Vanelan : There's still a lot of setup he has to do though which includes having the RGR Plugin communicate with it to handle loading the roms from Vizzed, loading and storing saves to the user's directory on their computer, supporting screenshot taking and having that connect to the server, etc.

I would definitely like to get MAME updated eventually. I've also considered maybe just getting another multisystem emulator added. Basically all that would have to happen is for the multisystem emulator be added and the "cores" would be added and configured manually by us. Examples of this include Libretro and OpenEmu.

Both of those multisystem emulators support a ton of systems and it doesn't go about it the same way as MAME does. What they do with those emulators is they find the best emulator for each system and those emulators are configured to work inside the multisystem emulator. So you're getting the best of all emulators with the simplicity of working through 1 emulator.

I also just found out that there's apparently a HTML5 frontend in development for Libretro. I wasn't able to get it to work but this could eventually allow us to add a boat load of games to Vizzed that can be played without any plugins. Here's the web Libretro:
https://buildbot.libretro.com/web/

Davideo7 : I've used libretro on my raspberry pi. 
It runs extremely well and would be a great asset to vizzed.

If we could get the HTML5 frontend working, that would be even better in the long run.
When I get a chance, I could do some research into it and see if I can figure out how to get it working.

Vanelan : I think that if we had a lot of games emulated on Vizzed without the need of a Plugin, we'd get more traffic. A lot of people have a trust issue with having to download and install a plugin. It's also a hassle for a lot of people. I might have to try and search for other HTML5 emulators. NESBox is great and we're already currently using that.

Davideo7 : I couldn't agree more, and I know we have talked about this in the past. I think a lot of what hurts Vizzed's RGR traffic is that you have to install a program and install it, which might cause issues were it just will not work on the persons computer, OR that they just don't trust downloading the file in the first place.

In the years since Vizzed came onto the scene, there are a several competitor sites that allow you to play these games right out of your browser with little to know setup involved. Sure they don't have the vast library that Vizzed does usually but still, I believe if we could go more to an in-browser setup that would be a huge help traffic wise.

Davideo7 : I tried out that demo of the HTML5 libretro and its rather buggy...
I never got it to start a game and it just gives me tons of errors in chrome and doesn't even attempt to create a game window.
So, I think it needs a lot of work before we could consider adding it.

I have been looking into asm.js to see if we could potentially do the same thing ourselves, but there are lots of issues compiling in Windows, so until I have a spare PC I can put Linux on, that is out of the question as well.

Either way, I think that just adding the new MAME/removing MESS would fix a lot of problems and make a lot more games/systems playable or playable again since the current version broke a lot of emulators.

Jordanv78 : To be honest though, a good portion of the games in the RGR already have browser emulators available but it would be nice to expand that. I think the big issue is that there are a lot of technical limitations to browser emulators.

Vanelan : It seems to work better in Firefox. I agree though, it does seem pretty buggy and it's definitely in early development still. I was able to get the emulators on this page working though:
http://toadking.com/retroarch/
But that seems to be early development of the Retroarch web player. I think there's a file missing with the up to date Retroarch web player causing it to not work, otherwise I think it's suppose to work a lot better than it currently is.

Vanelan : After doing a lot more research, I've been finding a lot of HTML5 emulators. I'll be making a thread about it soon and I'll summon you and the staff to it.

Davideo7 : I guess my point is not coming across correctly but I do understand that these in-browser emulators have some limitations, but to the average user they will function just fine.

Take the Internet Archives setup to their Dosgames for example. You go to the game page of the game you want to play. The game window is loaded up instantly to the Games Title/Load Screen and you click play. That's it. I've seen other sites with similar setups for many other systems as well.

For the average user, that's all they need. Maybe there could be a link for more advanced users to use an actual plugin emulator like the current setup if they so wished with extra features. The main point being that if we make it easier for the average person to play a game, the more traffic Vizzed would probably get.

Jordanv78 : So you're suggesting having the games play on the actual game's page rather than in a popup?

Davideo7 : I'd like to check them out. Do you know if any of them support controllers?

All those in the previous link only seem to support kb... and not very well at that...

Vanelan : Some of them do support a controller. For the ones that don't, there's a script out there that can be used to add controller support. Not sure how hard it would be to implement though.

Davideo7 : Exactly. The easier we can make these games run for the average user, the easier it will be to keep some of these users around and active. I can't tell you how many users we've lost over the past couple of years because they couldn't get various things to run with the RGR, or to run at all.

Some of this has to do with the N64 emulators but a lot of it just has to do with the fact that people don't want to have to go through all sorts of stuff they don't understand to get a game to run. I know it seems simple enough to people like us...but to the average user or younger child...not so much.

I'm just now replying to your summon... I don't want to sound like I'm being mean, but what about all the private messages I've sent you regarding the RGR plugin which were never responded to as well as all the posts in private forums regarding the RGR plugin which you haven't replied to?

Those need to be addressed IMO before new updates are introduced into the RGR plugin.