44 replies to this topic

[Keatah]

SpiceWare, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 8:40 AM, said:

Nice!

I dropped into Windowed mode and got a skinny display. It looks OK full-screen. I suspect it did this because I'm on a 16:9 monitor.
skinny.png

Also couldn't get Medieval Mayhem to run. The bank switch list in the readme has Atari 32K, though I suspect that's with a SARA Chip, which Medieval Mayhem doesn't use.

I gotta 4:3 display and the image is skinnier than an anorexic fashion model.. yikes!

[mwalden]

John Saeger, on Tue May 31, 2011 12:39 AM, said:

And you can post your complaints on this thread.

I discovered another bug in z26 v3.01. When firing the players laser in Laser Blast, the gun appears below the ship, the associated sound is produced, and an explosion is produced on the ground. No laser line is produced between the players ship and the explosion on the ground.

Also, one thing became apparent to me with the z26 user interface that should be changed. When selecting a game from the Play a Game screen, it is difficult to discern which game is the one desired due to the screen width (53 characters including the : on long lines) being shorter than the length of file names. This is problematic when two or more files have the first 52 characters identical. I have several suggestions for ways to address this.

1. Allow the user to use the left and right arrow keys to scroll the whole screen or selected game name left and right to expose obscured text.
2. Allow the user to press the question mark key (?) to pop-up a window with a word wrapped version of the full name. Pressing an up or down arrow key should cause the window to automatically disappear.
3. Make a two or three line high window on the top or bottom which shows the full name of the selected game.
4. Truncate the center of the name and replace the omitted text with an ellipsis (...) indicating that the name is incomplete.
5. A combination of two or more of the above, such as providing both items 1 and 4.

Lastly, when switching from the z26 task to another one using Alt+Tab, the mouse pointer is stuck in the upper left hand corner of the screen and therefore is unusable. When switching back to the z26 task it occasionally delays for about a second and blinks on the screen for a fraction of a second and then disappears/crashes.

Thanks in advance

[Keatah]

Air-Sea Battle is broken.

[John Saeger]

Keatah, on Tue Jun 7, 2011 9:12 PM, said:

Combat is broke, is this a joke??

No it's not a joke. It's a new TIA engine. The last time we got one working it took maybe two years. It was great fun actually. Combat doesn't work? Actually it is pretty funny. I didn't know anybody played combat any more.

Ciao!

John

[John Saeger]

stephena, on Tue Jun 7, 2011 4:10 AM, said:

Silvio Mogno, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 3:20 PM, said:

I played 2600 on z26 mainly in the past, now I play on my real 2600. But IMO z26 is superior to Stella in many ways and it feels lighter to my pc. The only thing I always missed in it is a debugger, do you think to add it in the future John?

The debugger in Stella is quite mature at this point, having had several years of work done to it. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to specifically state how Stella is inferior in many ways (so things can be improved) rather than just dismissing it out of hand. I assure you that adding a comprehensive debugger is not a small feat, so it would probably be less work overall to address shortcomings in Stella itself.

Hey dude! Welcome to my thread. Hey, I'm having a little trouble getting combat to work. Do you think you can help? Did you write the current Stella TIA engine?

Best,

John

[John Saeger]

SpiceWare, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 12:48 PM, said:

That fixed it!

I like the scanline option, makes the image look more like it does on a TV
z26.png

There's other homebrews that also use 32 w/out SARA. I think the auto-detect in Stella looks at the first 256 bytes of each bank and if it's filled in with a constant value ($FF or $00?) it turns on SARA support, otherwise it's turned off.

Thanks! We're working on it. I've seen it play, but we need to do some other things before releasing the next version. Something about combat...

Thanks again!

John

[John Saeger]

Silvio Mogno, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 3:20 PM, said:

I played 2600 on z26 mainly in the past, now I play on my real 2600. But IMO z26 is superior to Stella in many ways and it feels lighter to my pc. The only thing I always missed in it is a debugger, do you think to add it in the future John?

You know, for the longest time I didn't want to do a debugger because I liked the one in PCAE. I'll think about it, but the TIA engine comes first.

Thanks for the feedback!

John

[Keatah]

Outlaw is broke too.

Edited by Keatah, Sat Jun 11, 2011 11:29 AM.

[Silvio Mogno]

stephena, on Tue Jun 7, 2011 4:10 AM, said:

Silvio Mogno, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 3:20 PM, said:

I played 2600 on z26 mainly in the past, now I play on my real 2600. But IMO z26 is superior to Stella in many ways and it feels lighter to my pc. The only thing I always missed in it is a debugger, do you think to add it in the future John?

The debugger in Stella is quite mature at this point, having had several years of work done to it. Perhaps it would be more beneficial to specifically state how Stella is inferior in many ways (so things can be improved) rather than just dismissing it out of hand. I assure you that adding a comprehensive debugger is not a small feat, so it would probably be less work overall to address shortcomings in Stella itself.

I'm not saying Stella is no good, it has many features including a great debugger (that really helped me to finish my Rainbow Invaders ) and a cool frying feature that gives real results without frying a real cart . I didn't want to dismiss it, I also included an acknowledgment to you all in my Rainbow Invaders manual.
As I said I prefer z26 for its low cpu hunger and its immediacy (less the options -> less potentially dispersive the application, a bit like playing on a 2600 vs. playing on a PS3), but it's more a feeling than a strict technical judgment.
But if you want something to improve look at the attached pic: the zero on the left of the speed meter is not correct.
With my best thanks to all 2600 enthusiastics and contributors after near 35 years of history .
Silvio Mogno

Attached Thumbnails

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[Keatah]

Silvio Mogno, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 3:20 PM, said:

As I said I prefer z26 for its low cpu hunger and its immediacy (less the options -> less potentially dispersive the application, a bit like playing on a 2600 vs. playing on a PS3), but it's more a feeling than a strict technical judgment.

But if you want something to improve look at the attached pic: the zero on the left of the speed meter is not correct.
With my best thanks to all 2600 enthusiastics and contributors after near 35 years of history .
Silvio Mogno

With any form of PC hardware you absolutely *NEED* a lot of options in whatever emulator you're messing around with. You need to be able to accommodate all the differences in hardware, screen sizes, sound capabilities, and most importantly, Controller configurations! You need be able to handle Joysticks, adapters, keypads, paddles, race controllers, trackballs, keyboards, mice, gamepads, AND MORE! And every hardware setup will not appeal to everyone, so you need a good common default that works all around.

Once you've spent the 5 seemingly required "introductory" hours getting your emulated console set up to your preferences, you shouldn't have to dick around with menu options. You can just select your game and go! Done and done.

As far as z26 being lightweight compared to stella being overweight, this is a non issue. Especially on today's hardware. It's not like that either emulator needs to be distro'd on a DVD like an o/s!

As far as "immediacy" goes, I see no difference between stella and z26. They take the exact same number of clicks and mouse movements to get a game going. Exactly.

1- open the emu
2- click/scroll/type you're way to the game
3- select it and start it
4- hit the virtual reset switch and play begins.

how is z26 more immediate??? Perhaps it looks more old-school-terminally, like a tele-type terminal? More "DOSSY" ??

IDK, I'd rather have an emu that works and is tested prior to being released.

Edited by Keatah, Sun Jun 12, 2011 6:36 PM.

[John Saeger]

Keatah, on Sun Jun 12, 2011 6:31 PM, said:

Silvio Mogno, on Mon Jun 6, 2011 3:20 PM, said:

As I said I prefer z26 for its low cpu hunger and its immediacy (less the options -> less potentially dispersive the application, a bit like playing on a 2600 vs. playing on a PS3), but it's more a feeling than a strict technical judgment.

But if you want something to improve look at the attached pic: the zero on the left of the speed meter is not correct.
With my best thanks to all 2600 enthusiastics and contributors after near 35 years of history .
Silvio Mogno

With any form of PC hardware you absolutely *NEED* a lot of options in whatever emulator you're messing around with. You need to be able to accommodate all the differences in hardware, screen sizes, sound capabilities, and most importantly, Controller configurations! You need be able to handle Joysticks, adapters, keypads, paddles, race controllers, trackballs, keyboards, mice, gamepads, AND MORE! And every hardware setup will not appeal to everyone, so you need a good common default that works all around.

Once you've spent the 5 seemingly required "introductory" hours getting your emulated console set up to your preferences, you shouldn't have to dick around with menu options. You can just select your game and go! Done and done.

As far as z26 being lightweight compared to stella being overweight, this is a non issue. Especially on today's hardware. It's not like that either emulator needs to be distro'd on a DVD like an o/s!

As far as "immediacy" goes, I see no difference between stella and z26. They take the exact same number of clicks and mouse movements to get a game going. Exactly.

1- open the emu
2- click/scroll/type you're way to the game
3- select it and start it
4- hit the virtual reset switch and play begins.

how is z26 more immediate??? Perhaps it looks more old-school-terminally, like a tele-type terminal? More "DOSSY" ??

IDK, I'd rather have an emu that works and is tested prior to being released.

Actually, z26 can get into a game - back out and into the GUI way faster than Stella. Way. That's where the immediacy comes from. That's where the *feeling* comes from.

I've always crowd-sourced testing. Always. There is no way I can test 10,000 rom images. You are the first person ever to complain. That doesn't bother me much because actually, you are being one of the most helpful. I appreciate it.

Anyway, either today or tomorrow I'll release version 3.02. As far as I can tell, it fixes all reported problems except laser blast and meltdown. It even fixes pole position.

Thanks to everybody for the feedback so far. I will give more detailed responses to some of the suggestions for new features over time. I'm not ignoring you. It would be great if after 3.02 comes out we can start a new list of broken games and games with bad graphics.

Thanks a lot!

John

[Keatah]

Recent iterations of BallBlazer 2600 are JAMMED! the last 2 evaluation binaries won't start.

[Keatah]

Recent iterations of BallBlazer 2600 are JAMMED! the last 2 evaluation binaries won't start.
Donald Duck's Speedboat doesn't start, it flashed red all over the place.
Juno 1st is dead
Cosmic Ark - starfield is broke.
Stell-A-Sketch is a mess.
t2600.bas.bin won't start.
Flag Capture has a slightly raspy sound when you score the flag.

Edited by Keatah, Mon Jun 13, 2011 1:26 AM.

[stephena]

John Saeger, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:07 AM, said:

Actually, z26 can get into a game - back out and into the GUI way faster than Stella. Way. That's where the immediacy comes from. That's where the *feeling* comes from.

Not on any system I've tried. Stella starts up immediately and loads a ROM very quickly. Pressing Escape brings you back to the ROM launcher, where selecting another ROM again is very quick. I can start and stop several ROMs per second. I don't know how much faster it needs to be than that.

Also, Stella contains an internal ROM properties database of over 3000 ROMs, holding all sorts of information (like ROM name, manufacturer, etc) which must be loaded when the application starts, and searched each time a ROM is loaded. It uses binary search for this, so it is very fast. And it does extensive autodetection of both bankswitch type and TIA settings, so it will necessarily take a little longer to start a ROM, analyse it, run for a few frames, etc. But on every system I've ever tested, this extra delay has been imperceptible. I suppose I could make it even faster by removing the built-in database and autodetection, but I feel these are very useful things to have (and many users have agreed).

[Andrew Davie]

stephena, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 4:14 AM, said:

John Saeger, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:07 AM, said:

Actually, z26 can get into a game - back out and into the GUI way faster than Stella. Way. That's where the immediacy comes from. That's where the *feeling* comes from.

Not on any system I've tried. Stella starts up immediately and loads a ROM very quickly. Pressing Escape brings you back to the ROM launcher, where selecting another ROM again is very quick. I can start and stop several ROMs per second. I don't know how much faster it needs to be than that.

OK, I'm a stella fan so don't get me wrong. But for me, at least... the most up to date version of stella takes 2-3 seconds to exit. It's incredibly slow. It makes using it as a development emulator a bit frustrating. As such, it would be much nicer if stella was started on the command-line by passing it a ROM file, that the escape key would exit... NOT go to the rom launcher. Sytem: Linux Ubuntu 11.04

[bomberpunk]

i always used z26. and i had an old ass version. now i just use my Harmony cart.

[stephena]

Andrew Davie, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 4:33 AM, said:

stephena, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 4:14 AM, said:

John Saeger, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:07 AM, said:

Actually, z26 can get into a game - back out and into the GUI way faster than Stella. Way. That's where the immediacy comes from. That's where the *feeling* comes from.

Not on any system I've tried. Stella starts up immediately and loads a ROM very quickly. Pressing Escape brings you back to the ROM launcher, where selecting another ROM again is very quick. I can start and stop several ROMs per second. I don't know how much faster it needs to be than that.

OK, I'm a stella fan so don't get me wrong. But for me, at least... the most up to date version of stella takes 2-3 seconds to exit. It's incredibly slow. It makes using it as a development emulator a bit frustrating. As such, it would be much nicer if stella was started on the command-line by passing it a ROM file, that the escape key would exit... NOT go to the rom launcher. Sytem: Linux Ubuntu 11.04

Response sent by PM, as to not tie up this forum any further.

[ScumSoft]

Does Z26 support the DPC+ chip? no?

I win

I'm just kidding, Z26 is pretty nice but I feel Stella is a much more mature emulator, the debugger is a must have for my game development.
I will lean towards whichever emulator is more accurate to the real hardware, although I do own the Harmony cart and can test on the real thing, I like using the emulator for quick build tests and the real thing for long testing.

Personally, speed is not an issue. I care not if the application takes a few seconds to load or exit, I simply double click my rom and Stella launches the game. When I am done I press ESC, close the window with a mouse click and go back to working on my code.

Edited by ScumSoft, Mon Jun 13, 2011 5:46 AM.

[John Saeger]

mwalden, on Thu Jun 9, 2011 9:04 AM, said:

John Saeger, on Tue May 31, 2011 12:39 AM, said:

And you can post your complaints on this thread.

I discovered another bug in z26 v3.01. When firing the players laser in Laser Blast, the gun appears below the ship, the associated sound is produced, and an explosion is produced on the ground. No laser line is produced between the players ship and the explosion on the ground.

Also, one thing became apparent to me with the z26 user interface that should be changed. When selecting a game from the Play a Game screen, it is difficult to discern which game is the one desired due to the screen width (53 characters including the : on long lines) being shorter than the length of file names. This is problematic when two or more files have the first 52 characters identical. I have several suggestions for ways to address this.

1. Allow the user to use the left and right arrow keys to scroll the whole screen or selected game name left and right to expose obscured text.
2. Allow the user to press the question mark key (?) to pop-up a window with a word wrapped version of the full name. Pressing an up or down arrow key should cause the window to automatically disappear.
3. Make a two or three line high window on the top or bottom which shows the full name of the selected game.
4. Truncate the center of the name and replace the omitted text with an ellipsis (...) indicating that the name is incomplete.
5. A combination of two or more of the above, such as providing both items 1 and 4.

Lastly, when switching from the z26 task to another one using Alt+Tab, the mouse pointer is stuck in the upper left hand corner of the screen and therefore is unusable. When switching back to the z26 task it occasionally delays for about a second and blinks on the screen for a fraction of a second and then disappears/crashes.

Thanks in advance

Good catch with laser blast. It's not fixed yet. I posted 3.02 which does fix the alt-Tab issue. At some point I'll do *something* with the long filenames. Probably not this week though...

Thanks for the feedback!

John

[John Saeger]

stephena, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 4:14 AM, said:

John Saeger, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:07 AM, said:

Actually, z26 can get into a game - back out and into the GUI way faster than Stella. Way. That's where the immediacy comes from. That's where the *feeling* comes from.

Not on any system I've tried. Stella starts up immediately and loads a ROM very quickly. Pressing Escape brings you back to the ROM launcher, where selecting another ROM again is very quick. I can start and stop several ROMs per second. I don't know how much faster it needs to be than that.

Also, Stella contains an internal ROM properties database of over 3000 ROMs, holding all sorts of information (like ROM name, manufacturer, etc) which must be loaded when the application starts, and searched each time a ROM is loaded. It uses binary search for this, so it is very fast. And it does extensive autodetection of both bankswitch type and TIA settings, so it will necessarily take a little longer to start a ROM, analyse it, run for a few frames, etc. But on every system I've ever tested, this extra delay has been imperceptible. I suppose I could make it even faster by removing the built-in database and autodetection, but I feel these are very useful things to have (and many users have agreed).

Ha! You got me! Everybody's systems are different. On my system, with Stella, it's like hold your breath and hope for the best. Especially with the opengl modes. Lots of times the screen just turns white and then I have to reboot. What can I say? But that's neither here nor there really. So who wrote the Stella TIA? It's pretty nice.

John