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Altirra 3.20 released


phaeron

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Hey, I am sorry I interrupted this discussion about the various and endless screen options that will take hours to explore.
I am certainly also a former happy owner of the Atari 800 XL. It's unbelievable to see another emulator actually setting the bar.
I'm just overwhelmed by the endless possibilities, it takes weeks to get really familiar, I think.

But for screen or output options, I remember Retroarch, which I also came across this year and was very surprised.
Their shader suite is quite extensive and 80% somewhat tentative, but I still seem to be unable to include shaders from their libretto library (the .cgp shaders) into Altirra.
I hardly know anything about the differences between the different formats (Nvidia's own experiment CG, OpenGL GLSL, and HLSL from MS), the underlying graphics APIs, and the shader models.
However, they are easy to apply in Retroarch, and the result can be amazing.

 

If I try to use these CGP shaders in Altirra myself, the emulator just throws a small red line with an error message in the lower left half of the screen.
Do I miss something obvious here? Are these shaders not compatible? Why? And where are shaders to try on?

Thanks in advance for any hint. And big thanks for Altirra to its developer and many supporters. It is greatly appreciated here as well.

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10 minutes ago, Pixelfetish said:

Hey, I am sorry I interrupted this discussion about the various and endless screen options that will take hours to explore.
I am certainly also a former happy owner of the Atari 800 XL. It's unbelievable to see another emulator actually setting the bar.
I'm just overwhelmed by the endless possibilities, it takes weeks to get really familiar, I think.

But for screen or output options, I remember Retroarch, which I also came across this year and was very surprised.
Their shader suite is quite extensive and 80% somewhat tentative, but I still seem to be unable to include shaders from their libretto library (the .cgp shaders) into Altirra.
I hardly know anything about the differences between the different formats (Nvidia's own experiment CG, OpenGL GLSL, and HLSL from MS), the underlying graphics APIs, and the shader models.
However, they are easy to apply in Retroarch, and the result can be amazing.

 

If I try to use these CGP shaders in Altirra myself, the emulator just throws a small red line with an error message in the lower left half of the screen.
Do I miss something obvious here? Are these shaders not compatible? Why? And where are shaders to try on?

 

Shader languages are very complex and differ significantly between different graphics APIs. There are major differences between DirectX 9 HLSL and DirectX 11 HLSL, and even more between those and GLSL. Altirra's custom shader support is currently based on DirectX 9 HLSL, but the shaders you're trying to use are probably Cg shaders, which don't quite have the same syntax or feature set -- and I'm unwilling to pull in the Cg toolkit for various reasons, assuming the shaders would even run on DX9. The majority of the necessary .cgp syntax is supported in Altirra but the shaders themselves usually require some minor porting. You also need a shader compiler installed, which needs to be installed from the DirectX redistributable if you are on a version of Windows older than 8.1. I converted one shader as a test a while ago, but haven't returned to this part of the emulator because it needs more work to integrate better in the emulator, such as being able to work in more display modes and being able to tell the emulator what translation should be used for input when distortion is being applied.

 

tl;dr: It's unlikely that Altirra will ever be able to run RetroArch shaders verbatim any time soon.

 

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Hi phaeron,


I found something strange I don't know why when I call the selft test part doing the memory test in Altirra, but if I run the same in another emulator it starts from the main menu

selftest
    mva #$7d PORTB
    mva #$1 COLDST
    mva #$e0 CHBAS
    jmp $5000

regards

 

 

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2 hours ago, ascrnet said:

Hi phaeron,


I found something strange I don't know why when I call the selft test part doing the memory test in Altirra, but if I run the same in another emulator it starts from the main menu


selftest
    mva #$7d PORTB
    mva #$1 COLDST
    mva #$e0 CHBAS
    jmp $5000

regards

 

 

I already understood what was happening, only that works on OS ROM ver1 and ver2. but not in ver3 and ver4.

 

regards

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Hi phaeron

 

Not really a bug, but some program behaviour I don't understand...

 

When my Atari program writes to the mounted disk (ATR), most of the time it writes and updates the image, but sometimes (perhaps 25% of the time), the virtual write setting gets turned on and I have to go to File-->Disk Drives and change the setting from VRW to R/W.  In all cases I am performing the exact same operations in the same manner, but getting an unpredictable result.  It's easy to fix, but I can't help wondering what I am doing to trigger the random VRW mode.

 

image.png.19b4dbb45c3f9763384ba742a8a305ee.png

 

Also, a small request - when the Memory dump window is displayed, can you please give the address text box focus so I can start typing an address without having to select it with the mouse first?

 

thank you!

 

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5 hours ago, jacobus said:

Hi phaeron

 

Not really a bug, but some program behaviour I don't understand...

 

When my Atari program writes to the mounted disk (ATR), most of the time it writes and updates the image, but sometimes (perhaps 25% of the time), the virtual write setting gets turned on and I have to go to File-->Disk Drives and change the setting from VRW to R/W.  In all cases I am performing the exact same operations in the same manner, but getting an unpredictable result.  It's easy to fix, but I can't help wondering what I am doing to trigger the random VRW mode.

 

image.png.19b4dbb45c3f9763384ba742a8a305ee.png

 

Also, a small request - when the Memory dump window is displayed, can you please give the address text box focus so I can start typing an address without having to select it with the mouse first?

 

thank you!

 

Is the ATR stored in a syncing folder such as Google Drive or Dropbox? I keep everything in Google Drive and I have to turn off syncing when using Altirra. I'm assuming the file is being flagged as in use somehwere.

 

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On 10/27/2019 at 3:54 PM, gozar said:

Is the ATR stored in a syncing folder such as Google Drive or Dropbox? I keep everything in Google Drive and I have to turn off syncing when using Altirra. I'm assuming the file is being flagged as in use somehwere.

 

Ahhhhh - yes!  I use Resilio Sync to backup my dev environment - that must be it!  Thank you!

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http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test15.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test15-src.zip

  • POKEY accuracy fix for two-tone mode -- 1.79MHz timers now properly reflect the additional two cycle delay in their period.
  • Some internal rework of the POKEY rendering path to support more efficient sound processing, and possibly better filtering in the future to improve suppression of ultrasonics.
  • PIA motor control audio noise volume reduced to not be quite as loud.
  • Audio monitor improved. The audio monitor now reflects the slightly different frequency for two-tone mode and displays indicators for two-tone mode and asynchronous receive mode (2 and A). The way that the audio monitor samples the audio output has also been rewritten so that it can do better filtering on the output to produce the waveform. This means that it can now show some high-frequency effects that were previously either invisible or looked like noise (sawtooth, scanline-aligned PWM). This also fixes the bug that caused the audio monitor to blank out on redraws. The time base for the audio monitor is slightly different now, with vertical blank now at the front of the graph.
  • R/W disk flush errors now print an error message to the screen indicating the OS level error (typically Access Denied). Not very happy about all the various sync programs causing file locking conflicts in this regard (that's what oplocks are for), but I'll have to figure out a workaround at some point.

This fixes a couple of the reported two-tone bugs, though there is still a third one I'm pursuing:

 

POKEY-bugreport2-withclock.thumb.png.677ed64cb192ba820331b3897ed42c92.png

 

Thanks to the new toy, I know what's going on and just need to figure out the exact rules for it (the 5-bit noise generator is being sampled with an irregular period, which now that I know the period cycle counts does match the known LFSR).

 

On 10/26/2019 at 8:54 PM, ascrnet said:

I already understood what was happening, only that works on OS ROM ver1 and ver2. but not in ver3 and ver4.

This is happening because you are jumping directly into the self-test ROM instead of using the BLKBDV entry point. The self-test init address was moved from $5000 to $5006 in the newer versions.

 

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The new relese "Altirra-3.90-test15" crashes just after loading. No response. No error message. Once loaded it stays on screen for few seconds. The mouse pointer changes to blue circle. Then it vanishes.

Edit : Both of Altirra.exe and the 64 version act the same. System Win 10 1903 - x64.

Reverted back to test 14. (working version)

 

madi

Edited by Madi
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Funny how things work out sometimes... should be fixed now:

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test17.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test17-src.zip

 

(Clock wrapping issue depending on SIO/audio pattern on start.)

 

Edited by phaeron
Updated fix for a similar issue affecting drive sounds
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I'm so glad there are bugs, because otherwise Phareon really makes other developers look bad :-D

So here's what I've found, test17.

 

Audio monitor does not work in stereo mode, the right scope only draws 1 pixel wide or something.

 

The fact I can see the waveform when I pause is great though !

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Surprised it took this long for someone to comment on the avatar. I was expecting to get hate mail within minutes of someone seeing the effect.

 

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test18.zip

http://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-3.90-test18-src.zip

 

Fixes the stereo right channel visualizer, and also fixes an issue I found where some periodic cleanup wasn't occurring on the secondary POKEY which might cause issues after a long period of time.

 

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I am noticing a strange lag in Altirra 3.20, when pushing the fire button,

to start this game. It does not matter if I am using a joystick or the keyboard.

 

In Altirra 3.10 pressing the fire button to start the game does not work at all.

 

In version 3.00 it seems fine.

 

I am running Windows 7 64-bit.

 

Can anyone else confirm this?

 

rescueEx.xex

Edited by CrazyChris
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9 hours ago, CrazyChris said:

I am noticing a strange lag in Altirra 3.20, when pushing the fire button,

to start this game.

..

Can anyone else confirm this?

The game button behaves normal during play. No noticeable delay.

Altirra 3.90 test 17 - under WIN 10 x64

Did not test other versions/tests.

 

madi

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Regarding palettes, it seems that the NTSC and PAL defaults where built for CRTs. I've been testing games in modern TVs like Sony, LG, Samsung with composite video, and the colors differ. There are some colors bleached, others look the same (for default TV options). To have additional palettes for modern TVs would be an enhancement.

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1 hour ago, tane said:

Regarding palettes, it seems that the NTSC and PAL defaults where built for CRTs. I've been testing games in modern TVs like Sony, LG, Samsung with composite video, and the colors differ. There are some colors bleached, others look the same (for default TV options). To have additional palettes for modern TVs would be an enhancement.

It's actually the opposite, the default palettes are for a modern TV with the yellow-green hue 1 and there is a preset for classic CRT with a more orange hue 1 (Commodore 1702).

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28 minutes ago, phaeron said:

It's actually the opposite, the default palettes are for a modern TV with the yellow-green hue 1 and there is a preset for classic CRT with a more orange hue 1 (Commodore 1702).

I've been testing in different TVs, and there are light differences, the hue and strength depends of the brand in their defaults (Sony, LG, Samsung). And it also differs from a CRT.

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