Stella 2.3 Released!

[slaanesh]

New version of Stella v2.3 for the GP2X (and others)

Get it at:

Stella v2.3 for GP2X

Lots of changes and updates and potentially a fair bit faster.

Check the webpage for details.

 

[multi]

That's nice.
But still, Stella sucks.

Someone should port Z26 for gp2x. And yes, sourcecode is available.

 

[garethp1745]

That's nice.
But still, Stella sucks.

Someone should port Z26 for gp2x. And yes, sourcecode is available.

Instead of complaining get off your ass and convert it. Thanks Slanesh for porting the emulator to the best handheld on the market.

Gareth

 

[classicgmr]

Sweet! New 2600 upgrade. Thanks a ton.

 

[slaanesh]

Thanks Slanesh for porting the emulator to the best handheld on the market.

I didn't port it

I just saw that a new version was available and wanted to make sure that people knew of it!

 

[multi]

New versions of emulators are always appreciated, but Stella just can't handle VCS roms properly.

I checked Z26's source and it seems that since it uses x86 assembly, it won't be possible to port it yet. Correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[Goemon4]

awsome, thanks!

 

[rememberthe8bit]

That's nice.
But still, Stella sucks.

Someone should port Z26 for gp2x. And yes, sourcecode is available.

Eh? I see nothing wrong with Stella from the regular ole' end-user standpoint. The previous Stella ran all of the games I threw at it, and it was usable at 166mhz.

 

[sa666666]

That's nice.
But still, Stella sucks.

Someone should port Z26 for gp2x. And yes, sourcecode is available.

Thanks for that vote of confidence (NOT). We spend months working on something in our spare time, and this is the response? This is why I'm seriously considering giving up on maintaining Stella. There's always someone that pops up and says "use z26". Z26 doesn't have a frontend, built-in UI, debugger, and isn't portable to anything other than x86.

As for Stella not supporting VCS ROMs, this is the first I've heard of it. Have you reported the bug to anyone on the Stella team (ie, me)? Do you have a ROM that I can test it with. I've personally tested Stella with over 2700 ROMs, and scour the AtariAge site daily for new homebrew ROMs to test. And this is the first I've heard of it.

We can't fix bugs if people don't report them. And the "use z26" argument is really beginning to get on my nerves. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's no less harsh than saying that our work sucks, and then doing zero work to rectify it.

 

[GameGod]

sa666666: I don't even know why multi would post something so stupid like that. Just ignore him, as hard as that might be.

In either event, I'm personally thankful for your good work. Don't let the bastards grind you down - There's a lot of us out there that REALLY appreciate what you've done.

 

[alyinsanfran]

Oh hell yes, Stella on the GP2X is awesome!

I get so sick of people ragging on developers, it's a real sign of immaturity.

Thanks for this update sa666666, I love Stella!

 

[SiDCrAzY]

That's nice.
But still, Stella sucks.

Someone should port Z26 for gp2x. And yes, sourcecode is available.

Thanks for that vote of confidence (NOT). We spend months working on something in our spare time, and this is the response? This is why I'm seriously considering giving up on maintaining Stella. There's always someone that pops up and says "use z26". Z26 doesn't have a frontend, built-in UI, debugger, and isn't portable to anything other than x86.

As for Stella not supporting VCS ROMs, this is the first I've heard of it. Have you reported the bug to anyone on the Stella team (ie, me)? Do you have a ROM that I can test it with. I've personally tested Stella with over 2700 ROMs, and scour the AtariAge site daily for new homebrew ROMs to test. And this is the first I've heard of it.

We can't fix bugs if people don't report them. And the "use z26" argument is really beginning to get on my nerves. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's no less harsh than saying that our work sucks, and then doing zero work to rectify it.

Don't let one person discourage you sa666666, just know that the rest of us really do appreciate your work.

Thanks for all your work on maintaining Stella!

 

[zansatsu]

That's nice.
But still, Stella sucks.

Someone should port Z26 for gp2x. And yes, sourcecode is available.

Thanks for that vote of confidence (NOT). We spend months working on something in our spare time, and this is the response? This is why I'm seriously considering giving up on maintaining Stella. There's always someone that pops up and says "use z26". Z26 doesn't have a frontend, built-in UI, debugger, and isn't portable to anything other than x86.

As for Stella not supporting VCS ROMs, this is the first I've heard of it. Have you reported the bug to anyone on the Stella team (ie, me)? Do you have a ROM that I can test it with. I've personally tested Stella with over 2700 ROMs, and scour the AtariAge site daily for new homebrew ROMs to test. And this is the first I've heard of it.

We can't fix bugs if people don't report them. And the "use z26" argument is really beginning to get on my nerves. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's no less harsh than saying that our work sucks, and then doing zero work to rectify it.

Don't let one person discourage you sa666666, just know that the rest of us really do appreciate your work.

Thanks for all your work on maintaining Stella!

I had everything cued up for the release, it looks like the fans beat me to it. If anything, that points to the kind of thirst there is for the new release. Upon approval, we'll have archive.gp2x.de updated as well as the official news post.

It is also available from http://zansatsu0.tripod.com/stella.html

 

[zansatsu]

Ok, since my anouncement got nixed, I'll do it here.

Much has changed with the release of Stella 2.3. Among the changes below, Stella for the GP2X is now capable of handling higher resolutions. Translation: PAL ROMs are now playable. Be sure to thank Paeryn for opening up the GP2X hardware with his custom SDL libs.

Changes from 2.2 (Revision 1)

* Moved away from using joymouse emulation, which was frustrating many users, to a more effective GUI button control scheme.
* PAL ROMs are now playable thanks to Paeryn's scaling libs.
* Paddle games like 'Tac-scan,' 'Demons to Diamonds,' 'Video Olympics,' and others are now playable thanks to Steve.
* Made '/mnt/sd' the default ROM and Snapshot directory this way Stella doesn't look anywhere it shouldn't.
* Changed button mapping.
* Various performance tweaks.

 

[multi]

Thanks for that vote of confidence (NOT). We spend months working on something in our spare time, and this is the response? This is why I'm seriously considering giving up on maintaining Stella. There's always someone that pops up and says "use z26". Z26 doesn't have a frontend, built-in UI, debugger, and isn't portable to anything other than x86.

As for Stella not supporting VCS ROMs, this is the first I've heard of it. Have you reported the bug to anyone on the Stella team (ie, me)? Do you have a ROM that I can test it with. I've personally tested Stella with over 2700 ROMs, and scour the AtariAge site daily for new homebrew ROMs to test. And this is the first I've heard of it.

We can't fix bugs if people don't report them. And the "use z26" argument is really beginning to get on my nerves. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's no less harsh than saying that our work sucks, and then doing zero work to rectify it.

At least Eurocon 2005 and Graz intros have issues with flickering, colors and running speed.

 

[sa666666]

Don't let one person discourage you sa666666, just know that the rest of us really do appreciate your work.

Thanks for all your work on maintaining Stella!

Sorry for the mini-rant. Perhaps it's the stress of the holidays. Or maybe the fact that the Windows build had to be pulled for a bug that wasn't reported before the release. The overall problem is, it isn't just one person making comments like that. I've been involved with the project since 2001, and that's a long time to stay on one thing in my spare time and have to deal with useless comments. It wears you down after a while.

Just to reiterate: I have no problem if someone prefers another emulator. Although I'm somewhat biased since I think this project has features that no other emulator has, I have no problem with choice/diversity. But saying that something just sucks, and not following up on it, is just a waste of my time. If someone has a problem, report it. Even if someone says "it sucks because it doesn't work with XXX ROM", at least we have something to look at and fix. But comments like that are worse than useless.

Anyway, enough on that issue. Hopefully this release will work for those who do want to use Stella. And don't forget to thank Zansatsu and TelcoLou, who are more directly responsible for the suggestions and improvements in the GP2X port.

 

[sa666666]

We can't fix bugs if people don't report them. And the "use z26" argument is really beginning to get on my nerves. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's no less harsh than saying that our work sucks, and then doing zero work to rectify it.

At least Eurocon 2005 and Graz intros have issues with flickering, colors and running speed.

The speed issues are hopefully taken care of in this release. There was a problem with ROMs that had a lot of onscreen changes. New rendering modes were introduced (and made the default) in this release, and it's resulted in speed increases that make it run the same speed as in z26. Not bad for C++ vs. assembly code, I think. The flickering and colours are because those are PAL ROMs, and Stella needs to be told that. I'll admit that z26 often does a better job of detecting PAL ROMs, but it sometimes mis-detects them too. So on my system, when you specify PAL format for these ROMs, the run at the same speed and, using the z26 palette built in to Stella, look exactly the same as z26. It took me all of 2 minutes to diagnose this problem. If it had been reported to me directly, it could have been included in this release. As it is, you can modify the ROM properties yourself, directly within Stella. Then when you start the ROM again, it will work fine. Other than reporting bugs to me directly, I can't do much better than that.

 

[DaveC]

I don't know what that guy was bitching about.

I am one of if not THE most picky of emu critics here and the emu seems great to me, the previous version that is (haven't had the chance to get to this one yet). I don't have any problem with this yet.

I will have to test later, the only thing I am unsure of yet is if the emu supports software diagonals (UP+Right = diagonal) as I have a d-pad modded system. If it does then it is great to me.

 

[zansatsu]

We can't fix bugs if people don't report them. And the "use z26" argument is really beginning to get on my nerves. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but it's no less harsh than saying that our work sucks, and then doing zero work to rectify it.

At least Eurocon 2005 and Graz intros have issues with flickering, colors and running speed.

The speed issues are hopefully taken care of in this release. There was a problem with ROMs that had a lot of onscreen changes. New rendering modes were introduced (and made the default) in this release, and it's resulted in speed increases that make it run the same speed as in z26. Not bad for C++ vs. assembly code, I think. The flickering and colours are because those are PAL ROMs, and Stella needs to be told that. I'll admit that z26 often does a better job of detecting PAL ROMs, but it sometimes mis-detects them too. So on my system, when you specify PAL format for these ROMs, the run at the same speed and, using the z26 palette built in to Stella, look exactly the same as z26. It took me all of 2 minutes to diagnose this problem. If it had been reported to me directly, it could have been included in this release. As it is, you can modify the ROM properties yourself, directly within Stella. Then when you start the ROM again, it will work fine. Other than reporting bugs to me directly, I can't do much better than that.

Confirmed. Under 2.3, after setting ROM properties and a ROM reload, both (Graz and Eurocon) work.

http://img329.imageshack.us/my.php?image=e...2005zip3et9.png
http://img167.imageshack.us/my.php?image=graz2004zip2es9.png

 

[SiDCrAzY]

And don't forget to thank Zansatsu and TelcoLou, who are more directly responsible for the suggestions and improvements in the GP2X port.

Well on that note, thanks to Zansatsu and TelcoLou for all your hard work guys!

I'll make sure to test it out later once I get back to my place