falseprophet

A common theme in "Transformers" stories is the merging of organics and technology, flesh and metal working in concert to achieve things neither can do alone. This episode looks at the history and evolution of this concept, from Headmasters and Pretenders to Beast Wars and Beast Machines, and more - it's the biomechanical Basics on TECHNORGANICS!

ES-DE is a frontend for browsing and launching games from your multi-platform collection.

Release overview
This release adds official (although experimental) support for Linux on AArch64, which is aiming for operating systems such as the upcoming SteamOS release for ARM. It also adds support for a lot of new emulators across all the main supported operating systems.
For Android specifically there are three new systems enabled, those being Namco-Sega-Nintendo Triforce (triforce), Microsoft Xbox (xbox) and Microsoft Xbox 360 (xbox360). And although the Sega Model 3 (model3) system was technically supported in the previous release, it wasn't really usable in practice due to only MAME being available for these games, but now these games are fully playable due to the new SUPER3 emulator. Likewise PICO-8 is now much more usable on Android as the official Raspberry Pi build can be used via an unofficial PICO-8 wrapper. Support for multi-user setups has also been fully rolled out for all RetroArch cores as of this release, meaning ES-DE should now work correctly in Android multi-user environments.
On macOS three new systems have been enabled as well, those being OpenBOR Game Engine (openbor), Namco-Sega-Nintendo Triforce (triforce) and Microsoft Xbox 360 (xbox360).
As for general cross-platform topics, a new language has been added, which is Vietnamese. There are also a couple of general bug fixes and translation updates as well as some dependency library updates. There are also quite a number of new standalone emulators and RetroArch cores added for many systems, see below for all details.
Under the hood the remaining ancient Raspberry Pi specific code and configuration has now been fully removed, meaning there is no longer any device-specific code or configuration whatsoever in ES-DE and everything is instead completely generalized.

This Bed We Made is a third-person mystery game in which you play as a maid in a 1950s hotel and snoop around strangers' rooms to uncover their deadly secrets. Discover what links guests together in this tale of love, heartbreak and murder!

Fast PlayStation 1 emulator for x86-64/AArch32/AArch64/RV64 - Release Latest Rolling Release · stenzek/duckstation

• Qt: Tweak slider colour in Dark Ocean theme
• 28c34fe Qt: Use saveAndReloadGameSettings() instead of manual save
• efa9741 Qt: Warn when changing renderer for the first time
• 0f7eed0 dep/imgui: Update to 3a26b64
• 805dce4 FullscreenUI: Add outline renderer
• aebca6a ImGuiOverlays: Use outline text for OSD

It is rare that the MAME Team addresses the community with news of this magnitude, and we want to approach this moment with the transparency and care it deserves. What follows is a candid account of where this project stands, where it is going, and why the decisions we have made — difficult as some of them are — represent the most responsible path forward for a codebase that has grown into one of the most complex preservation efforts in the history of open-source software.

Game Boy / Game Boy Color / Super Game Boy emulator, debugger and embedded MCP server for macOS, Windows, Linux, BSD and RetroArch.

• 🎨 Added Super Game Boy support
• 🎯 Improved accuracy
• 👾 [libretro] Added webOS and Linux aarch64 support
• 🧠 Improved MCP server + skill
• 🐛 Many improvements and bug fixes

DMG/GBC/GBA emulator and experimental NDS emulator. - Release GBE+ 1.10

Ain't nobody got time for jokes today! There are some pretty sizable additions with the new GBE+ 1.10. Here's a breakdown of all the developments over the past year.

Notable Changes:

• Added support for the Wave Scanner, for use with Ryuusei no Rockman on the DS.
• Added support for the Wantame Card Scanner, for use with Wantame Music Channel: Doko Demo Style.
• Added support for the unreleased Vaus Controller. Allows you to use joysticks to control the paddle in Alleyway on the Game Boy.
• Added support for the unreleased WorkBoy. Allows you to use a QWERTY keyboard to emulate the WorkBoy's keyboard.
• Added support for sending and receiving Nectaris maps. This brings GB KISS support to 100%.
• Added support for the Bayer Didget. This is mostly a copy of the Glucoboy, but for the NDS.
• Added support for file fragmentation when running dumps of AM3 SmartMedia cards.
• Added stereo support for the GBA core.
• Completely reworked networking in DMG/GBC and Pokemon Mini cores. Allows for easier disconnects and resets (without segfaults!)
• Save States are now versioned. GBE+ will refuse to load incompatible versions. Everything from 1.9 and before will not work, so consider booting up from a .sav file and making new ones for 1.10.
• Save States now have Time & Date metadata in format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. GBE+ will display this in the GUI, letting you see which save states you've used and when you last used them.
• The Qt GUI now displays FPS in the titlebar.

Other structural changes have been made to better facilitate GBE+'s transition to SDL3 once a stable release of SDL_Net 3.0 comes out. GBE+'s architecture should be able to accomodate a Vulkan backend in the future as well.

3DS Emulator.

- GPU emulation improvements:  
    - correct lighting emulation  
    - normal mapping, shadow mapping  
    - fog  
- Camera and Mic support  
- Motion controls fixes  
- New game list UI  
- Other misc fixes/improvements  

It’s the end of another month, which means it’s time for another MAME release! As you’d expect, MAME 0.287 includes a wide-ranging array of emulation improvements to a multitude of systems. Interesting changes this month include better Namco System 23 graphics, improved lighting for Sega Model 3, and software-controlled volume control/panning for Philips CD-i (along with improved stability).

The GRiD Compass family has received a keyboard overhaul as well as an initial DAC sound output implementation. The Apple II family now handles tricky raster effects more realistically, as well as getting a substantial software list update (metadata for the MECC collection is in much better shape). And speaking of software lists, a couple of NES prototypes have been added.

Three months have passed since the last release, and here we are again, with our new release approach. We are both worried and excited, but hope that in the current reality of the absence of pre-release testing, with more frequent releases, we will …

• Add dosbox.conf option to control the duration of the beep when
  DOS CON and INT 10h are given the BEL character. (joncampbell123).
• DOS CON device BEL (beep) handling: For IBM PC modes, call on
  INT 10h to make the beep, rather than duplicate code. Fix the
  DOS CON device so that it can also properly beep in PC-98 mode.
  (joncampbell123).
• Fix bug where the "zero memory on DOS allocation" option was
  stuck on. Some games, like "Bad Cat" rely on memory contents
  peristing across DOS EXEC and memory allocation. (joncampbell123).
• Fix Hercules palette selection related to herc blend. (joncampbell123).
• DOS kernel: When executing an EXE file, the loader can now detect
  EXE files that were compressed using EXEPACK. Based on the new
  exepack dosbox.conf setting, it can decompress the EXE by itself,
  switch off the A20 gate, or do nothing. The purpose of this
  setting is to avoid EXEPACK "Packed File is Corrupt" errors that
  happen if the A20 gate is enabled and the EXE was loaded too low
  in memory. (joncampbell123).
• Linux SDL1: Use XDG_SESSION_TYPE environment variable to detect
  whether or not the user is running DOSBox-X under X11 or Wayland,
  and if so, prevent the fbcon and svga drivers from initializing.
  There seems to be a problem where, if run under Wayland and the
  XWayland compatibility layer if not present, SDL1 uses the fbcon
  driver to take over the screen using vtcon switching and the classic
  fbdev driver interface. Don't do that! (joncampbell123).
  INT 21h AH=4Ah resize memory: If memory resize fails because there
  is not enough room for the requested amount of memory, do not
  set ownership of the block to the program. This fixes memory
  allocation error in California Games II. The game at one point
  seems to miscalculate and ask for an excessively large amount
  of memory on resize, and then fail, which doesn't seem to affect
  the game. HOWEVER, prior to the bugfix, the memory block that
  was available was assigned ownership to the game anyway. Later
  on after helicopter takeoff, the game would attempt to allocate
  more memory, which would fail because of the erroneous assignment
  of ownership to free memory. (joncampbell123).

Recently I stumbled on the DKcafe frontend. It is an emulation frontend for the original Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Donkey Kong 3,* but also for countless Donkey Kong ROM hacks. What makes this frontend unique is the gamified experience.

When you load the frontend, you end up in an interface that looks like a classic Donkey Kong level. You control Jumpman (Mario) and can jump and climb ladders. But in the background there are several arcade machines. (Initially only one to three, depending on the ROMs you have provided for games). And on the top of the level, Donkey Kong is standing, throwing barrels at you but also coins. By collecting the coins he is throwing, you can unlock more arcade cabinets that are ROM hack variations of the game.
Additionally, while playing the games or ROM Hacks and get a certain amount of score, and you can win trophies, and when you exit the game, you get rewarded with a large amount of coins, unlocking the coins faster.

DKCafe also includes an add-on that you can download separately from the project GitHub page or from inside the front end itself. This add-on includes ROMs and ROM hacks for the home computer versions of the first Donkey Kong game.

You do not need to provide an emulator for the frontend, it comes with its own emulator called DKWolf, which is based on WolfMame. I am not sure what exactly is different about WolfMame and regular Mame, its GitHub page does not provide an explanation. It just explains what Mame is. I assume it focuses on ROM hacks, but I am not sure. You can also replace it with your own emulator if you want to do that.
The emulator is in the DKWolf folder in the root directory and can be run on its own. It can be configured as a standard MAME, emulator cheats can also be enabled. They seem to work with many ROM hacks but not with all.

The frontend also includes additional features. Like a practice mode to improve your DK skills. The ability to continue and DKTV an alternative viewpoint of the game. Jumpman is fixed to the center of the screen as the camera follows his movements. The camera zooms in further on the action when Jumpman is jumping or hammering.

The ROMs go into the ROM folder in the root directory. You have to provide your own ROMs for the three arcade games. Though I did not manage to get Donkey Kong 3 running with it. The arcade cabinet for the game did not appear in the frontend. When I tried to run DKWolf from the command line with Dkong3 as a parameter, it informed me that all files were missing even though they were in the zip file. And it runs with regular MAME, so I am not sure what is going on there.

DKCafe runs on Windows and Raspberry Pi 4. It also provides instruction to compile it for Ubuntu Linux, but they are a bit complicated. Though it does run with Wine on Linux without any problems unless the Donkey Kong 3 issue is related to that.

In conclusion, I love this idea and would love to see it for other games like Pac-Man, for example.
I also would love if DKcafe would add ROM hacks for Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3. Also maybe for the Game Boy Donkey Kong game from 1994.

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