Over the next many months – years even – the emulator was updated to correct emulation issues, and add new functionality such as smooth-scrolling reels, a user-friendly game manager, horizontal belt reels and so on. With some gentle nudges from Chris W along the way, the first version was born, and indeed did the job I had set out to do.
I had never attempted to emulate a Fruit Machine technology before, but I did already have the framework of a rendering engine (sort of!) in the form of the MERC layout creator – although at the time all of the components were written in Borland Delphi, and I knew that this would have to be created using C++Builder if I didn’t want to re-write the CPU emulation core from scratch! Machines like Indiana Jones, Casino Crazy and many others were considered “classic” machines by that time, and I really felt that I wanted to see them emulated the same way as the Barcrest machines. The JPeMu project (the so-called “JPM Emulator”) was developed in order to add both a newer and a non-Barcrest technology to the FME fold.