byuu est un nouvel émulateur multi-système de Near (anciennement byuu) qui se veut être un compromis entre l'exigence de précision de higan et la facilité d'utilisation de bsnes. La vision de higan est d'être absolument exhaustif dans la précision d'émulation en prenant en compte les cas les plus rares, byuu est moins intransigeant et couvre 99% des besoins de précision au prix de la perte de quelques fonctionnalités.
I'm releasing the first official beta for the new byuu emulator today.
This is a new multi-system emulator, which shares emulation cores with higan.
Like higan, byuu is focused on accuracy foremost. Unlike higan, byuu aims to be much more user friendly. Think of byuu as easy mode, and higan as advanced mode, but they are fundamentally the same emulator under the hood. One is not a superset of the other; they are sibling projects.
The goal of byuu is to carry forward the breakout success of bsnes for all of higan's emulation cores, and not just for the SNES alone. bsnes, by being much easier to use, led to a resurgence in support that resulted in several new features, speed optimizations, bug reports, and emulator accuracy improvements. I hope to rekindle the same interest in all 25 of my supported emulation cores with this new emulator.
And frankly, higan's future depends on this project being a success. I am aiming to retire around the end of this year (though it's not set in stone), and I am looking for a new lead developer willing to take over byuu.org, github.com/byuu, and its emulation projects. I would still contribute to the projects on GitHub for as long as I were able to.
I am changing my personal name to Near, and calling my new emulator byuu, for many reasons. You can read the complete rationale here: byuu.org/articles/names. But essentially, these emulators are not only mine: they are the work of dozens of volunteers spanning 15+ years of development. It is perhaps too late, but I wish to separate my personal identity from these projects. I want these emulators to become group projects with multiple developers, and I want them to outlast me if at all possible. With 15+ years and 230,000+ backlinks to byuu.org, I could not see a way to move these emulators to a new domain. And based on it taking 2+ years for higan to become even partially known to the general public, I did not see a viable method of establishing this new emulator in less than a year without using an established name, and the only such name I have at my disposal is byuu. Ideally, I would have kept my emulators on a separate website from day one, but I cannot change the past to correct for this mistake. I mulled over this decision for the past few weeks, and this is the best choice I could come up with. I hope you'll understand. I will also understand if folks continue to call me personally by byuu. I understand it's not easy to change names after 22+ years, and that this will invariably cause some level of confusion. But it can't be helped.
The byuu_san Twitter account, as well as most social media accounts using the name byuu, will be used only for official software development news and updates going forward. Some accounts will be harder than others to migrate, and will take more time and planning.
I have spun off my personal Twitter account to near_nyan, and my personal website to near.byuu.org for the time being, until I can find a better domain for it. Over the coming months, I will be migrating personal content from byuu.org and elsewhere over to my personal website.
I make no secret of the mistakes I've made in the past as byuu (nor will the internet ever let us forget them), and that I'll likely continue to make more mistakes as Near. But for the past two years, I have been doing my best to change and improve myself. I am who I am however, and though I am to be more friendly and cooperative, I won't hide my identity nor unwavering support for my friends. But game preservation transcends politics and ideologies, and I've now separated my work from my personality, so at this point, it is up to you if you want to follow me as Near or not. It's no longer directly tied to byuu.
In any case, byuu is still brand-new, and it is missing several major features including gamepad support, multi-player support, cheat codes, and more. These features will be added in due-time. Sans enhancements like HD mode 7, I am for feature-parity with bsnes, including run-ahead support and much more. The speed is rather limited as well, but I hope to implement scanline renderers and roughly double the performance of each emulator core in the coming year. I am releasing this now for feedback and to try to gauge interest in this new idea of mine.
I hope it will be a success! Thank you everyone!
Planned roadmap:
v1: support for gamepad mapping and the save state manager
v2: support for other controller types (mice, light guns) and multiple-players
v3: support for Famicom Disk System, Super Game Boy, and Sega CD emulation
v?: support for per-system input mapping, cheat codes, movie recording, and run-ahead functionality
v?+X: optional scanline renderers for each core to boost performance substantially
v?+Y: additional emulation cores from outside of higan (PS1, Saturn, N64 would be most promising!) |
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