liveinabin Posted March 28, 2004 Share Posted March 28, 2004 What can't it do? I can't run on Macs, worse luck. I'm so sick of Stella. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted March 29, 2004 Share Posted March 29, 2004 Paddle emulation on the Z26 now isn't what it used to be. What's wrong with it? It used to run smoothly using the control stick or mouse, but now it can't use the mouse, and the stick just makes it jump around. That's all I know. I guess that's what you get for letting a German update an English manual. The paddle emulation through the PC joystick now takes the value from an analog axis and uses it directly as the paddle value. This is mainly to allow using Atari paddles with the Stelladaptor, but it should work with other PC joysticks as well. In the older versions paddle emulation through the PC joystick worked just like though the keyboard: pushing the joystick left or right will increase or decrease the paddle value. Due to the way reading the joysticks now works, the joystick will always override the paddle value when it is connected. So to be able to use the mouse or the keyboard to emulate the paddle, you either need to disconnect your PC joystick before you start z26, or you need to disable the input from the PC joystick with the -iJ command line switch. If you use a digital PC gamepad, playing paddle games with it currently doesn't work too well. I think I'll have to something about it in one of the next versions of z26. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic George 2K3 Posted March 29, 2004 Share Posted March 29, 2004 Thanks. I just downloaded the previous version of Z26 in order to enjoy the paddle-controlled games again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy_Dude Posted March 29, 2004 Share Posted March 29, 2004 Thanks. I just downloaded the previous version of Z26 in order to enjoy the paddle-controlled games again. How you can enjoy them without a paddle is beyond me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic George 2K3 Posted March 29, 2004 Share Posted March 29, 2004 Thanks. I just downloaded the previous version of Z26 in order to enjoy the paddle-controlled games again. How you can enjoy them without a paddle is beyond me What paddle-controlled games I can enjoy using Z26, I use either the mouse or the control stick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StanJr Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Studly Stan wrote:it takes screenshots in PCX which my computer can't seem to make heads or tails of, so that is my single gripe. I think you can use commandline -B to enable .bmp format for screen captures. z26 Emulator, what can't it do? I'm still waiting for a commandline option to make toast... oh, and netplay would be nice. ok, bear in mind that I am a bumbling idiot, and I'm NOT using a front end. How exactly would I use your advice above to enable BMP? Could you write out an example, say I want a screenshot of Tutankham.... Thanks for bearing with me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 ok, bear in mind that I am a bumbling idiot, and I'm NOT using a front end. How exactly would I use your advice above to enable BMP? z26 -b game.bin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StanJr Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 thanks, Thomas. You are the King. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StanJr Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 ok, I tried it, but it still gave me .PCX files instead of BMP files. What did I do? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Capital -B Good luck with it, because below is how mine turned out... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 ok, I tried it, but it still gave me .PCX files instead of BMP files. What did I do? Oops, my fault. The parameter is case sensitive, you have to use an uppercase B. Don't be surprised about the huge size of the files. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StanJr Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 hey its working, but all of my screenshots come out looking like THIS! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 I guess that's why they chose PCX No offense Eckhard, you guys are doing a bangup job. >coughcough< Just convert the files already...I just use Lviewpro. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 hey its working, but all of my screenshots come out looking like THIS! Try a different video-mode! (ALT+0..8 ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Which one? It looks fine running on the screen, but the snapshot is stuffed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Which one? It looks fine running on the screen, but the snapshot is stuffed. Hm, works for me in all video modes. Eckhard? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Hm...I had to invoke scanlines for it to work right Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Just convert the files already...I just use Lviewpro. irfanview is a real winner of a viewer/converter; FREE, knows all the dang formats for audio and video, can resize, rotate, crop, colorbalance, does great thumbnails, and is one of the more powerful/easy to use batch processors for images I've seen. The only drawback is you have to explain the "run over cat" icon to anyone who sees it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 For the BMP screenshots we are using a function that is build into the SDL. I think it reads it data directly from the video memory, so BMP screenshots always use the size and bitdepth of the video mode you are running z26 in. The last time I tried this function it worked fine for me, but I'll check it again. What video mode were you using when you got these messed up screenshots? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nukey Shay Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Looks like Stan was doing the same thing that I was...just entering Z26 without a switch for video specification (which means that the examples posted above should be the default mode 0). Using scanlines seems to correct it for me, but the lower modes are still messed up - they will look fine on the screen, but the .bmp file turns out skewed. The PCX files look right in any mode...even the default. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 The paddle emulation through the PC joystick now takes the value from an analog axis and uses it directly as the paddle value. This is mainly to allow using Atari paddles with the Stelladaptor, but it should work with other PC joysticks as well. In the older versions paddle emulation through the PC joystick worked just like though the keyboard: pushing the joystick left or right will increase or decrease the paddle value. Due to the way reading the joysticks now works, the joystick will always override the paddle value when it is connected. So to be able to use the mouse or the keyboard to emulate the paddle, you either need to disconnect your PC joystick before you start z26, or you need to disable the input from the PC joystick with the -iJ command line switch. If you use a digital PC gamepad, playing paddle games with it currently doesn't work too well. I think I'll have to something about it in one of the next versions of z26. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg This is why I'm sticking with version 2.11 for the foreseeable future. I don't want to have to pay $40 for a piece of hardware just to play a FREE emulator. The Stelladaptor is a nice little niche product, but making the new versions of z26 basically unusable unless you purchase one is kinda lame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted April 2, 2004 Share Posted April 2, 2004 OK, I tried out the BMP support again, and I'm getting the messed up pictures in the 256 colour video modes (-v0 to -v8) too now. The video modes that use the same colour resolution as your Windows desktop (-v10 to -v18 = windowed / -v20 to -v28 = fullscreen) seem to work fine though. But in these video modes the BMP files will have the higher colour resolution too. This is fine when you want to make screenshots of games that play better with the phosphor effect enabled. But just doing normal screenshots could use smaller files I think. I could have sworn BMPs in all modes worked fine for me before. I guess I'll now have to go through all the older versions of z26 to find out if this bug is something that we introduced in the past ourselves, or if it's something computer related. In any way, I'll try to fix BMP support for the next release. @ Danno Believe me that John and I like simple programs more than anyone. But making the controller code in z26 as easy to use as possible also made it difficult to maintain, because everything got dependent of everything else. So to be able to add new features to the controller handling code in the future, I decided to completely rewrite it. And while I was working on this, Joe and Albert approached me about adding support for the Stelladaptor. I really liked this device and wanted to add support for it to z26. But since the new controller code in z26 wasn't quite ready yet and Joe and Albert wanted to release the Stelladaptor at the PhillyClassic, I had to chose to either make the people who bought a Stelladaptor angry at me, because I had working code for it and wouldn't release it until everything else was ready, or make the people who didn't buy a Stelladaptor angry at me, because I would have to release a version of z26 that wasn't quite as easy to use as before. I tried to make it possible to disable as many of the new Stelladaptor features as I could think of, so that people without a Stelladaptor would be able to still use z26 mostly as they used to. But as it seems there are people that use z26 differently than I do. So obviously I didn't restore every possible way of using z26 to it's original state yet. I'll try to fix this in future releases as good as the new controller handling code allows it. Releasing the new version of z26 in it's current state is not some kind of useless marketing ploy for the Stelladaptor. I just wanted to be able to use my Stelladaptor with z26 and thought I'd share the results with everyone else, who wanted to use it too, as soon as possible. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted April 2, 2004 Share Posted April 2, 2004 I don't want to have to pay $40 for a piece of hardware just to play a FREE emulator. The Stelladaptor is a nice little niche product, but making the new versions of z26 basically unusable unless you purchase one is kinda lame. First off, the Stelladaptor is only $30 (and was only $25 for those who purchased it at PC5). Second, as Eckhard stated, a fair number of controller-related changes were made to the latest version of z26, and not just for Stelladaptor support. I've been using version 2.12 of z26, with and without the Stelladaptor, and have not run into any problems. I'd hardly call this making z26 "unusable" and "lame" just because the one particular way you are using z26 (which the vast majority of people are not doing) is not working properly. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted April 2, 2004 Share Posted April 2, 2004 This is why I'm sticking with version 2.11 for the foreseeable future. I don't want to have to pay $40 for a piece of hardware just to play a FREE emulator. The Stelladaptor is a nice little niche product, but making the new versions of z26 basically unusable unless you purchase one is kinda lame. This post was "kinda lame" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danno Posted April 2, 2004 Share Posted April 2, 2004 I don't want to have to pay $40 for a piece of hardware just to play a FREE emulator. The Stelladaptor is a nice little niche product, but making the new versions of z26 basically unusable unless you purchase one is kinda lame. First off, the Stelladaptor is only $30 (and was only $25 for those who purchased it at PC5). Second, as Eckhard stated, a fair number of controller-related changes were made to the latest version of z26, and not just for Stelladaptor support. I've been using version 2.12 of z26, with and without the Stelladaptor, and have not run into any problems. I'd hardly call this making z26 "unusable" and "lame" just because the one particular way you are using z26 (which the vast majority of people are not doing) is not working properly. ..Al $29.95 + 5.00 Shipping, unless you plan to drive to Philadelphia(which could cost a bundle). + 1.75 Tax. = $ 36.74 That's $40 by my wallet. I appreciated Eckhard's sincere response, and understand his quandry. He wasn't given much time to fully implement support for both Stelladaptor users and non-users. This is why I said "I'M STICKING WITH 2.11 FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE". Meaning, until both methods are supported, I'll stick with the old. That's not a knock on anyone, unless support for non-Stelladaptor users is going to be permanently shut out. I'm glad Eckhard chose to address this question for me. I do appreciate Eckhard's work. I also appreciate what the Stelladaptor's creators have tried to accomplish, and apparently they've done an admiable job. But as we've ALL seen in the gaming industry, sometimes good projects get hijacked by people trying to make a buck. Sam Tramiel, anyone? Atari7800.com anyone? I just wanted to make sure that the fantastic emulator known an z-26 wasn't going to abandon it's faithful supporters, that's all. And I never said "MY" method of using z-26 wasn't working. The fact is, as Eckhard admitted, paddle emulation WITHOUT a Stelladaptor in z-26 version 2.12 is not working as it used to. I merely wanted to know if this was going to be a permanent change. Thankfully it isn't. You can all unbunch your undies now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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