Stella v1.4

posted in Emulator Release by narvick on Jul 19th, 2004

Stella, an excellent Atari 2600 emulator, has been updated recently. The Windows, Linux, and Mac ports are now available. What's new:

Codebase ported to SDL. The DOS and X11 ports have been discontinued.
Sound code ported to SDL. For the Linux versions, ALSA and OSS sound support has been discontinued.
The Linux, MacOS X and Windows ports are now based on the same codebase and are actively maintained. That means simultaneous (and hopefully more frequent) releases.
A new Windows port has been created, with the GUI based on StellaX. This is the first new release for Windows since Stella v1.2. (software mode is not yet optimized; OpenGL mode works much better)
A new MacOS X port has been created by Mark Grebe. This is the first new release for MacOS X since Stella v1.2.
Added OpenGL rendering support.
Added more refine in-game GUI.
Added event remapping. Emulation keys can now be remapped to the keyboard or up to 4 joysticks.
Added native Stelladaptor support. Joysticks, paddles, and driving controllers have been tested.
Digital sound support (used in games like Quadrun and Pitfall 2) has been greatly improved. Sound generation is now more tightly synchronized with video updates.
Added support for switchable palettes. Currently, you can switch between the current Stella palette, original Stella palette (pre-1.2 versions), and the z26 palette.
Added support for UA Limited style bankswitching (Funky Fish and Pleiades)
Switched to using high compatbility M6502 mode by default. This means old state saves from previous Stella versions will no longer work.
The meaning of the "-sound" command line option has changed. This option now accepts either 'true' or 'flase' (1 or 0) to enable/disable sound.
Changed sound mixer functionality. The system volume/mixer settings will never be changed; volume changes in Stella will only affect the emulation itself.
Added "-video" command line option. This option accepts either 'soft' or 'gl', to use software/OpenGL rendering.
Added "gl_filter" command line option. This option accepts either 'nearest' or 'linear', to use GL_NEAREST or GL_LINEAR filtering.
Added "gl_aspect" command line option. This option accepts a decimal value specifying how much to scale the width of the emulationi image (useful for giving an authentic 'square-looking' 4:3 mode).
Added "-gl_fsmax" command line option. This option accepts either 'true' or 'false', and specifies to use the maximum possible resolution when in fullscreen OpenGL mode (useful for Linux and Windows on laptops).
Added "-fragsize" command line option. This option accepts the size to use for sound fragments. The Linux/MacOS X works well with 512, Windows seems to need 2048. This value must be a power of two.
Modified "-volume" command line option. If you specify '-1', Stella will use the system volume.
Renamed the "-pro" command line option to "-altpro".
Renamed the "-fps" command line option to "-framerate".
Removed the "-center" command line option. Stella now automatically centers the window when possible.
Removed the "-paddle real" command line option, since it never really worked correctly (and Stelladaptor supports adds that functionality anyway).
Removed all command line options relating to the X11 port (owncmap, display).

Get at the Atari 2600 Emulators for Windows, Linux, or Mac pages

Thanks to Stephen Anthony for the news

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