2600 Emulator that can toggle sprite visibility?

[EtanSivad]

Does anyone know of an emulator that lets you disable/enable the visibility of the 5 sprite objects (Sprite 1/2, Missile 1/2, Ball object) on the fly?

 

I know that in games like Pitfall, the game uses the Pong ball sprite adjusted every line to draw the swinging vines. I'd be curious to see what other odd little hacks like that are in games.

 

Thanks,

[LidLikesIntellivision]

Stella can do this!

 

Try alt+z, alt+x, alt+c, alt+v and alt+b for player 0/1, missile 0/1 and ball.

[+stephena]

Stella can do this!

 

Try alt+z, alt+x, alt+c, alt+v and alt+b for player 0/1, missile 0/1 and ball.

 

Also Alt+n for playfield, and Alt+m for HMove blank area. Alt+Comma for use 'fixed debug colours', which clearly shows how the screen is being constructed (different graphical elements are drawn in fixed colours).

 

Also, add Shift to the player 0/1, missile 0/1, ball, playfield keys to toggle collisions of these elements (the elements are still shown, but collisions are turned on/off).

 

See here for more information.

[LidLikesIntellivision]

Also Alt+n for playfield, and Alt+m for HMove blank area. Alt+Comma for use 'fixed debug colours', which clearly shows how the screen is being constructed (different graphical elements are drawn in fixed colours).

 

Also, add Shift to the player 0/1, missile 0/1, ball, playfield keys to toggle collisions of these elements (the elements are still shown, but collisions are turned on/off).

 

See here for more information.

Great information in this site!

I remember the "A Brief History of the Atari 2600" in a very old version of Stella called StellaX, the first version I used (Was it a fork?).

And, if I remember correct, Stella came with "This Planet Sucks!" and an unfinished version of "Oystron".

Now I wonder if stella should come with some free software games... I'm guessing those two games were free software.

[LidLikesIntellivision]

This document is still with Stella!

In the end of manual page, i.e., man stella for linux version you see this doc available /usr/share/doc/stella/index.html .

[+stephena]

Great information in this site!

I remember the "A Brief History of the Atari 2600" in a very old version of Stella called StellaX, the first version I used (Was it a fork?).

And, if I remember correct, Stella came with "This Planet Sucks!" and an unfinished version of "Oystron".

Now I wonder if stella should come with some free software games... I'm guessing those two games were free software.

 

StellaX was for Windows only, and was based on Stella 1.0/1.1 or so. Back then, all ports were maintained separately (Linux used X11, OSX wasn't supported at all for some time, etc). That's actually how I became involved with the project back in 2001 or so. There were all these ports, some maintained, some out of date and some completely abandoned. My main goal was to port Stella to SDL, and have all major OS's covered with the same codebase. This was started in Stella 1.2, and was finalized in 2.0. From that point on, all three major systems (Linux, OSX, Windows) were fully supported and released at the same time. As well, porting to SDL allows Stella to be used on many other systems (Android, IRIX, etc).

 

As for the free ROMs, they are still allowed to be released with Stella. I guess I just didn't see the need anymore since ROMs are so widely available at this point.

[LidLikesIntellivision]

StellaX was for Windows only, and was based on Stella 1.0/1.1 or so. Back then, all ports were maintained separately (Linux used X11, OSX wasn't supported at all for some time, etc). That's actually how I became involved with the project back in 2001 or so. There were all these ports, some maintained, some out of date and some completely abandoned. My main goal was to port Stella to SDL, and have all major OS's covered with the same codebase. This was started in Stella 1.2, and was finalized in 2.0. From that point on, all three major systems (Linux, OSX, Windows) were fully supported and released at the same time. As well, porting to SDL allows Stella to be used on many other systems (Android, IRIX, etc).

 

As for the free ROMs, they are still allowed to be released with Stella. I guess I just didn't see the need anymore since ROMs are so widely available at this point.

 

Thanks for the information and a special thanks for all the huge work you've done to build a common code for all these OSs.

And, in the end, I think you're right about the free roms...

But maybe just put one rom as some kind of pack-in game. Only my 0.02 cents...

[EtanSivad]

Stella can do this!

 

Try alt+z, alt+x, alt+c, alt+v and alt+b for player 0/1, missile 0/1 and ball.

 

Ahh, thank thank you very much.

 

I finished the book "racing the beam" a while back and wanted to illustrate the chapter on pitfall by rending a short CG sequence of it. This helps out immensely.

 

Of interesting note, the ball sprite in Pit fall goes all the way to the top of the screen, but isn't visible normally as it's the same color as the trees: