KiNOX's interview #11

Target : Antiriad, author of RAINE
Interviewer(s): MGandhi and SE7E
Date : 99/09/04

This interview is a part of KiNOX's website.


Antiriad is the leader of Raine, one of the most famous Arcade emulators available


1. Why this name, RAINE?

RAIN (bow islands) E (mulator) - which was the original aim of the code


2. RAINE is for DOS, but there is a project to port it to Windows? Talk about the progress.

I already kinda ported it to windows using msvc, and the allegro 39xx wip's (allegro is becoming portable)... however, i haven't finished it enough to release publically, for example, the 68020 games crash


3. Why Atomic Runner isn't supported in the new version of RAINE, but runs in 0.06?

I experimented with some data east roms, but then some decent emulators turned up (xdragon, and another which never appeared), so I never finished those games. I found plenty of Taito stuff to concentrate on instead :)


4. And about CISCO HEAT? All games dumped from J-ROM were added, except it, why?

j-rom dumps so many great titles, and sometimes I cannot add them all at once :) cisco heat is in my dir of roms to look at, so i will try it soon :)


5. What's the present progress of sound support in Taito F3 roms?

'incomplete'... i now have info for the 'esp' signal processor, and some for an otto chip, which is hopefully similar to the f3-system otis (don't ask :)..).


6. Please make a comparision between MAME and RAINE

yikes! I'm not sure I can do that!! :) Both are different (raine is faster, user oriented interface. mame is portable, hardware documentation oriented).
Mame has a goal of documenting the hardware, raine has a goal of playing the games.


7. Will RAINE support another arcade boards?

Raine is always supporting new boards, but usually by the same companies (f2-system games do not actually run on one board like neogeo, or f3-system).
If you mean support more arcade companies, we are trying not to now, because raine can't go on indefintately.


9. Some ROM sets were changed to be compatible with MAME, comment it

Requests for mame compatible romsets was becoming asked a lot. i'd rather spend time on something else, but i guess it was worthwhile.


10. What are the games that you still have plans to add? Are you having problems with one especific game? Which one?

There are plenty of taito games to add, but there is nothing i can think of that i really want to see emulated now. This probably explains why I'm less motivated and find the emu scene a bit unexciting now...


11. What do you want to improve in RAINE?

I'd like to improve f3 emulation some more
I'd like a realtime 'sardu' gui too, but it's tough :)


12. What's your preferred game which still not playable/dumped?

I can't think of one at the moment :)


13. People also asks if you will start another projects (another emulators)?

I'll not start another arcade emulator project, because i've done enough of that, and there isn't any room for new arcade emus. ngpc looks interesting to emulate (i know it's controversial, but the ngpc will surely not be released by snk in the uk (or the rest of europe?)).

        Antiriad
 http://www.rainemu.com/


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