Apple II games on Apple IIGS emu

[timekills]

BLUF*: Need to have Apple II entries available automatically for Apple IIGS emulator as all Apple II games can be played on the Apple IIGS and its emulators.

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Instead of having an Apple //e and Apple IIGS emulators, I just run the IIGS emulator since it is backward compatible with and plays all games for the Apple II family.

Problem is, if I upload the data/images/video for an Apple II game, even after it is formally accepted it won't populate the Apple IIGS games. I have to duplicate the entry for both systems  - a waste of time and hard drive space.

Recommend the platforms be Apple IIGS (only) and Apple II family. All Apple II family games would populate whether the emulated system was the Apple IIe, Apple IIc, or Apple IIGS. The Apple IIGS (only) games will not run on the IIc or IIe.

 

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[SentaiBrad]

They're different systems though. Even if the same emulator can be used, they're still separate. Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance can all be played from VBA, VBA-M and mGBA, but they would never be merged. Just keep two platforms, one that is Apple II, and one that is Apple IIGS and they can use the same emulator.

[timekills]

They're different systems though. Even if the same emulator can be used, they're still separate. Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance can all be played from VBA, VBA-M and mGBA, but they would never be merged. Just keep two platforms, one that is Apple II, and one that is Apple IIGS and they can use the same emulator.

I agree with the two platforms; as I wrote, there are some games that can't be played on both. However, fire those that can, wouldn't it be advantageous to be able to list both platforms when you load the game data.

It's the same image and game. Duplicating it across both platforms seems redundant. Add multiple platforms you can use the image on in the database and voila - one shot one kill.

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[SentaiBrad]

Because then it's inaccurate. Apple II games can go forward but IIGS games can't go backward. I'll use my same example, Game Boy games can be played on the Game Boy Color, but you would never merge the two. Same analogy, GBC to GBA. Even if it's the same game on both platforms, they're still different. Even a Game Boy Color game that has some special features if played on a GBA is still a Game Boy Color game.

[timekills]

Brad, I'm clearly not explaining this correctly, but I'm not sure where you are getting that I'm recommending removing either platform. I'm not.

Allow Apple II games to populate the Apple IIGS. I didn't recommend REMOVING both (or either) platforms. Just allow adding both platforms to the game when submitted.

 

In your example,if you use the GBA emulator, can you play GBC or GB ROMS? If so, when you add a GBC ROM to the GBA emulator, what info is pulled from the LaunchBox database? NOTHING. Because it isn't shown as also compatible and playable on the GBA. So if you allowed multiple platforms to be selected when you add the game, if someone added the GBC ROM to either their GBC emu or their GBA emu, they'd get the information, images, video, etc. It's the same ROM or disk image. It's playable on multiple platforms. Allow the adding of the platforms it's playable on, rather than adding the same details to each emulator.

It's different than games that were released for Nintendo and Sony and MS platforms. You can't take the same disk/image/ROM and play it on the consoles or on the emulators. Those would have different boxes, different instructions - they're different datasets (even if the game is more or less the same.) For the GB/C/A and Apple II/IIGS I'm talking about the exact same image. 

I.E. if I add the data for  "Super Mario Bros. Deluxe" to the Game Boy Color, allow adding alternate platforms IF that exact image is playable. So I'd add Game Boy Advance as an alternate platform. Then if I had the GBA emulator and dragged the "Super Mario Bros. Deluxe" ROM into it, it would populate the data. Assuming you can play GBC ROMS on GBA emulators. You definitely can play Apple II images on Apple IIGS emulators.

Edited November 21, 2016 by timekills

[Cebion]

But it was originally released for a specific machine. And that way you scrape as that machine?

Why would you scrape a Apple II game as  a Apple II GS game, even though it works on the same emulator. If you want to play all the roms on the same emulator that's just a configuration thing for the emulators. 

 

[timekills]

On 11/21/2016 at 4:07 AM, Cebion said:

But it was originally released for a specific machine. And that way you scrape as that machine?

Why would you scrape a Apple II game as  a Apple II GS game, even though it works on the same emulator. If you want to play all the roms on the same emulator that's just a configuration thing for the emulators. 

 

@CebionHave you tried emulating the Apple II systems? The Apple IIGS emulation works considerably better in MAME/MESS and has better support in other dedicated emulators. Also, as the fastest version of the Apple II family, it runs the older Apple II software through emulators much more smoothly. You do understand the Apple IIGS was designed to be backward compatible with older Apple II software.

Arguably this is like saying a game was made for the Xbox 360, but if you run it on an Xbox 360S it needs a different dataset. Why? It's the Xbox360 game, just run on a later version of the Xbox 360 that was a little faster, a little cooler, a little less power use, etc. It's not like the game was re-released for the Xbox 360 Slim.

 

Why is there a push back about allowing Apple II game info populate an Apple II game running on a IIGS emulator? It's still the Apple II game. It's not a separate release of the game made for the IIGS.

Do we really want to save all the Apple II games twice, once for Apple II emulators and once for Apple IIGS emulators? Seems like a waste of space on the server, on the end user machines, etc.

 

I suppose since I'm the only one adding software to the Apple II collection anyway, I'll just upload the info to the Apple IIGS database.

Edited November 24, 2016 by timekills