Date: 10.24.05
Current Project(s): Yabause
Location: A town called "Rouen" in Normandy, France.


Today we focus our spotlight on the talented developer Guillaume who is best known for his work on the Open Source Saturn emulator Yabause.

Interview

Q : When did you get into emulation either as a coder or just a fan?
A : I got into emulation when I first tried zsnes about six years ago. After that, I've tried a lof of emulators and decided that I should write one someday, at least to understand how they worked.

Q : What was your first coding experience for emulation?
A : Yabause.

Q : What interested you in Saturn Emulation?
A : Like I've already said, I wanted to write an emulator. I choose the Saturn because I really like the games on this system and there was no working Saturn emulator for linux.

Q : What do you think about the current state of the emulation scene as a whole?
A : Not much, I don't have really much time to keep up to date with what is happening in the scence.

Q : What do you think about the current state of the NextGen scene?
A : same answer :)

Q : How do you feel about the response you have received so far for your projects?
A : The response so far has been really great. It looks like there are two kinds of people interested in emulation: those who just want a working emulator and don't care what is behind it and those who care about the work of emu authors. The firsts don't really care about Yabause as it's still not running most of the games and still has major things missing (like rotation screens), the seconds are aware of the progress we made and support our work by testing it and making useful comments and suggestions.

Q : What is your best experience when it comes to Emulation?
A : As it's the only one so far... Yabause.

Q : What was your worst experience when it comes to Emulation?
A : No bad experience for time being

Q : Are you currently working on any other projects besides Yabause?
A : I used to spend some time on the french Wikipedia and Wikibooks, but now I've another big project that's taking most of time time: my child :)

Q : Does the amount of lame requests ever make you second guess what you are currently doing?
A : In fact, I haven't received so many lame requests for the time being. Most of them are from people who don't read the docs and asking why Yabause isn't working just because they don't give it a bios :)

Q : What is the nicest complement you have received?
A : Someone told me Yabause was the best Saturn emulator :)

Q : Do you ever plan on working on another emulation project after Yabause? If so what would interest you and challenge you?
A : I've thought of writing a dreamcast emulator for linux but I'm not sure I'll have enough time for such a task and it seems that NecroRomancist is working on the port of dcemu to linux (http://sourceforge.net/projects/dcemu).

Q : Are you satisfied with the work you have done up to this point?
A : Yes, a lot of games are booting now and some of them are playable at "correct" speed. I can even play some of my favourites Saturn games again like Albert Odyssey or Tengaimakyoo.

Q : Does the progress of your projects surpass all of your expectations so far? Or do you think you would have been further along in development?
A : Yes. When I started this project I wasn't sure if I could get something running someday. It took a long time before things started to work but now that we got a working codebase, new features are easier to add and things are progressing faster.

Q : Who else do you currently work with on your projects?
There's some people who are working (or used to work) with me on Yabause like CyberWarriorX, joostp and Piratero for the development, Weston, menace690 and AdamGreen for the mac version, Romanito for the website and BlueCrab for the Dreamcast version.

Q : How much have they influenced you and how much have they improved your work and vice versa?
A : CyberWarriorX is contributing a lot to Yabause. In fact, he's now contributing much more than I am. He wrote major parts of the code (like the cdblock) alone. As he's a Saturn developer too, his knowledge of the Saturn is far better than mine and he really helped the project to get to the point it is now.

Q : After you have moved on from the scene what do you want to be most remembered for?
A : I want to be remembered as the one who started the first portable, open source Saturn emu :)

Q : Could you provide us with an teasers of things to come for your projects?
A : There's a new release coming soon. It will be faster than the 0.5 release.

Q : One last thing is there anything you would like to say or anybody you would like to thank?
A : Yeah, I would like to thank Runik of Saturnin and Fabien of Satourne for their help.

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Related Links:
:: Yabause Official Site
:: Yabause Official Forums

Small Tidbits:
Name: Guillaume Duhamel
Age: 27
Favorite Food: French cheese
Favorite Movie: Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Favorite Music: Death - Individual Thought Patterns
Favorite Book: The Lord of the Rings
Favorite Game: Tengaimakyoo - the Apocalypse 4
Your Favorite Hobbies: reading books, listenning music, spending too much time on a computer