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Stella 6.0 released


stephena

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15 hours ago, iesposta said:

Changing Phosphor mode to On corrects the bullets. 

(I would usually set it to Off  in previous versions as it shows what the program is doing with its limited objects.)

On older Stella versions the phosphor mode just merged frames in pair, which effectively completely eliminated any 30Hz flicker, but also caused fast moving objects to look bad.


Since Stella 5.0, though, the phosphor mode was rewritten to more accurately represent the phosphor decaying of a crt screen and I keep it enabled for all games now. Contrary to the old effect, the new one doesn't suppress the flicker (so you still see what the program is doing), it just looks more like on a real CRT. In addition, bright objects moving on a dark background leave a faint trail, which is something I always liked when playing on old Tv sets.


Note that I use the standard PC version, and have no experience with the libretro port. Things might be different there.

 

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Hi there again.. Here is a screeny of what the libretro version that someone compiled for me looks like with the TV effects turned off.

 

Wizard_Of_Wor_Arcade_20181115-180901-161852.thumb.png.3d424d2960b6714ebc636db3f5ae36f2.png

 

Turning a TV effect on corrects the image.  Unfortunately though the resources used by TV effect's slows down the frame rate on DPC based games.  My question for now is would this be considered a libretro issue?  Or a Stella Core issue?  Reading previous posts it sounds like the former.  In which case I would post a bug report over with the libretro guys?

Thanks.  :)

 

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What type of system are you using this on that causes a slowdown?  Also, how are you toggling the TV effects with the libretro port?  I wasn't aware that their software allowed access to change these things.

 

As you can probably tell, I'm not that familiar with how libretro works.  And in getting Stella to run on that platform, they do things a little differently with the Stella core, and use it in ways that I've never tested.  As a result, the libretro port is not a straight port, and must be tested separately from the others.

 

Please document as clearly as possible your setup, including OS, CPU/GPU, how you setup libretro, how you toggle TV effects in their software, etc.

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6 hours ago, Shannon said:

Hi there again.. Here is a screeny of what the libretro version that someone compiled for me looks like with the TV effects turned off.

 

Wizard_Of_Wor_Arcade_20181115-180901-161852.thumb.png.3d424d2960b6714ebc636db3f5ae36f2.png

 

Turning a TV effect on corrects the image.  Unfortunately though the resources used by TV effect's slows down the frame rate on DPC based games.  My question for now is would this be considered a libretro issue?  Or a Stella Core issue?  Reading previous posts it sounds like the former.  In which case I would post a bug report over with the libretro guys?

Thanks.  :)

 

 

Try to turn on the multi threaded rendering in libretro...

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55 minutes ago, stephena said:

I have to ask, how do you turn on/off multi-threading for libretro?  I know how it works in Stella mainline, but I didn't think the libretro port even exposed those settings ?

It is NOT part of the core options (not exposed), it is in the global video section,

 

I had the same problem in libretro Android, and found this helps... 

 

I don't know why....

 

I don't have this problem in Windows,

 

 

Edited by israelg
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6 hours ago, stephena said:

What type of system are you using this on that causes a slowdown?  Also, how are you toggling the TV effects with the libretro port?  I wasn't aware that their software allowed access to change these things.

 

As you can probably tell, I'm not that familiar with how libretro works.  And in getting Stella to run on that platform, they do things a little differently with the Stella core, and use it in ways that I've never tested.  As a result, the libretro port is not a straight port, and must be tested separately from the others.

 

Please document as clearly as possible your setup, including OS, CPU/GPU, how you setup libretro, how you toggle TV effects in their software, etc.

This is a compiled version for the Sony Playstation Classic which uses a SoC Mediatek 8167A Quad Core Cortex-A35 1.5 GHz / PowerVR GE8300.

I don't do anything special to setup libretro... I just put all of the retroarch stuff on a memory stick and run it.  The TV effects are set by going into the "in-game" menu after a game is started this is the only way to do it. 

 

2 hours ago, israelg said:

Try to turn on the multi threaded rendering in libretro...

Oddly enough this works.  After turning it on the screen looks normal and I was able to disable the TV Effects.  DPC games are running close to full speed (close enough) around 58-59fps or so. :D

 

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Yep, all this seems to be related to what I said before: the way in which libretro interacts with the Stella 'core' isn't always the same as how 'mainline' Stella works.  So unfortunately that means bugs may pop up from time to time that we (the Stella team) have never seen before, and that don't happen on any other system.

 

I really need to find some time to play with RetroArch and see how it really works ...

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And of course there's also the confusion of what 'multi-threading' means.  Stella has its own version, and perhaps libretro does too.  So when you turn it on in the "global video section", is this using Stella threading or libretro threading??

 

Not that I mean for you guys to care about these differences, but as a developer I can't fix these things until I fully understand how the system works.  And as of now, Stella for libretro sometimes worked differently than normal Stella.  And that won't change until I understand how it all works.

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It's definitely libretro threading...

 

All the stella specific options are in the aforementioned options menu which is available when a game is being played.  The options available depend on what the people who ported stella to libretro decide.

 

Thanks

 

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11 minutes ago, Shannon said:

It's definitely libretro threading...

OK, so that means I have to figure out how threading works in libretro too :sad:

 

12 minutes ago, Shannon said:

All the stella specific options are in the aforementioned options menu which is available when a game is being played.  The options available depend on what the people who ported stella to libretro decide.

How is this in-game menu activated?

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Nevermind, I looked up the libretro documentation and now see how it works.  Funny thing is, I helped with the porting of this, and saw the code that exports what settings the 'core' wants to present to libretro.  I just didn't understand how to actually activate them in the UI :dunce:

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Stephen,

When playing a game, I press the top center. It just happens to look like a Space Invader. 

C5FE5D11-83AE-4B1C-8163-3B3CD62E72A6.jpeg

 

Then for Stella’s Settings, I choose Quick Menu:

95B05C16-51DC-4C64-BCEF-E7DB9CD71B20.jpeg

 

Go down to Options, touch into this:

D37A11A2-FC2E-4D30-B885-4BA496AF08EF.jpeg

 

And that scrolls down to:

615E9ECB-4A60-448F-9503-BBB51962234F.jpeg

 

For global things like Threading and Vsync, I go out to the main start menu, then touch a far right bottom gear icon, video settings there. 

ABF2A33A-8285-42BE-BDFA-B9A40328FD98.jpeg

 

101282FE-226B-44C3-9F5D-46A1ABA86597.jpeg

 

I hope that that helps a little. 

 

And again, I am very thankful to those that got a modern build into Retroarch!

It benefits all OS systems just as it is now. 

 

iPhone 7 Plus, iOS 11.3.1 jailbroken

 

 

 

 

Edited by iesposta
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Thanks, just found the docs a little while ago.

 

Also, just noticed that the TV effects are incorrect.  When you select 'RGB', it actually picks 'Composite' internally.  I will have to fix this ...

 

EDIT: this is now fixed.

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3 hours ago, stephena said:

Also, just noticed that the TV effects are incorrect.  When you select 'RGB', it actually picks 'Composite' internally.  I will have to fix this ...

 

EDIT: this is now fixed

Whooops!  I'm just curious.  What happens if you select "none"?  Cause I had mine set to none.. but I swear it is using some type of TV blur filter.  Cause it literally looks like I'm playing it on a CRT ( pixels are not sharp, etc ).  Or is that how Stella works now?  I don't mind cause it brings back memories.  But it does seem kind of peculiar.

 

Oh and yes... Retroarch has come a long way since it's beginnings.  And it is cross compiled for numerous systems.  For the most part it has gotten rather nice, although it can be a little feature heavy.  Also it doesn't handle some core specific features as well as they could be ( depends on which options they choose to make available ) and computer based emulators can be a bit of a pita.  But overall it's rather handy!

 

Thanks for your help stephana!

 

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8 hours ago, Shannon said:

Whooops!  I'm just curious.  What happens if you select "none"?  Cause I had mine set to none.. but I swear it is using some type of TV blur filter.  Cause it literally looks like I'm playing it on a CRT ( pixels are not sharp, etc ).  Or is that how Stella works now?  I don't mind cause it brings back memories.  But it does seem kind of peculiar.

Looks like the default of libretro, which is bilinear filtering.  In Stella, 'off' means no filtering whatsoever, so you get sharp, raw pixels.  Also, it looks like their TV effects don't include scanlines, which Stella does.

 

This is all still a WIP anyway.  The people that ported Stella to libretro are very familiar with that platform, but don't understand all the nuances of how Stella works (and the fact that it wasn't designed to run as a library isn't helping).  On the other hand, I am quite familiar with Stella (almost 20 years now‼️), but don't really know yet how libretro works.  So it will be slow-going on both sides for a while.  I don't expect this to be in a final release for at least another few months, so there's still time ...

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@stephena  I have good news!  I had someone compile your latest "fix" for the improper selection of TV effects for the Playstation Classic mini and all the issues I had before have gone away!

 

I can now set the TV effects to none.  Turn off threaded video and the screen looks perfectly fine.

 

I'm going to play a few games now for some testing and see how things look.  :)

 

Edited by Shannon
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Good to hear that it's working for you now.  Unfortunately, this sort of illustrates my point, that I don't know how libretro is working fully, since the change I made should not have had any effect on what you're seeing. ?

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Libretro can take care of all kinds of display effects from CRT to “why would I want this”. Scan lines can be done in Shader tasks or Overlays (png replacing touch screen keys if using a controller). 

There are even settings to fix lag so that a button press instantly displays a reaction. 

 

I’m not for Retroarch or against Retroarch, it’s just another emulation option that can range from simple to very complicated in use. 

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