Beta Partial Success With Latest Stella-Version (3.2.1)

[lomaxx]

Just some feedback:

While playing Pitfall2 with the PNDed version of the Atari2600-emulator "Stella", which is as i guess the stella-GP2X-2.3.5-version, i noticed that it's not playing all tracks of the background-music. So i compared it to the stella-version on my Gentoo-box and noticed that it's running fine there. Because of this i was curious if the current version of stella would compile fine on the Pandora and - guess what - it did. Of course it compiled without OpenGL-support so far, but all i had to do was to install libsdl-1.2-dev ("opkg install libsdl-1.2-dev") and run "./configure" and "make".

After that i ran "./stella", the gui showed up, all menus worked. I tested some games and noticed that some ran, others not. After some investigation it seemed that the PAL-games seem to make the emulator crash with the message:

stella: src/common/Array.hxx:113: T& Common::Array<T>::operator[](int) [with T = FrameBuffer::VideoMode]:Assertion `idx >= 0 && idx < _size' failed.

When i manually set the video-mode in the display-section of the game-specific-config-menu to "NTSC", the games do not crash anymore, though are not playable due to gfx-bugs.

The NTSC-version of Pitfall2 ran fine with full sound. Just the sound was a stuttering a little bit every now and then (at 600mhz with Wlan enabled). That's not surprised as long as opengl-support is not running. "top" showed a cpu-usage somewhere in the 80-90%s. Seems to be a similar performance like the outdated PNDed-version is showing.

I didn't do a PND so far. If someone is interested, then i still can upload the directory containing the source-code and binary.

EDIT: Oh, i forgot to mention another benefit: This now comes with lots of command-line-parameters.

 

[skeezix]

We have multiple Stella builds; the very latest stella source runs much slower than the older source; the PAndora build is not the gp2x binary (that'd need Ginge), but is the same older Stella build, for speed reasons. I think we have the latest build around somewhere as well ..

But that was latest version 6mo ago; they have been doing strides to improving performance, and I Think the very latest perform nearly as well as older; inf act, I thought we had a pnd of a month or two old one around somewhere

But feel free to pack it up, if the current is not up somewhere; just grab the pnd from the existing stella, mount it, and use its run-script, icon, etc, to save yourself the work.,

jeff

 

[lomaxx]

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure if i should pack it into a PND right now. There are still a couple of issues.

The Pros are:

-nicer GUI, that let's you select games faster
-better sound-support (like in Pitfall2)
-command-line-parameters (although i am not sure if the old version also had some, i think not)

the cons:

-PAL-games are not working
-delete-key is not working (you can enter a filter in the rom-selection-window, but you can not delete it)
-GUI-window is a little bit too large (the panel is hovering above it). works if you press CTRL+F11, might be fixable with parameters
-game-screen is not centered in fullscreenmode, might also be fixable with parameters.

I just wanted to mention all this in order to get some attention in case noone was trying newer versions. But if you do, it's fine. =) The most interesting (and hardest) part is probably to get OpenGL-support running.

 

[skeezix]

A pnd needn't be perfect; if you think its an improvement, and getting a few more fixes is in is too much, it might be worth putting out anyway; or if you can fix it up, keep at it

jeff

 

[Yamara]

You could just release it and call it "beta"