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Foebane

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Posts posted by Foebane

  3. Posted

    I've tried to run Steem 3.2 with mostly default settings, but one demo with a full overscan effect that goes beyond the borders of the ST screen appears all collapsed and distorted, mainly because I think Steem is not set to allow graphics beyond display borders.

     

    What graphics settings should be set to allow me to do this for overscan demos and games?

     

  5. Posted · Edited by Foebane

    I always figured that Steem Engine supported the original ST, as no options came up in the menus for STE, and that Steem SSE was an updated version with STE support.

     

    I'll try Steem again sometime today, see if the problems clear up.

     

    EDIT: By the way, does every Atari user have the STE only? Are there no compatibility issues with ST software? Also, do I only need one ROM file? If so, which one is best?

  6. Posted

    I won't say anything about STEEM SSE, but volume control is handled by the LMC 1992 microchip. Steem should support it. Which videos did you compare?

     

    These are links to demos used on real hardware (as far as I know) and how they should sound, followed by what happens when I run them in Steem SSE:

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oarR61SeY8E

    On Steem SSE, the sound of the lapping waves and seagulls suddenly cuts in, and then cuts out - no volume changes.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA50pe1EjEE

    On Steem SSE, at the beginning with the footsteps and polaroids, there is a click at the start and end of every footstep.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpF_u4mYVAI

    On Steem SSE, the music has lots of additional clicking added.

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srPy8IhAtQo

    On Steem SSE, the music with the robotic voice suddenly cuts out, rather than fades out as it should.

     

    These are some examples of how sound emulation is poor in this software, with no PCM volume control and annoying clicking when PCM is used.

  7. Posted

    I tried the original Steem Engine, but it lacked support for the STE.

    I tried Steem SSE, but the audio emulation is exceedingly poor, and with annoying clicks when it comes to the PCM audio.

    SainT looked promising, but doesn't seem to support hard drives.

     

    I've had a look at Hatari, but it seems really slow on loading disk images. Also, I'm having issues with the 8.3 limitation imposed on the Windows filenames, which seems different to Steem SSE's hard disk mode.

     

    Winston is unavailable to me.

     

    I need a good all-round emulator for the STE - which is best?

     

  8. Posted

    I've been comparing YouTube demoscene videos of real hardware of an Atari STE with Steem SSE emulation, and I've noticed that the PCM samples in the videos sometimes fade in and out, but on Steam, the sample is either on or off, no volume changes.

     

    Does a real STE have volume control for the PCM audio or is it just editing by the video author? If it's the latter, why is audio on Steem SSE so poor?

     

  10. Posted

    Maybe so, but you need to remember this was the mid 90's by the time I bought the 500. My main machine at that time was an Atari Falcon030 and had recently purchased a brand new Apple Macintosh Performa 6320CD.

     

    Commodore was either dead, or damn near it and Atari was still breathing, but had stopped making computers. So using the Amiga was interesting, but I knew it was a dead platform just like my Atari's had become.

     

    My heart wasn't in it. I only bought it because the camera shop was closing and the price was right. I think it was $100. Included an RF modulator which I quickly tossed out and built a cable to hook it to my Atari SC1435 monitor.

     

    I used it for a few months maybe, bought some software from someplace called Software Hut, got bored and gave it to some guy who owned a local fitness club.

     

    Oh, I do beg your pardon, didn't catch that it was the mid-90s when you bought it. In that case, I agree that it was rather late for the A500, and by then the A1200 had superceded it anyway, and frankly, only the Falcon could compete with the AGA chipset and beat it in some areas (the STE had no chance whatsoever).

     

    I appreciate what your experience was, but in my case, it was Doom on the PC and the death of Commodore that convinced me that the time to upgrade to a new platform entirely (the PC) was nigh.

  14. Posted

    I briefly owned an Amiga 500 that I purchased from a camera store that was closing sometime in the mid 90's. The OS was really cool for its day, but the GUI was appallingly bad. So bad, that my Amiga ownership ended quickly and I was confused about all the fuss.

     

    Extremely pathetic reason to stop using THE multimedia machine of the late 1980s, bar none whatsoever. :D

  18. Posted

    the Amiga (all of them) is a hideous and horrible design

    So putting the elephant in the room, the Amiga, aside I think the ST only really needed a register to provide pixel scroll by redefining start of screen memory on the fly. If you didn't have to scroll 4 bitplanes with the 68000 whilst doing everything else the Gauntlet arcade motherboard does in hardware it would have made all the difference.

     

    The sound perhaps is a sore point for some people but I don't think the YM chip is actually that bad, go and listen to the Amstrad CPC's AY rendition of something like Uridium title tune and for me it sounds better than the C64 version.

     

    Also the 68000 is a massively capable CPU at 8mhz and the blitter of the Amiga 1000 may be 200% the speed of the 68000 it also causes a lot of contention on the system bus for access to the first 512kb of RAM unless you time your blits with pico second accuracy and with the overhead of scrolling removed it is fine for software sprites or game logic of any kind.

     

    Your opinion. Where's the proof that it was a "horrible design"?

     

    That's YOUR opinion. In MY opinion the AY chip IS actually that bad, and my ears bleed if I listen to it too much. I can only tolerate it with sample playback, and even then it's bad.

     

    Where does this BLASPHEMY come from, Oky2000?

  22. Posted

    I watched over a period of time one guy test almost every demo on the Amiga emulator WinUAE and the guy was at times getting nigh on rude to the emulator author so I said so to the tester only for the emu author to say "its ok, the emulation quality has never been this good after he's found all these bugs".

     

    You sure that wasn't me? I've asked Toni why some demos won't run on WinUAE, and he's either given me various tips or I've submitted logs to him to help him track down problems. In either case we got those demos to run eventually.

  23. Posted

    I have an idea of what's causing this and can address it in the emulator, but in the meantime, try using PAL instead of NTSC. If I'm right, the problem manifests when the part of the VBI that does command I/O gets pushed late, which is more likely to occur in NTSC. The demo is fairly well behaved in NTSC but does have a couple of portions that glitch occasionally due to apparent VBI overruns. You'll also want to turn off D: burst I/O, but presumably that's already off as you wouldn't have even been able to boot with it on.

     

    I use PAL for everything I emulate, as I've always been a UK resident, and it seems PAL is dominant in the Demoscene.

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