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Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 1:35 am
by Bart
Welcome Ladies of Le Mans and Sultans of Scud,
Dames of Daytona and Viceroys of Virtua Fighter,
Baronesses of Bass and Lords of the Lost World!

Welcome all to the official new Supermodel Forum. As of 2023, the Supermodel project is 20 years old! Hard to believe, isn't it? The project was started in 2003 by Stefano Teso, "Ville Linde", and myself, initially working independently, and then joining forces after being made aware of each others' efforts. The project went dormant within a few years and a MAME driver was produced by Ville. For years, Model 3 received little attention until in late 2010, as a frustrated PhD student looking for an escape hatch, I decided to rewrite it and released the first official public version on April 1, 2011. And so Supermodel was granted a second life -- and I think it's fair to say the project has been a dazzling success since then.

In recent years, I've been proud to discover that the number of users is much larger than I thought, and I'd like to thank each and every one of you for your continued support. I unfortunately have little time to contribute directly these days but thanks to the efforts of Ian Curtis, Matthew Daniels, Nik Henson, "Harry Tuttle", and others over the years, Supermodel is better than I ever could have made it on my own! I hope the project lasts at least another 20 years ;)

This forum is intended to bring together fans of Supermodel and that magical era of arcade gaming it seeks to preserve. The old forum was unfortunately broken by a necessary server upgrade and is still archived here. Here's hoping this one has an even more vibrant future!

Thank you,

Bart

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 2:14 am
by gm_matthew
Yay new forum :mrgreen:

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 7:02 am
by xbrunox
Hi Bart!
Thanks for this new forum.
Will you import old Topics?

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 10:22 am
by Jiterdomer
I'd like you to thank me for making a Discord server as a shelter when the old forum is down. Do you think you can able to post on both this and to my Discord server? Because I made a backup forum just in case if this shuts down again.

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 3:28 pm
by Ferrarifan
Awesome 😎

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 4:23 pm
by grahamaker93
THANK GOD IT'S JUST A NEW FORUM.
I almost had a heart attack thinking the forum is gone just like that.
I'm happy to see that you are doing well Bart. Thank you for giving us a superb emulator. Even the new Daytona USA 2 inside the new Yakuza game is no match for the Supermodel.
I'm also glad to see you working on cool new AR games in the future.

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2023 6:29 pm
by Ian
I find it amazing after 20 years of dev we are still unlocking secrets to the hardware :) Although emulation is very close to perfect these days.

I also find it quite amazing how much was worked out in the early days with literally nothing more than a dump of the games and a pdf description of the real3d api. 20 years ago pcs were so slow :D emulation must have been such a challenge .. even running in debug mode with relatively sane speeds. GPUs have also come a very long way in 20 years, what is possible now in the way of emulation would simply not have been possible back then.

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2023 1:16 am
by Bart
Jiterdomer wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 10:22 am I'd like you to thank me for making a Discord server as a shelter when the old forum is down. Do you think you can able to post on both this and to my Discord server? Because I made a backup forum just in case if this shuts down again.
Thanks a lot for creating the Discord! Is there a permanent invite link I can post here? As for cross-posting between Discord and phpBB, I don't see how that would even be possible.

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2023 1:21 am
by Bart
Ian wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 6:29 pm I find it amazing after 20 years of dev we are still unlocking secrets to the hardware :) Although emulation is very close to perfect these days.

I also find it quite amazing how much was worked out in the early days with literally nothing more than a dump of the games and a pdf description of the real3d api. 20 years ago pcs were so slow :D emulation must have been such a challenge .. even running in debug mode with relatively sane speeds. GPUs have also come a very long way in 20 years, what is possible now in the way of emulation would simply not have been possible back then.
Supermodel ran at a handful of frames per second on my 500 MHz Pentium III back in the day. I started developing it on my 180 MHz Pentium machine. I don't remember if we got as far as even 2D graphics showing up before I upgraded, though. Back then it simultaneously seemed so far away yet so tantalizingly close once we got basic 3D graphics showing up.

Agree about all the little secrets being unlocked. Pretty remarkable that the developers of these games were able to not only get anything up and running on a custom chipset back then but had enough creativity to push the hardware and abuse its esoteric features (e.g., some of the stuff happening with LODs in Emergency Call Ambulance).

Btw, you should be a moderator now.

Re: Welcome to the New Forums!

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2023 1:21 am
by Bart
xbrunox wrote: ↑Wed Nov 08, 2023 7:02 am Hi Bart!
Thanks for this new forum.
Will you import old Topics?
Don't think there's any way to now, unfortunately :( They're all archived (albeit not easily searchable).