Stella 4.1.1

mediamogul

I've noticed that RetroPie uses version 4.1.1 of Stella which is quite a bit behind the 4.7.2 current release. I am curious as to why this is. There have been quite a few advancements in the emulator that would be a welcome addition. Most notably are several improvements to analog controls such as paddles and track ball support. These controls, along with the keypad controller are not even emulated in lr-stella, leaving quite a few games unplayable. Is it that the later versions of Stella do not run well or compile on the Pi?

edmaul69

@mediamogul i havent had paddle issues with standalone stella. There is a lot of stuff you can do in the standalone stella the you cant do in lr-stella. I believe all the accessories are supported. I havent tested with a trackball yet to verify that.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

Make no mistake, I prefer the stand-alone version of Stella. As I mentioned above, it offers analog and keypad support that is non-existent with lr-stella. It's just that the Stella development team has made drastic improvements to how these controls function along with several other advancement that are currently not available in the RetroPie version of Stella (4.1.1).

For example, in 'Kaboom', which is arguably the most popular paddle game available, the paddles will stick to the sides of the screen because the emulator reads further directional movement than what is seen on screen. You actually have to push back in the opposite direction for a certain amount of time before you regain control of the buckets because the software believes they are further away in the other direction. This has been fixed since version 4.7. This is just one example mind you and there are plenty of other improvements that have been made past 4.1.1. I assume it is frozen at that version number in RetroPie for some reason, I am just curious as to why.

For anyone interested, a full changelog for Stella can be found below.
http://stella.sourceforge.net/changelog.php

edmaul69

@mediamogul if you dont have it, downoad the homebrew rom of medieval mayhem. It is the arcade version of warlords. Proof that atari could have made warlords much better. It has better graphics, the dragon and multi-ball. Available in a pal and ntsc versions. I also like the homebrew games seaweed assault and halo 2600.

mediamogul

@edmaul69

I'll be sure to check that out. It's a shame they didn't spend a bit more time on several of their games. 'Ms. Pac-Man' also proved that 'Pac-Man' could have been much better. Although I have to admit I'm somewhat nostalgic for their version, warts and all. After all this time, I'm still amazed at what was accomplished with 'Princess Rescue'.

edmaul69

@mediamogul yes princess quest was cool. If you hook a genesis controller up to a 2600 you actually have 2 buttons instead of jump being on the up button.

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Stella 4.1.1:

If you hook a genesis controller up to a 2600 you actually have 2 buttons

That was especially inspired.

Lyle_JP

@mediamogul No kidding about Pac-Man on the 2600. I remember first playing the game "Alien" on that console and thinking, "this is a better port of Pac-Man than Pac-Man!" Pac-Man for the 2600 was an awful port with no real good excuses.

edmaul69

@Lyle_JP i grew up with the atari version and never had played an arcade so i use to like it. Im glad i never saw the arcade version. I like the audio on the 2600 version though. Very addictive.

mediamogul

@edmaul69 said in Stella 4.1.1:

I like the audio on the 2600 version though. Very addictive.

What's hilarious is that the sounds from that game became the de facto video game sound insert for television and movies for the next twenty plus years. The worst offender I've seen was some years ago on a TV show where the 2600 'Pac-Man' sounds were inserted over footage of a kid furiously playing a portable game system upside down with an obviously empty cartridge slot.

mediamogul

Maybe @BuZz has some insight into this?

BuZz

We have always used the Raspbian Stella over building from source. When on Wheezy we were unable to build the newer one due to having too old tools, but we could include an up to date standalone stella now if needed (if it still works with the changes / move to sdl2). I'll add it on the bugtracker.

mediamogul

@BuZz

Your consideration alone is much appreciated.

Thank you.

BuZz

Just a quick update - Stella 4.7.2 builds and runs on the RPI, but running a game (I tested with Combat) caused it to eat up all memory until killed :/ It will need to be looked into further when I have more time.

mediamogul

@BuZz

That's still very exciting news and is great to hear.

dudleydes

I decided to take a look at this to see if there was a better experience of playing Super Breakout and Kaboom! with my PS3 controller than the libretro version of Stella.

I am using a Pi 2 starting with the version 4.0-rc2 image released in August 2016 running version 4.1.11 of the RetroPie setup script. I have installed additional emulators from binary and xboxdrv on top of the base image.

I built the latest version of Stella with the following commands:

git clone https://github.com/stella-emu/stella.git
cd stella
./configure 
make

I then added the following to /opt/retropie/configs/all/atari2600/emulators.cfg for testing.

stella-latest = "/home/pi/stella/stella -maxres 320x240 %ROM%"

I successfully loaded Kaboom! with the new binary but when I checked the CPU usage with the command top, Stella was running at 95-96% compared to 30-40% for Stella 4.1.1. The About option in the UI tells me this latest build is version 5.0.0-pre4.

I then decided to build version 4.7.3 using the following:

wget https://github.com/stella-emu/stella/archive/release-4.7.3.zip
unzip release-4.7.3.zip
cd stella-release-4.7.3/
./configure 
make

I added an entry for version 4.7.3 in emulators.cfg.and tested it with Kaboom! This time CPU usage was similar to that used by version 4.1.1.

It may worthwhile if others can test and confirm my findings so we could possibly update to version 4.7.3. If there's any further testing that may be useful, then let me know.

mediamogul

@dudleydes

I decided to take a look at this to see if there was a better experience of playing Super Breakout and Kaboom! with my PS3 controller than the libretro version of Stella.

When configured for analog paddle control, it really is a step up. The ability to play the keypad games is a big plus too.

I then decided to build version 4.7.3

Reading this, I was curious to see just how old 4.7.3 is and was surprised to see it listed as being the current "stable" version. So, I take it that the memory leak and excessive CPU usage is only in the current development build?

It may worthwhile if others can test and confirm my findings

I've been testing this all day and it's performed very well with every game and control scheme I've thrown at it. the CPU never rose above 36% and the memory usage never got higher than 1.6%. I compared it to 4.1.1 and the performance was no higher or lower.

The main feature that I was hoping would pay off does indeed. The in-game analog cursor no longer sticks to the sides nearly as much as it did previously. This is inline with the changelog after 4.7 that claimed the issue was greatly improved. I would say that it's barely noticeable now.

The only problem that still persists is that screenshots are still saved out in what almost seems to be inverted colors. I don't know much about compiling, but since this doesn't seem to be an issue on other platforms, I wonder if something could be adjusted there to account for the issue.

Anyway, I'm really glad you tried this, as I had written it off as being currently impossible. Now, I'm able to play 'Kaboom!' without a handicap. Granted, I'm still lousy at the game, but at least I can't blame the controls anymore.

BuZz

I have a module with updated stella - will test with 4.7.3. Certainly I had issues with 4.7.2 but from what you have said looks like it's all sorted now.

mediamogul

@BuZz said in Stella 4.1.1:

I had issues with 4.7.2

Those memory issues were just a point release older then? Wow.

I have a module with updated stella - will test with 4.7.3

Very cool! Thank you for that. I'll continue testing it quite a bit myself. I played 'Kaboom!' until I was bleary eyed yesterday.

BuZz

@mediamogul Could be an bug due to retropie compiler options or something perhaps so I will look into that too if I get the issue with 4.7.3.