Difference between revisions of "Support emulation projects"
(Add section about documentation) |
(Adding some words of caution (should be made more concise)) |
||
| Line 40: | Line 40: | ||
==Donate money== | ==Donate money== | ||
| + | |||
| + | Emulation development is a time intensive task. It's only fair to reward the contributors. | ||
| + | |||
| + | However, emulator development is often a group effort and there is no fair way to distribute money. | ||
| + | Often developers of emulators can only do their work because research has been done by other people - unfortunately, that work often goes unrewarded. | ||
| + | It's therefore important to understand who you donate to, and how that money will be shared or how it will be used. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Especially for Open-Source projects, there can also be problems with only supporting the core developer group: it might actively discourage other contributors because of the unfair reward system ("Why should I work for free, but XYZ is getting paid on a monthly bases?"). | ||
| + | This can quickly lead to one "hero" developer - if they ever disappear the project is essentially dead because nobody else is familiar with the source-code. | ||
| + | |||
| + | For some projects, there is also no practical use for money: money doesn't write code. | ||
| + | There's also a lot of free services for Open-Source projects, so many projects don't have any expenses. | ||
| + | |||
=== Patreon === | === Patreon === | ||
| Line 51: | Line 64: | ||
=== PayPal and other ways to donate === | === PayPal and other ways to donate === | ||
Some emulators have PayPal addresses and such on their homepages. | Some emulators have PayPal addresses and such on their homepages. | ||
| − | |||
== Big projects == | == Big projects == | ||
Revision as of 12:29, 9 January 2019
WIP page, help wanted.
There are several ways to support or contribute to an emulation project (or similar projects such as Compatibility layers, Game engine recreations or simulators). Explained here are different ways you can get involved, even if you have low technical skill and no money.
Contents
Game testing & bug reporting
more text here... Create a GitHub account, most projects have instructions on how bug reports should be written, make sure you search to see if the issues is already brought up by another user, in that case just add your observation to that report.
Provide support for end users
Discord, IRC, forums
Write & promotion
Write blog posts, promote news, provide information, make videos on YouTube, explain change logs, etc.
Help with technical documentation
Emulators depend on technical emulation about the systems they emulate. Typically, there are dedicated communities (often includes people from emulation, homebrew and piracy scene) for these research and documentation tasks.
These research communities often uses Wikis which need to be maintained. Beginners can help by fixing typos or formatting. For some of these tasks, no coding skills are required. Advanced users and developers can contribute their own research, or participate in technical discussions.
Many of these communities also maintain their own tools which can be helpful for testing emulation or ROM dumping. These tools are often written in beginner-friendl programming languages (such as C# or Python) and can be stepping-stone for moving towards actual emulator development.
Communities
Learn how to code and help out
WIP
Donate money
Emulation development is a time intensive task. It's only fair to reward the contributors.
However, emulator development is often a group effort and there is no fair way to distribute money. Often developers of emulators can only do their work because research has been done by other people - unfortunately, that work often goes unrewarded. It's therefore important to understand who you donate to, and how that money will be shared or how it will be used.
Especially for Open-Source projects, there can also be problems with only supporting the core developer group: it might actively discourage other contributors because of the unfair reward system ("Why should I work for free, but XYZ is getting paid on a monthly bases?"). This can quickly lead to one "hero" developer - if they ever disappear the project is essentially dead because nobody else is familiar with the source-code.
For some projects, there is also no practical use for money: money doesn't write code. There's also a lot of free services for Open-Source projects, so many projects don't have any expenses.
Patreon
Several emulators have a Patreon. Here is a list
BountySource
BountySource let's you directly donate money to certain features or improvements you wish for
PayPal and other ways to donate
Some emulators have PayPal addresses and such on their homepages.
Big projects
MAME
It is not possible to donate directly to MAME, but several other projects that help MAME's development can be supported.
- The Dumping Union - Accepts donations from PayPal.
- Team Europe - Accepts donations from PayPal. See info here on how to donate.
Libretro / RetroArch
- Has a contribute page with wish lists for hardware and other info.
- Has a Patreon.
- Has a Bountysource where you can donate money directly to functions and improvements you wish to see.
ScummVM / ResidualVM
- ScummVM has a PayPal
- ScummVM Has a Bug tracker
- You can help translate ScummVM
- ScummVM has a devolper instruction on how to contribute code
- ResidualVM has a getting involved page and a Bug reporting page.
WINE
- Has a donate page where you find information on how to donate with Paypal and other ways to send money, you can also support them by buying merch. Another option is to buy CrossOver which is a commercialized, supported version of Wine from CodeWeavers. They contribute all of their work on Wine back to the Wine Project and make up for 2/3 of the Wine commits.
