Thema: 40 JAHRE ATARI 2600 - Mit Aliens zum Welterfolg

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Changelog

Stella release 4.6.5 for Linux, MacOS X and Windows is now available.

    Added mappable events for toggling TV color/BW, left difficulty A/B and right difficulty A/B. This means that one key, joystick button, etc. can be used to toggle each event. Thanks to Buzbard of AtariAge for the suggestion.
    Added ability to edit values in more widgets in the debugger. For now, this applies mainly to the various decimal and binary fields. More widgets will be made editable in future releases.
    The TIA now emulates the jitter that occurs when scanline counts are not consistent frame-over-frame. Also, the DPC+ scheme now emulates jitter that can occur when using its Fractional Datafetchers if the DFxFRACINC registers are not re-initialized every frame. Special thanks to SpiceWare for this implementation.
    Tweaked 'MDM' scheme autodetection to detect that the identification string can be in either bank 0 or bank 1.
    Changed 'hidecursor' commandline argument (and associated UI item) to 'cursor'. The new argument allows to set mouse cursor visibility separately for both UI and emulation modes.
    Fixed snapshot bug most noticeable in MacOSX, where taking a snapshot of a TIA image sometimes left parts of the UI onscreen (and in the resulting picture).
    Fixed memory leak; the game console wasn't being closed after exiting a ROM.
    For the Windows port: added an application icon for Stella in the Control Panel "Add/Remove Programs" list.
    For the OSX port: Updated build scripts to be compatible with Xcode 7.
    Updated included PNG library to latest stable version.

-Have fun!

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Whats new:>>

Added 'Alt/Cmd + j' shortcut key and 'tv.jitter' commandline argument to toggle the TV scanline jittering emulation added in the last release. Also, this jittering now defaults to off.
Fixed bug in 'MDM' bankswitch scheme; bankswitching wasn't being done under certain circumstances.

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

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Fixed bug when using real paddles plugged into a Stelladaptor 2600-daptor device; the movement was very erratic.
Fixed small logic error in 'MDM' bankswitching scheme.

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

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Changelog

Improved paddle emulation in several ways:

    Added ability to specify the maximum range of movement for paddles when using a mouse or digital device to emulate the paddle. This is useful since on a real console most paddle games use very little of the paddle range, and could result in moving the mouse onscreen with nothing appearing to happen (when in effect it was as if you turned a real paddle all the way to the end of the range). This eliminates issues in (for example) Kaboom, where there was a huge 'deadzone' when moving to the left. All applicable ROMS in the internal database have been updated.
    The range for paddle emulation now takes an integer from 1 - 20, indicating how much to scale movement (ie, how fast the onscreen paddle will move when you move the mouse). The movement itself is now also smoother than before.

Fixed bug in 'Score mode' in TIA emulation; the TIA object colours were correct, but the associated priority was sometimes incorrect.
Fixed bug in ROM launcher; selecting 'Options -> Game Properties' after loading a ROM would always point to the last opened ROM, not to the one currently selected.
Fixed bug in storing ROM properties; in some cases, a copy of the ROM properties was being stored in the external file when it was exactly the same as the internal entry.
Added 'CV+' bankswitching scheme, developed by myself and LS_Dracon (of AtariAge). This scheme contains RAM like the CV scheme, and also switchable 2K ROM segments by writing to $3D.
Added more C++11 updates all over the codebase, and ran Stella through Coverity for the first time. I'm proud to say that Stella now has a 0.00 defect rate!

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Changelog

Improved TV 'jitter' emulation; the recovery time can now be spread over multiple frame, to simulate a real TV taking multiple frames to recover. Related to this, added new commandline argument 'tv.jitter_recovery' to set the recovery time. Finally, enabling the jitter effect and the recovery time are now accessible through the UI. Special thanks to SpiceWare of AtariAge for the initial idea and implementation.
Fixed bug with 'Medieval Mayhem' ROMs; the paddle range was set too low, and as a result the number of players couldn't be selected.
Fixed bug when using more than two input controllers with the same name; each controller after the second one was named the same as the second one. This caused the joystick mappings to be lost, since there was only information about two controllers being saved.
Indirectly fixed issues with Stelladaptor/2600-daptor devices and paddles having too large of a deadzone in Linux. Currently, this involves running an external application to set the deadzone, since SDL2 does not yet expose this information. The program is called 'evdev-joystick', and will be released separately from Stella.
Updated internal ROM properties database to ROM-Hunter version 11 (thanks go to RomHunter for his tireless research in this area). Related to this, updated the snapshot collection.

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Fixed bug when entering and exiting the debugger; sometimes the character corresponding to the '`' key would be output in the prompt area.
Updated DPC+ Thumb ARM emulation code to latest from David Welch. In particular, this fixes incorrect handling of the V flag when adding and subtracting, but also fixes compile-time warnings that I couldn't get rid of before.
Updated UNIX configure script to work with GCC 6.x compilers, and to remove references to obsolete compiler versions that can no longer be used to compile Stella.

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

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Whats new:>>

Added preliminary support for the 3E+ bankswitching scheme, developed by Thomas Jentzsch.
Fixed HMOVE positioning bug that occurred under certain circumstances. Thanks to Omegamatrix of AtariAge for the bug report and patch to fix the issue.
Added 'trapm', 'trapreadm', 'trapwritem' commands to debugger prompt. These are similar to the non-'m' versions, except that they also trap on all mirrors of the given address.
Fixed bug in debugger 'reset' command; it wasn't resetting the bankswitching, so after a reset the banks were in an undefined state.
Updated UNIX configure script to fix a bug where it fails in cross-compilation under certain circumstances. Thanks to Vlad Zakharov for providing a patch to fix this issue.

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

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Atari arbeitet an der Ataribox, einer Nostalgiemaschine im Stil der Nintendo-Classic-Mini-Konsolen. Jetzt gibt es erste Bilder der beiden Farbvarianten.



Atari hat erste Fotos der Ataribox veröffentlicht. Die Retro-Spielekonsole wurde im vergangenen Monat mit einem kurzen Youtube-Video angeteasert. Viel war darin nicht zu sehen. Jetzt ist wenigstens bekannt, wie das fertige Produkt aussehen wird. Es gibt zwei Farbvarianten: Eine etwas peppiger anmutende Variante kommt in schwarz und rot, die Holz-Fassung sieht deutlich edler aus.

Der ganze Artikel

Quelle : www.heise.de

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Changelog

Note: because of major TIA/6502/RIOT changes, the state file format has changed, and old state files will not work with this release.
Completely new TIA core is now available, ported from 6502ts by Christian Speckner (DirtyHairy). This new core is extremely accurate, and matches real hardware in almost every test we've performed. New features include:
Meltdown emulates correct
The lap number in Pole Positions displays correctly
Artifacts in the mountains on Snoopy and the Red baron are gone
Line artifacts in Title Match Pro Wrestling and Realsports Boxing are fixed
The spurious line at the left border of Video Chess now displays correctly
All 32 char text demos from AtariAge now work perfectly (Stella 4 shows artifacts on several of these)
Stella is now the only emulator to display the "Mega Bitmap Demo" (atext.bin) from AtariAge correctly
Improved starfield effect for missiles (still TODO for ball and players)
RSYNC emulation has improved, all testcases now match real hardware
Several other ROMs that have never worked in any emulator are now emulated correctly
RDY behavior with respect to write cycles is accurate
Optional YStart autodetect and more robust frame handling
NUSIZ during player draw matches hardware
RESMx during missile draw matches hardware
Paddle emulation is slightly more accurate. As a consequence, the "paddle feel" may be slightly different from Stella 4
Fixed debug colors can now be set for each graphical object, from a choice of 'red', 'orange', 'yellow', 'green', 'blue' and 'purple'. This is accessible through the new 'tia.dbgcolors' commandline argument and within the UI.
Implemented new phosphor emulation mode, which is much closer to real TV output. Related to this, added ability to change the default phosphor blend level in the UI and through the new 'tv.phosblend' commandline argument. Special thanks to Thomas Jentzsch for the idea and implementation.
TV phosphor effect can now be force-enabled for all ROMs, instead of manually setting ROM properties for each ROM. This is accessible in the UI and through the 'tv.phosphor' commandline argument, and defaults to being off (or enabled per-ROM).
PAL color-loss and Blargg TV effects can now be enabled at the same time. Previously, when Blargg effects were enabled, PAL color-loss couldn't be shown. Related to this, the Blargg effects now use much less memory and in some cases run faster than before.
Much improved RIOT timer emulation never before seen in any emulator. Special thanks to Christian Speckner (DirtyHairy) for the implementation, and alex_79 for finding documentation that finally describes in more detail how the M6532 chip actually works.
Added BUS (experimental) and CDF bankswitching schemes, and also ARM Timer 1 support; special thanks to SpiceWare for the code.
Fixed bug with SaveKey and AtariVox not properly closing their memory files before starting another instance of the same ROM, when the ROM was opened in the ROM launcher.
Various improvements to the debugger and command prompt:
The 'cls' command now only clears the screen, not the history
The 'help' command now accepts other commands, and gives extra
information about the command (ie, 'help breakif' prints extended information about the breakif command)
Added 'palette' command, which shows a color swatch of the currently active TIA palette
Added 'debugcolors' command, which shows a legend for 'fixed debug colors' mode
The previous trap'm' commands now work when setting TIA read addresses; previously they only worked for write addresses
The previous trap'm' commands are now renamed 'trap', 'trapread' and 'trapwrite'
The TIA tab now shows 'old' contents of player and ball registers
Various UI items are crossed out when disabled, to more clearly indicate their current state
Various UI items that previously required a double-click to toggle (pixel and bit widgets) now require only a single-click.
Command completion now works with internal functions and pseudo-ops (basically, anything starting with the '_' character)
System labels (aka, register names, etc) can now be typed in lowercase. Previously, these labels always had to be uppercase.
In general, input error checking is much more strictly enforced
Read-only UI items now have a different background color, to clearly indicate if an item can be modified.
Debugger '.lst' and '.sym' files are now searched based on the name of the ROM file, and not on the internal properties name.
Snapshots can now be saved by pressing the F12 key (the various other ways to save snapshots still exist).
Mouse grabbing is now enabled in windowed mode only when the ROM is using a virtual analog controller (paddles, trakball, etc).
Renamed various trakball-like controllers more accurately: AmigaMouse, AtariMouse (previously CX80) and Trakball (previously CX22). Related to this, reduced the resolution of the Trakball by half, to properly match real hardware.
The stack pointer (SP) is now initialized to $FD instead of $FF, to match research done in other 6502 projects.
Fixed bug in debugger tracing and displaying the partial TIA image; the first time entering the debugger and starting to trace, the image was blanked out (black) instead of being drawn in greyscale. Also, the image is now synchronized, instead of being two frames behind.
Fixed crash with zipped ROMs that are less than 4K in size; so far this bug has only ever occurred in Windows XP, but it's been there since Stella 4.1.
Fixed bug in 'Rom Audit' functionality; sometimes ROMs without a valid properties entry were being renamed as "Untitled.bin".
For the entire UI, removed colons and generally made the UI items easier to read.
When in 'ROM launcher mode', Stella now uses slightly less CPU time. More work is required in this area, though.
Added ROM properties for D.K. VCS homebrew ROM, thanks to Andreas Dietrich.
Added slight improvement for auto-detecting Superchip bankswitching; the new implementation now works for the NTSC 'Dig Dug' ROM. Special thanks for SpiceWare for the idea and modified implementation.
Fixed long-standing bug in 3-voice music in DPC+ bankswitching scheme; the music now sounds much more like the real thing.
For the Linux/UNIX port:
The settings directory now uses the XDG Base Directory Specification. In most cases, this means that your files will now be stored in '$HOME/.config/stella' instead of '$HOME/.stella'. To keep your old settings, run the following commands from the terminal:
cd ~
mv .stella .config/stella
You will probably need to edit '~/.config/stella/stellarc' and change some paths accordingly.
For the OSX port:
Always use the built-in png and zlib libraries instead of the system versions.
The preferences file has changed from 'net.sourceforge.Stella.plist' to 'Stella-emu.plist'. To keep your old settings, run the following commands from the terminal:
cd ~/Library/Preferences
mv net.sourceforge.Stella.plist Stella-emu.plist
Updated internal ROM properties database to ROM-Hunter version 13 (thanks go to RomHunter for his tireless research in this area). Related to this, updated the snapshot collection.
Updated included PNG and ZLIB libraries to latest stable version. Also, both libraries are now compiled into the app whenever one is selected. This fixes issues with a newer ZLIB not working with an older PNG, etc.
Updated build scripts for Visual Studio 2017 (Windows) and MacOS Sierra (latest version of Xcode), and make these the minimum supported versions for building Stella.
Updated UNIX configure script to work with the clang 5+ and gcc 7+ compiler versions, and fixed compile issues on AArch64 and ppc64le architectures.

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Changelog

Fixed issues in keypad, Genesis and various other controllers that use INPTx registers; the emulation is now much more accurate in this area.
Various 'Bumper Bash' and 'Decathlon' ROMs are marked as always having all 4 directions on a joystick enabled, since they can't be played properly otherwise.
Added 'Hunchy II' from Chris Walton (cd-w) to ROM properties database.
Codebase now uses C++14 features.

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Changelog

Improved emulation of Trakball controller, eliminating bias in left/ right directions. Thanks to Thomas Jentzsch for the idea and code. Related to this, added 'tsense' commandline argument and associated UI item, to allow changing sensitivity of mouse trackball emulation.
Added preliminary support for multi-threading in the Blargg TV effects code. This is still a WIP; more improvements are coming. Related to this, further optimized the TIA rendering code. Also added 'threads' commandline argument and associated UI item to enable/disable multi-threading. Thanks to Thomas Jentzsch for the bulk of the work in this area.
Blargg TV effects now no longer cut off the right side of the image (by several pixels) in certain cases.
Updated CDF scheme to latest version from Spiceware. In addition, this scheme now supports versioning, so older and newer ROMs will continue to work.
Fixed an annoying bug in Linux, where Alt-Tab'ing out of a window and then back again would pass a 'Tab' key event to the app, which in most cases would navigate to the next UI element.
Fixed potential issue with state file saving and the debugger; under certain circumstances a rewind would give a different state than before (note that the state file format has changed because of this).
Fixed lockups when entering the debugger under certain circumstances.
The debugger 'listtraps' command now shows all traps set, not just the first one(s).
Reverted joystick changes for Decathlon ROMs from last release, as it was added by mistake.

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Die Ataribox kommt 2018 mit einer Menge vorinstallierter Spiele auf den Markt. Ein AMD-Kombichip mit Radeon-GPU treibt die Spielkonsole an.

Die Retro-Spielkonsole Ataribox soll im ersten Halbjahr 2018 auf den Markt kommen. Dies geht aus einer Pressemitteilung der Firma Ataribox hervor. Die Konsole soll je nach Variante und Speicherkonfiguration zwischen 250 und 300 US-Dollar kosten. Auf der Konsole sollen zahlreiche Atari-Retrospiele bereits installiert sein – allerdings verspricht Ataribox auch "aktuelle Spiele" von mehreren Studios ohne konkrete Namen zu nennen.

Radeon-GPU, Linux, volle PC-Erfahrung

Ein AMD-Kombichip mit integrierter Radeon-Grafikeinheit treibt die Ataribox an. Als Betriebssystem kommt Linux zum Einsatz, die Benutzeroberfläche wurde für eine einfache Bedienung am Fernseher gestaltet. Die Ataribox soll Besitzern aber auch eine "volle PC-Erfahrung am TV" bieten und Anwendungen, Streaming, Social Media, Browsing, Musik und mehr erlauben. Im Unterschied zu vielen anderen TV-Streaming-Geräten oder Konsolen soll die Ataribox "dank Linux offener" sein. Nutzer können laut dem Hersteller das Betriebssystem konfigurieren, nach persönlichen Vorlieben anpassen und auf Spiele von anderen Online-Services zugreifen, sofern sie kompatibel mit dem Betriebssystem und der Hardware sind. Genaue Informationen bleibt Atari allerdings schuldig – denkbar wäre beispielsweise die Integration des Steam-Stores.

Atari veröffentlichte außerdem die drei ersten Bilder eines Ataribox-Prototypen mit Holzelementen. Die Konsole soll einen Steckplatz für SD-Karten haben, dazu USB-Ports und eine HDMI-Buchse.

Crowdfunding-Kampagne "für die Spieler"

Noch im Herbst 2017 will Atari eine Crowdfunding-Kampagne auf Indiegogo für die Ataribox starten – das erscheint merkwürdig ob des fertigen Prototypen und dem geplanten Marktstart, der spätestens im Juni nächsten Jahres erfolgen soll. Atari erklärt dazu, dass man durch die Crowdfunding-Kampagne die Atari-Community mit ins Boot holen wolle. "Wir möchten euch Gelegenheit geben, um Early Acess zu erhalten, Spezialvarianten der Konsolen abzugreifen und als aktive Partner beim Marktstart dabei zu haben. Wir möchten, dass ihr Teil der Geschichte seid". Über Crowdfunding-Kampagnen sammeln Hersteller letztlich Geld ein, um ihre Projektideen umzusetzen.

Quelle : www.heise.de

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Changelog

Added "Time Machine" mode, which automatically creates save states in user-defined intervals. The user can navigate back and forth within these states inside the emulator and the debugger.

Huge improvements to the disassembly view in the debugger and disassembly files created:

reformatting in debugger for better space utilization
much improved code and data detection
access tracking and indicators for TIA/IO/RAM adresses in disassembly
break vector is tracked (if used)
improved cycle count (page penalties, sums created in disassembly)
improved handling of instruction masking opcodes (e.g. BIT)
Fixed change tracking bug during rewind; changes were accumulated instead of being displayed only for the last rewind step.
Extended 'rewind' to take a second parameter which allows rewinding multiple states.
Added 'unwind' command, which undoes the latest rewind(s).
Added '<' (unwind) button to debugger.
Thumbulator support is not conditional any more.
Moved various developer related settings in new Developer Settings dialog. These settings now come in two groups (player/developer) and allow switching all settings at once.
Don't trap write accesses to the datastream pointers in CDF and BUS. This fixes -dev.thumb.trapfatal 1.
Complete rework of TV mode and ystart autodetection. The new implementation is more robust and reduces startup time.
Add two "grace lines" of black to the top of the frame when autodetecting ystart.
Fixed Genesis controller autodetect (Stay Frosty 2, Scramble, etc).
Fixed a bug in ystart autodetection that could cause screen jumps.
Fixed several bugs in holdselect, holdreset and holdjoyX commandline arguments; these now work as expected.
Fixed bug in TIA collision handling; it is now disabled in VBlank.
Improve TIA PF collision handling during hblank; this fixes a bug in Thrust ROM.
Fixed wrong display of HM values in debugger after 'HMCLR' has been executed.
Fixed bug with the debugger 'savedis' command in Windows; it wasn't actually saving the files at all. This has never been reported before, so I guess it shows how many people use that functionality.
The debugger 'savedis', 'saverom' and 'saveses' now save files in a default, user-visible directory (see the documentation for more information). In the case of 'saveses', the filename is now named based on the date and time of when the command was entered.
Fixed bug with saving snapshots in 1x mode; there was graphical corruption in some cases. Such snapshots also now include any TV effects / phosphor blending currently in use.
Fixed regular-sized snapshots when phosphor effect was enabled; sometimes the image was 'double-blended', resulting in a snapshot that was too dark.
Fixed crash when selecting 'CompuMate' as a controller type for a non-CompuMate ROM; this controller type can no longer be manually selected, and will be used automatically used for CompuMate ROMs.
Fixed cheat codes, so 7 digits codes are now accepted as described in the doc.
Fixed swapped ports being displayed wrong in System Logs and debugger.
Added options to erase the AtariVox/Savekey flash memory, either for all ROMs or only the current one. Also added a message (configurable) when the flash memory is accessed.
Access to the AtariVox/SaveKey can be signaled with a message.
Added new interface palette 'Light'.
Frame stats display made transparent. Also it now displays the real frame rate and if the developer settings group is enabled.
Improved tab auto-complete in debugger.
Added conditional traps and savestate creation to debugger.
Added 'Options...' button to debugger which gives access to the options menu during debugging.
Added debugger pseudo-register '_cyclesLo' and '_cyclesHi', which give the number of CPU cycles that have occurred since emulation started.
Added debugger pseudo-register '_fcycles', which gives the number of CPU cycles that have occurred since the frame started.
Added debugger pseudo-register '_icycles', which gives the number of CPU cycles of the last instruction.
Extended debugger 'dump' command to take a second argument, indicating the end of the range to dump data.
Improved change tracking; more values are tracked and change tracking now works in case of a break too.
Added widgets for trackball and SaveKey/AtariVox controllers.
Improved emulation of 'FE' bankswitch scheme (no user-visible changes, but internally the emulation is much more accurate compared to the real thing). Related to this, improved the debugger support for this scheme (you can now switch banks in the debugger view).
Added emulation of 7800 initial RAM values and Pause key.
Added ROM properties for 'Scramble' ROMs, and updated info for all "Champ Games" ROMs.
Added ROM properties for 'Zippy the Porcupine' ROMs, and updated info for all "Chris Spry (Sprybug)" ROMs.
Support UNIX style builds (configure / make) on OSX with both XCode / clang and g++.
Fixed error when building with uClibc-ng for ARM (thanks to Sergio Prado).
Updated included PNG library to latest stable version.

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Whats new:>>

Fixed bug in Stargunner ROM starting with a blank screen.

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Whats new:>>

Fixed bug with SaveKey autodetection; some ROMs were not correctly detecting that a virtual SaveKey device as plugged in. This notably fixes issues in "Super Cobra" and "Scramble" ROMs.
Make previously mentioned ROMs use the SaveKey device by default.
Fixed bug in UI navigation with joystick hat movement.

https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/releases