Stella 2.8.2 released

[Robert]

Atari 2600 emulator

 

June 23, 2009 - 2.8.2

 

Stella release 2.8.2 for Linux, Mac OSX and Windows is now available. Ports to other operating systems will be released as they become available.

 

* Fixed OpenGL detection bug which could disable OpenGL support entirely if TV effects are not available (version

* The '\' character can now be entered in UI text fields again. Related to this, strings containing '\' are now properly loaded and saved to various config files.

 

June 19, 2009 - 2.8.1

 

NOTE: Windows users will have to reset their options or manually move their config folder in this release, since the location of the config files has changed.

 

* Fixed OpenGL issue for some Windows users whereby the OpenGL TV effects weren't available, even if the available version of OpenGL was sufficient. Related to this, the OpenGL version found by Stella is now reported in the TV effects dialog.

* Added fallback to software rendering when OpenGL rendering has been requested, but for whatever reason fails to initialize.

* Added native support for 4in1, 8in1 and 32in1 multicart bankswitching schemes. When using these schemes, the 'Reload ROM' action (by default, Control-r) will switch between each game in the ROM.

* Added bankswitch support for ROMs smaller than 2K in size. These will be treated as 2K ROMs natively, without having to manually 'pad' them to 2048 bytes.

* Added preliminary suppport for autodetection of X07 bankswitching.

* Tweaked PAL autodetection; it was marking some PAL ROMs as NTSC.

* Changed default location for Stella config files in Windows to the users' APPDATA folder (for XP and Vista, this is '~/Application Data/Stella'). The '~' symbol now represents the users PROFILE/home directory, matching its usage in Linux and OSX. The ability to override this with 'basedir.txt' is still available, but not advised.

* Changed '-exitlauncher' commandline argument to '-uselauncher'. This works as before except the launcher is never used at all if the option is set to false.

* Fixed crash when launching Stella from the commandline and giving a directory name instead of a rom filename.

 

June 9, 2009 - 2.8.0

 

* Added CRT simulation effects as described in the AtariAge posting CRT emulation for Stella. For now, this requires OpenGL 2.0 or greater with support for GLSL (GL Shading Language). This code will be expanded on and optimized in future releases.

* Adding editing of extended RAM in the debugger RAM UI. The RAM 'spreadsheet' now shows the entire address space of RAM in the system, in 128 byte increments. The first bank shown is zero-page, with the others following in consecutive order. * The UI takes care of read vs. write port differences, so you don't have to worry about the offsets. For now, all SuperChip based ROMs (EFSC, F4SC, F6SC, F8SC) as well as 3E, CV, E7 and FASC are supported.

* All ROMs which include SC extended RAM will now have memory erased if you attempt to read from the write port. Related to this, entering/exiting the debugger will no longer erase the extended RAM.

* Patching of ROM for bankswitch types 0840, SB, UA and X07 is now implemented, but hasn't been extensively tested.

* Visual improvements to the CPU register UI in the debugger; the SP/A/X/Y registers now have separate decimal and binary views.

* Tweaked paddle control so that all positions are reachable in game 4 of Activision Casino in both NTSC and PAL versions.

* SuperCharger/AR ROMs now start with a random value in the CPU accumulator. This should fix issues with Dragonstomper always starting in exactly the same state.

* Auto-detection for '3F' bankswitching improved; several ROMs previously detected as 'F8' now work correctly.

* Updated internal ROM properties database to ROM-Hunter version 5 (thanks go to RomHunter for his tireless research in this area).

* Added '-exitlauncher' commandline argument and associated UI item, to specify what happens when you exit a ROM. Normally, exiting a ROM brings up the ROM launcher, but this can be disabled for those using an external frontend (in which case exiting a ROM also exits from Stella).

* Re-added '-fastscbios' commandline argument, and added an associated UI item. When enabled, the SuperCharger load bars are now completely removed (and not just sped up as in previous releases).

* The '-listrominfo' commandline argument now shows all ROM information built in to the internal database, taking into account any information in 'personal' stella.pro files.

>> Get it HERE.