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by whateveryousayw
968 days ago
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For the reason you mentioned, there is no such thing as finished software, because no software runs forever without maintenance: nothing works in a vacuum. You're either at the mercy of an API, an operating system, a BIOS, etc. The amusing thing is that for game development, the most stable target platform is old proprietary video game consoles like the Genesis and Neo Geo simply because there are dozens of emulators for them that run on hundreds of platforms. "Write once, run anywhere" is more true if you program a new Genesis game than make a native cross platform PC game. Make a PC game, and there's a decent chance it'll stop working after a couple of decades (most Win95 games are already dodgy). People will be making Neo Geo emulators after you're dead. If you make a Neo Geo game, it's going to run on virtually every computer for a very long time. The real power of it is that it gives you the ability to latch onto the fame of (and interest in) a popular platform. Even if you make an open source game, the problem is that if you didn't program Doom, there's a good chance that there isn't going to be enough interest in it for large groups of people to maintain it over long periods of time. All things will break in time, though. Eventually, people will probably lose interest in maintaining emulators for arcane systems like that, and your software will stop working then. |
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But, for a long while now, the forecast has been looking increasingly grim for emulation and software preservation.
That said, if you're targeting the performance envelope of 1990s games, there are options without resorting to anything so esoteric as emulated consoles.