Tjoppen

This explains some things. But it also solidifies my point about not buying these things. Set up a RetroPie or something instead.

Yep, just checked. Versions 4-6 of the game supports paddles in the right port that can be switched to by pressing fire on the paddle. Joystick in the left port, also switched to by pressing fire on the joystick.

Come to think of it, I think we made The Byte Before Christmas so that you can have both joystick and paddles connected. I don't quite recall though, and I don't want to open my mint condition copy to test it

Oh it's just a detection failure? Is it not possible to set what controller "mode" to use on a per-ROM basis? Stella sure allows that, but maybe the Gamestation integration doesn't. I suppose a separate directory for paddle games is a reasonable fix. Won't help with games that use a combination of paddles and joystick though, which I've had some ideas around. This just leaves the Flashback 2 issue, but I'm going to chalk that one up to an incorrect TIA implementation. Still, would be interesting to see how other titles that display text using similar techniques fare. The demo 2600 BC by Genesis Project might be a good test ROM since the greetings text uses a very similar text display routine to mine.

This discussion about modern hardware and wireless controllers also makes me wonder if it'd be worthwhile to make a wireless paddle controller. It should be possible with either an RF or IR link, and a digital potentiometer on the receiver side connected to the controller port.

I'm not sure what emulator the Gamestation runs, so it's somewhat hard to figure out what might be wrong. If you could figure out what it uses that would be great. Seems the hardware landscape gets worse for homebrew devs as we now have to take into account all this oddball hardware. I mostly used Stella and a mouse when developing, and the light four-switch "Darth Vader" plus the 2600jr for real hardware testing. Not sure what the Flashback 2 uses for hardware, maybe some form of reimplemented TIA + 6507? If it's FPGA based then maybe there's a firmware upgrade. Other games using 12-digit displays, especially with early HMOVE, might also be good test beds. Demos too. Seems to me the best way to play 2600 games is still the original hardware + flash, or a regular computer running Stella with suitable USB controllers. Atari actually seems to make a decent wireless joystick+paddle combination controller that works with Stella. There are some other paddle controllers on the market as well - no need to give Atari any money.

Oh and also, how do demoscene productions run on that machine? Do you have a 2600+? It just uses Stella, so I imagine it should work. I wonder what the Atari Gamestation Pro uses.. Based on some videos, MAME maybe? I don't see the purpose of these machines when you could just use a Raspberry Pi or an old laptop, or a real machine + Harmony

Hi, coincidentally this old game of mine came up in conversation recently so hopefully I'm not too late in replying. What is the actual hardware on this machine? I bet there could be many reasons why it isn't working. Also the forums switching to requiring email rather than username for login almost made this account impossible to log into.

Are you sure? I've tried renaming the file "stella.pro" and "Stella.pro" with no change. If I copy it into ~/.stella it obviously work, but that's kind of an unreasonable thing to expect users to do.

Hi I'm working on a project needs Display_Phosphor = YES. Is there some way to have Stella automagically pick up on that? I tried adding a file named pal.pro next to my pal.bin file, with this contents: "Cartridge.MD5" "324f559ec4e6da7392371400e9b73111" "Cartridge.Name" "pal" "Display.Phosphor" "YES" "" That didn't work, unfortunately. Digging through the code I can't find a way to do this. I can ship .bat and .sh files for users, but I'd rather not have to. Am I missing something? If this functionality is indeed missing then perhaps I'll write a patch for it.

Nope, didn't notice that. Just frustrated with Stella and Harmony

Putting values at the end of RAM so they can be initialized by pushing values on the stack is a nifty idea. Might steal that for future sizeprods

It was part of my IRC backlog even: 11:19 < tjoppen> I feel like a new vcs.h with a good license may be in order 12:34 < SvOlli> tjoppen: you might want to check the vcs.inc from my releases. Also comes with a lot of nice infos like what bits are used, what the bits in NUSIZx do, etc. 12:36 < tjoppen> sounsd nice 12:37 < tjoppen> I just keep tabbing back and forth between stella.pdf 12:37 < SvOlli> http://xayax.net/2k_is_no_limit/2kisnolimit.7z 12:37 < SvOlli> for example, contains vcs.inc You all should drop by in #vcsdev on IRCnet btw

There's a vcs.h with a permissive license floating around somewhere, I think SvOlli knows where. macro.h on the other hand I can't say, but there's not terribly much in there

Doesn't the "random start bank" problem become kind of moot with Melody boards? Does anyone even make F4 boards these days? I guess emulator compatibility is a concern tho I also noticed a bug: all the screens in the intro are 308 scanlines only edit: Of course it's nice to see this finally (mostly) finished :]