Stella 6.7 released (and concerning the future of Stella)

[+stephena]

It's time for a new release of Stella.  Now available is version 6.7, with some nice new features.  Please test to make sure everything is working, as this was a long release cycle (real life issues getting in the way), and we didn't get a lot of feedback.  Thanks again to the other members of the Stella team, @Thomas Jentzsch and @DirtyHairy for their work on this.  Changelog as follows:

 

  * IMPORTANT NOTES:
    - Because of fixes to JSON handling, all remappings will be reset to defaults; if you had custom mappings, they will need to be re-entered again.
    - Because of internal changes, all state files are now invalid.

 

  * Completely reworked the file launcher:
    - Redesigned user interface
    - Added tracking of user favorites, recently played and most popular games
    - Added virtual directories for selecting tracked games
    - Added quick path navigation
    - Added navigation history
    - Added icons for files and directories
    - Added option to show/hide file extensions
    - Extended context menu and shortcuts
    - Fixed sluggish behaviour when reading large and/or invalid files

 

  * Added hotkey display to tooltips.

 

  * Added option to automatically pause emulation when focus is lost.

 

  * Added option to toggle autofire mode.

 

  * Improved controller mappings for Paddles.

 

  * Improved controller mappings for Driving controllers.

 

  * Improved Mindlink support.

 

  * Added another oddball TIA glitch option for score mode color.

 

  * Enhanced TV jitter emulation.

 

  * Enhanced support for CDFJ+ bankswitching type.

 

  * Added 0FA0 bankswitching for Fotomania ROMs.

 

  * Added ARM chip auto detection.

 

  * Extended support for older BUS (experimental) ROMs that worked with an older, obsolete version of the BUS scheme; special thanks to SpiceWare for the code.

 

  * Fixed Stella crash due to invalid ZIP files.

 

  * Fixed TV mode auto detection in some ARM ROMs.

 

  * Fixed color loss when switching TV mode from/to PAL.

 

  * Fixed score mode glitch emulation corner case.

 

  * Fixed state messages staying on screen forever.

 

  * Added M1 support for the macOS build.

 

  * Debugger improvements:
    - added PlusROM information
    - fixed patching code in ZP-RAM
    - improved bank origin detection

 

  * Updated internal ROM properties database to ROM-Hunter version 17 (thanks go to RomHunter for his tireless research in this area).  Related to this, updated the snapshot collection.
 

As usual, Stella can be downloaded at https://stella-emu.github.io/downloads.html, and donations can be made at https://stella-emu.github.io/donations.html.  Feedback and bug reports can be made in this thread, or preferably by creating a Github issue at https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/issues.

 

Our Future

Now, on to a more serious issue.  The Stella team is evaluating our involvement with the project.  As a result, we intend to take an extended break, probably for the rest of this year, but possibly longer.

 

Stella has come a long, long way over the past 20+ years, with many, many hours invested (especially by myself, but also recently by Christian and Thomas).  At this point, we are basically demotivated by the lack of feedback of the past several releases.  It seems like interest is moving to other projects, so we will take a break.  We may provide less support during the break.

 

We want to thank people who were supporting us (e.g. Stellathon, helping with bugs or coding, donations, etc).

 

Finally, note that the source code is available, in case someone else wants to step in and start contributing.

 

Thanks for the support.  Hopefully we will be back soon.

 

The Stella Team
  Stephen Anthony @stephena
  Christian Speckner @DirtyHairy
  Thomas Jentzsch @Thomas Jentzsch
 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

Thank you @stephena, @DirtyHairy, @Thomas Jentzsch and everyone else who contributes to Stella for all the incredible work that goes into this mighty emulator! Stella is an invaluable tool for me as I use it many times a day, everyday, for both playing all the amazing Atari 2600 homebrew and prepping for my show.

 

It wasn't mentioned in the changelog but you even managed to put into the new version my request for searching directories by numbers. It's much appreciated!! ?

 

- James

 

 

[+mksmith]

Well done to each of you for your contributions to this wonderful program and tool! Enjoy a much deserved break ???

[+Nathan Strum]

Stephen, Christian and Thomas - Thank you all for contributing so much to Stella! It's my daily driver for all things 2600, and I couldn't contribute to homebrews without it (plus - I just really enjoy playing games on it  ).

 

I haven't given any feedback, since I really didn't have any to give. It all just works brilliantly for my needs. Plus, I knew that some things (like CDFJ+ support) were already in the works, and nobody needed to hear "is it ready yet" from me.  

 

I suppose I'm guilty of taking Stella for granted, but I really do appreciate all of the hard work you all put into it (and I just did again). Please do enjoy taking time away from working on it. I know that hobbies can start becoming a chore after awhile and it just sucks all the fun out of them. Hopefully, that sense of fun or satisfaction will return again. Stella (and those of you who work on it) are an invaluable part of this community, and I hope you know that the work is highly appreciated, even if we don't always remember to say so.

 

Again - thank you!

[alex_79]

Thanks @stephena, @Thomas Jentzsch, @DirtyHairy and all contributors for all the work you put into Stella. I've been using it for over 15 years now, and I don't see this to change in the foreseeable future.

 

The lack of feedback seems to affect many projects (emulators, homebrew games, hardware projects), and that's a shame for sure. Unfortunately, this is a small community, and, as Nathan pointed out, Stella is great already (and has been so for a long time now) which probably causes many of us to take it for granted.

 

Of course, it's best to take a break if you feel you're not enjoying it. I'm confident that you'll (soon!) get motivation again to work on it.

 

In the meantime, thanks again, and long live Stella!

 

 

[Rom Hunter]

Stephen, Christian and Thomas,

I simply can't praise you enough for all the time and effort you guys put into this marvelous emulator.

For many years Stella has been a great help for me examining and comparing countless VCS ROMs.

My work on the collection would have been so much harder without it.

I can fully understand your motivations for your break and I truly hope you will pick up the good work again when the time is there.

Thanks again and hats off to you.

Cheers,

Rom

[zzip]

Stella has worked great for many years, thanks for all your hard work!   Once emulators mature they focus more on quality of life issues that affect a small part of the userbase rather than critical updates that affect everyone,  that might be way you get less feedback these days?

[+littaum]

Thanks to you and your team for everything you've done over the years for this incredible emulator - I have not provided any feedback mainly because it works so well.

[+johnnywc]

Thank you @stephena, @Thomas Jentzsch and @Dirty Harry for all your hard work on Stella over the years, it is very much appreciated!  You have all been a invaluable resource to the Atari 2600 community, both from a playing and development perspective.  I have had the fortune of enjoying the benefits of Stella from both, and without it I certainly wouldn't have been able to fulfill my childhood dream of actually making games for the Atari.   I want to say special thanks for the specific work you've all done on Stella to help with my personal game development, including that addition of QuadTari support (special thanks to TJ for that one  ) and the most recent CDFJ+ changes where I actually had the opportunity (finally) to contribute some code to the project.  I also want to thank @SpiceWare for all of his support to the Stella team, even it it did take him a while to figure out how to check in code.  

 

Enjoy the well deserved break and I hope to be working with you all again if you choose to return to Stella development at some point in the future. ?

 

Thanks,

John

[israelg]

Thanks you ALL for the hard work for many years, to make us all happy and feel like little kids again...  

[Dionoid]

Hi @stephena, @Dirty Harry and @Thomas Jentzsch, I'm adding another big THANK YOU to this list.

I think Stella is a great emulator and an amazing tool for homebrew developers. I learned so many tricks by just loading a ROM into Stella and turning on the debug colors ?

Sometimes I noticed things in Stella which I wanted to feedback on (e.g. those state messages shown on the screen for a long time), but found someone else already reported it on GitHub.

 

Anyway, if you don't feel the motivation, taking a break is the best thing to do. It gives way to learning other/new/different things, which could even benefit Stella when you choose to return to developing it.

Just be assured that a lot of people appreciate Stella and the work that you guys did on it!

[Keatah]

I'll just like the posts that say what I was gonna say..

[Atari Nut]

Thanks guys.  Stella is my emulator for everything 2600!

[ricky]

Congratulations for the whole team for having contributed to keeping Stelle alive for so many years.
Stella is my 1st emulator that I use from the beginning.

For a few years I have switched to the real Harmony console and cartridge, plus a good collection of game cartridges.
This is also probably why there is a slowdown in the use of emulators, because many people in the world have started using the real VCS machine.
But hey, there are still a lot of people who have to use Stella, myself mostly using it when testing homebrew games.

In any case, this latest version works perfectly ?

Edited June 15, 2022 by ricky

[Rodney Hester]

For anyone who finds it useful, I'm attaching R77 builds of Stella 6.7 final.  These were created with the official Docker image and the same official source code releases from Github for both r77-firmware-ng (commit 34ac4b1ce5a9ad01173d2569257168d5d66ab065) and stella-emu (commit 4c7384f82e4f34eedf19760132ec8b11808895b2).  No slight to intended to DirtyHairy and these should NOT be considered official releases, I know he's a very busy guy with other commitments, just trying to help the community out until there's an official release (but they should be identical!).

 

Build removed as a result of notification that there are still (R77-specific?) bugs to be fixed.

 

To the entire Stella team, present and past - THANK YOU so much for helping to preserve my childhood and the wonder of early console gaming!  I cannot possibly praise you enough for the difficult work of preservation you have generously given us.  Please enjoy the well-deserved break!

 

 

Edited June 16, 2022 by Rodney Hester

[Thomas Jentzsch]

3 minutes ago, Rodney Hester said:

just trying to help the community out until there's an official release (but they should be identical!).

Except for the bugs waiting to be fixed before.

[Rodney Hester]

8 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Except for the bugs waiting to be fixed before.

Ah...wasn't aware there was anything still in the queue in that regard, apologies!

 

Build removed pending further perfection.  ?

[DirtyHairy]

31 minutes ago, Rodney Hester said:

Build removed as a result of notification that there are still (R77-specific?) bugs to be fixed.

Thanks alot for building, though  As Thomas says, I still want to iron out a few issues with paddles attached directly to the R77, plus a switch to disable overclocking before I release. I guess I'll have a release ready sometime next week.

[Rodney Hester]

1 hour ago, DirtyHairy said:

Thanks alot for building, though  As Thomas says, I still want to iron out a few issues with paddles attached directly to the R77, plus a switch to disable overclocking before I release. I guess I'll have a release ready sometime next week.

LOL no worries, I know often you just haven't had time to prepare them and I thought I was being helpful ? 

 

One thing I just noticed during play - with the RELEASE build of 6.7 (minus your fixes, of course!), one game I just tried (Journey Escape) behaves oddly compared to past releases - it seems to be underperforming pretty badly (stuttering audio is very evident) on R77, and (this may be entirely my imagination, but I've played this game a *LOT* on both hardware and Stella) there seem to be entirely too many Kool-Aid Man (invulnerability for that level) bonuses available - I got three on one level, and you typically only see 1-2 per game at the most!  The performance issue is very obvious though, so ignore the Kool-Aid man.  LOL

[Sohl]

I love using Stella as a development tool.  Its debugging features are awesome.  I've donated money in the past year or so and suggest everyone who has not done that yet to do so too!

 

I've not upgraded to 6.7 yet, but I look forward to trying it.  In version 6.6 I do have a minor debugging UI issue... if you start typing in the prompt window, then paste some additional text into the prompt window, that text clobbers what was already entered.  I find I do this when I want to setup a break point... I type "break" in the prompt window, then highlight and copy the name of a entry point or symbol from my text editor, then try to paste it into the prompt line to complete the breakpoint definition, but I lose the word break, which I need to re-enter.  Just an annoyance when I don't remember it will happen.  I might be able to look at the Stella source see if I can spot the cause and maybe even suggest a patch/pull-request.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

3 hours ago, Sohl said:

In version 6.6 I do have a minor debugging UI issue... if you start typing in the prompt window, then paste some additional text into the prompt window, that text clobbers what was already entered. 

Thanks. What you describe is a known issue. Unfortunately it is nothing easy to fix, because the debugger prompt needs a major refactoring before we can fix it. Which is still on our long todo list.

[+TwentySixHundred]

Personally i have spent little time on all things Atari related the past 12 months or so. Thanks to the team for all the hard work over the years. Stella is an amazing emulator and im also guilty of taking it for granted.

 

I know what it's like trying to keep motivation up when receiving little to no feedback. Usually i thank all the developers that work on projects i use and the past couple of updates i think i have missed.

 

Anyway enjoy the hard earned break and i hope it's not the end of this project. One thing to keep in mind is there are many other users that probably don't even think to comment or report bugs expecting they will be fixed later down the track.

 

All i can say is for me personally the emulator has been faultless for a long time now. You guys even added my white on black UI theme request a few versions ago, which was the cherry on the top for me ?

Edited June 17, 2022 by TwentySixHundred

[alex_79]

5 hours ago, Sohl said:

I type "break" in the prompt window, then highlight and copy the name of a entry point or symbol from my text editor, then try to paste it into the prompt line to complete the breakpoint definition,

A workaround is to use the auto-complete functionality: just type the first few letters of the label, then press TAB a few times until you find the correct match. I find this faster than having to copy and paste between the editor and the prompt (and it's very similar to how the linux shell behave, which I'm familiar with).

 

Auto-complete works for commands too: e.g. you can just type "br" and then press TAB for "break".

Edited June 17, 2022 by alex_79

[Sohl]

8 hours ago, alex_79 said:

A workaround is to use the auto-complete functionality: just type the first few letters of the label, then press TAB a few times until you find the correct match. I find this faster than having to copy and paste between the editor and the prompt (and it's very similar to how the linux shell behave, which I'm familiar with).

 

Auto-complete works for commands too: e.g. you can just type "br" and then press TAB for "break".

Alex, I do use auto-complete a large extent, but not always.  I suppose I can train myself to use it closer to 100%.  

[+FujiSkunk]

Thank you, Stephen and crew, for one of the best emulators on the planet for any system, let alone the 2600.  While I hope this break isn't permanent, y'all deserve a good rest!