Keatah Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 (edited) I'd be curious to know what mode you have yours set at. Or if custom, what the values are. I have a screenshot of my settings I'll see if I can find it or make a new one. ..and it is things like this that will likely be missing from RetroN 77. They really need to use the updated version of Stella. Edited July 17, 2017 by Keatah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 I'd be curious to know what mode you have yours set at. Or if custom, what the values are. I have a screenshot of my settings I'll see if I can find it or make a new one. ..and it is things like this that will likely be missing from RetroN 77. They really need to use the updated version of Stella. Under Video/TV Effects, there's a Mode drop-down. Options are Disabled (default) Composite S-Video RGB Bad Adjust Custom I've kept the TV Phosphor and Jitter/Roll Effect at their defaults. Right now, I like "Bad adjust" because it adds some fuzz into the image. Lest you are tempted to call me a hypocrite for enjoying this feature, the thing I like MOST about it is that you can TURN IT OFF and enjoy super crisp graphics, too. All without having a nasty-ass cathode ray tube. I was playing this on my silly little plastic blue basically-a-toy HP Stream laptop. Retron 77 will have scanlines, because every oldies product does that. I doubt it will be as nice as this, though. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 (edited) There are times when I turn it all off to examine a game pixel by pixel or to demonstrate something or relive the 1st days of emulation. Or SOMETHING!! I prefer scanlines that are barely visible. And when I stuffed my face into the Zenith Chromacolor II we had I never recalled individual "fake" scanlines like most software does today. It was rather more subtle. More of a texture. Thing with Blargg Effects is the library doesn't do any bloom or spillover from one scanline to the next. It blurs nicely in the horizontal direction. But not the vertical. The library is becoming rather dated and while it was awesome for its time, ahead of its time, it's time to get going on an update. Especially with all the awareness and pervasiveness of passive displays. And bilinear filtering doesn't do the insides of corners much justice. They're still rather sharply defined. --- They're still pretty good and I wouldn't go replacing the library just yet. But I would like to see more controls added in the interim till we switch to full CRT emulation via GPU. Given the right information, an LCD can do a good replication of a CRT. Just watch a video of a CRT in action, on LCD. You get the bloom, and all the lightwave interaction. The wife had suggested upping the brightness, contrast, and saturation to near max, and the putting a sheet of slightly smoked plexiglass or glass over it. I don't know what she's smoking, but gimme gimme!! Overall, though, I'm glad to be rid of those big-ass fucker CRT things. I hate them. I remember dropping one when I was still a kid. And it imploded and scared me and I was like crying for an hour! Edited July 17, 2017 by Keatah 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 It appears the paddle emulation operates much better. Gone are two of our chief complaints. 1- The error buildup on the left side. With equal left/right movements, like in Breakout, over time the on-screen bar/paddle/guy would creep to the left. Left/right sensitivity is now better balanced it seems and exhibits even left/right tracking. I can now play a game of breakout with the mouse on a McDonald's napkin, without it "falling off" the right side. For you aerospace types, think of it as not having to dump the reaction wheel anymore.. 2- No more "buffer accumulation". By moving the paddle with the mouse a lot in the left direction, you could get your guy stuck on the left side. And it would require significant movement to the right to unstick him. It's kinda like your guy extended off-screen, and you have to get him back into the playfield. Finally it's all fixed 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shannon Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 Great work everybody! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DirtyHairy Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 (edited) It appears the paddle emulation operates much better. Gone are two of our chief complaints. 1- The error buildup on the left side. With equal left/right movements, like in Breakout, over time the on-screen bar/paddle/guy would creep to the left. Left/right sensitivity is now better balanced it seems and exhibits even left/right tracking. I can now play a game of breakout with the mouse on a McDonald's napkin, without it "falling off" the right side. For you aerospace types, think of it as not having to dump the reaction wheel anymore.. 2- No more "buffer accumulation". By moving the paddle with the mouse a lot in the left direction, you could get your guy stuck on the left side. And it would require significant movement to the right to unstick him. It's kinda like your guy extended off-screen, and you have to get him back into the playfield. Finally it's all fixed Nice to hear that there is not only a change, but an actual improvement. The new code simulates the readout circuit (charging and discharging the cap over the paddle resistance), so it should really be pretty close to an actual paddle with the potentiometer position mapped to the mouse coordinate. Edited July 18, 2017 by DirtyHairy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHoboInYourRoom Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 Nice to hear that there is not only a change, but an actual improvement. The new code simulates the readout circuit (charging and discharging the cap over the paddle resistance), so it should really be pretty close to an actual paddle with the potentiometer position mapped to the mouse coordinate. Something strange is happening with keyboard games, though. Six of the keys on each controller have no response. The top row works correctly, but on lower rows only the rightmost key (connected to the fire input) works. The left and middle columns, of course, are the ones connected to the paddle inputs, going by the schematics. This problem wasn't affected by remapping any effected keys, and it shows up in both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions (on Windows). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 (edited) The only keys on the simulated PC keyboard that work for me are 3 E D C. The other 8 (1 2 Q W A S Z X) do nothing and cannot seem to be remapped to work. Edited July 18, 2017 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DirtyHairy Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 (edited) Interesting. Do you have a specific testcase to reproduce this? The games I just tried seem to be OK for me, but there has been an old issue with this in past, and I believe that it has either returned from the dead or never was fully fixed in the first place. EDIT: It seems that BASIC is affected. Edited July 18, 2017 by DirtyHairy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 (edited) I tried Hunt'n'Score, I could only get 3,6,9, # to do anything. Which games are working for you? I'll check them now as I'm at my emulation rig. Edited July 18, 2017 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted July 18, 2017 Author Share Posted July 18, 2017 Various 'Synthcart' ROMs have issues, but in this case the keys 4/5/*/0 are the ones not working. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DirtyHairy Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 Alpha B I tried Hunt'n'Score, I could only get 3,6,9, # to do anything. Which games are working for you? I'll check them now as I'm at my emulation rig. Alpha Beam was one, can't remember the other Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted July 18, 2017 Author Share Posted July 18, 2017 For those of you trying remapping, there's no need. The problem is at a lower level than event remapping. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 I kinda guessed that, after trying it! Woot! 3.9.3 keyboard ok 4.7.0 keyboard ok Pre-0 seems keyboard doesn't work, no response on any keys Pre-2 keyboard started partly working, fails the same way as 5.0.0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DirtyHairy Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 Basically, it is related to the moment in which the readout circuit simulation is fed with updated date. At the moment, this happens every frame, which can be too coarse (depending on the way the code drives the controller). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheHoboInYourRoom Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 (edited) Different games (see attached zip archive) exhibit different responses. I didn't test any prototype games. 2600 Red Box/Blue Box: first row works, other rows right key only Game of Concentration, Codebreaker, Basic Programming, Brain Games, Magicard: all rows right key only Synthcart: first and third rows work, other rows right key only Star Raiders: first row works, second row right key only (game doesn't check other rows) Oscar's Trash Race: all rows work Alpha Beam with Ernie, Cookie Monster Munch: game only checks top three rows, all of which work keyboard.zip Edited July 18, 2017 by TheHoboInYourRoom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arenafoot Posted July 18, 2017 Share Posted July 18, 2017 Have Stella 3.9.2, Stella 4.5, Stella 4.6.1 all installed on my Acer Aspire One Netbook without any problems, but now when I run Stella 5.0, I get an error message. Any ideas how to fix this? I tried both downloads - win32.exe and the windows.zip. Here's the specs of the Netbook I'm trying to download it on: Windows XP Home Ed Ver 2002 SP3 The error message screenshot I'm getting is below - thanks for your help in advance.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted July 19, 2017 Author Share Posted July 19, 2017 Have Stella 3.9.2, Stella 4.5, Stella 4.6.1 all installed on my Acer Aspire One Netbook without any problems, but now when I run Stella 5.0, I get an error message. Any ideas how to fix this? I tried both downloads - win32.exe and the windows.zip. Here's the specs of the Netbook I'm trying to download it on: Windows XP Home Ed Ver 2002 SP3 The error message screenshot I'm getting is below - thanks for your help in advance.... It's on the download webpage; you need to install the Visual Studio 2015 runtimes. There is a link there as well. Otherwise, it might be that WInXP support has finally ended. I've mentioned in the past, both here and in the documentation, that eventually as I upgrade Visual Studio, WinXP will probably stop working. I will test later and let you know if it's working in an WinXP VM for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 19, 2017 Share Posted July 19, 2017 5.0 continues to work in XP. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted July 19, 2017 Author Share Posted July 19, 2017 Yes, it works for me as well. Go to the downloads page, or download from the Visual C++ Redistributable link. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arenafoot Posted July 19, 2017 Share Posted July 19, 2017 Yes, it works for me as well. Go to the downloads page, or download from the Visual C++ Redistributable link. will do - thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted July 22, 2017 Author Share Posted July 22, 2017 This issues with keypad controllers is now fixed, thanks to DirtyHairy. This also affects several other controllers, notably the Genesis. The fix will be in the next point release, which we hope to do soon, after fixing up a few other minor issues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 22, 2017 Share Posted July 22, 2017 Do you think this point release will be out before september? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tschak909 Posted July 22, 2017 Share Posted July 22, 2017 you could always grab and compile... -Thom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted July 22, 2017 Share Posted July 22, 2017 It's ok. I'd have to set up an environment. And I'm too lazy to do that. Whenever it comes out it comes out. If we want to play keyboard games we can just load 3.9.3 or 4.7 in a pinch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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