Schvenn

Thanx for all your hard work on Stella!

Testing round 3: Test alternate software solutions Joysticks - "up" doesn't for for any of them, except the Retron DB9 or a USB controller. I swapped ports in the interface and got the same results. Paddles - the button doesn't work well in any of the games, but controls are jittery. Adjusting the settings smoothed out the jitter tremendously. The buttons still don't work in game. They do however, work flawlessly in the GUI and joystick based games! That means this problem is software. USB - reimaged the SD card and reset all the settings and now, USB works every boot! Testing round 4: Try original software I put the original Retron SD card in the device, with their antiquated version of Stella and tried all of the above. Joysticks - Same result! UGH! Hardware? Really? Time to contact Hyperkin. Paddles - the button and controls work flawlessly in games. This confirms that the problem is software. USB - no issues whatsoever. Results: Paddle controls work properly now in Stella 6.4, but paddle buttons do not.

By "Stella joystick" I was referencing the Hyperkin Trooper, Retron joystick. It works flawlessly. I find it very hard to believe it's a hardware/pin/wiring problem since a CX-10, Thrustmaster and Genesis controller all suffer from the same problem with "up" only on the Retron and yet the Retron joystick works perfectly. That seems more likely a software issue. I will try to adjust the jitter settings to see how that works. I've never noticed that setting before; newb mistake. As for the paddle button press, I've tried holding it down for about a second, but no menu opens. I wasn't aware of that feature and will test it out. Either way, I wasn't referring to the game not starting. I'm referencing in game usage. I need to press and hold the button for probably 0.25 to 0.5 seconds in order to get it to act like a proper fire button. It's simply not sensitive enough to recognize proper rapid fire, like you would use in real world gaming. Otherwise, the Stella doesn't seem to recognize it. Is there a setting for sensitivity in the interface? I haven't found one. As for testing the USB, I did use a freshly installed image file, in order to eliminate any artifacts, with the same results. I also deleted all the settings files, not just the SHM and I got the same results, testing various combinations of files. Thus the reason that I specified the SHM, because I narrowed it down to that file, rather than the original settings file. If the original setting file exists on boot-up, the USB works, but as soon as I restart the Retron, wherein the SHM file now exists, the USB no longer works.

I've narrowed down the problems a bit more. So, "up" on any of the standard DB-9 joysticks won't work, except for the Stella joystick. That hasn't changed. The paddles are very jittery, but they work. I have noticed however, that I need to hold the fire button for half a second in order to get the new emulator to recognize it; quick taps of the fire button no longer works and yes, I tried the button on my 2600 for comparison. My paddles work flawlessly there. This issue is unique to the emulator and I tried it on several versions of paddle and ball type games. I can get the emulator to recognize my USB devices on a fresh configuration of Stella. However, as soon as I turn the device back on, none of the USB devices work, unless I delete the "stella\settings.sqlite3-shm" file, at which point, they work again. So, something is getting screwed up in the settings file. It doesn't matter what the settings are, either. I've tried erasing the settings and recreating them with different options, but I get the same result, every time in that the USB devices only work until a restart, when Stella has to read the -SHM file.

Recently, I broke my Retron Joystick. (Sad face, single tear.) So, I've been using my CX-10, which is when I noticed that "up" doesn't work on the Stella, any version of the Stella, for any of my joysticks except for the Retron model. When I say it doesn't work, I get it to recognize up maybe one out of 20 tries, but that's about it. There is enough of a "nib" left on the Retron joystick that I was able to confirm that this is the case on 6.2.1, 6.3 and now 6.4, because up still works for the broken Retron joystick, quite well. I previously reported that my paddles only work on version 6.1.1 and nothing since then. A ticket was opened for that issue and when 6.3 came out, it still didn't work. Well, the good news is that the paddles work once again on Stella 6.4, but are extremely jittery. When I try the same paddles on my 2600, they are smooth as glass, so it's not the controllers. However, now Stella 6.4 will no longer recognize my USB keyboard and mouse. It will recognize my USB game controller (PS2 clone) and it works fantastically, though. So, plenty of good and bad. It's like a game of whack-a-mole.

That was actually on purpose. I found that the older version worked much faster, smoother and was far more playable. The addition of the voice synthesizer and better laser sounds made the game extremely slow.

Let me start by saying that purists will hate this collection. I designed it for myself, but others have asked me for it, which is why I am posting it. I've gone through several thousand Atari ROMs, hacks and homebrews and carefully curated them into a "playability style" list. I started with the original ROMs and organized them by type. This meant that direct rip-offs like King Kong went into the Donkey Kong folder, and Cat Trax when into the Pac-Man folder. Sacrilege, right? I also ignored several games that were identical to the original versions, but with a different colour scheme. So yes, this means I even discarded some of the original Atari 2600 titles. (*gasp*) If however, the games had different graphics, but the same game play, I kept them. I then went through the several thousand homebrews and hacks that are available and kept only those I personally felt added something to the game. That means that I skipped all of the games that only changed the palette. However, I kept the game that fixed the vine problem in Jungle Hunt, because a fix is not the same. I know there are always other homebrews out there. I see references to them and screenshots to games I've never seen, even in the OneDrive spreadsheet on this forum (https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?resid=EBF48A1964E7EEB5!214&ithint=file%2Cxlsx&authkey=!ANBrJ6_VZzVCms0&fbclid=IwAR3WrzWCKVUC2nISHevCvn6qTcCuQE3uJvFyX7jVCm3n-Teo_ot02mZdzFo). I will of course, evaluate and add them, as I find them. I also entirely replaced the PAL versions of original games with the NTSC conversions. Adventure was a different story. Seriously, how many hacks/remakes/tweaks do we need of that game? I only kept those that I felt were significantly different enough to warrant inclusion. In this regard, I am sure there are many people who will disagree. If I was unable to get the game play properly, or it was just a really, really bad homebrew, I discarded it. This one will no doubt be a bone of contention for some, as well, but again, I'm more interested in the gaming side of things, rather than the collecting. As long as you keep that in mind, it will make sense. The end result is 870 titles. Think of it as a really big Atari 2600 "essentials" collection. Once done, I recreated all of the snapshots and added them to a single, playable collection for my Stella. I also have a separate folder of snapshots for the Stella emulator on my PC. You can find them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1r9byUZm2ZwD2UfqcU8dpv0e7CogPZQWh I hope some of you find this useful.

Hi everyone, I've been digging online and through these forums for a while and haven't quite found what I'm looking for. What I'd really like to get my hands on is a professional arcade stick/spinner combo for the 2600. I would have thought someone has made one like this already. Since the 2600 recognizes the joystick and paddles as different devices, I would still think that it would be possible to put both in a single box, but using a hardware switch to toggle between using a high quality arcade stick for the directional control, to a high end spinner, at will. The fire button I would suspect wouldn't need to change, but circuitry is not my forte, so I'm just guessing. Alternately, you could have a different trigger button for each controller. Either way, putting both directional controls in a single box, I thought would have been done by now, but I haven't seen one, yet. Then, you wouldn't need to constantly switch controllers, for each game and you'd have a universal controller for all of them. I would also think there'd be a reasonable market for this product.

Sadly, the two Bomb titles do not work.