58 replies to this topic

[Room 34]

OK, follow-up.

It's not the panacea I thought it was. I seem to be able to make some games play at full speed (or even way too fast), such as Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. (I know, I know... I just chose Pac-Man for testing purposes.) But I can only do that through a mystical voodoo combination of switching between software rendering and OpenGL rendering as well as toggling fullscreen mode. (It only plays at the proper speed in fullscreen... and in fact Ms. Pac-Man plays like a speed chip modded arcade machine if I turn off speed limiter.)

However... Activision games (I tested my two favorites, H.E.R.O. and Keystone Kapers) seem to have trouble working at all in fullscreen mode... video, anyway... and when I switch back to regular mode they are EXCRUCIATINGLY slow. What's worse, if I fire up Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man after that, they're slow too! I have to restart the program to get them fast again. Also, it's kind of spotty in remembering my preferences, including OpenGL rendering mode, screen mode, the last used directory (jumping back to the default ~/Documents which is NEVER where I keep my ROMs!), etc.

Granted, even with these glitches, I will probably use this version more than the last, since I had to run it in a microscopic window to get my G3 iBook to play at full speed.

[Bruce Tomlin]

So, is anyone going to re-port MESS to OS X any time soon? 0.70 is quite a few versions behind. (And I found a bug in the 7800 emulation of 0.70: in 320B mode, indirect with 2-byte characters shows up half as wide as it should be.)

[Albert]

[quote name='Bruce Tomlin]So' date=' is anyone going to re-port MESS to OS X any time soon? 0.70 is quite a few versions behind. (And I found a bug in the 7800 emulation of 0.70: in 320B mode, indirect with 2-byte characters shows up half as wide as it should be.)[/quote']

That would be nice, especially considering how many systems MESS emulates!

..Al

[stephena]

Quote

OK, follow-up.

It's not the panacea I thought it was. I seem to be able to make some games play at full speed (or even way too fast), such as Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. (I know, I know... I just chose Pac-Man for testing purposes.) But I can only do that through a mystical voodoo combination of switching between software rendering and OpenGL rendering as well as toggling fullscreen mode. (It only plays at the proper speed in fullscreen... and in fact Ms. Pac-Man plays like a speed chip modded arcade machine if I turn off speed limiter.)

However... Activision games (I tested my two favorites, H.E.R.O. and Keystone Kapers) seem to have trouble working at all in fullscreen mode... video, anyway... and when I switch back to regular mode they are EXCRUCIATINGLY slow. What's worse, if I fire up Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man after that, they're slow too! I have to restart the program to get them fast again. Also, it's kind of spotty in remembering my preferences, including OpenGL rendering mode, screen mode, the last used directory (jumping back to the default ~/Documents which is NEVER where I keep my ROMs!), etc.

Granted, even with these glitches, I will probably use this version more than the last, since I had to run it in a microscopic window to get my G3 iBook to play at full speed.

I'll have to forward this message to the OSX maintainer, since I don't have access to a Mac and never wrote portions of that code.

Steve

[stephena]

[quote name='Room 34]However... Activision games (I tested my two favorites' date=' H.E.R.O. and Keystone Kapers) seem to have trouble working at all in fullscreen mode... video, anyway... and when I switch back to regular mode they are EXCRUCIATINGLY slow. What's worse, if I fire up Pac-Man or Ms. Pac-Man after that, they're slow too! I have to restart the program to get them fast again. Also, it's kind of spotty in remembering my preferences, including OpenGL rendering mode, screen mode, the last used directory (jumping back to the default ~/Documents which is NEVER where I keep my ROMs!), etc.[/quote']
What ROMs are you using (exact name from stella.pro file, if possible)?

Maybe you're using PAL ROMs that are mistakenly running as NTSC ones.

Also, please describe your hardware (OSX version, CPU speed, etc).

As Stella 1.4 was a huge jump (partial rewrite) and the OSX port is quite new, there are bound to be some bugs ...

Steve

[Voch]

Room 34: you might want to try knocking down your iBook's screen resolution to 640x480 or 800x600 and running the emulator like that. Less pixels equals more speed.

Voch

[stephena]

Quote

Room 34: you might want to try knocking down your iBook's screen resolution to 640x480 or 800x600 and running the emulator like that. Less pixels equals more speed.

Voch

This is true for software mode, since the scaling actually sends more pixels over the line.

But the OpenGL mode always uses an (approx) 300x200 window. It actually gets bigger by using hardware scaling. So assuming you have enough video memory and a somewhat recent video card, rendering at 300x200 or 1280x1024 should be the same speed.

I still think there's something else wrong. Room 34: could you provide me with the info requested in a previous message when you get a chance?

Steve

[Cybergoth]

Hi Steven!

Quote

Yes, I'm quoting myself I've partially found the problem. The SDL.dll I included seems to be causing problems. It was compiled in VC6 under Windows XP. When I use the one from libsdl.org it works fine (but without Stelladaptor support, of course).

So I'll try recompiling the dll under Windows 98 and see if that works. If not, I guess I'll have to figure out another way of doing Stelladaptor support in Windows (damn, I hate having to work around Windows bugs ...)

Hm... by now I tried the sdl.dll from Z26 and the 1.2 from the original distribution and neither one did the trick for me...

Greetings,
Manuel

[atarimac]

Room34,
I'm the author of the Mac port, and I've been gone on vacation for the last week. I'm probably going to need your help to figure out what sort of bug you are seeing. What version of OSX are you running? And what speed processor?
I haven't seen any problems on my machine, but I have a Dual 1.25G G4 PowerMac. I do have an older B/W G3 (500M) I can hook up later this weekend and try it on.

Mark