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It's time for a new release of Stella. Now available is version 6.7, with some nice new features. Please test to make sure everything is working, as this was a long release cycle (real life issues getting in the way), and we didn't get a lot of feedback. Thanks again to the other members of the Stella team, @Thomas Jentzsch and @DirtyHairy for their work on this. Changelog as follows: * IMPORTANT NOTES: - Because of fixes to JSON handling, all remappings will be reset to defaults; if you had custom mappings, they will need to be re-entered again. - Because of internal changes, all state files are now invalid. * Completely reworked the file launcher: - Redesigned user interface - Added tracking of user favorites, recently played and most popular games - Added virtual directories for selecting tracked games - Added quick path navigation - Added navigation history - Added icons for files and directories - Added option to show/hide file extensions - Extended context menu and shortcuts - Fixed sluggish behaviour when reading large and/or invalid files * Added hotkey display to tooltips. * Added option to automatically pause emulation when focus is lost. * Added option to toggle autofire mode. * Improved controller mappings for Paddles. * Improved controller mappings for Driving controllers. * Improved Mindlink support. * Added another oddball TIA glitch option for score mode color. * Enhanced TV jitter emulation. * Enhanced support for CDFJ+ bankswitching type. * Added 0FA0 bankswitching for Fotomania ROMs. * Added ARM chip auto detection. * Extended support for older BUS (experimental) ROMs that worked with an older, obsolete version of the BUS scheme; special thanks to SpiceWare for the code. * Fixed Stella crash due to invalid ZIP files. * Fixed TV mode auto detection in some ARM ROMs. * Fixed color loss when switching TV mode from/to PAL. * Fixed score mode glitch emulation corner case. * Fixed state messages staying on screen forever. * Added M1 support for the macOS build. * Debugger improvements: - added PlusROM information - fixed patching code in ZP-RAM - improved bank origin detection * Updated internal ROM properties database to ROM-Hunter version 17 (thanks go to RomHunter for his tireless research in this area). Related to this, updated the snapshot collection. As usual, Stella can be downloaded at https://stella-emu.github.io/downloads.html, and donations can be made at https://stella-emu.github.io/donations.html. Feedback and bug reports can be made in this thread, or preferably by creating a Github issue at https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/issues. Our Future Now, on to a more serious issue. The Stella team is evaluating our involvement with the project. As a result, we intend to take an extended break, probably for the rest of this year, but possibly longer. Stella has come a long, long way over the past 20+ years, with many, many hours invested (especially by myself, but also recently by Christian and Thomas). At this point, we are basically demotivated by the lack of feedback of the past several releases. It seems like interest is moving to other projects, so we will take a break. We may provide less support during the break. We want to thank people who were supporting us (e.g. Stellathon, helping with bugs or coding, donations, etc). Finally, note that the source code is available, in case someone else wants to step in and start contributing. Thanks for the support. Hopefully we will be back soon. The Stella Team Stephen Anthony @stephena Christian Speckner @DirtyHairy Thomas Jentzsch @Thomas Jentzsch

So, it's that time of year again. And for a special gift, there is a new release of Stella! This one has been almost 6 months in the making, and is obviously a jump to a new major version. There are huge changes all across the board, but the major new feature is cycle-exact TIA audio emulation. For the first time, cycle-exact audio emulation allows several ROMs to work correctly that have never worked before. E.T. and Ms. PacMan are the most obvious; they now sound exactly like they do on a real console. Most other emulators (and Stella too, previous to 6.0) use an idealized emulation of sound, which in some cases results in better sounding, but incorrect, output. The new code is based on FPGA work by Chris Brenner (crispy), and as a result AFAICT, this is the first time that E.T. has sounded correct in an emulator. And for the first time in a long time, Stella gets a new coat of paint! The themes have been modernized a little, which new schemes, titlebars on windows, etc. Definitely makes the app look a little more modern. We don't want to look too modern, though. After all, we are emulating a 40+ year old system There are many other sound changes too, and bugfixes/improvements/new features all over the place. Complete changelog as follows: Note: because of major TIA sound changes, the state file format has changed, and old state files will not work with this release. New cycle exact audio core based on work by Chris Brenner (crispy); greatly improved audio emulation accuracy (i.e. E.T., Ms. Pacman). Full rewrite of the audio subsystem; resample TIA output to target sample rate directly in Stella. Added option to force stereo sound for all ROMs, or to use the setting on a per-ROM basis. Threading: decouple emulation from frame rendering. Main loop rewritten; emulating speed and timing is now much more faithful (i.e. speed in Pick'n'Pile). Added preliminary support for 'CTY' bankswitching scheme and recently released 'Chetiry' ROMs. Special thanks to SpiceWare for adding music support to this scheme. UI modernization (new widget look, dialog titles added, dialogs refactored). The bankswitch scheme can now be forced by naming the ROM with a specific extension (ie: .f8s for F8SC, .fe for FE, etc). The supported extensions are the same as the ones from HarmonyCart and UnoCart. Audio settings replaced with new 'audio.xxx' settings. FPS setting replaced with speed setting for adjusting emulation speed. Extra functionality for Time Machine dialog (start/stop recording; minor fixes). When logging messages to the System Logger, condense similar messages that arrive in batches into fewer messages (including timestamps). Fixes for collision corner cases (during HBlank). Fixed excessive CPU usage while in UI modes (ROM launcher, debugger, etc). The 'launcherexts' option has been replaced by a true/false option named 'launcherroms', which specifies to show only ROMs or all files in the ROM launcher. Changes in 'Game Properties' dialog - 'Default' button now affects only current tab like in all other dialogs. - 'Display' and 'Console' tab changes are now immediate. - Fixed bug when selecting 'Auto-detect' format for 50Hz ROMs Fixed bug in autodetecting Genesis controllers. Fixed bug with 'thumb.trapfatal' commandline argument; sometimes Stella would lock up when encountering a fatal error instead of entering the debugger and displaying a message. Fixed bug in reading from settings file with entries that were empty; the parsing was failing. This affected the 'cpurandom' argument; when all options in it were turned off, they were all turned on again during the next program run. Fixed bug with 'hold' events; they are now released a short time after starting a ROM. When starting Stella for the first time, the first ROM selected will determine which path to use by default for subsequent runs. Fixed emulator crash when starting SaveKey ROMs from commandline with SaveKey messages enabled. Fixed missing TV format update in frame stats dialog when switching display type. Fixed missing debug color update when switching display type. 'Fill to scanline' now works for scanlines above current scanline too. The debugger 'uhex' command is now honoured in CDF and BUS schemes. When switching screenmodes, the sound is now paused and later resumed. This fixes popping and cracking sounds apparent on some systems, notably macOS when toggling windowed/fullscreen mode. State file format has been optimized to be smaller, and faster loading and saving. This affects both the files saved to your computer as well as Time Machine functionality. The ROM name saved in a PNG tEXt chunk now honours the 'snapname' setting. Improved snapshots when phosphor is enabled. Updated PAL palette. Added 'Cartridge.StartBank' ROM property, to force a ROM to use a specific bank for its reset vector. Added Developer setting, which breaks on reads from write ports. It now detects such conditions in many more cases. This new way of detecting RWP errors obsoletes the old '_rwport' debugger command, which has now been removed. Added recently released 'Arkyology' prototype ROM to the database. Added 'Amoeba Jump' and 'Flappy' ROMs (from the Retron77) to the database. Fixed 'Street Racer' and 'Video Olympics' ROMs to use paddles in both ports. If using SDL 2.0.5 or above, the calculated desktop size now takes the taskbar/dock into account (so windows should no longer overlap those areas). For UNIX systems: in the ROM launcher, when using symlinks use the symlink pathname instead of the underlying filesystem pathname. The UNIX builds now use the system-installed PNG and ZLIB libraries by default. The Macintosh builds are now named 'macOS' throughout the codebase to reflect the new naming from Apple. For better compatibility, the Windows 32-bit version does not require SSE2 anymore. Updated included PNG library to latest stable version. As always, Stella can be downloaded from the usual place. And as a shameless plug, please consider a donation if you like; I plan to build a new development workstation in 2019 Special thanks to Christian Speckner and Thomas Jentzsch for work on this release; their work formed a large part of what became version 6.0. Bug reports can be posted here, or by creating an issue on the Github page. Merry Christmas, and enjoy this latest release of Stella

So, it's time for the "Christmas" release of Stella. Unfortunately, real life got in the way (as it sometimes does) and we missed the scheduled date. As well, we weren't able to add all the things we were planning. But enough apologizing, let's look at what was included. Note that there were a lot of under-the-hood changes here, so even if the changelog looks relatively short, a lot of work/bugfixing was done. One of the biggest new backend changes is moving the settings to an SQLite database. Stella is getting much more complex, and having different settings (in different formats) all over the place was getting out of hand. Another cool new feature is High Scores saving, even for ROMs that don't normally support it. Finally, we extended the cut/copy/paste functionality in the UI a little further (more work to come). So here's the changelog: As usual, Stella can be downloaded at https://stella-emu.github.io/downloads.html, and donations are welcome at https://stella-emu.github.io/donations.html. Note that we're still working out some last minute issues with the R77 port, so that one will come later this week. Bugs can be reported here, or ideally by creating an issue at https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/issues. Enjoy! EDIT: There are now builds available for Ubuntu 18.04 (previous LTS) and also Raspberry Pi OS 3/4, generously contributed by @SvOlli. The download links have been updated accordingly.

So, time for another very quick release of Stella. It's been less than a month, but we decided to bump from version 6.3 to 6.4, since there were a few major bugs in the last release, and there are quite a few new features in this one. Anyway, here's the changelog: The R77 port will be ready soon, and will contain some nice new features as well. We will update the thread when that happens. As usual, Stella can be downloaded at https://stella-emu.github.io/downloads.html, and donations are appreciated at https://stella-emu.github.io/donations.html. Bug reports can be done here, or preferably by creating a Github issue at https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/issues.

So, it's time for another release of Stella. This one has a few bugfixes reported in the 6.2 thread, as well as some feature requests too. And a few new features here and there. Changelog as follows: As usual, Stella can be downloaded from https://stella-emu.github.io/downloads.html, and donations are welcome at https://stella-emu.github.io/donations.html. Bugs can be reported here, but ideally on Github at https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/issues. Have fun.

Hello SpartaDOS X 4.45 is now officially available on http://sdx.atari8.info/index.php (or http://spartados.com and http://spartadosx.com - these addresses, being for now aliases only, are recommended as being easier to remember). It is this year's third edition, so the changes are not so many as in the transition from 4.42 to 4.43. We recommend upgrade anyways. A brief list of changes is available here: http://sdx.atari8.in...45/whatsnew.txt As usual, we'd like to express thanks and appreciations to the work GoodByteXL is doing, who is restlessly working on the biggest part of the documentation (i.e. the User's Manual and online MAN help). We are also happy to announce that a new coder has joined us in improving the SpartaDOS X, namely Mono/Tristesse, who is (among other things) responsible for the most fancy functionality of this SDX' edition: namely the filename completion (implemented in DOSKEY.SYS, 128k RAM or more is required to run this). Some programs have been moved to the Toolkit disk. Please review the whatsnew.txt file carefully to know which they are, and, when they are necessary for you. please use the SDX Imager program to customize your cartridge image before flashing it into ROM. Have fun KMK/DLT

So, it's time for another release of Stella. This one was a long time coming, and was actually supposed to be released for Xmas. But real life got in the way, and we're pushed until now. Anyway, this one has several huge features, including finally implementing a request that's been on the TODO list for about 10 years; rewind outside the debugger! We call it 'Time Machine', and it basically allows one to unwind/rewind the emulation state both inside and outside the debugger. One obvious use-case for this is when you're trying to track down a bug during development. You can now play the ROM, experience the bug, go into the debugger and rewind (and unwind!) until you find the issue. So it will be much easier to track down and fix a bug!! Or course, another use-case would be playing a game and getting killed, then rewinding and trying again. But we all know you wouldn't cheat like that, right? There are also quite a few debugger improvements, TIA fixes, and really changes all over the map. I want to single out Thomas J. and Christian Speckner for this release. Quite a lot of crap happened in my life over the past few months, and I didn't get to work on Stella as much as I'd have liked. But these two guys kept at it, and are in fact responsible for most of the stuff in the changelog. Thanks for the help! Anyway, without further ado, here's the (huge) changelog: As usual, bugs can be reported here, but adding them as an issue on the github page is preferred. Donations are also welcome. Enjoy ...

It's long past time for a new release of Stella. This release contains a few features that have been done for quite some time, but I didn't release (for reasons explained below). Anyway, changes as follows: As usual, Stella can be downloaded from http://stella.sf.net/downloads.php, and donations can be made at http://stella.sf.net/donations.php. Bug reports can be made here or by PM. Anyhow, with that out of the way, some other news. As some of you may have known and/or read in other posts, I haven't been feeling well for the past few months. Work was hectic, and there are also some real-life issues. So I haven't done a new release of Stella since March; that's the longest stretch without a new release since I started on the project in 2001. On the bright side, things are starting to improve. I'm feeling better, and in 3 weeks I will be off for a 3 week Christmas break, which is badly needed. Also, something unexpected happened over the past month or so; Christian Speckner has offered to port his 6502ts TIA core to Stella! I'm happy to say that this is now proceeding fairly quickly in a forked project on Github (https://github.com/DirtyHairy/stella). When it's all done, it will be imported into the main Stella codebase. Finally, we have hope for a more modern TIA core You may also remember that I was working on a new TIA sound core, based on work from Chris Brenner. I did eventually mostly finish that code, but integrating it into Stella with the old TIA code proved too difficult. The good news is, this code looks like a perfect fit for the new TIA core Finally, I've been planning on a large improvement to event remapping, where joystick buttons and axes are no longer tied to one specific virtual device. Currently, if you map joy button 0 to virtual left joystick, you can no longer use that button for anything else. So even if you aren't currently using the left virtual joystick, button 0 is still not available. This will change to being able to map buttons to each virtual device (so joy button 0 may be 'Fire' when in joystick mode, one of the keypad buttons while in keyboard mode, etc). Anyway, the above is (I'm hoping) what will eventually become Stella 5.0. No hints or guesses on when this will happen, but rest assured that it's well in hand. Thanks for the support emails I've received over the past few months, Steve A. Stella maintainer

Here's another release of Stella, fixing/adding a few things I missed in the last release. Changes are as follows: As usual, bug reports can be reported by PM or here in this thread. Download the latest Stella here, and donations are greatly appreciated.

So, it's time for a new release of Stella. I'm still working on the improved paddle emulation as well as a new phosphor mode that looks much nicer than the current implementation. Those changes are taking a little longer than expected, so I decide to do an interim release now. Changes are as follows: As usual, Stella can be downloaded from Stella webpage; any donations are greatly appreciated. Issues, comments, bug reports, etc can be posted in this thread or by PM.

After approximately 6 months, it's time for a new release of Stella (and on Canada Day, no less ). This one has been a long time coming, and finally completes the porting of Stella to SDL2. I think you'll find many improvements here, particularly for Windows users where Direct3D/hardware-accelerated video/vsync will be used by default. This means that most people won't have to download new drivers, and Stella will work well out-of-the-box. There are also a few other nice improvements too. Changelog is as follows: Since the SDL2 conversion was a big job involving changing a lot of code, there may be some bugs yet present (although I've went over it quite a bit and didn't notice anything). As such, bug reports are welcome. Remember, Stella can be downloaded here, and donations are welcome here.

It's time for a new release of Stella. First of all, I apologize for being away so long. I've been dealing with an illness for the past 3 months, and am only now starting to get back into the swing of things. This is a quick bugfix release based on the old 3.9 code (I'm currently working on what will become Stella 4.0). It includes new bankswitch schemes and a few bugfixes, thanks to several members here on AtariAge. Changes are as follows: As usual, Stella can be downloaded from the Stella homepage. Donations are of course welcome, as is feedback in this thread or by PM.

It's time for another release of Stella. This one, like the last few, concentrates mostly on debugger improvements. However, as always, there are a few extras thrown in from different areas. Changelog is as follows: Barring any major issues, the next release will concentrate on controller improvements (particularly mouse/paddle stuff, and a new device like 2600-daptor). Then I'll be concentrated on porting Stella to SDL2, which was just released a few weeks ago. As usual, you can download Stella here, and please consider a donation if you find the project useful. Bug reports, etc can be reported here or by PM.

OK, this is a quick bugfix release for version 3.9.1. Changelog is as follows: As usual, Stella can be download here, and please consider a donation here. Now, back to work on the stuff mentioned in the 3.9.1 release thread.

OK, it's time again for a new release. First the good news, the changelog: And now for the bad news. I didn't get to the TIA updates again. And this leads to even worse news: if I don't get some of these issues fixed soon and recover from burnout, the 3.9 release will be my last release. For those interested, I've documented my current situation here, and expand on some help I need here. While I greatly appreciate all the words of support and the occasional donations I receive, right now I'm most in need of help from fellow developers for working on the TIA code. If you're a C/C++ developer and are familiar with how the TIA works, please consider giving me a hand; the continuation of the Stella project could depend on it. Anyway, as usual, bug reports, comments, donations, etc can be directly to this thread or by PM. And sorry for the potentially bad news, and I hope to see you post 3.9. EDIT: Oops, forgot to upload the files and post the link. The link is, as usual, http://stella.sf.net . And the files will be there momentarily.

It's just about game time! TooManyGames is only a few short weeks away! Are you ready? This year's TooManyGames is June 15th-17th at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. We're packing their largest hall with games! Video games, board games, arcade games, card games, and more will line the floor! Score some rare games to fill gaps in your collection, or pick up some of the awesome artwork to adorn your house with in our marketplace! Play brand new unreleased games in the Indie Game Showcase! Show off your video game chops in tournaments all throughout the weekend, including Soul Calibur 5, Street Fighter X Tekken, Halo Reach, Call of Duty, Pong, and more! Are tabletop games more your speed? We'll be running Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments over the weekend, plus we've expanded our board gaming area! We'll be demonstrating some of board gaming's most popular games throughout the weekend, including Carcassonne, Ticket to Ride, Dominion, Puerto Rico, and more! When you get tired of walking around the show, make sure to stop in and check out some of our panels. Two of gaming's biggest internet celebrities, The Angry Video Game Nerd and Darksyde Phil will be screening new videos and hosting Q&A session. If you're ready to rock then you need to check out all the concerts going on throughout the weekend! We have Temp Sound Solutions, Pixel8ter, Inverse Phase, Chipocrite, X-Hunters, Those Who Fight, Autoscroll, and more playing throughout the weekend! And if you register for our Final Boss package, you get to come to the after-party Saturday night and check out an exclusive performance by the minibosses! Of course there's more going on at the show, but that's a good start! Make sure you check out our website, www.toomanygames.com and our Facebook page www.facebook.com/tmgexpo to get all the latest info on TooManyGames! Three day passes start at $25 and single-day passes will be on sale at the door. We'll see you in June!