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Everything that has a beginning must have an
end...
To quote from the Matrix Revolutions movie... All things must come
to an end..
I wanted to let everyone know that I will be
retiring from PinMAME effective as of our upcoming version 1.31 to
be released on my birthday Dec.23, 2003.
My free time to
devote for this fantastic project will become extremely limited in
the next few weeks, with no sign of ever returning.. The 2 major
events which will cause this are 1) I will be beginning long term
software projects for 3 new clients starting in January which will
require me to work ~65 hours a week to keep everyone happy.. 2) My
wife is expecting our first child in March, and as any parent can
say, you always want/need time to have to spend with your
kids..
So for those 2 reasons, which are great and happy
events in my life, I am stepping down from PinMAME as much as I wish
I did not have to.
Due to his incredible dedication and
effort to this project, I am pleased to announce that Gerrit(Gaston)
will take over the role of project leader of PinMAME. His enthusiasm
and many contributions and ability to continuously be involved in
the project (even more so than myself in the past year) have proven
to me that he would be the most effective person to take over the
lead..
Just like previous project leader Martin (WPCMAME)
before me, I will continue to be around for advice, help and
opinions whenever I am able. You'll still see me hanging around the
forums, and when the occasional opportunity arises, I may even
contribute some new bug fixes or code, just as Martin has done over
the years..
Having known this was coming for some time now,
it should be no surprise to anyone now, why I've put in such a
massive effort in the past months to get Capcom emulation working as
completely as possible, as it was the one thing I felt I needed to
accomplish before I retired. There were some weeks where I probably
spent almost 40 hours working on it, putting off my real life job
entirely.. While there are still some minor issues remaining,
overall I am extremely pleased with how it turned out, and consider
it to be one of the best achievements we (the PinMAME team) have
ever made.
In general, I look back over my 3 years as being
head of the PinMAME project, and I am simply amazed at how far we've
come, what we've been able to accomplish. It's almost impossible to
me to remember that when I started, all we had was Williams WPC
emulation.. just look at our supported hardware list now, and you've
just got to be impressed!
It's also been an incredible
learning process! It's almost funny to me when I look back and think
that I couldn't even read a basic schematic when I first started,
and Martin had to write several emails outlining the most basic
simple stuff to me... and now I can read schematics as effortlessly
as the newspaper, something I will forever be grateful to have
learned.
I want to publicly say to the PinMAME team that it
has been a real pleasure and honor to have worked on such an awesome
project with you guys, and I wanted to thank each one of you
personally for helping to make it all happen. Only the 5 of us can
truly understand just how much effort and time is involved to create
PinMAME and have made it the incredible piece of software it is, and
for that I am grateful to have been a part of it with you
all.
I also want to personally thank everyone at the forums
for helping to make Visual PinMAME such a huge success. Your efforts
and contributions both directly and indirectly have meant a lot to
me, even when I haven't had the time to spell it out each time. If
it weren't for you guys, the PinMAME project would be just some link
somewhere buried on the back pages of some outdated emulation news
page.
Instead, thanks to your efforts, enthusiasm and
support, we have one of the most unique and fun communities ever
created. Sure, the community has had it's growing pains, and we've
lost some wonderful contributors along the way, but overall,
everyone here should be extremely proud of what's been
accomplished.
I also feel we've all helped to re-ignite the
passion of pinball in some of us who may have forgotten, and to
further introduce some newer/younger members to the fun that is the
silverball. I think that is an accomplishment which words cannot
describe. We all are a true merit to the pinball world, even though
many of the outside world will possibly never consider us to be. And
that's ok, we do it for the love of pinball, and I am honored to
have been a part of it with you all! How many people can say they've
actually "done" something to help the pinball world survive and
grow? It's an amazing thing, and we should all be extremely
proud!
The only thing that helps make retiring easier is the
confidence I have in the project moving forward, because I know it's
in very capable hands. There's still plenty of stuff to be
accomplished and I know the team will continue to grow and improve
PinMAME far ahead of where it is today.
Finally, just wanted
to remind you again, that I'll still be around quite often helping
out/answering questions.... I just won't be able to contribute much
in the way of source code changes to the PinMAME project in the
future.
Best of luck PinMAME team! I can't wait to see where
you guys take the software 1 year from now!
Best of luck to
the community!! May we all see the day when every solid state
pinball has been fully preserved in a digital/playable format so
that generations for many many years to come will someday be able to
have at least "some" experience of what our generation's pinball
machines were like..
Warmest regards and best wishes to
all-
Steve
Ellenoff
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