Email from Pete Dabbs

Pete,

I understand your commitment to the CD-ice project, and appreciate the time you have taken to reply.

I wrote to Andy Looney, programmer of the 3DO game Icebreaker, today. He claims on his website (http://www.wunderland.com) to be the world's last active 3DO programmer and also claims to have a full 3DO development station.

As far as what you can do, simply register at http://sourceforge.net for a user account (you choose an id and password). Email me with the account id and I will add you to the project in whatever capacity you desire (even if it's just snooping around).

As for the "openness" of the docs, I only wish it were as easy to open as a "Base Case!" ;-/ it is my fear that with each passing day, more gets lost in peoples' memory, and Matsushita/Panasonic and 3DO certainly don't seem to care much about the platform. Today, I honestly began to feel like police detective, because I have been attempting to gather evidence from long-dead crime scenes and statements from people who witnessed a crime committed years ago.

I simply _had_ to do _something for the scene. I know it's largely thankless, but it is a labor of love; I'm sure you feel the same way for the CD-i. Had the Philips CD-i sold more openly stateside, I would probably have acquired one as well. ;-)

Regards,
Allen

-----Original Message-----
From: Pete Dabbs
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2002 6:51 PM
To: awright@dcreng.com
Subject: Re: Open 3DO Emu project started up!

Hi Allen,

It's good to see someone being active in 3DO emulation again :)

I'd be glad to get involved with the project but I can't guarantee how much time I could spend on it because as you've guessed I am very busy, still got CD-i emulator to finish, plus lots of other projects I'm involved with.

I see a lot of talk about how difficult it would be to emulate the 3DO but from reading your news on SourceForge it seems people are begining to get the right idea about emulating the API and staying well away from the actual silicon. The only thing needed (and believe me, I spent a lot of time looking, ex colleagues who worked on 3DO etc) is the relevant documentation. This is the aproach I took with CD-ice and I had the first game working within about 3 weeks of starting the code. Also any available source code would be a great help (from games developers etc) this helped me no end with coding CD-ice, well documented code removes a "total" reliance on tech manuals etc (ie, see a function call to draw a sprite, you can see whats SUPPOSED to happen). When I started I had NO docs at all on the system and still managed to work out what was going on together with the little I could remember for coding for the system..

Anyway good luck with finding people/docs/etc and let me know what I need to do in terms of signing up etc.

Pete