Date: 2004-02-09
Current Project(s): Xeon
Location: United States
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This time around our Spotlight is going to focus on a newcomer to the development scene. He's an American known as _SF_ and he is making big waves in Xbox emulation. Now we will unmask the man behind Xeon, one of the hottest topics around the scene. As a fan he initially starting using emulation with Nintendo 64, and Gameboy Emulators. It wasn't until later down the road that he became interested in development. Not interested in older system emulation _SF_ wanted try something new and more challenging. The Xbox gave him a perfect opportunity to try out his coding skills which were previously non emulation related, as well as develop his knowledge of Direct3D and other Windows APIs. _SF_ feels that older generations of consoles seem to have been emulated almost to perfection, and that the latest generation has seen little progress in regards to actually playing games. He hopes to contribute in the development of the next generation emulators with is current Project Xeon.
Quite pleased with the support he has received so far for Xeon which is in the primitive stages of development, _SF_ hopes to improve it a lot in the future, especially in regard to compatibility. One of his best experiences came the first time he was able to run Halo in Xeon even though the emulator was very incomplete. Although he made a lot of mistakes in early development by focusing on the wrong aspects of the emulator he was neither discouraged nor surprised since he was new to emu development. Though he cannot single out any complement he has received so far he greatly appreciates the people that have dealt with Xeon's issues and kept a positive outlook. Rather then focusing on useless negative feedback he chooses to ignore it and not become discouraged.
Xeon is progressing well, though it's going to be difficult isolating and fixing all of the graphics bugs. It's possible that within a few months Halo and a few other games will be playable, though it's hard to tell. He is very interested in other next generation consoles and would be quite happy to start work on a different system once he loses interest in Xeon. He is working on another project which can not be revealed at this time. He is generally satisfied with his current work even though he admits he has made a lot of mistakes since this is his first project. Since Halo works very well internally within the emulator he would like to have better graphics without as many bugs. While currently not working with anyone he feels he will probably need to join other developers in order to deal with the limitations that Xeon has. When all is said and done and he moves on from emulation _SF_ hopes to be remembered for the quality of his emulators. _SF_ would like to thank all of the people that support Xeon, as well as caustik for some of the documentation and ideas which helped him early on.
Sandie and Keith would like to give a big thanks to _SF_ for helping with this article and wish him lots of luck with his current and future projects.
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