Bob's Blog

With respect to 'Stella lagging when playing music', this is often related to the video rendering mode being used. If you're using software mode, try the OpenGL renderer. Or, if that's not possible, try turning on (or off) dirty rects in the Video settings.

With respect to 'Stella lagging when playing music', this is often related to the video rendering mode being used. If you're using software mode, try the OpenGL renderer. Or, if that's not possible, try turning on (or off) dirty rects in the Video settings.

If that doesn't work, go into the debugger and NOP-out the STA VBLANK that enables the raster, and the music will again run full speed. I've done this a number of times on those crazy music demo kernels.

Or I can just use z26.

 

Seriously - I love Stella; I use it all the time; the debugger is great for developing - but without an onscreen speed indicator I have a hard time trusting it for music, where full-speed execution is very critical. Especially since I have had issues with it lagging before.

 

Of course, now that I have a Krok Cart, it isn't as big of a deal.

Or I can just use z26.

 

Seriously - I love Stella; I use it all the time; the debugger is great for developing - but without an onscreen speed indicator I have a hard time trusting it for music, where full-speed execution is very critical. Especially since I have had issues with it lagging before.

True, but I'd appreciate some testing so I can fix this issue. FYI, I've *never* seen this happen in Windows or Linux on my systems, so I can't fix what I can't personally see. And it will probably never be fixed if I can't track down what the problem is ... As I've noted before, Stella runs at full speed on a 200MHz GP2X device, so I know the code *can be* fast. But I'd really like to get this annoying slowdown in Windows fixed for good.

 

As for the onscreen speed indicator, is this in z26? I could probably add one to Stella easily enough.

Run z26 with the -n flag to show the number of scanlines as well as fps.

For what it's worth, the slowdown happens on the OS X port of Stella as well. Bob's R.O.D theme really stammers quite a lot.

For what it's worth, the slowdown happens on the OS X port of Stella as well. Bob's R.O.D theme really stammers quite a lot.

Yes, I can see that now. Over the next few weeks, I'll be experimenting with some new rendering modes, and perhaps this will fix the issues. I'll be doing more testing on slower systems, such as on OSX with a 500Mhz G3. Also, my new ultraportable laptop has a 1.1GHz Core Solo processor and onboard GMA950 video, so making Stella work better on underpowered hardware will be a new goal for me