Experimental 2600+ Firmware and Dumper

[Trebor]

Regarding the actual palette value for the top of the buildings in NTSC Keystone Kapers, the hue value chosen is $04. 

 

From darkest ('black') to lightest ('white') these are the possible options a developer could have chosen:

 

$00, $02, $04, $06, $08, $0A, $0C, $0E.

 

The second darkest gray value was chosen, as $00 is black.

[MrChickenz]

1 hour ago, Trebor said:

Regarding the actual palette value for the top of the buildings in NTSC Keystone Kapers, the hue value chosen is $04. 

 

From darkest ('black') to lightest ('white') these are the possible options a developer could have chosen:

 

$00, $02, $04, $06, $08, $0A, $0C, $0E.

 

The second darkest gray value was chosen, as $00 is black.

What value was chosen for the Retron 77 firmware because it’s an exact match as 1.1x-r2 Firmware I have both hooked to the same monitor.

I know there were some issues with the color palette for PAL but I don’t recall anyone having issues with NTSC color palette.

It was fine! The purpose of the Firmware updates is to make more games playable by making the display darker you have more games that become unplayable! It’s like shoveling turds against the tide!

 

First picture Retron 77

Second picture Atari 2600+ 1.1x-r2

Third picture Atari 2600+ 1.1x-r3/r4

 

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 04:22 AM by MrChickenz

[raz0red]

49 minutes ago, MrChickenz said:

What value was chosen for the Retron 77 firmware because it’s an exact match as 1.1x-r2 Firmware I have both hooked to the same monitor.

I know there were some issues with the color palette for PAL but I don’t recall anyone having issues with NTSC color palette.

It was fine! The purpose of the Firmware updates is to make more games playable by making the display darker you have more games that become unplayable!

 

First picture Retron 77

Second picture Atari 2600+ 1.1x-r2

Third picture Atari 2600+ 1.1x-r3/r4

 

 

 

So the first 2 are the standard Stella palette, so they should match, and they are what you are familiar with.

 

It doesn't necessarily make them more right or wrong than other choices, just different. We hear your feedback, and will try to come up with a solution that provides the best overall experience for all users.

 

There is a reason why televisions have different picture modes, as not everyone likes the same thing. Some modes are quite vivid (way beyond what the original intent was), others are more muted. 

 

However, you mention games being unplayable. What specific games are those? If games are truly broken, we should definitely focus on those.

 

Thanks,

Chris.

 

Edited Wednesday at 04:40 AM by raz0red

[MrChickenz]

51 minutes ago, raz0red said:

However, you mention games being unplayable. What specific games are those? If games are truly broken, we should definitely focus on those.

It was mentioned in a previous post.  https://forums.atariage.com/topic/361600-experimental-2600-firmware-and-dumper/?do=findComment&comment=5491562  There are two so far. That I just recently ordered. They looked and played just fine when I first received them. Because I was on 1.1x-r2. You mentioned the pallets I’m familiar with, not being right or wrong but it happens to be the pallet choice of the those games. When ordering those games the screen shots looked exactly like they did when playing on 1.1x-r2. So in my opinion the pallet being used in 1.1x-r2 must be right. If I’m using 1.1x-r3/4 how can I be sure when ordering games in the future like homebrews or official release games that it’s going to look like the screen shot of the store I’m ordering from. Colors being slightly off is one thing but darker colors can definitely affect gameplay.

 

I just started noticing the changes it has on some of my games. I haven’t gone through all of them as of yet. I’ll have to go through all of them again to see.

Edited Wednesday at 05:15 AM by MrChickenz

[DEANJIMMY]

57 minutes ago, raz0red said:

So the first 2 are the standard Stella palette, so they should match, and they are what you are familiar with.

 

It doesn't necessarily make them more right or wrong than other choices, just different. We hear your feedback, and will try to come up with a solution that provides the best overall experience for all users.

 

There is a reason why televisions have different picture modes, as not everyone likes the same thing. Some modes are quite vivid (way beyond what the original intent was), others are more muted. 

 

However, you mention games being unplayable. What specific games are those? If games are truly broken, we should definitely focus on those.

 

Thanks,

Chris.

 

Thanks!

 

Colors will always vary. There is this big Potentiometer inside any 2600. Did it get off over the years? Was it tuned before or after lunch break in production? Plus the TVs.

I tuned my once 4 2600 and 2 7800 to give the same output.

 

The pictures on the box intend(!) to show correct NTSC colors but are the same on PAL boxes, where the PAL colors are different. 

 

And today you have the software in TVs which causes diversity. You should turn game mode on, yes. But still there are features which can or can't be changed. Like color temperature is not selectable anymore, you should still switch off auto contrast,...

 

X2 colors seemed to be fine for both.

 

To have seperate palettes is a good idea, it worked good for months now and I am confident it will work with the different TVs out there, which is in my opinion the purpose of the palette😊

 

Edit: And I fully understand @MrChickenz referring to Pitfall! as it was my reference for tuning the pot in my old PAL 2600s

Edited Wednesday at 05:22 AM by DEANJIMMY

[MrChickenz]

I understand this is experimental Firmware. It’s my choice to use it or not. That’s why I said I could stay with 1.1x-r2 it’s not an issue for me. There are extremely great improvements with the Firmware. I just feel the change to the NTSC pallet is a downgrade.

[ZippyOasys]

Look, we'll worry about the colors later. What I want to know is that do most 2600 games work now, including SuperChip based homebrews.

[m.o.terra kaesi]

Thanks for you work guys. So I still wait with upgrading (and buying) an Atari 2600+ until we are close to 100% perfect 

[AtariYMás009]

Another solid example of comparison with real hardware

 

With standard palette you can barely see the bomb's tip, and also the traps fron further levels are invisible

 

 

In the real hardware, the floor is a much lighter gray and you can see both the traps and the bombs much better

 

 

much more similar to the z26 palette

Edited Wednesday at 08:49 AM by AtariYMás009

[DEANJIMMY]

28 minutes ago, ZippyOasys said:

Look, we'll worry about the colors later. What I want to know is that do most 2600 games work now, including SuperChip based homebrews.

All my 300 carts except my 2 champ games  and Draconian work🤗

Among these, 100% of my 7800 carts including homebrews work.

So the colors of 297 carts are more important to me than the 3 carts I have to run on original hardware 😉

[AtariYMás009]

11 hours ago, JetmanUK said:

And what does PAL Pole Position look like on that JR?

it looks like this

 

With Stella's standard palette the mountains behind are almost black instead of green, and the road is almost the same color as the wheels, making them invisible

 

 

with z26 the mountains are green and the road gray just like on real hardware

 

 

[JetmanUK]

6 minutes ago, AtariYMás009 said:

it looks like this

 

With Stella's standard palette the mountains behind are almost black instead of green, and the road is almost the same color as the wheels, making them invisible

 

 

with z26 the mountains are green and the road gray just like on real hardware

 

 

Thanks for posting these, again your JR looks very similar to my light sixer.

 

IF Z26 is more accurate than the standard palette, why? The Stella guys have made an amazing piece of software, why is the standard palette not so, erm standard. Does it look right on a particular piece of reference hardware?

 

I still feel that the PAL colours should be explored further, as I think a tweaked standard palette could be better than an alternative palette. At this point I think I have seen enough to think that neither palette in their normal configuration is quite right... Although I understand 'right' is very subjective and tricky/impossible to achieve.

 

As an aside I think that the PAL colours are closer to correct right now than the NTSC ones, @MrChickenz is right, there has been a colour downgrade, judging by his photos anyway, I have not tested myself, perhaps I should later. I live in PAL land but I use mostly NTSC carts.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

1 minute ago, JetmanUK said:

IF Z26 is more accurate than the standard palette, why? The Stella guys have made an amazing piece of software, why is the standard palette not so, erm standard. Does it look right on a particular piece of reference hardware?

Since I got no other feedback when I asked back then, I modeled it after my own Sony Trinitron TV. Which seems to be quite dark compared to other PAL TVs.

1 minute ago, JetmanUK said:

I still feel that the PAL colours should be explored further, as I think a tweaked standard palette could be better than an alternative palette.

I already did that for the coming 7.0 release. The palette got brightened. Whether that's good enough to make everyone happy is doubtful.  

[JetmanUK]

1 hour ago, ZippyOasys said:

Look, we'll worry about the colors later. What I want to know is that do most 2600 games work now, including SuperChip based homebrews.

To chime in on this one, all my 502 classic carts, consisting of 2600/7800 PAL and NTSC all work.

I currenty have no homebrew carts, but some are on their way to me right now so I will soon see if they work too.

 

 

The carts are:

 

Lode Runner

Deepstone Catacomb

Space Rocks

Boulderdash

Dungeon Stalker(7800)

 

Anyone know if they do work?

 

 

Regardless, amazing work has been done on this machine so far, it's fantastic right now and will continbue to get better. The Experimental firmware has been nothing short of amazing so far. Thanks to the great minds on this project.

[JetmanUK]

48 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Since I got no other feedback when I asked back then, I modeled it after my own Sony Trinitron TV. Which seems to be quite dark compared to other PAL TVs.

I already did that for the coming 7.0 release. The palette got brightened. 

Thanks Thomas, so it sounds like a tweaked standard palette may be the future anwyay.

 

Thats from the horses mouth here people, the standard PAL palette IS being tweaked, when done it should be more accurate than the z26 one then....and used in the Plus, until then I don't mind if we stick with z26*.

 

*If doing so doesn't negatively effect the NTSC palette, if it does, lets tweak it in the meantime.

Edited Wednesday at 10:20 AM by JetmanUK

[CPUWIZ]

@Thomas Jentzsch Weird bug in V1.1, I found poking around in the binary, Matt's website is truncated on Arkyology. 

 

 

[DEANJIMMY]

1 hour ago, JetmanUK said:

To chime in on this one, all my 502 classic carts, consisting of 2600/7800 PAL and NTSC all work.

I currenty have no homebrew carts, but some are on their way to me right now so I will soon see if they work too.

 

 

The carts are:

 

Lode Runner

Deepstone Catacomb

Space Rocks

Boulderdash

Dungeon Stalker(7800)

 

Anyone know if they do work?

 

 

Regardless, amazing work has been done on this machine so far, it's fantastic right now and will continbue to get better. The Experimental firmware has been nothing short of amazing so far. Thanks to the great minds on this project.

Lode Runner might fail as Boulderdash does?

 

Space Rocks and Dungeon Stalker work on x4.

 

Dungeon Stalker worked from the beginning and Space Rocks since x4, I guess.

No idea about Catacomb.

Edited Wednesday at 10:40 AM by DEANJIMMY

[Thomas Jentzsch]

11 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

@Thomas Jentzsch Weird bug in V1.1, I found poking around in the binary, Matt's website is truncated on Arkyology. 

 

 

   

[CPUWIZ]

27 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

   

 

Weird huh, I was just doing a quick scan through it, to see how easy it is to write a quick patcher tool for the IMG, that can insert a user-custom palette.

 

It is.

[AtariYMás009]

In case a change is made to the standard palette and it is implemented in a new firmware, I would be happy to test it.
But until then I wish the z26 palette would not be removed as (in the case of the PAL versions) it is much more similar (although not realistic) to the real hardware, and above all, much more pleasant to look at and play.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

6 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

 

Weird huh, I was just doing a quick scan through it, to see how easy it is to write a quick patcher tool for the IMG, that can insert a user-custom palette.

 

It is.

Stella can even load a user-defined palette. 

 

But how does that release to the screenshot?  

[CPUWIZ]

8 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Stella can even load a user-defined palette. 

 

But how does that release to the screenshot?  

 

The screenshot shows atariprotos.com, the rest of his URL's are correct, the very first entry is missing the ATARI, never mind the www.!

 

The screenshot is something I took, while digging around for the ability of patching in a palette into the flash image.

 

Macht das Sinn?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

30 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

The screenshot shows atariprotos.com, the rest of his URL's are correct, the very first entry is missing the ATARI, never mind the www.!

Ah, now I get you. The link is correct in the source code, so I figure it must be a compiler thing.

30 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

Macht das Sinn?

Nein, das ergibt Sinn.  

[MrChickenz]

4 hours ago, AtariYMás009 said:

Another solid example of comparison with real hardware

 

With standard palette you can barely see the bomb's tip, and also the traps fron further levels are invisible

 

 

In the real hardware, the floor is a much lighter gray and you can see both the traps and the bombs much better

 

 

much more similar to the z26 palette

You failed to mention are you PAL or NTSC. I’m referring to NTSC colors. Z26 pallet appears darker on NTSC in some games it’s too dark to see certain sprites on screen as you mention with your example with standard pallet on real hardware 

[MrChickenz]

5 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said:

So the colors of 297 carts are more important to me than the 3 carts I have to run on original hardware 😉

My thoughts exactly!