John Saeger Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Just thought I'd let you know there's a new z26. It's pure OpenGL and has Eckhard Stolberg's CPU and TIA engines which are written in C. The visuals are pretty nice if you ask me. You can download it from here: http:/www.whimsey.com/z26. And you can post your complaints on this thread. Thanks! John 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maiki Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Please, consider adding gameplay recording features: input recording / bookmarks / rollbacks + video export to lossless AVI or similar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Will further releases include updates to the emulation? E.g. for Meltdown? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwalden Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 (edited) ... And you can post your complaints on this thread. “Oh! Oh! Mr. Kotter!” ... I mean Mr. Saeger ... I really like what you have done with z26. I immediately, on playing my first game of Adventure, found a cool design feature in the new z26 3.0 where the player (Square dude) can run right through the walls. This makes for a whole new strategy at playing the game ... On the other hand, I believe this is a bug with the collision detection code. In the meantime it is kind of fun! No complaints here. Thanks Edited May 31, 2011 by mwalden Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 Breakout is completely unplayable of course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flammingcowz Posted May 31, 2011 Share Posted May 31, 2011 It is really slow on my machine. 64bit dual-core 2.22 ghz, 2gb ram wow the atari was powerful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torr Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 people still use z26??? Hello... Stella anyone? come on Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 people still use z26??? Hello... Stella anyone? come on I do. It is (was?) great on slower machines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rom Hunter Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 people still use z26??? Hello... Stella anyone? come on Almost daily, for quick references, using the excellent X26 frontend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 (edited) people still use z26??? Hello... Stella anyone? come on I used z26 in my early days of getting started in the "emulation business". But unless I'm missing something, Stella 3.x is the defacto standard for 2600. I took a look at the latest version and found the collision detection to be not working, Why would this be released like this? Tells me no testing was done. OpenGL or not, why?? IMHO: a complete waste of time. Sorry. Edited June 1, 2011 by Keatah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaGtGruff Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 people still use z26??? All emulators are not equal; each may have its own strengths and weaknesses, as well as one or more features which are unique to that emulator. One feature I really like in z26 is the ability to do a true interlaced display. To be fair, no actual 2600 games I know of use interlacing, although some interlaced demos were made. Be that as it may, the interlaced z26 display looks just like my HD LCD TV. Both fields are drawn at the same time-- interleaved, of course-- or at least are *displayed* at the same time, even though they might (hopefully) be updated in an alternating sequence as on a traditional TV. So you can take screenshots that show both fields at once. To do that in Stella for a game that uses flicker, you must enable the "phosphor" mode-- which is also available in z26-- but it's my experience that the phosphor effect doesn't give an accurate blending of colors, as can be seen by setting the framerate to match your monitor, then turning phosphor mode on and off and on again. If you adjust the phosphor setting so that the blend of two particular colors looks the same regardless of whether phosphor mode is turned on or off, it's still different on other colors-- you just can't seem to adjust it so it's correct for all colors simultaneously. I don't know why that is-- maybe at least partly because the averaging is being done in the RGB colorspace rather than the Y'IQ or Y'UV colorspace? In any case, both Stella and z26 have the phosphor feature-- but only z26 has the interlacing feature. Michael 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Saeger Posted June 1, 2011 Author Share Posted June 1, 2011 Will further releases include updates to the emulation? E.g. for Meltdown? Yes, I certainly hope so. But I can't guarantee what order things happen in. You see I have this MacBook Air which is like a piece of jewelry. Industrial art. I'll probably spend some time trying to make it work there first. And besides, it's Eckhard's engine. I don't want to spoil the fun if he's interested to work on it. On the other hand, Yar's Revenge doesn't play either. It's one of my favorite games. So yes, one way or the other, I think things will get fixed. Eventually... Ciao! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alex_79 Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 I mainly use stella but I still have z26 on my computer and I use it from time to time. I find its "Trace mode" useful when testing my attempts in 2600 programming. And, as others stated, it's lightweight and works well even on old hardware. I didn't tried the latest version yet because my main computer hard drive failed and I'm currently using an old pc without OpenGl support, but I'm glad to know that z26 is still being developed. Long live z26! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 1, 2011 Share Posted June 1, 2011 You see I have this MacBook Air which is like a piece of jewelry. Industrial art. I'll probably spend some time trying to make it work there first. A Mac version of z26? That'd be awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Saeger Posted June 2, 2011 Author Share Posted June 2, 2011 people still use z26??? Hello... Stella anyone? come on I used z26 in my early days of getting started in the "emulation business". But unless I'm missing something, Stella 3.x is the defacto standard for 2600. I took a look at the latest version and found the collision detection to be not working, Why would this be released like this? Tells me no testing was done. OpenGL or not, why?? IMHO: a complete waste of time. Sorry. Because it's fun! Anyway, Eckhard sent me a patch to fix breakout and it's been posted (3.01). Thanks for the feedback! Ciao! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
israelg Posted June 2, 2011 Share Posted June 2, 2011 Nice to hear from you again...! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Saeger Posted June 6, 2011 Author Share Posted June 6, 2011 You see I have this MacBook Air which is like a piece of jewelry. Industrial art. I'll probably spend some time trying to make it work there first. A Mac version of z26? That'd be awesome! Sometimes the magic works. The 3.01 source code compiles on a Mac with no changes! I've posted a Snow Leopard binary at the usual place. Ciao! John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 Nice! I dropped into Windowed mode and got a skinny display. It looks OK full-screen. I suspect it did this because I'm on a 16:9 monitor. Also couldn't get Medieval Mayhem to run. The bank switch list in the readme has Atari 32K, though I suspect that's with a SARA Chip, which Medieval Mayhem doesn't use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Saeger Posted June 6, 2011 Author Share Posted June 6, 2011 Nice! I dropped into Windowed mode and got a skinny display. It looks OK full-screen. I suspect it did this because I'm on a 16:9 monitor. Also couldn't get Medieval Mayhem to run. The bank switch list in the readme has Atari 32K, though I suspect that's with a SARA Chip, which Medieval Mayhem doesn't use. There's a width and height adjustment that are continuously adjustable. They're under the video menu. That way you can adjust the aspect ratio of the game just how you like it. Medieval Mayhem. So it's 32K like Fatal Run but no super-chip. Maybe there's something we can do about that. Best, John Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 i've always loved z26, looking forward to checking this out. hope the collision stuff gets fixed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+SpiceWare Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 That fixed it! I like the scanline option, makes the image look more like it does on a TV There's other homebrews that also use 32 w/out SARA. I think the auto-detect in Stella looks at the first 256 bytes of each bank and if it's filled in with a constant value ($FF or $00?) it turns on SARA support, otherwise it's turned off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silvio Mogno Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 I played 2600 on z26 mainly in the past, now I play on my real 2600. But IMO z26 is superior to Stella in many ways and it feels lighter to my pc. The only thing I always missed in it is a debugger, do you think to add it in the future John? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 6, 2011 Share Posted June 6, 2011 I played 2600 on z26 mainly in the past, now I play on my real 2600. But IMO z26 is superior to Stella in many ways and it feels lighter to my pc. The only thing I always missed in it is a debugger, do you think to add it in the future John? There is no doubt it is a lighter application. I used it on my 486 back in the day. What other ways do you think z26 is better than Stella? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+stephena Posted June 7, 2011 Share Posted June 7, 2011 I played 2600 on z26 mainly in the past, now I play on my real 2600. But IMO z26 is superior to Stella in many ways and it feels lighter to my pc. The only thing I always missed in it is a debugger, do you think to add it in the future John? The debugger in Stella is quite mature at this point, having had several years of work done to it. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to specifically state how Stella is inferior in many ways (so things can be improved) rather than just dismissing it out of hand. I assure you that adding a comprehensive debugger is not a small feat, so it would probably be less work overall to address shortcomings in Stella itself. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted June 8, 2011 Share Posted June 8, 2011 Combat is broke, is this a joke?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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