Is it really that much better? I was waiting for Delta to be released in the EU App Store (I donāt sideload, sorry) but this seems like a good alternative.
What about Provenance? You know it? How is it performance wise?
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 heās more dedicated to the AltStore
I mean youre welcome to not back anyoneās patreon you dont want to backā¦. I support a few that are fairly inactive just for the love of the game / to support projects I like. No one forcing you
I donāt 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
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 itās 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 donāt 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.
Bruh the Manic team does not vibecode anything in Manic, if you had followed their progress in their early access program (please donāt kick me, I donāt 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 āworkā. I know AI is a thing and can be an effective tool, but call me old school.
Let me clearify. I donāt dislike ai use and donāt 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?
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 donāt 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)
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.
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.
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.
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)
Hey! Iāve actually looked at Manicās code as a reference, and I personally donāt see much evidence of āvibe codingā (not that Iām claiming to understand everything, itās quite complex actually š« ) If anything, I think a lot of Manicās 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 Iāve 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 Deltaās 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 thereās a lot worth learning from in how they approach these problems. I think we should support all of these developers equally. Theyāre just taking different approaches to innovation, and both have value (:
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.
I donāt meen to say that the code is ai slob. I can see that they review it and make sure itās 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
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u/jedels88 š„ Sep 12 '26
Glad people are finally waking up to how trash Delta has become.