A free and Open Source Philips CD-i Emulator, would it be possible? The current emulation options do not offer the ultimate CD-i experience, mainly because there are very limited people who are capable to write a true CD-i Emulator. By far, cdifan's CD-i Emulator 0.53 beta 5 comes closest and works the best, including DVC compatibility. The Mame CD-i Emulator currently disappoints a bit, with less compatibility in the most recent versions and no real progress since a few years. However, today something very interesting happened. CD-i member Stovent showed us his first work and effort in building a new experimental, free and true open-source CD-i Emulator.
CD-i member Stovent: "Don't get hyped too much, it can't boot anything for now. I want it to be simple to use (unlike MAME), but with a bunch of settings for advanced users. And of course free and open source (unlike CD-i Emulator). And it is designed to be embedded in other software if necessary. My plans are for now to be able to boot a bios rom, and then to boot a game. I'm not planning in emulating every single CD-i model that existed. I started it because I wanted to try emulation, but I didn't wanted to do another NES emulator, I wanted to be original. And the CD-i came naturally as I had one at home and its emulation scene is bad. As for the current features, it is capable of extracting the audio data and the files from a disc (it features a form of video extraction but it's very experimental), I also have minimal emulation of the main components so when you load a bios, something actually happens. From my current goal with it, the main difficulty will be to gather resources, and notably regarding the interaction of the disc and the emulator."
This means a new FOSS (Free and Open -Source Software) CD-i Emulator is in the works, that's always a good thing. With the current CD-i Emulator projects this is a valuable addition to stir up the CD-i Emulation scene. It is going to feature an easy to use GUI like all other emulators out there. It will offer premade configurations depending on the type of controller to be used. We expect a debugger will be present too. We like the idea of an emulator that can also serve as some sort of utility or homebrew making software, just like CD-Izi which was promising but too much wishful thinking for now. In that field, previous promises did not deliver (yet) so it is very welcome to meet other members who will dive into CD-i development. Of course, for now this project is also a drawingboard first, but the potential is high and we highly support efforts like this.
Next to this new CD-i Emulation effort we have met a few people who are thinking of writing a new CD-i homebrew game! Of course we fully support this and it shows a true open CD-i Community delivers more partnerships than ever before.
As always, we keep you posted.
[Thanks, Stovent]