Wraggster: Can
you tell us where were you born, where you live, your family details,etc.?
Metafox: I was
born on March 17, 1979 in the state of New York. I'm single, no children
or anything - but I do have a cat and a guinea pig. ^_^
Wraggster: What
qualifications do you have?
Metafox: I took
a C course and a Pascal class in college, but I'm mostly self-taught.
I know C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, BASIC, some X86 ASM, HTML :), some
Java, and some CGI/Perl.
Wraggster: What
made you get into computers?
Metafox: When
I was in the third grade, my teacher had our class go to the computer
room and make an ASCII Christmas tree in BASIC.
That's where I first got interested in computers, as
well as programming. :)
Wraggster: What
projects/coding have you done previous to your Laser Emulator.?
Metafox: I never
released anything that I coded previous to Laser. I did make a few
things, including an adventure game called The Adventures of Gus and
Rob for Windows, which I'm remaking on the NeoGeo Pocket.
Wraggster: What
made you choose to do a Laser emulator ?
Metafox: I always
wanted to make an emulator. But I really didn't think that I had the
technical skill to do it. I was browsing through the homepage of Mike
Greene's EmuDX emulator, and saw the sourcecode for the first emulator
he made, SinVader. The sourcecode was simple and very well commented.
I emailed Mike and asked him if I could use his sourcecode as a basis
for my emulator. Mike Greene agreed, and I happily set out on my way
to modify the source.
Wraggster: How
did you start and what programs did you use to start coding Laser?
Metafox: SinVader
was completely written in C by Mike Greene - with Marat Fayzullin's
Z80 emulator (also completely in C) as the CPU core. It was compiled
in DOS using the freely available GCC compiler. The first change that
I did was change the green graphics to white. :P
Laser is it's own emulator now, with very little of
Mike's original code still in place. Especially with ss_teven's rewrite
to a driver system. But Mike is still credited, because Laser never
would have existed without him. ^_^
Wraggster: Can
you give us a status update on your emulator?
Metafox: I'm
taking a break from it to work on games for the NeoGeo Pocket and
the Dreamcast. I also believe that ss_teven is currently not actively
developing Laser either - so Laser is on hold for the moment.
Wraggster: How
hard was it getting your Laser emulator to work and how can you improve
it?
Metafox: Well,
SinVader compiled for me on the first try, so it wasn't that hard
at all. There are a lot of things that I'd like to improve for it.
Lupin 3 is really messed up at the moment - it worked before the rewrite
- but doesn't now. It's odd, and neither I nor ss_teven can figure
it out currently. I'd also like to add some more discrete logic simulators
to it. And Kaillera is a nice thing that I might look into too. :P
I'm also going to release the discrete logic simulators
for the Dreamcast as a separate entity from LaserDC. (which was actually
due to some pestering from wraggster :P) Pong Doubles on the Dreamcast
using the 4 controllers of the Dreamcast could definately be a fun
party game. :D
Wraggster: Do
you have any new projects in the pipeline?
Metafox: 2 NeoGeo
Pocket games (Pengo and The Adventures of Gus and Rob), 2 Dreamcast
games, and the beforementioned simulator for the Dreamcast. I'm not
going to go into the Dreamcast games any further - you'll just have
to wait and see. ;)
Wraggster: Are
you carrying on with the DCGen emulator and have any news about that?
Metafox:I'm still
planning to do a bit with DCGen. I haven't really done much of anything
to it since my source releases a while back. I've got a few ideas
I'd like to work to try to improve some things in the emulator once
I get back to actively working on it again.
Wraggster:What
are the good and Bad side of Being a Emulation website webmaster?
Metafox:It's
fun to be able to think up ideas and bring them into a website, and
I like to post news - it is a nice break from coding and real life.
:P
The bad side I guess, would be keeping staff, and keeping
spirit up among staff members (and myself). It's hard to keep a site
up to people's expectations when a site's been around for so long.
Wraggster: Whats
your opinion of the Xbox and PS2 Emulation Scenes and which looks
the most promising for you?
Metafox: I don't
like the way that binary distribution is handled with the XBox. But,
with Xbox's x86 processor - XBox definately looks the most promising.
When Linux is running at a reasonable speed on the Xbox, you won't
have to recompile every program to run like you do with the Dreamcast.
The PS2 emulation scene, though, is fun to watch. I
like BigBoy's emulators, and his emulator framework is neat. I might
decide to try something on the PS2 some time. :)
