Altirra 4.00 released

[Pixelfetish]

Depends on what LCD Panel you are using. TN panels and VA/MVA Panels are the NOT best, especially the latter have tearing with black areas.
Use a recent IPS Panel and it works as it should.

I use Altirra all the time, my real ATARI times was over, when I tried to repair my disk drive's squeaking with oil from the kitchen, olive oil. I was quite young and stupid. Now I am not young anymore.

Edited June 22, 2022 by Pixelfetish

[Keatah]

14 hours ago, Ricky Spanish said:

When I use Altirra I try to emulate the real deal as close as possible. No acceleration, no generic OS, no modified program languages, etc. But it is fun to emulate modern modifications on it though. When my real one arrives the only mods will be what was available back in the day. 256K RAMBO, and alike. However it will run on my LCD monitor, as I very much dislike old CRT monitors.

Much of my experience was on a stock Atari 400/800 with cartridge games and some disk-based games. So for nostalgia I don't need to go much beyond that configuration. And modern mods don't really enhance the early titles much.

 

I agree with the memory thing. We were always looking to add storage and memory in whatever form back then. BITD we'd write fiction about magical Superman Sci-Fi crystals that had part of their lattice extended into subspace for storing multiple bits per cell. And all stuff like that. It was always a watershed moment when I got memory expansion cards on the Apple II. Or any computer. More K meant a smarter computer. I mentioned Apple II because my Atari 8-bit hardware was long gone in the late 80's, though I kept all the Apple II material.

 

I also dislike CRT monitors, but simply because of burn-in susceptibility, color accuracy & repeatability. And of course geometrical alignment. But they have their places and are nostalgic, so my take is not all negative in that regard.

[Mclaneinc]

Lets not get too confrontational, we can agree to split our opinion on LCD vs CRT, tis not worth making comments about owning subpar gear..Come on..

 

For me, lcd offers one plus, space saving, the screen I am using at the moment is a semi cheap Samsung, it's not the cheapest model but it's not the worlds finest and when I see a signal on it I just cringe a little. It requires lots of tweaking to make it look ok but I do notice lag and scrolling while smoothish suffers from a form of ghosting if the image moves fast, something I don't get on a 30 year old plus crt.

 

Am I going to smash it to pieces because of this, er no, but it is for me not a great screen.

 

Anyway, lets remember this is an Altirra based thread, we all can open up a separate thread re Atari's on LCD.

[FULS]

I was playing around with Altirra on my touch tablet and this mini Atari keyboard popped up when I touched the screen towards the bottom and rapidly slid up with it.

I'm sure you guys have seen this but this was new to me. It looks like this could come in handy at certain times.

Is there a command or setting for this? How do you get it to come out on a regular monitor?

 

Thanks,

Doug

 

[phaeron]

2 hours ago, FULS said:

I was playing around with Altirra on my touch tablet and this mini Atari keyboard popped up when I touched the screen towards the bottom and rapidly slid up with it.

I'm sure you guys have seen this but this was new to me. It looks like this could come in handy at certain times.

Is there a command or setting for this? How do you get it to come out on a regular monitor?

 

This is the touch keyboard that I put in a long time ago while playing around with a Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet. There are two ways to get to it:

• Swipe up from the bottom (touch only)
• Double-click on the left side to bring up the in-display menu, then choose the on-screen keyboard.

It is multi-touch enabled to allow for Shift/Ctrl keys, but by default it'll be a bit small for full-size touch screens unless you increase the UI% in Tools > Options.

 

[Heaven/TQA]

@phaeron me is little suprised... I wanted to restart some A8 coding and went through my library and source codes...

 

some older works from past years do not run anymore without glitches in Altirra? how is that coming? 

 

Any ideas?

 

e.g.

https://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7661

 

https://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7953

 

attachted some more (2 VBXE ones).

 

I might have been 2 years on the SNES but me little suprised what is "broken"? Insane at Nordlicht VBXE the zip contains the Altirra-Version I gave the demo compo team at that time to run at Party.

 

 

 

dsr_flat_shading_is_slower_than_gouraud_vbxe.xex dsr_nyd19_packed.xex desire_insane_at_nordlicht2018_demo.zip

[Heaven/TQA]

@JAC! another interesting fact here... your BMXKidz file does show corrupt "menu" with my Atari XL/XE OS Rev 2 while Altirra OS works fine.

By resetting my config to default this runs, too... I suspect that BASIC (?) was always on... doesn't matter what I selected.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Heaven/TQA

[phaeron]

1 hour ago, Heaven/TQA said:

@phaeron me is little suprised... I wanted to restart some A8 coding and went through my library and source codes...

 

some older works from past years do not run anymore without glitches in Altirra? how is that coming? 

 

Any ideas?

 

e.g.

https://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7661

 

https://a8.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=7953

 

attachted some more (2 VBXE ones).

 

I might have been 2 years on the SNES but me little suprised what is "broken"? Insane at Nordlicht VBXE the zip contains the Altirra-Version I gave the demo compo team at that time to run at Party.

 

 

 

dsr_flat_shading_is_slower_than_gouraud_vbxe.xex 32.27 kB · 0 downloads dsr_nyd19_packed.xex 6.74 kB · 0 downloads desire_insane_at_nordlicht2018_demo.zip 4.94 MB · 0 downloads

Could you specifically describe what you're seeing? These are whole demos, so it would help if you could point out or include a screenshot of what the problem is. For instance, I see issues with blue blotching on the Nordlicht 2018 demo that you've attached here, but those same artifacts also occur with the version of Altirra 3.10-test34 that you've chosen to include in the .zip file, so I'm not sure what the issue would be...? Similarly, the first attached demo also has a missing polygon on that same version. I'd assume that the version that was included in the .zip ran the demo as intended at the time.

 

[Heaven/TQA]

KIDZ

 

me on Windows 11 here

[Heaven/TQA]

NYD19

 

[Heaven/TQA]

Flat Shading VBXE

 

that doesnt run at all...

 

[Heaven/TQA]

Edited June 25, 2022 by Heaven/TQA

[Heaven/TQA]

I checked if basic is enabled or not... and never had such issues... and when I am using Altirra OS instead of my XL ROMs some work but some still not... wtf...  it seems 50 years Atari and now someone tells me not to code

Interesting fact... Atari800win 4.0+ runs all non VBXE ones... and I did not use for ages Atari800win for developing.

Edited June 25, 2022 by Heaven/TQA

[Heaven/TQA]

ok. Wrathchild did suggest to reset settings and now it works. wtf. never had that in 20 years

 

[Heaven/TQA]

1 hour ago, phaeron said:

Could you specifically describe what you're seeing? These are whole demos, so it would help if you could point out or include a screenshot of what the problem is. For instance, I see issues with blue blotching on the Nordlicht 2018 demo that you've attached here, but those same artifacts also occur with the version of Altirra 3.10-test34 that you've chosen to include in the .zip file, so I'm not sure what the issue would be...? Similarly, the first attached demo also has a missing polygon on that same version. I'd assume that the version that was included in the .zip ran the demo as intended at the time.

 

êven by resetting to default setting in Altirra Options menu the polygon error in the flat_shading.... VBXE intro vanished. 

[8BIT 1337]

On 6/20/2022 at 8:07 PM, scotty said:

Is it just me, or does anyone else not use real hardware any more?

It's likely neither.  It might be interesting to know how many users still use real hardware only vs emulation only, but you wouldn't be alone regardless of which category you fit into and I imagine there are a lot of hybrid users.

 

If I'm developing a game (which I haven't done in a few years) it's all done with emulators for sure, and I'll only go to real hardware once I'm in final testing.  Lately I've used Altirra to help me figure out how to get a game running on the real hardware, by playing around with what a given OS may do kinda thing.

 

But I personally use real hardware maybe 90-95% of the time.  In my case a 1200XL I bought from Steven Tucker that has the ability to switch to a bunch of different OSs along with a FujiNet.  That's because of HSC - I just enjoy playing the games on the real deal and taking a pic of my TV like I'm sending in for an Activision patch much much more than playing on an emulator, which I'll do only if the game won't play properly on NTSC hardware.  Plus I enjoy the hardware addons the community has created as much as I enjoy the wonderful emulation I have available.

 

 

[Mclaneinc]

If you are having fun on an emulator or having fun on real hardware, I fail to see the difference, surely the point is the fun bit and not how fun was achieved..

 

I use both, works for me...

[Mclaneinc]

1 hour ago, Heaven/TQA said:

ok. Wrathchild did suggest to reset settings and now it works. wtf. never had that in 20 years

 

I've mentioned the same issue a few times over the years, seems random, the only regular thing is that I use the registry rather than an ini, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

 

Keep forgetting to give it a test as it's so rare it happens...

[Heaven/TQA]

1 hour ago, Mclaneinc said:

I've mentioned the same issue a few times over the years, seems random, the only regular thing is that I use the registry rather than an ini, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

 

Keep forgetting to give it a test as it's so rare it happens...

That was bloody annoying… your released and tested products don’t work anymore? Even with the embedded Altirra versions I supplied in some ZIPs… ? jeeez and so I spend 2 hours of my life. But lesson learn… maybe it was some confusion with that “open with…” and I flipped it several times? Who knows.

[Mclaneinc]

26 minutes ago, Heaven/TQA said:

That was bloody annoying… your released and tested products don’t work anymore? Even with the embedded Altirra versions I supplied in some ZIPs… ? jeeez and so I spend 2 hours of my life. But lesson learn… maybe it was some confusion with that “open with…” and I flipped it several times? Who knows.

I wish I knew what the deal is, these days I make sure I have a set of created profiles now that Altirra boots to a temp profile by default unless instructed otherwise. I often forget and I've been playing with the temp profile and messed it up, odd mixes etc. So when using a created profile, as long as you selected the right categories for the profile's environment it should be back to square one with no corruption unless you added it. Not had a corruption for a little while so fingers crossed.

[Schadret]

The text output using Altirra in an Ubuntu VM through Wine is more crisp/sharp for me vs when running natively under Windows. Is there a setting somewhere on the Windows side I'm missing perhaps? Just feels slightly blurry. 

 

Left is Windows 11, right is VM/Ubuntu/Wine

 

[phaeron]

Figured out what's causing this. It's the debugger's Randomize Memory on EXE Load debugging option. Turning this on scrambles $80-FF and MEMLO to MEMTOP before the executable load starts in order to try to flush out uninitialized memory usage. The NYD19 demo, for instance, uses uninitialized zero page variables:

  1002:248:  9 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 (      ) | 2AAA: 99 00 C4          STA $C400,Y  ;$C474
- NMI interrupt (VBI)
    1002:248: 21 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 (   I  ) | 21B5: 2C 0F D4          BIT NMIST
    1002:248: 26 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 ( V I  ) | 21B8: 10 03             BPL $21BD
    1002:248: 30 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 ( V I  ) | 21BD: 85 00             STA $00
    1002:248: 34 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 ( V I  ) | 21BF: 86 01             STX $01
    1002:248: 38 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 ( V I  ) | 21C1: 84 02             STY CASINI
    1002:248: 42 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 ( V I  ) | 21C3: E6 6D             INC BUFSTR+1
    1002:248: 48 | A=13 X=8B Y=74 ( V I  ) | 21C5: A6 8D             LDX $8D
    1002:248: 52 | A=13 X=EE Y=74 (NV I  ) | 21C7: BD B1 21          LDA $21B1,X  ;$229F

VERIFIER: Load from uninitialized memory.
(1002:248, 52) A=13 X=EE Y=74 S=F4 P=F4 (NV I  )  21C5: A6 8D             LDX $8D      [$8D] = $EE

This option should be noted in the program load log and the config overview, I'll get those fixed up. The randomize option is also using a fixed seed instead of the new randomization seed framework, which also needs to be fixed. For the few values that do get randomized on the emulator in each boot, they are all supposed to be tied to the seed that appears in Computer > Boot. The EXE load delay is one such nondeterministic value that is based on this seed, if the "Randomize program load timing" checkbox is enabled.

 

When trying to figure out if an option is a problem, you don't have to reset all your settings to test with a fresh config. You can run the emulator with /portabletemp to have it start clean with no saved settings, and not read or modify the saved settings.

 

[phaeron]

4 minutes ago, Schadret said:

The text output using Altirra in an Ubuntu VM through Wine is more crisp/sharp for me vs when running natively under Windows. Is there a setting somewhere on the Windows side I'm missing perhaps? Just feels slightly blurry. 

 

Left is Windows 11, right is VM/Ubuntu/Wine

 

View > Filter Mode. Left is bilinear, right is sharp bilinear (default). The latter can also be tuned via View > Filter Sharpness.

[Schadret]

Awesome that did it, thanks!

 

I've never changed that setting before (that I can remember), wonder how it was set to something other than the default in my Windows version.

[phaeron]

21 minutes ago, Schadret said:

Awesome that did it, thanks!

 

I've never changed that setting before (that I can remember), wonder how it was set to something other than the default in my Windows version.

The default did change from bilinear to sharp bilinear, though that was quite a while ago (2.60, ca. 2015).