Altirra 3.10 released

[Mclaneinc]

IMO, the Debugger is a powerful and complex tool. Dropping into it just to change a memory location or see the current value within one isn't the best use of it. And with the Cheater, you have to enter your memory locations and values and it constantly updates them in memory unless you uncheck them. Why would I want to continuously update say a screen color change?

 

As for the terminology "peek/poke", I really don't care what it's called as long as the functionality is there. I do think "peek/poke" sounds more "Atari-ish" than "Mem Change", which sounds more "Microsoft-ish" to me.

 

All I can say is I think it would be a very useful addition. We'll see.

 

 

Hi Eddy,

 

Please don't think it was a personal dislike of your idea, we are not like that in here, its just that many of us in here are experienced with Altirra be it on its usability or deeply technical, the spread of knowledge in here is wide between folks and we have seen requests for many things and by now we have a good idea of what Avery will like and his style of programming although he does surprise us with all sorts when we least expect it

 

One thing we know is that Avery likes to keep Altirra as friendly to the user as possible so multiple semi repeat function requests are something we have come to expect as not being favourable but as said, he is the only boss of Altirra here, we just chime in like yourself and he likes it or not, so it either goes on his to do list or he very politely declines.

 

Can't ask for more..

 

And yes, as I said I can see how you find the debugger use for something so simple a little overkill which is kindly why the cheat engine was very kindly added as one of my and maybe other requests a long while ago, a third option to manipulate memory was always going to be a push I thought..

 

Again, the name you liked isn't being treated with dislike and it does sound very 8 bit'ish with the Speccy and C64 being known in the UK as the peek and poke favourites but it was just that it looked a little confusing to me...

 

Nothing personal, we all love seeing new idea's for features, most of us sit there and say "hell I wish I'd thought of that", some great things have happened because of user requests but they all can't go in and when Da Boss decides we remain grateful that Altirra is as amazing as it is. As exactly the same as you, a fellow user of Altirra I'd hate to think you were put off with suggesting idea's because you hear people say they think it won't happen, its just we have seen so many be added or not and Avery is a busy busy guy so even with the best will in the world not every thing can be added that we all suggest as much as we would love to see them

 

Paul..

Edited December 13, 2018 by Mclaneinc

[EddyFree]

Oh well. I finally had to ask, been chewing on it for several months now. Thanks for the consideration though and keep up the good work, it's a fine program.

[Mr Robot]

A couple of enhancements that I'd love to see...

 

The option to have System->Profiles->Temporary Profile ticked by default? The number of times I've tried to run something, it doesn't work, and I've fiddled to get it going, and then remembered that I'd not checked Temporary Profile before I started fiddling, and now my default profile is a mess, are too numerous to count.

 

The option to check the filename of a loaded image for user defined bits of text and to tweak the settings according to user defined rules. I know there is quite a lot of work in something like this if you allow full profile reconfiguration from it, but I'm thinking of the common things that need to get tweaked when running stuff. I have tags in my file naming scheme for PAL/NTSC, memory requirements, Firmware version, BASIC, VBXE, Stereo, and controller requirements. Being able to tell Altirra that when it sees [VBXE] in a file name it should enable the VBXE emulation would be great. In concert with the Temporary Profile being enabled by default would really simplify a gaming session.

[+JAC!]

Hi Avery,

 

3.20-test28 (and prio versions) create a dump, when I set Full Screen = 1 in the INI file and start in portable mode.

[user\Software\virtualdub.org\Altirra\Profiles\00000000]
"Display: Full screen" = 1

 

...

 

if NOT X%1==XSTART goto :eof
start site\%RELEASE%\Altirra\Altirra.exe /portable /disk:%ATR%
goto :eof

 

I have attached the context. I am running Windows 10, 1709.

Update to 1803 keeps on failing for unknown reasons ... sigh...

 

Best Regards, Peter

Altirra.zip

[Faicuai]

Hi Avery,

 

3.20-test28 (and prio versions) create a dump, when I set Full Screen = 1 in the INI file and start in portable mode.

[user\Software\virtualdub.org\Altirra\Profiles\00000000]

"Display: Full screen" = 1

 

...

 

if NOT X%1==XSTART goto :eof

start site\%RELEASE%\Altirra\Altirra.exe /portable /disk:%ATR%

goto :eof

 

I have attached the context. I am running Windows 10, 1709.

Update to 1803 keeps on failing for unknown reasons ... sigh...

 

Best Regards, Peter

Do you get failure at update-component level, or do you get a separate screen / window with some strange error code that blocks the ENTIRE cumularive update? I ask because I experienced the second on two separate occassions with my HP-Z840, and found the solution in the least expected place I could imagine.... and the issue was NOT Windows, itself... :-/

Edited December 16, 2018 by Faicuai

[phaeron]

Can't reproduce, so trying blind fix:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test9.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test9-src.zip

 

The crash is specific to having D3D11 enabled.

[+JAC!]

Can't reproduce, so trying blind fix:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test9.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test9-src.zip

 

The crash is specific to having D3D11 enabled.

Thanks! Works here now . And yes, because of Windows 10, I had enabled the D3D11 as mentioned on the Altirra page. Previous it got stuck with a grey blank fullscreen.

[Atari Nut]

I'm having difficulty running the Antic Software .atr of "Sir Galahad And The Holy Grail". I'm getting "Boot Error". I tried with altirra and atari basic both enabled and disabled. Anyone know how to make it work?

[flashjazzcat]

ATR downloaded here boots OK for me.

[Atari Nut]

ATR downloaded here boots OK for me.

 

I get the same thing with that one. So it must be a setting in Altirra. Disc 2 runs but not Disc 1.

[phaeron]

Looks like a bad dump. Disk 1 needs to be ATX.

 

The disk boot is failing because of a copy protection routine that is checking sector 577 and expecting phantom sectors to be present. The amusing part is that it is checking for the sector reading faster than 133ms, which means that the check is trivially defeated by either a track buffering drive or the emulator's SIO patch. If the emulator is run without SIO patch and with accurate sector timing on, the read takes too long (288ms), the check times out eventually, and it returns C=1 to the OS which causes the Boot Error.

[Atari Nut]

Interesting, thanks for the explanation. Would the best setting for this game be "D:patch (Disk SIO)" enabled?

[Mclaneinc]

If you want a more compatible boot then don't enable the patch, if there's any protection on the disk that say checks the load speed or disk speed then this will trigger it still.

 

If you want a truly realistic load then go to system then configure system and lastly devices and add a disk drive, either 1050 or 810 as long as you have the firmware roms and select D1:

 

Normally the default inbuilt emulation for generic, 810 or 1050 (not happy) will pass the tests and be compatible..Those settings are in Files/ disk drives..

[+DjayBee]

Looks like a bad dump. Disk 1 needs to be ATX.

 

The disk boot is failing because of a copy protection routine that is checking sector 577 and expecting phantom sectors to be present. The amusing part is that it is checking for the sector reading faster than 133ms, which means that the check is trivially defeated by either a track buffering drive or the emulator's SIO patch. If the emulator is run without SIO patch and with accurate sector timing on, the read takes too long (288ms), the check times out eventually, and it returns C=1 to the OS which causes the Boot Error.

This is ANTIC's standard protection.

[Mclaneinc]

Attn: Atari Nut...

 

Thanks to DJBee's above quote from Phaeron, it reminded me that accurate sector timing is another option to tlick for a more accurate boot although the scenario quoted does indeed say otherwise but that's poor protection for you by the company and not the Atari or Emulator at fault..

Edited December 25, 2018 by Mclaneinc

[Atari Nut]

Thanks for the suggestion. I configured Altirra to use a 1050 with ROM version L but it still doesn't work.

 

It does work if I either enable the patch "D:patch (Disk SIO)" OR untick "Accurate Sector Timing". Which one would be the better to use thinking about what may not work?

Edited December 25, 2018 by Atari Nut

[Atari Nut]

This is ANTIC's standard protection.

 

Did you ever do a crack for this title DjayBee?

[+DjayBee]

 

Did you ever do a crack for this title DjayBee?

 

 

Not until now.

Galahad and the Holy Grail (1985)(Antic Software)(US).zip

[Atari Nut]

Another one for the DjayBee Cracks folder! Thanks a bunch again!

[Mclaneinc]

Atari Nut, its a weird title with others like it, the tips I sent are right for normal stuff

 

DJBee sorted this out tho

 

An extra present from him

 

Have fun..

[Atari Nut]

Atari Nut, its a weird title with others like it, the tips I sent are right for normal stuff

 

DJBee sorted this out tho

 

An extra present from him

 

Have fun..

 

Yes, thank you for the tips Mclaneinc. Without the cracked version I probably would have gone with unticking "Accurate Sector Timing".

[Mr Robot]

A couple of enhancements that I'd love to see...

 

The option to have System->Profiles->Temporary Profile ticked by default? The number of times I've tried to run something, it doesn't work, and I've fiddled to get it going, and then remembered that I'd not checked Temporary Profile before I started fiddling, and now my default profile is a mess, are too numerous to count.

 

The option to check the filename of a loaded image for user defined bits of text and to tweak the settings according to user defined rules. I know there is quite a lot of work in something like this if you allow full profile reconfiguration from it, but I'm thinking of the common things that need to get tweaked when running stuff. I have tags in my file naming scheme for PAL/NTSC, memory requirements, Firmware version, BASIC, VBXE, Stereo, and controller requirements. Being able to tell Altirra that when it sees [VBXE] in a file name it should enable the VBXE emulation would be great. In concert with the Temporary Profile being enabled by default would really simplify a gaming session.

I guess thats a no then?

[phaeron]

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test10.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.20-test10-src.zip

 

Initial support for hardware accelerated screen effects:

 

 

This is an early version, so there are still some bugs, but these are the changes:

• Gamma/color correction can now be accelerated on the GPU. For plain displays, this was done for free through the palette, but any effect that forced 32-bit rendering incurred extra cost for this. In particular, color correction about doubled the CPU cost of NTSC artifacting, which this brings back down. The main intention is to make it reasonably cheap to switch color correction on in the default NTSC color profile for more accurate default colors.
• Scanlines are also accelerated on the GPU and rendered with better quality: full resolution instead of double vertical interpolated and computed in linear space instead of gamma space. This reduces moiré effects. GPU scanlines can also be rendered in interlace mode, though you need at least an FHD resolution display to do so (>960 pixels vertical).
• PAL artifacting (chroma blending) can now be GPU accelerated. (NTSC and PAL high artifacting still cannot.)
• Barrel distortion and bloom/glow simulation is now supported. These are tuned through a new dialog in View > Adjust screen effects.

Caveats:

• Screen effects currently require DirectX 11 and a shader-capable graphics card (DX9-class or above). DX11 must be enabled in Options > Display and thus this won't work on Windows XP. I should be able to reimplement these for DX9 (needed for Windows 7 as well as XP) but don't want to maintain two code paths just yet.
• GPU acceleration of existing effects requires checking an enable in Configure System > Emulator > Display. Barrel distortion and bloom don't, those require GPU acceleration to work. Some features like video recording will disable accelerated effects.
• Screen position dependent features like text selection, light gun, etc. are not currently barrel distortion aware and will ignore it.
• There are some known issues with artifacts along borders.
• Most of the effects should be pretty cheap on any graphics card that can run them, but the bloom in particular may cause slowdowns if you have a very weak graphics card. The slowest DX11-capable GPU I have is an Intel Graphics 520 (Gen9/Skylake), which gets up to around 40% when rendering all effects at 2560x1440.

I would like to get NTSC high artifacting accelerated so the full NTSC display pipeline can run on the GPU, but the algorithm is a pain to convert. It'd either be a very heavy pixel shader or a very ugly compute shader and it may require a higher GPU spec than the rest of the effects.

 

Also, a couple of miscellaneous fixes:

• Fixed a case where auto NTSC/PAL high artifacting wasn't the same as selecting the specific mode: the sharp bilinear filter wasn't adjusted the same way.
• Fixed ROR instructions assembling as LSR in the debugger's miniassembler.

 

I guess thats a no then?

 

Don't see any problems with the suggestions, but that's all I have for now.

[Mclaneinc]

Wow....Do you ever take a break Avery

 

Thank you as always..

 

Paul..

[Mclaneinc]

Avery, with the addition of the effects in a big way would it be a pain to move the effect load tab out of Tools / Options and maybe have it in View?

 

Just seems so out of place now these things are more in action..

 

Bad idea?