bake in the commitment for collaboration and being a good member of the OSS community. If there are individuals that canā€™t do that then it doesnā€™t seem like theyā€™re the best fit for this sort of project.

We have good, fruitful relationships with dozens of developers/teams, thatā€™s just not exciting enough for people to want to talk about.

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Yeah I been on there and just Seems everyone there loves Bashing RA and People who Support Them and be Positive about it just get Abused for doing that.

They only look at 1 side of the Stories and just Believe that without doing some Research about the Other Side of the Story

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Human relationships are somewhat extremely complicated. And that of the developers of ā€œFOSSā€ is especially very intense ā€¦

I started reading (almost) everything. And this is simple, it is licensed, the license is a legal entity we use to avoid confusion.

RA did not do anything wrong, the license allows it. And the others who ordered donations did not do anything bad either.

Stenzek did not know him, I see that he is a very relevant developer, and it is something that every lover of emulation appreciates. But it is very bad to make public things in this way.

Then names begin to appear ā€¦

Twinaphex, is like coffee without sugar, first you fall bitter and then you get addicted. I do not know very well than that, I know it is a spice of SHAOLIN master of emulation. If before it was difficult and has changed, that is why it is not? We all learn, we are human.

Near ā€¦ I have tried not to comment because it is a very deep complex issue. People do not commit suicide because they make fun on the Internet, it is much more complex, it is a series of traumas that create anomalies at the neuronal level that have to be treated by a specialist doctor. He took an irreversible decision and we must respect the memory of him and the pain of the family and friends of him. And for the people who live the same. Please RESPECT.

If RA receives donations, it is because he is doing something right. Although, anyone who has to fill the fridge knows that it is not enough. If they become millionaires, applause! This guarantees the permanence of the project.

This can be solved fast. Stenzek publicly threatened to denounce for copyright, Then, that RA challenges him to denounce, public and official. And the gossip is over.

LibRetro/RetroArch are doing wonderful things, like other projects. RA has more people and relevant means supporting it. Mr. Sujano is one of the best, but every time there is more.
Do not spend your life on these things. The approach should be promoting all impressive features, and it would be really great to make developers known, that few know, the human side.

ā€œdejad que los perros ladren, es seƱal de que cabalgamos.ā€
Ā· Don Quijote.

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Postdata: This reminds me of an emulator that I will not name but start with ā€œDā€, which became open source and then closed it. The difference is that at that time nobody put a copy of the source code.

Irony, I could not avoidā€¦
:rofl: letā€™s laugh at these things.

Mame devs (at least some, although afaik Haze isnā€™tā€™ that involved anymore anyway) donā€™t appreciate old versions of MAME being used in the first place though. Just on a general note, I think people shouldnā€™t expect relations (not only specifically with MAME) to be able to progress beyond ā€œfrostyā€ with some developers, if they donā€™t see particulary much value in RA/libretro (regardless of any code-related issues).