Le 2021-06-30 08:15, Kaede a écrit :


Je n'ai pas réagi car je n'étais pas certain de mon coup, mais comme c'est mentionné dans le quote de Youpla, au moins pour l'essentiel, ce n'étaient pas des jeux prêtés, il a acquis les jeux lui-même.
Il avait expliqué le process sur son blog (il y a même eu des "rebondissements" comme un gros colis perdu par les services postaux ... retrouvé des mois plus tard, heureusement, au moins un gros site avait couvert l'info à l'époque), mais je ne sais pas si ce dernier est et restera accessible, d'autant qu'il lui était déjà arrivé de publier puis supprimer des articles.


edit : son portfolio, en version très brève et claire https://near.sh/

Le contraire m'aurait étonné

Ca demande du matos et des compétences particulièrs, donc les devs d'émulateurs s'en remettent souvent à d'autres.

"Funded decapping all SNES coprocessors to extract their firmware.
Funded decapping and delayering the SNES PPU processors for analysis."

The emulation and rom hacking community appears to have lost an absolute legend, as reports indicate that coder and rom hacker Near has passed away.

It’d be an understatement to say the community wouldn’t be where it is today without Near’s contributions. Their creation of the SNES emulators higan and bsnes are still revolutionary today for their accuracy, but let’s also not forget Near’s numerous hacking and patching tools, the creation of things like BPS and MSU-1, preservation efforts and of course, rom hacking translations. And this is just scratching the surface.

Above all else, Near was a warm, caring, and gentle person who touched the lives of so many.

Earlier this year, Near completed their one true passion project: their English translation of Bahamut Lagoon. Near demanded absolute perfection in their work, making this far away one of the most professional fan translations ever made. Their reworking of the game also pushed the SNES to its limits, to the point where some strange glitches began appearing with some people who were playing the game on real hardware using a flash cart.

Ever the perfectionist, Near created a workaround and put out version 1.1 of their translation a few days after the initial release. But they were determined to find out the root cause of the glitch: was it with the sd2snes flash cart, was it with certain models of the SNES itself, or was it something else entirely?

A little over a month ago, Near reached out to Ballz, one of their project beta testers, with a version 1.2 patch, knowing Ballz had experience issues with his 1-chip SNES console. After some testing and playing around with some settings in my sd2snes they did determine version 1.2 fixed the issue. Version 1.2 also contained some script fixes from the project’s translator, Tom. This patch is absolutely perfect.

There was a bug, but it was with the firmware to sd2snes and Near fretted about when they should release the patch: do it now before the firmware fix was made and run the risk that some people would still report the bug, or wait until the firmware was updated… which would be who knows when. On June 1, Near posted this update to their site with little fanfare.

This is the final release of Near’s Bahamut Lagoon translation. A labor of love literally decades in the making, and an absolute joy to play.

While community mourns the loss of a truly phenomenal person, people can also can take heart in knowing Near’s legacy remains.

Thank you for everything, Near. Rest in peace.

Hi there community,

last Sunday a tragedy befell the emulation community, when Near tragically took their own life. While we feel Near needs no introduction, we feel it is only right to let people know of the extent to which Near’s work laid the foundational framework of Libretro/RetroArch, and what other great projects they worked on, including of course bsnes (which needs no introduction at this point).

Among Near’s other great accomplishments: libsnes (which later turned into our fork, libretro), libco (a cooperative multi-threading library), Higan (a multi-system emulator), Ares, and various other auxiliary projects.

Out of respect for Near’s untimely passing, we have delayed the release of the next RetroArch by a full week. You won’t be seeing us doing any promotional material or coverage for it until then, and who knows, we might even skip going into it at all. We feel this right now is more important and should get front and center coverage.

We asked three people familiar with Near to provide their own eulogy. Recognize that we speak from the heart and that our purpose in doing this is to pay proper respect and tribute to a great programmer in the emulation scene, the likes of whom we might never get again.

Le 2021-06-29 00:32, inFiniteRunN3rd a écrit :
Concernant Near, c'est peu vraisemblable qu'il ait décapé tous les microproc de toutes ces cartouches : trop fastidieux et les proprios n'auraient pas été d'accord (vu que ça fout en l'air le jeu).

"Funded decapping all SNES coprocessors to extract their firmware.
Funded decapping and delayering the SNES PPU processors for analysis."

Il est difficile d'énumérer toutes ses contributions sur les vingt dernières années. On lui doit bsnes et higan, les deux émulateurs les plus exacts concernant la SNES, mais aussi ares, un émulateur multi-plateforme qui s'annonçait déjà extrêmement prometteur pour des plateformes comme la N64, le PC Engine ou le 32X. On lui doit le format BPS pour les patchs de traductions amateurs, et aussi le MSU-1, une puce imaginaire dans l'esprit du Super FX, qui étendait les capacités d'une cartouche SNES pour lui permettre d'accueillir des cinématiques FMV et des musiques en qualité CD, le tout d'une manière compatible avec le véritable hardware. Il a contribué à la préservation de certaines cartouches rares, notamment en mettant la main avec ses propres fonds sur une collection privée de 1200 jeux pour en scanner chaque puce, chaque circuit à la main, un par un, avant de reverser le fruit de ses travaux à la communauté. On lui doit également les premières ébauches d'un framework multi-émulateurs, principe qui sera plus tard repris par d'autres pour devenir RetroArch, l'un des logiciels les plus importants de la scène émulation de ces 10 dernières années.

C'était, sans exagération aucune, la personne la plus savante au monde sur les rouages internes de la Super NES, probablement bien plus que n'importe quel ingénieur de chez Nintendo. Cette console a été son obsession durant 25 années de sa vie, et si vous avez joué à un jeu SNES sur un émulateur au cours de ce siècle, vous le lui devez très certainement.

Le 2021-06-28 19:29, Kaede a écrit :
mais a "préservé" des centaines voire milliers de jeux, des boîtes aux détails techniques des cartouches (incomplets ou manquants dans les dumps à l'époque)