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Stella 6.2 released


stephena

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Hi guys, thanks for the new Stella release!

 

The first thing I tried is the new Emulation menu, however when I change the emulation speed (or tick the Turbo checkbox) and then click "OK", Stella shrinks to a small window and freezes up (see screenshot below). It does this for every game, and even when I don't change any settings, but just click the "OK" button in the Emulation window.

Note that I'm using the Windows 64-bit version.

 

image.png.6006fea81b32b28807fae083e3c62f97.png

Edited by Dionoid
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29 minutes ago, Dionoid said:

Hi guys, thanks for the new Stella release!

 

The first thing I tried is the new Emulation menu, however when I change the emulation speed (or tick the Turbo checkbox) and then click "OK", Stella shrinks to a small window and freezes up (see screenshot below). It does this for every game, and even when I don't change any settings, but just click the "OK" button in the Emulation window.

Note that I'm using the Windows 64-bit version.

 

image.png.6006fea81b32b28807fae083e3c62f97.png

 

I can confirm that

 

grafik.png.3afd5dd0514e3d9e026eab48bbb59618.png

 

if i hit enter, i get for a second this text on the close button position.

"...able to show the dialog box; FIX THE CO......"

maybe it helps you

grafik.png.49f3d1360510eb0ce71c812d27f57e0b.png

Edited by Schitti
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@alex_79

i have seen your bug report (stella issue 643) with the enabled tv-effects in 1x mode for screenshots. this helps me a little with my problem. :thumbsup:

the 1x screenshots i made were too blurry for my use and i was wondering why the 300% looks so much better (but still stretched). This is the reason why i have asked for the 300% perfect pixel ratio.

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On 6/16/2020 at 5:06 AM, Schitti said:

Hi Stella Team,

i have a question about a function since (Stella release 6.1)

  • Major improvements to display mode handling in NTSC vs. PAL. The window is now the same size for both modes, and scaling is applied to simulate the height of scanlines (in PAL mode, there are more scanlines and hence each is narrower). This more properly emulates how the display would look on a real TV.

Is it possible to disable this function somewhere? Or maybe I do not know where to switch.

If i make screenshots with option "Ignore scaling (1x mode)" i get image in original size. But when  i choose the default settings with Zoom 300% i get a image with 960x720 every time, regardless of whether it is PAL or NTSC. I want no stretched pic.

 

Anyway, you're doing a really great job. :thumbsup:
Thanks for that.

I would also like to request that scaling in the main window could be ignored.

 

My issue is, I need pixel-perfect screenshots for a lot of the work I do for homebrews. For developing game graphics and working on screenshots for manuals, I often need to take screenshots and alter them, and they have to be pixel-perfect to do that. I can't scale them precisely if they've had any interpolation. 

 

I was going to post about this after 6.1 was released, but then Spiceware posted the workaround, which temporarily solved my problem. But it doesn't fully solve it.

 

For manuals especially, it's effectively impossible to capture the screenshots I need on-the-fly (try playing Zoo Keeper sometime and hitting F12 and see what you get ;) ). So I have to capture video of Stella instead, then pull individual frames out of the resulting QuickTime movie. The only way to do that, is capturing the main window. Currently, I'm sticking with Stella 6.0.2 to do that.

 

(Also, a 1x scaling option would be nice, so I could capture a smaller area.)

 

Thanks!

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From all the feedback I see, it seems that what most people want is a way to generate pixel-exact snapshots.  So it's not so much that what's rendered onscreen is pixel-exact, but that the eventual snapshots will be.  It's easy enough to extend the snapshot settings to offer an option to do a pixel-exact image, with only integral zoom (so again, no interpolation).

 

However, we won't be changing what is output to the screen.  A lot of work has been done to make this as realistic as possible.  NTSC and PAL TV sets don't suddenly change dimensions, and neither should Stella.  It is a fact that PAL scanlines are thinner than NTSC ones, so generating video output that doesn't do that same thing is in effect quite inaccurate.  Even if Stella worked that way in the past. It was wrong then, and we're attempting to correct that going forward.

 

So the best we can do is offer a snapshot mode that just gives you raw pixels without any interpolation.  It's already there, mostly.  We need to fix a few bugs and add to it a little, but the infrastructure is there to do it.

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1 hour ago, Nathan Strum said:

For manuals especially, it's effectively impossible to capture the screenshots I need on-the-fly (try playing Zoo Keeper sometime and hitting F12 and see what you get ;) ).

:idea: You can use the Time Machine. Set it to single frame save states, play, enter the debugger and there you can move back and forth to the frame you want. Then enter "savestate 0" or press F12. Done. 

 

Or is flicker your problem?

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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Also, I'm not entirely sure that pixel-exact images are what people are looking for either.  Because a pixel-exact image is one that comes from the TIA in one frame, and that means no phosphor effect and no zoom.

 

So we have some people requesting pixel-exact images, but they want zoom.  And others are requesting pixel-exact, but they don't want flicker ?  So I'm not sure in the end what it actually is that people want with this functionality.  

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1 hour ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

:idea: You can use the Time Machine. Set it to single frame save states, play, enter the debugger and there you can move back and forth to the frame you want. Then enter "savestate 0" or press F12. Done. 

 

Or is flicker your problem?

How long of a recording can I make with Time Machine? Also, can I save them? I need to be able to go back to recordings later, since manual content is often changed during production. Does Time Machine save complete gameplay recordings? I couldn't suss that out from the online documentation.

 

I need to be able to record games of any duration, save them, and be able to move to any point in the video to save screenshots. This is critical for any game with multiple levels, screens, puzzles, etc. I never know how long it will take to get the kind of screenshot I need to illustrate a particular gameplay element. Adventure-type games can take a particularly long time.

 

I record these at 60fps, so I can pull subsequent frames and combine them in Photoshop to simulate a complete frame. I don't use the phosphor effect during recording because it leaves trails and other undesirable artifacts that are hard to remove.

1 hour ago, stephena said:

Also, I'm not entirely sure that pixel-exact images are what people are looking for either.  Because a pixel-exact image is one that comes from the TIA in one frame, and that means no phosphor effect and no zoom.

This is exactly what I'm looking for. I need a clean image to work from, because for manuals I have to be able to go in and edit the screenshots pixel-accurately, so the end result is a correct representation of the game graphics. Not a correct representation of what those graphics look like stretched to fit the aspect ratio of a TV screen. After the image is edited to represent the gameplay elements that are being illustrated, I correct for the aspect ratio in the page layout software.

 

When working on game graphics, I need pixel-exact images because if I'm creating/editing graphics, that has to be pixel-accurate when I give the end result as bitmaps to the developers. I can't work with interpolated scanlines, because it's not accurate to what the TIA is doing. I can do much of that work with static screenshots, but captured video is far more flexible to work with. I'm approaching this from the standpoint of a graphic designer and video editor - not a developer.

 

I can't speak for others as to what they need this for. But this would make my job easier. Or I can just stick with 6.0.2.

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6 minutes ago, Nathan Strum said:

 

This is exactly what I'm looking for. I need a clean image to work from, because for manuals I have to be able to go in and edit the screenshots pixel-accurately, so the end result is a correct representation of the game graphics. Not a correct representation of what those graphics look like stretched to fit the aspect ratio of a TV screen. After the image is edited to represent the gameplay elements that are being illustrated, I correct for the aspect ratio in the page layout software.

 

Well then, the current '1x' option is what you need.  Currently there's a bug that applies TV effects to that mode, and it shouldn't.  I can have that part fixed for 6.2.1.  But to be clear to everyone; it would be in 1x zoom mode, 320 pixels wide by h pixels high (where h depends on whether the ROM is NTSC or PAL).  And no phosphor (which means no blending of frames in 30Hz mode), no scanlines, no interpolation, no TV effects.  It's easy to turn everything off and offer a mode to save in that format.  The problem comes when someone says "I want everything turned off except this".  And the 'this' is different for everyone. ?

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Fixed the 1x snapshot issue.  The first pic is from Stella 6.2 (TV effects are incorrectly applied).  The second pic is from the latest code (will be included in Stella 6.2.1).  The result is obvious.

 

Screenshot_20200618_220957.png

 

Screenshot_20200618_221036.thumb.png.95c56887f918601ee0602655b8d429c6.png

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1 hour ago, stephena said:

Well then, the current '1x' option is what you need.  Currently there's a bug that applies TV effects to that mode, and it shouldn't.  I can have that part fixed for 6.2.1.  But to be clear to everyone; it would be in 1x zoom mode, 320 pixels wide by h pixels high (where h depends on whether the ROM is NTSC or PAL).  And no phosphor (which means no blending of frames in 30Hz mode), no scanlines, no interpolation, no TV effects.  It's easy to turn everything off and offer a mode to save in that format.  The problem comes when someone says "I want everything turned off except this".  And the 'this' is different for everyone. ?

Yes, I need a "1x" option, but for the main window. No phosphor, blending, scanlines, TV effects, interpolation, etc. That would be great. (1x, 2x, etc. is fine - as long as it's something I can scale cleanly without artifacts.)

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7 minutes ago, Nathan Strum said:

Yes, I need a "1x" option, but for the main window. No phosphor, blending, scanlines, TV effects, interpolation, etc. That would be great. (1x, 2x, etc. is fine - as long as it's something I can scale cleanly without artifacts.)

So again, I'm not sure what you're asking for.  There is a 1x mode there already for generating snapshots with all the extra stuff turned off.  There was a bug whereby it was applying TV effects when it shouldn't have (mentioned above).  I've fixed that, so now in 6.2.1 you can get clean snapshots.

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I want to be able to do a realtime video screen capture (I have a utility for that) of the main Stella gameplay window, while playing ROMs, without any interpolation, effects, etc. Scaling is fine (2x, 3x, 4x, etc.), as long as it's not doing any interpolation.

 

In Stella 6.1+ I can't do that, because Stella is vertically stretching the heights of scanlines to simulate the aspect ratio of NTSC displays. I want to turn that off. That's television emulation.

 

I'm not sure how else to describe this.

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6 hours ago, Nathan Strum said:

How long of a recording can I make with Time Machine? Also, can I save them? 

In the "Developer/Time Machine" dialog you can define the size of the buffer, the interval and the time horizon. The maximum uncompressed size (no save state removed) is 1000 states (=~16.7 seconds with single frame interval).

 

Quote

I need to be able to go back to recordings later, since manual content is often changed during production. Does Time Machine save complete gameplay recordings?

You can tailor it that way. Increase the "Horizon" to what you need (e.g. 30 minutes) and reduce the uncompressed size and maximize the buffer size. Just play with the parameters to get an idea.

 

You can save all TM states in three different ways:

  • Hotkey: ALT+F9 (default)
  • Time Machine dialog: Last but one button
  • Automatically: "Emulation" dialog: check "Load/save all Time Machine states"

And of course you can load them all later again.

 

Quote

I couldn't suss that out from the online documentation.

Its all there. When you know how to do it, maybe you can help to improve the documentation? If you didn't understand it, others will not understand it too. And that shouldn't happen.

 

Quote

I need to be able to record games of any duration, save them, and be able to move to any point in the video to save screenshots. This is critical for any game with multiple levels, screens, puzzles, etc. I never know how long it will take to get the kind of screenshot I need to illustrate a particular gameplay element. Adventure-type games can take a particularly long time.

Since the buffer has to be limited, you cannot go back to the exact frame (30 minutes = 108000 frames). But you can get pretty close (~ 2 seconds) and e.g. start playing from there to get single frames again (note: this will overwrite the "future" states).

 

Quote

I record these at 60fps, so I can pull subsequent frames and combine them in Photoshop to simulate a complete frame. I don't use the phosphor effect during recording because it leaves trails and other undesirable artifacts that are hard to remove.

This is exactly what I'm looking for. I need a clean image to work from, because for manuals I have to be able to go in and edit the screenshots pixel-accurately, so the end result is a correct representation of the game graphics. Not a correct representation of what those graphics look like stretched to fit the aspect ratio of a TV screen. After the image is edited to represent the gameplay elements that are being illustrated, I correct for the aspect ratio in the page layout software.

We are working on this. The 1x snapshots will become free of any post processing, just the native pixel of the current frame.

Edited by Thomas Jentzsch
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thanks to everyone to clarify the problem and work out a solution. Partly now implemented in version 6.2.1. Thank you in advance.
Actually i am only interested in the snapshot output free from post processing. If this future snapshot output now had the zoom 2x 3x ... ecetera, then that would be what I asked for initially.

But I think I can also work well with the 1x only if it is implemented as announced. :thumbsup:

So far I had only used the Stella sporadically. That will be more for our project in the future.

thank you guys :thumbsup:

Edited by Schitti
changed screenshot to snapshot
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I seem to remember that an option that allows to play the game inside the debugger was proposed in a discussion a while ago. That would incidentally also meet Nathan's needs, as the debugger window shows a raw TIA output with no aspect ratio adjustment (every TIA pixel is always 2 screen pixels wide x 1 heigh) and no effects, exactly like the 1x snapshots.

 

On the other hand, I think an option to have a "RAW" output in the normal window should only be considered if it doesn't complicate the code and the UI, because, as stated before, it generates an image that is actually deformed (it's compressed vertically for NTSC games, and stretched for PAL ones), while Stella focuses on accurate emulation which includes giving an image with correct aspect ratio (and this took efforts to implement). Therefore it should have no options: no zoom, no fullscreen, no phosphor emulation, no effects.
Basically, it should be clearly an option only needed in special cases like those discussed here, and should be off normally.

 

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