Altirra 3.20 released

[ilmenit]

9 hours ago, phaeron said:

No. The video recorder does not use DirectDraw and you should not be seeing significant color differences between the different display API modes. The only cases where you will are if you have opt-ed into either the 16-bit display mode for speed or have "use hardware acceleration for screen effects" enabled with bloom turned on Adjust Screen Effects, since that effect is display-only. Check your video driver settings to see if you have a color correction or other rendering override set for 3D graphics.

Thanks for the answer. I have Screen Effects with Bloom enabled and this was causing the differences in the recording.

[Wrathchild]

4 hours ago, phaeron said:

By the way, those screenshots are all from Windows XP -- you should be aware that I am going to be dropping support for XP and Vista in the next version. So if you are running XP, even if I do add these features, you won't be able to run the new version unless you upgrade to at least Windows 7.

 

That's shouldn't be to say that if they REALLY wanted to then some of those (like the extra/corrected text) could be diff'd from the sources and retro-applied and built to the XP target themselves?

Edited May 11, 2020 by Wrathchild
build->built

[Keatah]

2 hours ago, phaeron said:

C'mon, please don't start this again. I warned that this was coming last year on page 1 of this thread, and you've gotten a reprieve since I was originally going to drop support for XP on this release instead of the next release and 3.90-final will still run on XP. I think I'm being generous enough here given that the new baseline of Windows 7 just fell out of official support.

 

Of course. But don't take it too seriously. I recall the post and understand the reasoning. All of us here enjoy this emulator in all kinds of ways and appreciate the ongoing effort and attention to detail. It really is possible to believe a standard PC has a "built-in Atari 800". And that's good enough for me.

 

 

[Mclaneinc]

And lets be fair here, its not just Altirra but lots of ongoing software that will have to be ran on a newer OS than XP. To be honest I'm trying to avoid Win 10 at all costs but eventually I'm going to have to upgrade to it just to keep track, I'll bemoan it for a while but do it. It isn't the end of the world...(alright at the moment that's a possibility  )

[+DrVenkman]

For all the folks groaning about Win10, just install Linux and run Altirra under WINE. Seriously, so much angst. 

[Mclaneinc]

I'm not really groaning, its purely I've been long chatting to Avery about Win 10 and the worthwhile of me upgrading to it and his advice because of the age of my machine was to leave it as long as possible. Its something I will adopt when it becomes needed. I use Linux sometimes and don't really enjoy the experience, also I already struggle on some emulation platforms speedwise so the notion of running a different OS and then running my stuff under a patch of sorts would most likely just give me more issues.

 

I had Win 10 on previously but drivers for my stuff were not about at that time (its a long time ago) so it came off.

 

I'll get used to the changes in Win 10 when I adopt it..Life moves on..

[+Eyvind Bernhardsen]

5 hours ago, Jacques said:

I'd like to try just once more ( ) to kindly ask for  possibility to load external .act palettes, instead of only choosing predefined ones (among them included Oliver's and Jakub's, that most likely are originated from .act files anyway ).

Maybe I read Phaeron incorrectly, but my understanding is that Altirra doesn’t use static palettes at all, instead generating them based on the colour wheel. In other words, it won’t necessarily be possible to reproduce a palette colour by colour.

 

I’d recommend trying to adjust colours manually (the control panel is available in the View menu) to get more correct colours.

[Jacques]

@Eyvind Bernhardsen

So I don't quite understand what's done behind the scenes when user chooses incorporated Jakub/Olivier palettes (well known in .act files) and if such method of incorporation could be available for the user?

[+Eyvind Bernhardsen]

20 minutes ago, Jacques said:

@Eyvind Bernhardsen

So I don't quite understand what's done behind the scenes when user chooses incorporated Jakub/Olivier palettes (well known in .act files) and if such method of incorporation could be available for the user?

I can only speculate (and I don’t know who Jakub or Olivier are), but it’s possible that these settings are presets that match those palettes either exactly or closely enough that it makes sense to name them that way. It might also be possible to find a setting that matches your preferred palette closely.

[Mclaneinc]

With the visual variation of Atari's being a huge factor its pretty hard to estimate what actually are the real wanted colours, Phaeron kindly gave more choices of palettes and more importantly the ability to tweak the colours and intensities etc which then become saved per machine and be they PAL or NTSC saved for both. So its possible to go to the View tab and Adjust Colours. Its not as complex as it looks and its pretty easy to create what looks best to you. Its also dead handy for the NTSC artifacting colours which are usually way off ie purple and green when red / orange and blue are what most box screen shots show of the game. A.E. for instance.

 

Will Phaeron add the ability to import the files, I have no idea but with the ability to tweak them yourself it seems a lot of changing to do basically the same thing.

[Jacques]

Since .act files are widely know and used Atari palletes, I hoped playing with sliders could be avoided and one could quick-load the pallette he likes and uses in VBXE or used in another, older emulator.

But it's just speculation if there's an algorithm @phaeronused to provide Jakub/Olivier palette (that could allow loading own .act files), or such process needs to be done with human's eyes (thus only an imitation of palette).

Edited May 11, 2020 by Jacques

[Suppawer]

23 hours ago, phaeron said:

• Added documentation for properties supported in custom effects (.cgp).

You mean: "Options -> Display Effects (VintageTV, Motionblur, Rotate)"?

Documentation? Where?

[phaeron]

18 hours ago, Wrathchild said:

That's shouldn't be to say that if they REALLY wanted to then some of those (like the extra/corrected text) could be diff'd from the sources and retro-applied and built to the XP target themselves?

  Yes, but I can't guarantee how easy it'll be. Part of the reason for dropping XP was to be able to move to features that require Windows Vista or 7. One of those is Direct2D, which can potentially make debugger windows like the Memory Window faster and better. I've also already begun ripping out code paths that were only there for XP, such as the DirectDraw renderer and the old pre-Vista directory selector. The VS2019 16.24 toolchain also has better C++ language compliance, so some of the new code that I write may not compile properly with the 15.9 compiler (which is particularly broken for anything constexpr). Part of the cost of dropping XP/Vista is that I have to make it count, after all.

 

For full disclosure: DirectDraw and OpenGL paths are gone for the next version (the OpenGL code was really out of date anyway), and I'm considering dropping D3D9 fixed-function and pixel shader 1, making D3D9 PS2.0 the minspec.

 

9 hours ago, Jacques said:

Since .act files are widely know and used Atari palletes, I hoped playing with sliders could be avoided and one could quick-load the pallette he likes and uses in VBXE or used in another, older emulator.

But it's just speculation if there's an algorithm @phaeronused to provide Jakub/Olivier palette (that could allow loading own .act files), or such process needs to be done with human's eyes (thus only an imitation of palette).

They were matched by an incremental search algorithm to derive the original parameters. Unfortunately, I hacked it into the code temporarily at the time and it won't work with the current code. Only some palettes can be matched this way, as some don't match YUV/YIQ signal processing, and others have singularities like color $00 being forced to black. I haven't looked at the palette you've provided to see if it can be fit this way, but I'm working on something that should help match palettes.

 

Again, Altirra cannot use PAL/ACT files. It needs more information than is encoded in a final palette clamped to 0-1 RGB for several features to work. I can't run an algorithm that requires separated luminance and chrominance on a palette that wasn't created properly in that form to begin with.

 

5 hours ago, suppawer said:

You mean: "Options -> Display Effects (VintageTV, Motionblur, Rotate)"?

Documentation? Where?

In the help file, under Reference > Custom Effects. Mind you, it's "custom" for a reason -- it doesn't come with any such effects, you have to make them.

 

For now, the custom effects is still an experimental feature until I get a Direct3D 11 version of it up.

 

[EddyFree]

 

EF: Old values on the cheater. Very useful!

I should have taken a moment to explain this one. The "Cheater", being a "Memory State Comparison" tool is a powerful tool that can provide important information for all sorts of initial inquiries into program/OS functionality. As is now, you can see what addresses changed and what their NEW values are. But by showing the OLD values also, the user can see the "magnitude" of change, which could be important info in their analysis. For example, if you were able to see a drop pattern of say 128-64-32, you can easily deduce that the programmer is progressively toggling bits..

 

I assume you mean for disk images? It already supports drag-and-drop for files.

Yes, Drag & Drop on the Disk Explorer window to open the .ATR would be nice.

I don't want this enabled by default for performance reasons, but I suppose it could be an option. There have been other requests for memory viewer functionality, so it could use an overhaul.

No, not enabled by default. I was thinking more as an option under the Debugger where you could open a "real-time" memory viewer window and then start/stop activity with the F8 run/break as usual. I believe the FCEU emulator is open-source if you'd like to take a look at it's code for implementation ideas.

 

By the way, those screenshots are all from Windows XP -- you should be aware that I am going to be dropping support for XP and Vista in the next version.

Ouch. Most unfortunate. Yes, I'm running XP on a 2006 machine. It's the perfect OS for my "retro-gaming" needs. Stable, slim and trim. After boot-up, I have only 24 processes running(and that's including a virtual DVD/CDR emulator). Most of my software CD collection is from this era or before and all the software "tools" I normally use work great with it. As such, I've never seen the need to progress to a more "bloated" and/or "intrusive" Microsoft OS, especially with an older machine/processor. But I do understand that development processes progress.

 

With all that said, thanx for your consideration of my suggestions. Your emulator is a fine piece of software, well-written and plays flawlessly with the OS. I enjoy using it and have for a while now. Keep up the good work!

 

 

[EddyFree]

20 hours ago, skr said:

As I´m on Mac, I´m used to Atari800MacX which I totally love for it´s ease of use. I run Altirra with wine, but always struggle with some basic stuff, which I´m used to have on a800macx.

Something like the media window and the keys window would be great to have in Altirra:

All the Icons are drap&drop areas: For example put an ATR on D1: and the drive will be switched on and the disk mounted automatically.

That's "cute", but I think the method used in Altirra is more to-the-point and gets you back to full-screen action quicker...I'd just like to see the drive ownerships listed while dragging-dropping without having to go to the pull-down menus...

[phaeron]

1 minute ago, EddyFree said:

That's "cute", but I think the method used in Altirra is more to-the-point and gets you back to full-screen action quicker...I'd just like to see the drive ownerships listed while dragging-dropping without having to go to the pull-down menus...

You can also drag-and-drop to the Disk Drives window, though the drop targets are a bit small.

 

I've thought about doing a friendlier toolbar or sidebar but am hampered by the neolithic Win32 UI facilities. This does improve somewhat with Windows 7, though I suspect I'd be lynched if I added a ribbon UI to Altirra.

 

[Docwiz]

23 hours ago, phaeron said:

C'mon, please don't start this again. I warned that this was coming last year on page 1 of this thread, and you've gotten a reprieve since I was originally going to drop support for XP on this release instead of the next release and 3.90-final will still run on XP. I think I'm being generous enough here given that the new baseline of Windows 7 just fell out of official support.

 

 

I don't mind if you end Windows XP support, next year it will be 20 years and it's an old out of date OS.

 

That being said, can you make sure that it's well known what version of the emulator is the last for Windows XP?

That way it's clear and people can know if they are running Windows XP which one to download.

[Docwiz]

1 hour ago, phaeron said:

You can also drag-and-drop to the Disk Drives window, though the drop targets are a bit small.

 

I've thought about doing a friendlier toolbar or sidebar but am hampered by the neolithic Win32 UI facilities. This does improve somewhat with Windows 7, though I suspect I'd be lynched if I added a ribbon UI to Altirra.

 

Well as long as we can hide it, I think it's fine.  I would like to see a huge change to the Win32 interface and upgrade it a bit, make it simpler to get to things quicker and I do love the images the the mac version has, that's pretty neat, it just would be good to turn it off for people who don't want it.

[_The Doctor__]

Wonderful rant follows ?

Gee Wiz lets just do the whole thing in Metro and make it charms bar centric... don't worry about that old desktop either... that's so old. active tiles rule the world...    Sorry but truth be told, no one has been able to tell anyone what's so great about 8.1 or 10 for that matter...  I don't see it... we've been told the whole this thing is all new and nothing of the old remains so many times... only to find that isn't the case. But they are getting much better at the shell game and hiding it. It sure does up the requirements so they can sell more machines and re-sell er um lease er um make you subscribe as is the deal now.... you don't own it... they do... pay up and you still don't own it. Whatevs....

 

I'll just be glad if the old version still gets fixes, as so many just abandon completely anything not under their new tool chains, there's no reason the old stuff can't or shouldn't get bug fixes etc... that I expect, new features and stuff that didn't exist when is eol'd, that I don't expect to happen.  Anyway...

 

Great work on this version and all the kinks/twists/turns that it's gone through to become the best we have. Truly a monument to the programmer as well as community it serves. Tips hat.

Edited May 12, 2020 by _The Doctor__

[phaeron]

Quote

That being said, can you make sure that it's well known what version of the emulator is the last for Windows XP?

That way it's clear and people can know if they are running Windows XP which one to download.

 

I'll note it on the download page like for the SSE2 requirement. The major versions line up too: 2.X is the end of line for non-SSE2, 3.X is the end of line for XP/Vista.

 

28 minutes ago, Docwiz said:

Well as long as we can hide it, I think it's fine.  I would like to see a huge change to the Win32 interface and upgrade it a bit, make it simpler to get to things quicker and I do love the images the the mac version has, that's pretty neat, it just would be good to turn it off for people who don't want it.

Yeah, I don't think people realize how bass-ackward the XP-era UI and graphics systems are. Some of the newer stuff is a bit better but harder to use. Some of the really new stuff is near impossible to use, clunky to use, and ugly. It's a mess. I've not been impressed at all with the UWP stuff, even if I could use it. WPF's not too bad, but it wants to do its own rendering, and I hate bridging between .NET and native code almost as much as I hate dealing with JNI.

 

That having been said, a fair amount of it is on my side as well. Coming up with quicker ways to do things is fine -- once you figure out what those actions are. Which I haven't sat down and done yet. The move away from menu-itis and into Configure System seems to have worked out well and I just need to finish it by moving the rest of the crap out of Options. Media management might be the next thing I need to attack UI-wise since it's a hassle to keep searching the filesystem for common stuff like SpartaDOS X, and the firmware list is also getting scary with so many disk drives now emulated. Profiles help some with the media swapping but I still keep accidentally mounting stuff on the wrong profiles at times.

 

UI was easier when the emulator just supported one disk drive and a joystick....

 

[StickJock]

5 minutes ago, phaeron said:

UI was easier when the emulator just supported one disk drive and a joystick....

 

Speaking of joystick, did you see my suggestions for additional input mapping in post 648?  Since the cheapo ZeroDelay USB joysticks support 12 buttons, it would be really cool if we could map some of them to arbitrary keys.  I already build a joystick that maps buttons to the three console buttons & the spacebar, but being able to add other keys (and 2B+) would allow much more flexibility.

 

Thanks!

 

[jamm]

5 minutes ago, phaeron said:

Yeah, I don't think people realize how bass-ackward the XP-era UI and graphics systems are. Some of the newer stuff is a bit better but harder to use. Some of the really new stuff is near impossible to use, clunky to use, and ugly. It's a mess. I've not been impressed at all with the UWP stuff, even if I could use it. WPF's not too bad, but it wants to do its own rendering, and I hate bridging between .NET and native code almost as much as I hate dealing with JNI.

I greatly appreciate that you've been thinking about this stuff, and, yeah, people who haven't programmed Windows UI code have no idea what a mess it is and how hamstrung you are if you stick with supporting something as ancient as XP (which is really more like supporting Windows 95).

 

Much of the new stuff is its own mess in different ways, not the least of which was clearly brought about by many half-baked ideas introduced around the Windows 8 period.  With the move to mobile and the web, desktop user interfaces haven't been the focus of development work at companies like Microsoft for quite a while now, and it definitely shows in the haphazard efforts of the last decade.

 

I think Atari800MacX's interface is generally very nice and pleasant to work with, but, of course there's no beating Altirra's functionality and rock-solid, amazingly thorough emulation.  I switch back and forth between the two depending on the machine I happen to be working on and what I'm trying to do.

 

I'm just happy we have great options for A8 emulation!

[Jacques]

3 hours ago, phaeron said:

They were matched by an incremental search algorithm to derive the original parameters. Unfortunately, I hacked it into the code temporarily at the time and it won't work with the current code. Only some palettes can be matched this way, as some don't match YUV/YIQ signal processing, and others have singularities like color $00 being forced to black. I haven't looked at the palette you've provided to see if it can be fit this way, but I'm working on something that should help match palettes.

 

Again, Altirra cannot use PAL/ACT files. It needs more information than is encoded in a final palette clamped to 0-1 RGB for several features to work. I can't run an algorithm that requires separated luminance and chrominance on a palette that wasn't created properly in that form to begin with.

 

While I keep my fingers crossed for that "something that should help match palettes", thank you for your explanation and all the incredible work so far Recently I had great joy emulating Turbo Blizzard on Altirra ? 

[+gnusto]

14 minutes ago, jamm said:

people who haven't programmed Windows UI code have no idea what a mess it is and how hamstrung you are if you stick with supporting something as ancient as XP

It's not just that, it's the case that eventually, as a developer, you can no longer even use your tools to produce code that runs on XP as a target. This is the case by default nowadays with Visual Studio, and phaeron is using a hackish unsupported 'it kinda works' approach to the platform targeting, or he's using an old version of the development tools, not sure which. Well I should say that's what I would guess, maybe he's found some clever work around.

 

Arguably you can so something like use MinGW to build a windows target to almost any version, but honestly its a horrid mess and distraction compared to the Microsoft tools and just rolling a drop down to the target.

 

This is completely separate from the issue that older Windows have less kernel features to call upon or worse occasionally incompatible usage that you have to create code paths around.

 

So anyway, it may work fine for you, but it's very real and significant effort for a developer to support older platforms like that. It's likely costing feature trade offs and certainly is a drain on very finite time to code. Sooner or later it has to give.

[_The Doctor__]

There are very few exciting new features that would only be made possible on Windows 10 that may apply to a mature and very well done emulator such as Altirra. I rather think, as I listen, that it's a fair amount of work moving everything over and making the changes needed to cut the old out for the new. The advantage that I did hear was the environment for further development may be nicer.   There's little point discussing it. The decision is made. We'll see what the future holds, phaeron has a way of beating the crap out of the new clunky stuff and making it useful, it's possible he'll do the impossible and make something win10 can't muck up. The only reason I am the slightest bit receptive, is because phaeron makes it happen.

 

I just installed 8.1 on and old HP, currently trying to remember all the tweaks to make it 'normal'... this is in preparation for what we've been told is coming...   hmmm. killed most of the charm bars trip wires... now to murder the rest of it... yanking stuff left and right...

Edited May 12, 2020 by _The Doctor__