atari 2600 emulation?

spiroth10 · Post by **spiroth10** » Fri Mar 11, 2005 10:27 pm

OK, I've recently gotten back into the 2600 hype. Call me crazy, stupid, or whatever, but the games were fun. period...

anyway, the DC easily handles more powerful consoles, so why is there no complete atari 2600 emulators? Im pretty sure a lot of DC fans are also atari fans, so there would be a demand... and it should be trivial compared to other projects...

Im not trying to get flamed or anything, I was just wondering...

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 10:28 am

More Complete? StellaDC has a high compatibility rate, and support for both the atari joysticks and the paddle controller.

What more do you want than that?

spiroth10 · Post by **spiroth10** » Sat Mar 12, 2005 2:00 pm

oh... I didnt know... I didnt try that one

...
sorry for being ignorant...

alex.james · Post by **alex.james** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:11 am

I have Stella DC & the sound on the games is messed up & the bottom of the screen is missing from a lot of games. Am I missing something here?

Sweater Fish · Post by **Sweater Fish** » Thu May 05, 2005 12:36 pm

Stella For DC is good, but it's not perfect. It may be hard to believe, but the Atari 2600 is actually a somewhat complicated system to emulate. Just because it's an ancient system and has really simple graphics and sound doesn't necessarily mean it's a piece of cake. The VCS architecture was odd to begin with and as time went on programmers found more and more and more little bugs in the design that they could exploit to create interesting effects in their games. Makes things complicated when it comes to emulation.

Of course, the Dreamcast should still be able to emulate the 2600 flawlessly. A ported emu like Stella For DC might not be the best option, though.

The 2600 is better emulated on the DC than the Colecovision, though. Which is a shame since the Coleco should be an easy job to emulate perfectly. And it's such a great system.

...word is bondage...

Heliophobe · Post by **Heliophobe** » Sun May 08, 2005 5:28 pm

Sweater Fish wrote: The 2600 is better emulated on the DC than the Colecovision, though. Which is a shame since the Coleco should be an easy job to emulate perfectly. And it's such a great system.

...word is bondage...

What's missing with the ColecoVision? I never really used a ColecoVision so I can't really tell by using DColem.

And I concur, writing a 2600 emulator is a difficult, difficult thing to do. I was going to make Smeg into a multi-system emulator at one point and the VCS was the next thing I was going to add (where did all that free time come from, anyway?) - I got a prototype that ran a few games--- sort of, but I didn't realize just how perfectly you have to simulate the timing of the VCS - most games more complicated than 'pong' require mid-scanline display updates, as something as simple as displaying a score counter of more than two digits required multiplexing the two hardware sprites across the display. I had started developing it with the same model as I approached SMS emulation, where you do a scanline's worth of opcodes and then draw a scanline based on the video register settings at the end of the scanline. On the VCS that doesn't work, changes made mid scanline affect the display so you have to either interleave the two more closely (slow!) or keep some log of the changes made during the scanline and attempt to reconstruct the display as it would have been.

I can't believe anybody ever wrote anything so complex as Pitfall 2 or Solaris for the VCS.

RitualOfTheTrout · Post by **RitualOfTheTrout** » Sun May 08, 2005 8:10 pm

Wow, I never thought the 2600 was so difficult to emulate. I just kinda thought the author or the person who ported it to DC lost interest before it was completed.

compacho · Post by **compacho** » Sun May 08, 2005 10:14 pm

spiroth10 wrote:OK, I've recently gotten back into the 2600 hype. Call me crazy, stupid, or whatever, but the games were fun. period...

Very good to here. Just in case you didn't hear the news, Atari is gonna release Flashback 2.0 in the summer. I seen the pics of it and it's amazing. To read more about it go here http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.ph ... 68759&st=0

LyingWake · Post by **LyingWake** » Sun May 08, 2005 10:18 pm

RitualOfTheTrout wrote: Wow, I never thought the 2600 was so difficult to emulate.

Yeah, I didn't either. I wonder if this post can spark up any interest for any coder's willing to take on the task to continue what DCStella once had planned for it?

Post by **Quzar** » Sun May 08, 2005 10:49 pm

compacho wrote:
spiroth10 wrote:OK, I've recently gotten back into the 2600 hype. Call me crazy, stupid, or whatever, but the games were fun. period...

Very good to here. Just in case you didn't hear the news, Atari is gonna release Flashback 2.0 in the summer. I seen the pics of it and it's amazing. To read more about it go here http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.ph ... 68759&st=0

Is the cart slot on it fake or real o_O?

LyingWake wrote:
RitualOfTheTrout wrote: Wow, I never thought the 2600 was so difficult to emulate.
Yeah, I didn't either. I wonder if this post can spark up any interest for any coder's willing to take on the task to continue what DCStella once had planned for it?

New versions came out not that long ago. I'm fairly certain the emulator is almost perfect.

Heliophobe · Post by **Heliophobe** » Sun May 08, 2005 11:56 pm

RitualOfTheTrout wrote:Wow, I never thought the 2600 was so difficult to emulate. I just kinda thought the author or the person who ported it to DC lost interest before it was completed.

Mind you I don't think it's any more difficult to port a working 2600 emulator, except that it might be more CPU intensive than you'd think.

Writing one from scratch, though... that's a challenge.

Sweater Fish · Post by **Sweater Fish** » Mon May 09, 2005 1:33 pm

What's missing with the ColecoVision? I never really used a ColecoVision so I can't really tell by using DColem.

Actually, DColem does more or less as good a job on the actual emulation as should be expected. Most of the things I'd like to see in a new Coleco emulator are interface related. DColem just looks for its ROMs in the root of the CD and it displays every file there, so if you burn compilations like I do, you have to wade through lots of irrelevant files to get to the Coleco ones. I'd also like to see a button mapping feature so that the Super Action controller games could be played and also games like Mouse Trap that used just a few of the number pad keys. Analog support, too, of course. It also seems like there's some full-screen filtering going on, though it's not too thick, but it'd be nice to have an option to turn it off.

Someday, when my life is different I plan to get into deving for the DC and while I'd mostly be interested in homebrew games, I think I'd like to make a new Coleco emulator since it was always one of my favorite systems (aside from the Dreamcast, of course).

...word is bondage...

compacho · Post by **compacho** » Mon May 09, 2005 7:34 pm

quzar wrote:
compacho wrote:
spiroth10 wrote:OK, I've recently gotten back into the 2600 hype. Call me crazy, stupid, or whatever, but the games were fun. period...

Very good to here. Just in case you didn't hear the news, Atari is gonna release Flashback 2.0 in the summer. I seen the pics of it and it's amazing. To read more about it go here http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.ph ... 68759&st=0
Is the cart slot on it fake or real o_O?

Sadly no. There is no cart slot. How do I know? Cause Curt Vendel, one of the main designers for the flashback 2.0, frequently posts on that forum. He posted pics of the almost final case design and there's no cart slot at all. Though, he's designed it in such a way that it'll be easy for modders to attach their own cart slot to it.

For your viewing pleasure:

Sorry for going a lil off topic.

Sweater Fish · Post by **Sweater Fish** » Mon May 09, 2005 9:59 pm

Oh wow, the 2.0 looks way nicer than the original Flashback. Will the 2.0 work with 7800 carts, too (after the mod, of course)), or is it just 2600? I suppose I could find that by just following the link, but I'm too lazy.

...word is bondage...

alb3530 · Post by **alb3530** » Wed May 11, 2005 10:30 am

Last sunday I've played Bobby Is Going Home and River Raid,where I lost my last plane after scoring 140000 points.The hard is you reach a point,where the fuel items appear each time less often...

But i'm having problems with Dcstella 0.2f.
I have both 0.2b and 0.2f versions in the same disc,but whenever i load 5 or 6 roms,if i try to load another,it takes me back to Demo Menu,where i gotta load the emu again,wait the screens,and come back to play.The weird is it doesn't happen to 0.2b,but only to 0.2f.What's happening?

By the way,is there some atari emulator better than dcstella 0.2f?

atari 2600 emulation?

atari 2600 emulation?

Re: atari 2600 emulation?