Mindfield Posted April 25, 2002 Share Posted April 25, 2002 Never did care much for Stella. Compatibility was always a bit sketchy, and I didn't particularily like the UI. I usually use PCAEWin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquid_sky Posted April 25, 2002 Share Posted April 25, 2002 I never used it because the pallette was horriblly off. I mean prtessure cooker you had a red green and blue tube.. well red beame PURPLE in stella Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquid_sky Posted April 26, 2002 Share Posted April 26, 2002 The new version has improved the colors quite a bit. Havent had time to mess with much else so far, but now it looks like ill have a good 2600 emu when im in linux Anyone out there ever try to use KDEStella (the stella frontend)? Nothing but trouble from my end.. I gave up.. plus im a gnome user Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted April 26, 2002 Author Share Posted April 26, 2002 Looks like Retrogames got the news out before AtariAge... A new version of Stella has (finally) been released! Check out the homepage here, and download the new version here. Here's a list of what's new: - Improved illegal CPU instruction support. - Thrust and Qb will now operate correctly. - Improved emulation of undefined TIA reads. The ball in Video Pinball finally bounces off of the paddles! - More accurate NTSC and PAL palettes. These palettes should be much more like the colors displayed on a real TV. - PAL color loss is now emulated. If a PAL game displays an odd number of scanlines then the next frame will be displayed in black & white. - TIA emulation improved to fix some problems with Pole Position, Fatal Run, Dolphin, Decathlon, Robot Tank, and Hole Hunter. - Support for Pitfall II has been added, however, the enhanced sound provided by the DPC chip found in the Pitfall II cartridge isn't currently emulated. - Support added for the Commavid (CV) bankswitching method. - Support added for the Megaboy cartridge. - Improved Supercharger emulation including a new BIOS that shows the vertical blue progress bars like the real thing. - Code for the emulation core has been updated to work with newer C++ compilers compliant with the C++ standard. - Basic message support added to the TIA emulation. This allows a short message to overlay the TIA frame. Currently, it's used when switching color modes and difficulty settings. - The internal data structure for the stella.pro file was changed from a resizable array to a binary search tree. This results in quicker startup times. - An SDL port of Stella is available (requires SDL 1.2.0 or greater) - Added option to not load in the whole stella.pro file when starting Stella. This option is enabled on the X11, SDL, and DOS versions. Win32 version is left alone since it's needed for loading multiple games from the UI. Saves on memory usage. - Added INI file option to the X11 and SDL versions. Options can be specified in this file instead of entering them on the commandline. Any options entered on the commandline override options in the INI file. File is called stellarc. For the X11 and SDL versions, it can be in either $HOME (as $HOME/.stellarc) or in /etc (as /etc/stellarc). The one in $HOME has higher priority than the one in /etc. - Added snapshot support to the X11 and SDL versions. Pressing F12 saves the current screen in PNG format. Requires PNG library. - Removed stella.pro file from the binary, resulting in large space savings. The stella.pro file is no longer optional. For the X11 and SDL versions, it can be in either $HOME (as $HOME/.stella.pro) or in /etc (as /etc/stella.pro). The one in $HOME has higher priority than the one in /etc. For DOS and Win32 versions, the stella.pro file must be in the same directory as the executable. - Added pause functionality to the core. Implemented in DOS, X11, and SDL versions for now. I know most of you are probably using Z26 by now, but for those of us (like me) who still use Stella, this looks to be a great new version --Zero Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted April 27, 2002 Author Share Posted April 27, 2002 Well, this new release certainly does fix a lot of the problems I had with it before. The biggest complaint I had was that if I quit Stella using anything other than Esc (For example, if I closed the window manually), it would leave stella-sound running, which would keep my sound device open until I killed it. This is now fixed it seems. Compatibility is up again, and I can finally play Thrust and Pitfall 2 on it. The only thing missing is the music for Pitfall 2 (although you can hear odd beeps in the background... I assume this was part of the music not handled by the special sound chip?) liquid_sky: have you tried Stellashell? It's not exactly full of features, but at least you don't need KDE. --Zero Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ze_ro Posted April 29, 2002 Author Share Posted April 29, 2002 It should probably be mentioned that Stella 1.21 was just released for DOS... it's a bugfix release that fixes some problems with pausing. As far as I know, this problem isn't present in the other versions (It's definitely not in the Linux X11 version anyways). So, anyone using the DOS version might want to pick this up from the Stella Website --Zero Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
null_mind Posted May 4, 2002 Share Posted May 4, 2002 Man, i'm so glad this version has been finally released. I was also havng problems with stella-sound under Linux. I'd always forget to hit Esc to exit, and then have to kill stella-sound manually. The pallet really does look better too. liquid_sky, I didn't have much luck with KStella either. I just went ahead and wrote my own front-end. It's a java program, but otherwise works fine with most 2600 emulators under Windows and Linux. If anyone wants to try it out, ya can download it from http://nothingville0.tripod.com/atari_emu_fe/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 Is there any way a Win32/DirectX binary can be compiled with each official release? I mean, it is 2001 and DOS should finally be on the way out. Jeff Miller is no longer updating StellaX so somebody has to provide the Stella emulator to the dominant operating system (Win2K/XP). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Glenn Saunders: Is there any way a Win32/DirectX binary can be compiled with each official release? I mean, it is 2001 and DOS should finally be on the way out. Jeff Miller is no longer updating StellaX so somebody has to provide the Stella emulator to the dominant operating system (Win2K/XP). Do you know if the source is available? ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Glenn Saunders: Is there any way a Win32/DirectX binary can be compiled with each official release? (Win2K/XP). Manuel Polik (Cybergoth) is currently working on a new Win32 port called CyberStella. It should be released in a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Thomas Jentzsch: Manuel Polik (Cybergoth) is currently working on a new Win32 port called CyberStella . It should be released in a while. Ahhh, thanks for the news. I'll have to ask him if he needs any beta testers. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybergoth Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Albert: Ahhh, thanks for the news. I'll have to ask him if he needs any beta testers. Actually Cyberstella should have been released in time with the other 1.2 versions, but due to some heavy workloads at my regular job, it's a little delayed. Now I hope to have a version ready by the end of the week. But don't expect any wonders, since I've *just* ported/rewritten the complete UI. It's now a framed Application with a Toolbar, thus making future features like the planned debugger easier to add. Of course it'll feature all new kernel improvements, so it can play Thrust for example. I'll hurry up. But consider this: You're waiting for 2+ year now, so I think another week won't hurt To answer your other question, this is a GPL project and actual sources are available at Sourceforge. Greetings, Manuel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Cybergoth: I'll hurry up. But consider this: You're waiting for 2+ year now, so I think another week won't hurt To answer your other question, this is a GPL project and actual sources are available at Sourceforge. Excellent, great news! Yeah, another week's not going to kill me and certainly don't push yourself harder just because I mentioned an interest in it. I'll have to grab the source off Sourceforge and compile it, assuming you're writing it using Visual Studio or something even better like Delphi (don't I wish). Okay, I just tried to find Cyberstella in Sourceforge but was unable to locate it. I searched for both "stella" and "cyberstella". Is it up there yet? ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybergoth Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Albert: I'll have to grab the source off Sourceforge and compile it, assuming you're writing it using Visual Studio or something even better like Delphi (don't I wish). Okay, I just tried to find Cyberstella in Sourceforge but was unable to locate it. I searched for both "stella" and "cyberstella". Is it up there yet? It should almost compile with VC++ 6.0. If I didn't forget any file. Since I'm the only one working on the WIN32 version, I wouldn't know if it's incomplete. It compiles & runs fine on my computer There's two files generated by some strange MD4 macro that's to be runned by another MD4 tool. Thomas will tell you more soon, I assume And I'm sure Thomas is posting the direct sourceforge link, while I'm typing this Don't know why, but the sourceforge search-engine seems to work properly only every other day... Greetings, Manuel Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted May 5, 2002 Share Posted May 5, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Cybergoth: There's two files generated by some strange MD4 macro that's to be runned by another MD4 tool. Thomas will tell you more soon, I assume MD4 is a tool that belongs to the utilities of the GNU compiler. Start searching here. quote: And I'm sure Thomas is posting the direct sourceforge link, while I'm typing this Hope this is fast enough. The special CyberStella files can be found in the UI directory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted May 10, 2002 Share Posted May 10, 2002 Not that I'm the only Mac person in the world...but any word on a carbon Mac port? To play Pitfall II: Lost Caverns I actually use Stella 1.2 for DOS in Virtual PC (and yes...it's fast enough). Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted May 10, 2002 Share Posted May 10, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Voch: Not that I'm the only Mac person in the world...but any word on a carbon Mac port? To play Pitfall II: Lost Caverns I actually use Stella 1.2 for DOS in Virtual PC (and yes...it's fast enough). I haven't looked at the CyberStella source yet, but I presume it's pretty Windows-centric. If it's using DirectX in any fashion, directly porting it to Carbon will not be so trivial. Personally, I'd just make it a Cocoa app at this point, since Apple is now being more aggressive about getting developers off OS 9. I haven't followed the Mac 2600 emulation scene very closely. What good 2600 emulators are available? ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted May 10, 2002 Share Posted May 10, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Voch: No no no...not a port of the Windows-centric Cyberstella . Just bringing up the Mac version of Stella 1.1.2 to the 1.2 core. Ahh, okay, I could live with that. Without doing any research myself (yet), is the source available? Is someone still working on it? I've been wanting to start programming under OS X for some time now, maybe this is the kick in the pants I need! ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted May 10, 2002 Share Posted May 10, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Albert: Is someone still working on it? I've been wanting to start programming under OS X for some time now, maybe this is the kick in the pants I need! ..Al As far as I know John Stiles still owns the port. The last vestage of Stella for Mac information I know of is on this Emulation.net page. I'm sure the source can be found (Stella itself has been open source). Voch [ 05-10-2002: Message edited by: Voch ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Voch Posted May 11, 2002 Share Posted May 11, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Albert: I haven't looked at the CyberStella source yet, but I presume it's pretty Windows-centric. No no no...not a port of the Windows-centric Cyberstella. Just bringing up the Mac version of Stella 1.1.2 to the 1.2 core. Voch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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