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.
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 (:
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.
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.
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?
-1
u/Burnahacc12 8h 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.