Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons
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@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
Could you provide me with an example of a configuration file you have with a working 2nd player controller?
My controls in
atari800.cfgare just the default settings. I have an external map running in parallel that takes advantage of the keyboard controls in Atari800 that aren't able to be mapped to a controller from the emulator itself. This approach is very flexible, but it's still far from perfect, as Atari800 just wasn't designed with a thoughtful control scheme to work with in the first place. It's really odd too considering that the software can emulate all the available control devices necessary to play every game out there, it just can't map those devices to a modern controller effectively. -
I was reading a little bit about the
OlivierP.actpalette file and apparently the 'P' stands for PAL. There's an NTSCOlivierN.actalternative available here. -
@mediamogul I'll try it out and see if there is any real difference.
I wasn't aware that the colors were any different between NTSC and PAL. I thought that just had to do with framerate and speed due to the difference in the amperage to the systems?
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@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
I wasn't aware that the colors were any different between NTSC and PAL.
There is indeed a difference, although here it has more to do with cosmetically adhering to the regional color encoding standards than anything else. It won't hurt anything to use the PAL palette if you are so inclined. It'll just have the subtle differences that exist between the two standards.
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@mediamogul said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
I wasn't aware that the colors were any different between NTSC and PAL.
There is indeed a difference, although here it has more to do with adhering to the regional color encoding standards than anything else. It won't hurt anything to use the PAL palette if you are so inclined. It'll just have the subtle differences that exist between the two standards.
I see.
Did you give it a shot yet, either way?
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I did. The settings you have above seemed to be a bit over-saturated, so I employed a hybrid setup between my original settings and the NTSC palette. A good game to test with is 'Ms. Pac-Man', as it has a very distinctive shade of pink used in the title screen that can be referenced in many other games and locations.
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@mediamogul Care to share your setup?
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Sure, although it's not really any different from the settings @pjs posted a year ago. In that post, he notes that he used other Atari systems, such as the 7800, as a baseline. The benefit there is that the colors are going to be as close to what was intended as you're likely to find.
Of course the one exception to my settings is that I'm offsetting them slightly with the Atari800 NTSC palette file that you turned me on to.COLOURS_NTSC_SATURATION=0.5 COLOURS_NTSC_CONTRAST=0.5 COLOURS_NTSC_BRIGHTNESS=-0.5 COLOURS_NTSC_GAMMA=1.2 COLOURS_NTSC_HUE=0 COLOURS_NTSC_GTIA_DELAY=26.8 COLOURS_NTSC_EXTERNAL_PALETTE= COLOURS_NTSC_EXTERNAL_PALETTE_LOADED=0 COLOURS_NTSC_ADJUST_EXTERNAL_PALETTE=0Edit: I went into the Display menu and it didn't have the color palette set at all, despite adding it manually to the
atari800.cfgfile. Once enabled, the result was pretty extreme when combined with the the other settings. This being the case, I've decided to just use @pjs's custom settings as it produces a result that seems correct more often than not when compared to other examples. -
@mediamogul That's cool man. It's all a matter of personal preferance, right?
I haven't seen what an Atari 7800 actually looks like on a screen in probably 20 years or more, and except for once when my brother showed me a 5200 with working controllers he got off of ebay it's been closer to 30 or more years since I've seen the 5200.
I'm pretty much just going with what I like over accuracy. Plus, I only have one screen to work with so trying to compare things is really just by memory in between launches.
I noticed that outside of kat5200, the colors that everybody uses are extremely muted compared to later systems. Seems that the 8-bit Atari systems used pretty washed out colors from what I remember them to be. Either way, anything I've tried in the last 24 hours since you posted that link with the way to change them has brought a lot of life to the screen compared to the default settings in atari800. Thanks. :)
BTW... that Atari 5200 I spoke of is actually in my possession now. :)
It's even got the original box and everything, even though it's pretty damaged. Last time my brother used it he says both controllers worked. I'm going to have to figure out how to rig that thing up to a more modern TV and try it out one of these days. Too bad we never found that gray cart.
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@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
I'm pretty much just going with what I like over accuracy.
I can definitely understand that. I'm an art director by profession, tasked with making sure every little artistic detail is correct before anything goes out the door. Needless to say that once I start going down these rabbit holes, it's tough to stop until I get things looking as accurate as possible. Two things you may want to consider after looking at the settings more closely is that one; these settings apparently don't go over 1.0, so anything over won't do any good and two; a brightness setting of anything less that 0 will increasingly darken colors to the point of gradually turning anything white into a shade of grey. Mileage may vary between displays, but it seems that -0.16 is the lowest setting possible that will still result in a black background.
BTW... that Atari 5200 I spoke of is actually in my possession now. :)
Very nice. A friend of mine has one with a damaged power supply and I've been meaning to help him with it. The 5200 power supply is pretty unique in that the RF runs through it as well. I'm betting that'll be somewhat of a challenge to mod for a modern TV.
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@mediamogul said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
@used2berx said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
I'm pretty much just going with what I like over accuracy.
I can definitely understand that. I'm an art director by profession, tasked with making sure every little artistic detail is correct before anything goes out the door. Needless to say that once I start going down these rabbit holes, it's tough to stop until I get things looking as accurate as possible. Two things you may want to consider after looking at the settings more closely is that one; these settings apparently don't go over 1.0, so anything over won't do any good and two; a brightness setting of anything less that 0 will increasingly darken colors to the point of gradually turning anything white into a shade of grey. Mileage may vary between displays, but it seems that -0.16 is the lowest setting possible that will still result in a black background.
That's cool man. I haven't been able to land a decent job since I was laid off. Just been working part time jobs way under my abilities since it's pretty hard to find anything decent these days without a degree. My job right now keeps me in real good shape though, even if it just barely pays the bills. :)
I'm putting the same kind of detail into my projects regarding the emulation here though. I don't know when I'll ever be satisfied with the NES/FDS project, but one of these days I will be releasing it for everyone to enjoy.
Thanks for the tips. I didn't realize that anything over "1" didn't actually change anything.
BTW... that Atari 5200 I spoke of is actually in my possession now. :)
Very nice. A friend of mine has one with a damaged power supply and I've been meaning to help him with it. The 5200 power supply is pretty unique in that the RF runs through it as well. I'm betting that'll be somewhat of a challenge to mod for a modern TV.
I'm still working with old TV's myself. I actually don't even own a TV that was made in the last 10 years. It probably won't be all that hard to figure out how to convert it. I'm assuming that it still has that RF adapter that you need to screw into the back of an ancient TV, but who knows what's in there. My brother might have already picked up some sort of converter for it.
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So.... you guys have any idea why the left direction on both my d-pad and left joystick would not move the guys left on Beamrider, but it still works for every other game using my default
atari5200.cfgfile?This one is kind of driving me nuts. Every other game that uses the default configuration has no problems moving left, but when you play Beamrider once you've gone to the right side of the screen you're all out of moves.
I know when I tested this game a year ago that this wasn't an issue.
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@used2berx This is for player 1 when player 2 joystick is attached as well ? what happens when only player 1 joystick is attached ?
Have you tried launching this rom with a different config file (just to be sure you're not using a wrong config file) ?I don't really have a clue why Beamrider only moves right in you're case , but i seem to remember successfully testing it's controls about a year ago with you.
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@future-child said in Atari 5200: New version of Atari800 (Beta): two triggers (Moon Patrol!!!), hat start and exit buttons:
@used2berx This is for player 1 when player 2 joystick is attached as well ? what happens when only player 1 joystick is attached ?
Have you tried launching this rom with a different config file (just to be sure you're not using a wrong config file) ?
I don't really have a clue why Beamrider only moves right in you're case , but i seem to remember successfully testing it's controls aboutHey man. I'm completely stumped here.
This happens whether or not I have 1 or 2 controllers plugged in. I did try various other configurations (including the "alternate.cfg" as well as a few game specific configs) with no luck. It happens no matter what.
I really wasn't expecting that to be the issue though because Beamrider uses my default "atari5200.cfg" that about half of the game library uses and I can press left on any one of the other games that I controlled.
We did successfully test this game as working about a year ago. I actually noticed this almost right away when you recently fixed the atari800 emulator for use with 4.4 and made a note about it, but I forgot to go back to it when I completed a thourough re-test of every game with 1 and 2 player controls. I just happened to be going through my recent notes last night and I ended up spending about a half hour trying to figure this mystery out without any success.
Any suggestions you might have would be appreciated. Maybe you could give Beamrider a try with your updated build and see if you have the same problem or not. It just doesn't make any sense why only this one single game would suffer from that issue when about 40-50 other games use the exact same configuration and are launched exactly the same way.
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@used2berx It's odd to say the least, using Peter's diagnostic cartridge i have confirmed the analog input's to be working correct for horizontal direction (vertical as well but there are no problems reported there).
Pokey_pot0 has a value of 0 when the controller is pushed left, 114 when controller is centered and 227 when controller is pushed to the right, which is normal for digital joysticks.
Also whenTRUE_ANALOG_JOYSTICK=1is present in the config files in-between values are also there, also normal when analog controllers are used.
So logically there should be no problems.Beamrider will not go left however when using digital joystick (even with disabled joystick and using keyboard input only).
When analog controller is used (TRUE_ANALOG_JOYSTICK=1andJOY_SPEED_ADJUST=10lines are present in the config) i can sometimes get it to go left (very errattic and with a huge lag) .As the only that has really been changed to the emulator for Retropie 4.4 is the renaming of the libEGL and libGLESv2 libraries to libbrcmEGL and libbrcmGLESv2 i will see what happens when the older libraries are installed used during compilation (if i can still find them somewhere).
Update: I can now confirm it is not my modifications causing these issues because both a freshly compiled original version 3.1.0 as well as the new 4.0.0 release behave in the same way (i didn't figure out yet how to get the original glesv2 and egl libraries installed, but since it has nothing to do with input i highly doubt it matters anyway).
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@future-child hmmmmm....
I wonder if this was actually not working a lot earlier in the process, but some time after I had tested Beamrider and didn't have any problems with it. I know for sure that left worked at the time I had tested it, for all 4 players (on two joysticks alternating). But it is one of the very first few games alphabetically in the 5200 library, and we did make a ton of alterations over many months.
What is version "3.1.0"? Is this before you touched it at all, or the last build you had made before moving to kat5200?
(I guess the good news to report is that a complete re-testing of all of the games I had originally tested didn't bring any other control issues to light. This is baffling though.)
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@used2berx Version 3.1.0 is the version of the original Atari800 emulator upon which i added my modifications.
The following tests have been made:
Atari 3.1.0 (original) retropie 4.4 : Beamrider only moves right
Atari 3.1.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.4 : Beamrider only moves right
Atari 4.0.0 (original) retropie 4.4 : Beamrider only moves right
Atari 4.0.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.4 : not yet finished*Atari 3.1.0 (original) retropie 4.3: works as intended
Atari 3.1.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.3: Beamrider only moves right (so somethin's off there i can't explain yet)
Atari 4.0.0 (original) retropie 4.4: testing
Atari 4.0.0 (my ver.) retropie 4.4 : not yet finished**This version has a lot of changes (like native HAT support, i'm looking if analog support can be added as the numerical buttons should pose no problems.
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@future-child Wow! You've decided to kick around the tires on Atari800 a bit more? That's awesome. :)
Glad you seem to have been able to pin down the Beamrider issue. Hopefully you figure out a solution for it.
*This version has a lot of changes (like native HAT support, i'm looking if analog support can be added as the numerical buttons should pose no problems.
These changes your talking about... are they already in the version you updated to work on RP 4.4, or are these new things? I'm just wondering if you're going to need a re-test of all the games again or not when you have an update.
Also, do you think any of these changes you're planning might fix the strange bugs that occur, such as some games like Choplifter having problems using the trigger buttons if you move with the analog stick instead of the D-Pad, or only 1 trigger button working on 2 player games so you can't jump with the 2nd player in Moon Patrol?
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@used2berx
The HAT support is new in the original 4.0 Atari emulator, this was added in my version (actually it was added by jfroco) because the original 3.1 did not have this, my release for RP-4.4 is still based on Atari800-3.1 .I'm looking at the source of Atari-4.0 too see if the new code lends itself for adding real analog control's (the dreamcast built seems too support it so there is a starting point to investigate there).
The code is still not event driven though but just maybe analog is feasible.
When (if) it happens i will probably release it parallel to the existing one. -
@future-child Cool man... let me know if you come up with anything and I'll test it out on my end.
I've put the breaks on my NES/FDS project for now while trying to wrap up this Pi Zero setup for my brother. I've got to give him a call and let him know that I'm going to take some extra time to set up the SNES and configure all of the emulators/roms for the best performance. I think I can get 95% of them working great on Pi Zero, but it's going to take a bit of tinkering and setting things up on the emulators.cfg file. I discovered that my set didn't have a lot of correct no-intro stuff, and unbelievably Prince of Persia was the German version!!!! I'm in the process of fixing all of that, so I should have this thing for a week or two more. Hope to maybe eek out a little better performance on the 5200 if it's at all possible. :)
Thanks again.
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