Stella 6.7 released (and concerning the future of Stella)

[Thomas Jentzsch]

41 minutes ago, batari said:

I'm not sure, actually. It looks like I may have multiple versions of the game. I'll compare with the posted version tomorrow.

Thanks.

41 minutes ago, batari said:

Speaking of trapread and trapwrite, they now seem to trap all mirrors of a location by default. I can't figure out how to revert to the old behavior and only trap a literal address (such as $230 only) with the current version of Stella.

Mirrors are used since 5.1. Why would you want to disable them?

[+batari]

7 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

Thanks.

Mirrors are used since 5.1. Why would you want to disable them?

In this instance, it is useful for testing bankswitch hotspots. When I issue a trapread $0230, it instead traps all mirrors of CXM0P, so trapread is useless for finding where it only hits $0230.

 

It could also be useful for finding stack overruns. Supposing your zero page use ends at $F4, without mirrors you can set a trap at $1F4 which will find only stack accesses and ignore all normal accesses. With mirrors you instead get all uses of $F4 and there could be a lot of them.

 

Another potential use is for trapping specific cart-space addresses. For instance if you are debugging a 32k game, if you have the code in each bank assembled to a separate mirror, you would be able to trap only addresses in that bank rather than in any bank.

 

So if there isn't a way to trap literal addresses, there should be.

 

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

On 8/21/2023 at 7:42 PM, batari said:

So if there isn't a way to trap literal addresses, there should be.

I will create an issue for this. 

[MarkM]

I have been using VICE as an emulator for my C64 projects. I actually use it more than I use my actual set of C64's. Recently, in the past few months I have been getting into the Atari 2600 platform. I now have 2 machines, but as is the case with my C64 efforts, I prefer to use the Stella Emulator on my PC. Even as a new Atari 2600 aficionado (see there is interest in the new gamer groups), I find Stella to be an exceptional tool and platform for experiencing the wonderful world of the Atari 2600 gaming and hardware understanding. And as I learn to use its capabilities more and more, I am amazed at the work that went into this tool, and am in awe of those that were smart enough to develop it. Take a break, take a vacation. But please, in the next year come back to your baby and help it mature even more.

[kid_snz]

Hi I'd like to set Stella's zoom to 100% and have a 320 pixel wide screen on my project, is that possible?

[+Nathan Strum]

On 9/29/2023 at 1:11 PM, kid_snz said:

Hi I'd like to set Stella's zoom to 100% and have a 320 pixel wide screen on my project, is that possible?

Me too. Can't get there from here:

 

 

I'm trying to capture video without any scaling - I'd prefer to do the scaling during video editing.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

200% is the lower limit due to a technical restriction. The (faked!) dialogs are part of the emulation surface, we cannot make it smaller than the dialogs.

 

If you disable "Correct aspect ratio" the image is scaled by 2 in all directions. So you can scale it down to 50% without any loss if information.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Thomas Jentzsch

[scotty]

On 9/23/2023 at 2:41 AM, MarkM said:

I have been using VICE as an emulator for my C64 projects. I actually use it more than I use my actual set of C64's. Recently, in the past few months I have been getting into the Atari 2600 platform. I now have 2 machines, but as is the case with my C64 efforts, I prefer to use the Stella Emulator on my PC. Even as a new Atari 2600 aficionado (see there is interest in the new gamer groups), I find Stella to be an exceptional tool and platform for experiencing the wonderful world of the Atari 2600 gaming and hardware understanding. And as I learn to use its capabilities more and more, I am amazed at the work that went into this tool, and am in awe of those that were smart enough to develop it. Take a break, take a vacation. But please, in the next year come back to your baby and help it mature even more.

I agree completely.  I have WAAAY too much real hardware like 10 2600's with 3 of them heavy sixers, a C64, C64c, C128, Vic 20s and a boatload of Atari 8-bits amongst many others.  I use Altirra, Stella Vice etc... with controller to USB Adapters like BlissBOx (Cheap plug) I Live in a small condo so space is limited.

 

Edited December 13, 2023 by scotty

[Living Room Arcade]

The same for me!  I just joined in July.  Thank you, @stephena, @DirtyHairy and @Thomas Jentzsch for all of your work making Stella.  My feedback is I think Stella is Atari 2600 emulating perfection.  I don't know how you guys did it, but I'm glad you did!

 

When you guys return from your rest, I have a new feature request that I'd like to make.

 

Two parts:

- randomly select a subfolder

- randomly select a rom 

 

Hot keys for both; possibly buttons to click with mouse somewhere on the GUI

 

Maybe an example would make this idea more clear?

 

Suppose I want to play Atari, but I don't know what I want to play.  I just know I'd like to play a sports game.

So I launch Stella and open the folder with my Atari 2600 sports roms.

I have the roms organized into subfolders for each sport.

I press the "Random Folder" button (or use the hot keys).

Stella sees that there are 24 subfolders and randomly selects Baseball.

I think to myself, "Oh, that's a good choice!"  And so I hit the space bar.  Stella opens the folder and shows me my baseball roms.

But I still don't know which one I want to play.  So, I click on the "Random Game" button (or use the hot keys)

and Stella randomly selects E. A. Smith's homebrew, 1 v 1 Baseball.

I again think to myself, "Good choice!"  And I tap the space bar and Stella launches the game so I can play it.

 

The answer to the question, "Have you played Atari today?" is a two-step process.

Step 1: Choose a game.

Step 2: Start playing it!

I always get stuck on step #1.  We all have Rom Hunter's amazing rom collection.  We all have hundreds of games to play.  For me, the problem isn't having enough games.  I already have plenty of games.  For me, the problem is which ones should I play?  A random game feature would do the trick for me perfectly.  Apparently this idea is not crazy or new.  Other places that already have random game features include LaunchBox (random game), Atarionline.org (six random games), Mesen emulator (random game), Atari Age's 2600 hacks page (random hack), Moby Games (random game), MyAbandonware.com (random game) and Atarimania.com (random screenshot).  

 

Well, gentlemen, that's my pitch.  I think I'm not the only person who wonders, "What game should I play?"  I think the whole Atari community would benefit from this new feature.  Then we can all spend less time wondering which games to play and more time playing Atari.  Thank you for listening.  

Edited January 4 by Living Room Arcade

[Living Room Arcade]

On 1/4/2024 at 12:13 AM, Living Room Arcade said:

The same for me!  I just joined in July.  Thank you, @stephena, @DirtyHairy and @Thomas Jentzsch for all of your work making Stella.  My feedback is I think Stella is Atari 2600 emulating perfection.  I don't know how you guys did it, but I'm glad you did!

 

When you guys return from your rest, I have a new feature request that I'd like to make.

 

Two parts:

- randomly select a subfolder

- randomly select a rom 

 

Hot keys for both; possibly buttons to click with mouse somewhere on the GUI

 

Maybe an example would make this idea more clear?

 

Suppose I want to play Atari, but I don't know what I want to play.  I just know I'd like to play a sports game.

So I launch Stella and open the folder with my Atari 2600 sports roms.

I have the roms organized into subfolders for each sport.

I press the "Random Folder" button (or use the hot keys).

Stella sees that there are 24 subfolders and randomly selects Baseball.

I think to myself, "Oh, that's a good choice!"  And so I hit the space bar.  Stella opens the folder and shows me my baseball roms.

But I still don't know which one I want to play.  So, I click on the "Random Game" button (or use the hot keys)

and Stella randomly selects E. A. Smith's homebrew, 1 v 1 Baseball.

I again think to myself, "Good choice!"  And I tap the space bar and Stella launches the game so I can play it.

 

The answer to the question, "Have you played Atari today?" is a two-step process.

Step 1: Choose a game.

Step 2: Start playing it!

I always get stuck on step #1.  We all have Rom Hunter's amazing rom collection.  We all have hundreds of games to play.  For me, the problem isn't having enough games.  I already have plenty of games.  For me, the problem is which ones should I play?  A random game feature would do the trick for me perfectly.  Apparently this idea is not crazy or new.  Other places that already have random game features include LaunchBox (random game), Atarionline.org (six random games), Mesen emulator (random game), Atari Age's 2600 hacks page (random hack), Moby Games (random game), MyAbandonware.com (random game) and Atarimania.com (random screenshot).  

 

Well, gentlemen, that's my pitch.  I think I'm not the only person who wonders, "What game should I play?"  I think the whole Atari community would benefit from this new feature.  Then we can all spend less time wondering which games to play and more time playing Atari.  Thank you for listening.  

UPDATE: The ticket is closed at Git Hub.  The random game feature will be included in Stella 7.0 thanks to Thomas Jentzsch!  See other thread if interested.  

Edited January 11 by Living Room Arcade

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The implementation is a bit different from your request. There is only one button and it only selects a valid ROM from the current file list (current directory with or without subdirectories). I could change it to select anything (incl. directories). And if a directory selected this would be entered and another random selection could be done.

 

But IMO the current implementation is most likely the most generally useful one.

[Living Room Arcade]

15 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

There is only one button and it only selects a valid ROM from the current file list (current directory with or without subdirectories). 

@Thomas Jentzsch  Perfect!  Selecting a random ROM from the current file list is the key functionality requested.  Nothing more is needed if you ask me.  And I'm very grateful for it!  

 

I have a folder on my computer called Arcade, and in it I have 200+ Atari 2600 ROMS representing 175+ arcade machines!  What will my first random arcade game be?  Will it be Centipede?  Or Arkanoid?  Or Mappy?  Or Time Pilot?  Can't wait to try out the new random game feature on my arcade games folder and find out!  Thanks again!

Edited January 13 by Living Room Arcade

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Please note that a minor update of Stella (6.7.1) has been released. This was requested by @dualcam (Tom Hafner of 2600-daptor) and fixes the driving controller support for the 2600-daptor. It was broken before and Tom got a lot of customer complains about this.

 

Since Tom is a longtime, frequent contributor to Stella, the Stella team was more than happy to honor his request.

Edited January 16 by Thomas Jentzsch

[+stephena]

I've had to pull the Windows builds for 6.7.1, as someone has reported a virus present.  It's apparently not a serious virus, but I want to be cautious anyway.  I will re-release these when I'm sure my system is virus-free (or I'll find another system to build them on).

[+stephena]

1 hour ago, stephena said:

I've had to pull the Windows builds for 6.7.1, as someone has reported a virus present.  It's apparently not a serious virus, but I want to be cautious anyway.  I will re-release these when I'm sure my system is virus-free (or I'll find another system to build them on).

I've determined this only affects 32-bit builds, not 64-bit.  So if you've installed and used only the 64-bit version, you're fine.  I'll continue working to fix this.  For now, all the Windows builds are pulled.

[+stephena]

I think I have this fixed, and will do new uploads tomorrow.  There's still a false positive there, but it passes every anti-virus test I've tried.

[+stephena]

Builds are now updated.