+stephena Posted September 25, 2009 Author Share Posted September 25, 2009 Just wanted to say that the rewind button and electron beam indicator are the best thing ever. Would it be possible to make the rewind button work after the debugger is triggered by a break? That would be awesome. I suspected that would be the next request It's probably possible, but it means that automatic state saving will have to be turned on all the time (right now, it's only turned on when you enter the debugger). There are some speed issues I have to work out first, since saving state on each step/trace/scanline/frame advance does have some overhead. The overhead doesn't really matter in the debugger, but it might when you're playing a game normally. I'll add this to the list for 3.1, but I don't know if I can get it all done in time. Or maybe I'll just push 3.1 back until Christmas or so. I really have to finish the HarmonyCart software first, now even more so since the cart is actually available to end users. Not to mention finishing the KrokCart software so I can return it to you Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disjaukifa Posted September 25, 2009 Share Posted September 25, 2009 Just want to say I use Stella 3.0 on my Mac with 10.6 and it works great!!! I would like to make a suggestion and I really don't know how difficult this would be to do, so if its too difficult please ignore this request, but I would love to have an optional panel of buttons that the Heavy Sixer had, Power, TY Type, Left Difficulty, Right Difficulty, Game Select and Game Reset. I know there are key combinations for this but I just think it would be nice to have panel you could click on!!! And if this has already been implemented could someone please point me to where it is . Thanks Disjaukifa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted September 25, 2009 Share Posted September 25, 2009 I just wanted to also throw my thanks in for Stella 3.0! I've been having fun with 'Fixed Debug Colors' mode. I had no idea so much of Sky Jinks was drawn with the ball, for example. One addition to that, which would be nice, would be to have user-definable colors, since sometimes the colors are a bit hard to discern (depending on the game, and how much things are flickering). Another handy feature would be to be able to save a screenshot from the debugger (since you can step one frame at a time, and lock in exactly the image you want). Alternately, would be the ability to pause a game, and frame step through it during play. Not that I'm trying to add even more work to your load. Stella is awesome already, and the changes made to 3.0 are excellent. Thank you for all your hard work! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vdub_bobby Posted September 25, 2009 Share Posted September 25, 2009 Yay! :thumbsup: I've been waiting for this for a long time; thank you very much. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omegamatrix Posted September 26, 2009 Share Posted September 26, 2009 Just wanted to say that the rewind button and electron beam indicator are the best thing ever. Would it be possible to make the rewind button work after the debugger is triggered by a break? That would be awesome. I suspected that would be the next request It's probably possible, but it means that automatic state saving will have to be turned on all the time (right now, it's only turned on when you enter the debugger). There are some speed issues I have to work out first, since saving state on each step/trace/scanline/frame advance does have some overhead. The overhead doesn't really matter in the debugger, but it might when you're playing a game normally. I'll add this to the list for 3.1, but I don't know if I can get it all done in time. Or maybe I'll just push 3.1 back until Christmas or so. I really have to finish the HarmonyCart software first, now even more so since the cart is actually available to end users. Not to mention finishing the KrokCart software so I can return it to you Ha ha you say that request coming, eh? Well I hope you'll be able to implement it. The improvements in Stella are growing in leaps and bounds, and I'm just glad I could help you in some way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Another request for Stella... 90° rotation for Merlin's Walls. (Or actually, I think it would be -90° rotation). This is the game that requires you to flip your TV on its side to play it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom-Lynx Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Another request for Stella... 90° rotation for Merlin's Walls. (Or actually, I think it would be -90° rotation). This is the game that requires you to flip your TV on its side to play it... But isn't Stella emulating that game perfectly? Once you rotate your monitor the picture is still perfect.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Yes, but not everyone can rotate their computer monitor 90°. It's strictly a playability/display thing - not anything to do with actual emulation. (It could be categorized under "TV effects", for example.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Another request for Stella... 90° rotation for Merlin's Walls. (Or actually, I think it would be -90° rotation). This is the game that requires you to flip your TV on its side to play it... But isn't Stella emulating that game perfectly? Once you rotate your monitor the picture is still perfect.... Don't some graphics cards/video drivers let you rotate the picture 90 degrees clockwise, or 90 degrees counter-clockwise, or 180 degrees? Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom-Lynx Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Don't some graphics cards/video drivers let you rotate the picture 90 degrees clockwise, or 90 degrees counter-clockwise, or 180 degrees? Michael True...all my computers do that. It's pretty standard these days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted October 9, 2009 Share Posted October 9, 2009 Don't some graphics cards/video drivers let you rotate the picture 90 degrees clockwise, or 90 degrees counter-clockwise, or 180 degrees? Michael True...all my computers do that. It's pretty standard these days. I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice/convenient for Stella to have such a feature, if it were easy to incorporate. Michael Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted October 9, 2009 Author Share Posted October 9, 2009 Don't some graphics cards/video drivers let you rotate the picture 90 degrees clockwise, or 90 degrees counter-clockwise, or 180 degrees? Michael True...all my computers do that. It's pretty standard these days. I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice/convenient for Stella to have such a feature, if it were easy to incorporate. Michael As with most graphical things in Stella, it's ridiculously easy with OpenGL mode, and annoyingly hard with software mode. In OpenGL, it's simply a matter of transposing the window coordinates and letting the hardware do the rotation for you. I'll look into adding it for a future release. But probably only for OpenGL mode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Stephen Posted October 10, 2009 Share Posted October 10, 2009 I finally installed the latest build of Stella - the debugger is insanely cool. I would give anything to have this in an Atari 8-bit emulator! Stephen Anderson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Stephen, I have a question: I want to record videos directly from Stella 3.0 for the store (and ultimately the AA database). I tried this yesterday, and predictably, flicker in the games (such as on the title screen of Juno First) just looks terrible. If I try toggling the "TV Phosphor Burn-Off" checkbox while a game is running, Stella will lock up on me 100% of the time when I click the "Exit Menu" button. I have to Force Quit the app. If I change this setting while in the file browser, I can save it and get out of the menu. However, I'm not seeing any "Phosphor Burn-Off" at all, and it didn't make any difference in the videos when I tested it. It looks like I meet the requirements--I'm using OpenGL 2.1 and gl_texrect is disabled: The other TV Effects (TV Color Texture, Color Bleed, and Image Noise) all seem to work fine. Any help will be greatly appreciated.. Thanks, ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Instead of Video Settings, try the Game Properties -> Display tab. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 (edited) I have a question: I want to record videos directly from Stella 3.0 for the store (and ultimately the AA database). I tried this yesterday, and predictably, flicker in the games (such as on the title screen of Juno First) just looks terrible. If I try toggling the "TV Phosphor Burn-Off" checkbox while a game is running, Stella will lock up on me 100% of the time when I click the "Exit Menu" button. What you're looking for is "Enable Phosphor Effect", not "Phosphor Burn-Off". The Phosphor Effect is a per-game property that turns on/off frame blending. On the Mac, it's shift-command-p to toggle it. Some games automatically use it, if they're so tagged in the database. You can change the amount of blending in game properties as well, under the Display tab: Edit: beat to the punch! Edited October 20, 2009 by Nathan Strum Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Instead of Video Settings, try the Game Properties -> Display tab. Oh yeah baby, that works great, thanks! I know I've used that option before, but I ran into the Phosphor setting on the video tab and didn't go any further. Just took a test video of Juno First and it looks much better! Will have to periodically record videos to break up the day. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cd-w Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Just took a test video of Juno First and it looks much better! Will have to periodically record videos to break up the day. Cool - any chance of mixing in the speech (you'll need to tell Stella to use the AtariVox in the right port)? Chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Just took a test video of Juno First and it looks much better! Will have to periodically record videos to break up the day. Cool - any chance of mixing in the speech (you'll need to tell Stella to use the AtariVox in the right port)? Chris Yes, however, I do not want any AtariVox-equipped videos to be the main video since that may mislead some people into thinking those speech and sound effects produced by the AtariVox will be heard without one. I will definitely add additional videos for any AtariVox-enabled games once Glenn Saunders has more available for purchase. I'm sure having video with the mixed AtariVox audio will move a ton of AtariVoxes. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 Instead of Video Settings, try the Game Properties -> Display tab. Oh yeah baby, that works great, thanks! I know I've used that option before, but I ran into the Phosphor setting on the video tab and didn't go any further. Just took a test video of Juno First and it looks much better! Will have to periodically record videos to break up the day. ..Al To be honest, the video options in Stella are a little screwed up right now. We have the original phosphor code, the TV effects contributed by one of the Georgia Tech teams, and yet another Georgia Tech contribution (Blargg) that hasn't been merged yet. Unfortunately, some of the approaches are trying to re-implement the same functionality, and testing has suffered. You're seeing that with the lockup for 'Phosphor burn-off'. I need to rework this entire area for the next release, going through the whole thing and deciding what works and what doesn't. Of course, before I can do that, I need to understand it all (as I didn't write much of it). Getting huge contributions is a double-edged sword in this case; there's now a large block of OpenGL code that I didn't write or properly test, so there are bound to be issues ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Speaking of people contributing things, I hope somebody reading this who has the skill will contribute whatever is needed for Stella to make video recordings of gameplay, so we won't have to keep using things like CamStudio. Record straight from Stella without clogging up the computer with extra software that can make Stella slow down and speed up, ruining the video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dutchman2000 Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Using Stella 3.0, RealSports Basketball's end lines are in the wrong spots. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 To be honest, the video options in Stella are a little screwed up right now. We have the original phosphor code, the TV effects contributed by one of the Georgia Tech teams, and yet another Georgia Tech contribution (Blargg) that hasn't been merged yet. Unfortunately, some of the approaches are trying to re-implement the same functionality, and testing has suffered. You're seeing that with the lockup for 'Phosphor burn-off'. I need to rework this entire area for the next release, going through the whole thing and deciding what works and what doesn't. Of course, before I can do that, I need to understand it all (as I didn't write much of it). Getting huge contributions is a double-edged sword in this case; there's now a large block of OpenGL code that I didn't write or properly test, so there are bound to be issues ... Thanks for the information, very interesting. Glad to see these improvements making their way into Stella--you must have your hands full! Think you'll take advantage of the Tracker? ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 Can you please add an option to not show the various on-screen messages? Such as when you reset the console, the "New console created" message. These get in the way when trying to record video as well as when taking screenshots. Thanks! ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+batari Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 I think I may have requested this before, but I would like to see an option to drive normally undriven bits randomly. For example, if one does a read to $0F, Stella returns $0F. This might work on 90% of hardware but on some hardware, the state of most of the bits is not reliable. The TIA's read registers are only connected to 2 bits, and these bits are not driven for all addresses, so it would be nice if the undriven bits could be random. This also happens when reading from the write areas of certain bankswitch schemes, except all 8 bits should be driven randomly. I'm not sure what Stella is doing in these cases, but it would be nice is there were an option to return completely random values. The reason I want to see this is not all hardware is the same. Games have been released with these kinds of bugs and they end up failing on some types of hardware and on some systems, and it would be great if there were a way to exploit these bugs in emulation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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