- Switching monitor resolution for full screen mode. (Today's video cards can easily handle the stretch in software).
No problems there. I actually
dislike forced resolution switching. See: Diablo 2 for OS X - it forces 800x600 and doesn't even use OpenGL stretching. The result? Super blurry video
and black bars on the screen. So long as we at least get to retain the choice between proper aspect ratio and/or stretching to fill the screen entirely, you're right, this isn't an issue anymore. Even Apple's lowly mobile GPU lineup in their machines can handle this. Hell, even
Intel's IGPs can handle it. Well, mostly. IGPs still suck for other reasons. :P
- Speed controls. (Does anyone ever run at anything other than 100%?)
For RPGs, yes, we do. Turbo functionality
really saves a ton of grind time in RPGs. But note that I said
turbo mode, so if you leave in just the ability to set a turbo speed and a turbo keybind, you can ditch the rest of the speed controls and nobody would ever really notice. I've never actually configured the turbo speed though, so as long as the core turbo function remains, then it would be just as it has been all along for people like me that used turbo but never changed the speed from your presets.
- Interface controls to pause emulation in certain scenarios.
Useful in certain circumstances, but especially so in situations where the user experiences odd behaviour when switching to and from fullscreen mode while in an app (it's a bug in OS X that keeps resurfacing and is currently afflicting quite a few non-emulation games when using CMD-TAB). But it's really your call whether or not you want to work around yet another Apple bug. (Side note: The AMD wake from sleep bug is back in 10.13 so any users using that OS that sleep their machines while using your emulators that report slowdowns are experiencing this one and there is no workaround except for Apple to fix it
yet again; it has literally come back every other major (10.X) OS version since Mountain Lion).
- Sound controls. (There's almost no performance gain from turning off the emulation, and you can mute your speakers.)
Useful if you're trying to record a playthrough without sound. Also useful for when you want a game w/o sound while either listening to other audio or a video as mentioned above. Sometimes it's nice to just rock out to a soundtrack other than the game's own when grinding...
- Filter options (Flip, invert, grayscale, colour channel adjustments. Fun to play with, of no practical use).
Outside of using them for filters for youtube videos and whatnot, you're right. But I can't remember the last video I ran into that used any of these, so... *eyeballs dumpster*
- Changing the colour of the frame rate display. (You can have any colour you like as long as it's green).
Don't ask me how I managed to never see that dialogue button, but I didn't and wish I did (neon green is a bit bright and I'd have changed it to a more neutral color). That said, I've lived with neon green this long so...take that for what you will. :)
- Pausing can be useful if I'm gaming and my baby starts crying. Uuuum. That said, most games have an in-game pause option and if for some reason it's disabled, you're probably cheating if you pause. I don't like cheats because I find the internet has made games too easy (i.e. you can youtube the solution in 2 seconds whereas in the past I'd spend all summer down at our Ring of Bright Water-esque beach house trying to figure out a lot of simple puzzles in between surfing, home renovations and swimming out to the islands... the fun of having to work everything out myself without any tips/cheats made games last so much longer!) Nostalgic rant aside, pause is useful, but I say that with caution... in principle I have no objection towards removing features that are mostly gonna be used by cheaters...
I've had to answer the phone constantly lately. Robocalls + scam calls + family calls and I never know which is which because of rampant caller ID spoofing and/or blocking (my family blocks caller ID and has unlisted numbers so I get to answer the phone all. The. Time. A keybind/controller bind to pause is still appreciated, though I can understand it being removed if it makes life more difficult for you in terms of the rewrite. It's a "love to have it" item, but if push came to shove I'd probably just have to live without it.
Rose Tinted Glasses Moment: I kind of miss the simplicity of the UI for the InputSprocket controls. The current gamepad mapping methodology is slightly less intuitive than one might prefer, but if you haven't gotten any complaints about it from anyone else just consider this one a nitpick. :)
What I'm more concerned with long term is OpenGL. Your emulators hook into it specifically for the stretching and resizing functionality, yes? Well, OpenGL hasn't been updated at all since Mavericks, and with Apple having switched to Metal development only, they have effectively deprecated OpenGL. I honestly wouldn't be surprised to see it dropped in 10.14. World of Warcraft for example will almost certainly have to drop OpenGL support at that time, and the writing's been on the wall with regard to its demise on OS X for some time now. So just out of curiosity (this is only a question, not a request), how big is the roadblock with regard to switching from OpenGL to Metal with your emulators? I get the feeling that would be more complicated than the UI rewrite itself.
Oh, and it goes without saying that since this is a fairly hefty rewrite you're looking at no matter how you slice it, I have no qualms about having to pay to upgrade EE to modern functionality with the OS either.
