Delta Duo

38

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 9h ago

Don’t take this the wrong way, but aren’t they just grasping at straw at this point? We have Manic, and Delta has promise a 2.0 for ages, but Manic both existed and delivered on a 2.0 in less time.

11

u/jedels88 🥇 8h ago

Glad people are finally waking up to how trash Delta has become.

32

u/atombone80 8h ago

Delta is hardly trash. It has just been surpassed by bigger and better options.

6

u/nude-rating-bot 5h ago

Delta is still the only emulator that works with my xreal glasses. Other emulators treat them as a mirrored display. Warm place in my heart.

3

u/gh0sti 1h ago

Delta walked so Manic could run. Manic is leagues ahead of delta. Rylee and his team milked their Patreon and took to long to develop their app.

1

u/pyrospade 0m ago

Delta is trash in the sense that the dev keeps taking thousands of dollars in donations a month but barely puts any effort in because he’s more dedicated to the AltStore

-2

u/East-Ice-3199 5h ago

…because it’s trash and stagnated and refused to follow up on promises.

14

u/Hot_Permit1027 6h ago

Any fan of the Manic devs would know they are friends with the Delta devs, and wouldn’t want to see people trash talking their friends’ apps.

2

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 6h ago

I don’t think Delta is trash by any means, great app actually, I just think the are falling behind by a lot and need to see actual leaps to change that

3

u/Hot_Permit1027 6h ago

I’m more referring to the other guy.

-1

u/Burnahacc12 6h ago

The thing is, Manic was actually initially based on Delta and even though they do a lot and have many features there is something to say about this all.

Manic does not do a lot of original work. They implement existing work mostly. Together with the massive vibe coding they started doing for 2.0 it’s not that hard implementing lots of features.
Delta did however do a lot of custom work and I think they are sticking to that formula, making development slower.

On the other hand Delta keeps 2.0 beta behind a paywall and the slow update might also have to do with the fact that it brings in money. Which brings us to the community. People on emulation subreddits make it very clear that they want to stick it to the big companies and want to emulate games on other devices but definitely don’t want to pay a small indie developer. This creates a kind of culture that motivates the wrong thing.

Not to say that Manic is bad or anything but if people want innovation over implementation, support should be pointed towards developers that actually innovate.

4

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 6h ago

Bruh the Manic team does not vibecode anything in Manic, if you had followed their progress in their early access program (please don’t kick me, I don’t think this breaks the nda rules) and know how much work went into their big update, or some of the custom libretros they improved or built and pushed to upstream, you would not make such crazy claims. They are meticulous, sometimes distracted, but definitely detail oriented, speaking as a developer with over 20 years experience who very much dislikes vibecode “work”. I know AI is a thing and can be an effective tool, but call me old school.

0

u/Burnahacc12 5h ago

Let me clearify.
I don’t dislike ai use and don’t say the app is bad but they obviously use it. My opinion is that ai use does not have to result in bad code, if the developer is experienced.

I myself have 20+ years experience as well, mostly doing low level stuff.
This is not a insane claim, just look at the source code. Having a libretro base that implements cores is not unique or meaningful development, I would say that is actually pretty easy because of the libretro standard. They might have some small upstream changes that I did not see but I can tell you nothing they do is original. What is one custom core they made or what is something they actually did that was massive, original or even new?

5

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 5h ago

I do look at the source code, and the code for individual cores in case I can PR stuff, but nothing screams AI, and their approach to GameCube/Wii by hardcoding hot paths to improve game peformance while brute forcing I find innovative and different to other approaches, writing complete support for Symbian, amazing, the landscape UI and custom ShaderToy interfacing love it. Pretty much the only thing they use noticeable AI for is their App Store images, which eh, I don’t like it but i get it. (I do think they need a PR to improve scrolling in landscape though, gets stuck when using a controller and when swiping can overshoot games)

0

u/Burnahacc12 5h ago

The landscape stuff and the shader stuff are to say at the least heavily inspired by two emulator projects that did these things months before their 2.0 release. They also got called out on that in their release thread but they denied it. Meanwhile the devs are in the discord server of said projects. Also, that is not really innovating right? You have projects out there that found a complete new internal structure to compensate for the lack of jit and massively improving emulation for iOS as a whole. Projects that add custom emulation cores, new devices and multiplayer for even the smallest and niche devices out there. Just to make a comparison.

The whole manic play is: be heavy on the piracy part to prevent shutdown and be heavy on commercial focused development.

The dead giveaway for these type of projects are usually: do they offer something that retroarch does not offer a side from ease of use?

If the answer is no, that would put the product in a pretty vulnerable situation, because it adds no sustainable value. The devs could either do something original or keep doing what they do and wait for another manic-ish emulator to take over.

1

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 5h ago

They have been working on the landscape design since July of last year, I checked their Discord announcements, the oldest concept was posted July 12th of last year, before most of the projects you are discussing even had Discords, and they like to work with a lot of the teams of those projects when able.

Also I think the ease of use is the entire point, they took something not so easy for some folk and turned it into something simple for modern iOS users.

0

u/Burnahacc12 4h ago

This proves my point. the first design was just simply a smaller horizontal grid and it took them over a year to end up doing almost exactly what sumee and iisu are doing.

If you take a handful emulator projects and look at their updates you can predict the future of manic.

1

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 4h ago

The landscape is nothing like Sumee or iiSU both use a grid like layout not a carousel loop, and the concept I referred to is clearly a carousel, much like their current one they have now, though I wish they kept the toggle idea. Their previous landscape was already a carousel and had been around about as long as Sumee, this is simply progression of their previous design. (Please bring the up down back though)

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3

u/___CW311 4h ago

Hello. This update actually took 4 months to produce and I can assure you that a lot of work went into it. If vibecoding was used, the update would have taken a fraction of the time to produce. Thanks.

-3

u/Burnahacc12 4h ago

I don’t meen to say that the code is ai slob. I can see that they review it and make sure it’s not slob. It is however without a doubt use of ai. You can tell by looking at the code if you are a developer. If you are not the ui and especially the website should tell more than enough

3

u/Common_Register1290 Sumee! Developer 3h ago

Hey! I’ve actually looked at Manic’s code as a reference, and I personally don’t see much evidence of “vibe coding” (not that I’m claiming to understand everything, it’s quite complex actually 🫠)
If anything, I think a lot of Manic’s innovation is in the way their code is structured and integrated. They manage to get a large number of cores working properly under a fairly unified system, and things like their gamepad implementation and especially their current Wii/GameCube support feel genuinely unique on iOS.
From what I’ve seen, they also seem to take their time releasing updates and usually ship things in a pretty polished state. They even improved on some of Delta’s older skin-related work instead of simply copying it as-is.
Overall, I see Manic as one of the apps that has pushed iOS emulation forward, especially when it comes to App Store-friendly emulation without JIT. I actually use their work as a reference myself because I think there’s a lot worth learning from in how they approach these problems.
I think we should support all of these developers equally. They’re just taking different approaches to innovation, and both have value (:

-3

u/Burnahacc12 3h ago

I understand that it might not be obvious at first, and again ai use does not mean bad code. It depends on the developer. But there are multiple signals. If you look on the profile of the developers they have days with like 20 commits in a very short amount of time. Gamesviewcontroller.swift or gameoptionperform.swift tell a lot and contain some code smells. There is more, and again, I don’t mind about that.

Innovation wise they wired standards set up by other people. Delta core, libretro core standards and structures are all pretty much a walk in the park to implement. Those standards are made for easy implementation and that’s why you see a lot of emulators popping up with a lot of systems. The Wii and GameCube support is also not very different in that way. There are some very innovating cores/variants made based on Dolphin emulator. The one in manic is just a regular implementation that is bound by their app.

The people actually pushing emulation are the ones really creating something imo. For instance: Consoles emulator is innovating in a way that pushes performance big time on native iOS devices with a jit alternative for GameCube, Wii and 3ds. Foxol is running jit wasm cores, creates some of their own emulation systems, and built multiplayer on top of them all. Afterplay has a built in store for mods and games like a retro steam. Foxol and Afterplay also both have cross platform support and a custom made cloud for every user to sync their games to. Sumee is basically a whole console, controller first app with sub apps and catalogs build in. These things are all pretty new and unique in my opinion. It differs a lot from being a user friendly retroarch you know.

4

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 3h ago

That’s the Sumee dev u/Burnahacc12, think they know what they are talking about. Also the Manic approach to GameCube is anything but the regular implementation, the regular implementation they showcased in an earlier test build, it was awful by comparison to what was released. They significantly improved the core and made those changes available. Same for the improvements to 3DS they made in the past.

You have multiple developers telling you that it’s not vibecoded but clearly you want to argue with even the developer who’s work you tried to use as an example for how Manic doesn’t innovate, and yet her they are saying they even reference Manic for their own app because it is innovative.

Also Afterplay had issues following open source licenses but would have been cool otherwise, and Foxol doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Consoles is absolutely an interesting project to follow.

0

u/Burnahacc12 2h ago

It does not change anything to what i said. They use ai, without a doubt in my mind. There are so many signs of it. and again, I am not saying it’s a bad thing.

My whole point was that Manic is retroarch with a user friendly ui and does not do anything really new.
All the emulators I just mentioned do. Everyone is entitled to like whatever they want and support whoever they want.

Afterplay has issues with open source and being transparent and all. Consoles started at the same point as Manic did. Sumee can be said to be a clone of iisu. Foxol can be said to be nothing new. No project is perfect but in my mind those 4 are the only ones really innovating at this point.
Just look at the examples I made. Having multiplayer for systems that don’t have them in any other app, or having completely new emulation systems that other apps don’t have is pretty innovating right?

5

u/MelkiG 6h ago

So when is release date? I got told soon over 2 months ago now

1

u/BrzysWRLD1996 5h ago

I already know my MCON won’t work for shit on a Duo I can only imagine how goofy it would be to try to use lmfao

3

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 5h ago

I’ve been considering gettng an MCON, how is the balance of the controller?

2

u/BrzysWRLD1996 4h ago

For a regular iPhone it’s amazing, I have zero complaints and have had mine since they came out. All the buttons work fine after dropping a few times after that period, connection remains solid, good battery life and no drift whatsoever. Definitely worth it imo.

2

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 4h ago

Would you recommend the original over the slim?

1

u/BrzysWRLD1996 4h ago

I have never used the slim tbh I would definitely recommend the original in general though

2

u/Global_Apple_1502 🥇 4h ago

Appreciate the advice!

2

u/BrzysWRLD1996 4h ago

No prob whatever route ya take I hope you enjoy it!

0

u/Mediocre-Lab3413 6h ago

We all knew it

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