Stella 4.1.1

BuZz

@mediamogul Please can you detail your system specs and the md5sum of the Combat rom you tested with.

mediamogul

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
5.1V 2.5A PSU
RetroPie 4.1.14
Pre made SD Image on RetroPie website
8GB SanDisk microSD
Memory Split: 400
'Combat' md5sum: 4c8832ed387bbafc055320c05205bc08 (From the "Good" ROM set)
Run from 128GB External USB Thumb Drive, mounted using the auto-mount feature of RetroPie

BuZz

@mediamogul thanks.

mediamogul

@BuZz

Not a problem. I just shut my test game down, but I checked on it about every twenty minutes or so for the last couple of hours. It seemed to behave itself the whole time, never using more than 1.6% of the memory.

BuZz

@mediamogul Unfortunately I am still unable to get Combat working with 4.7.3 of Stella.

Same set-up as you - manually compiling exactly as above. Other games work, but Combat doesn't. Same md5sum too.

Are you able to send me perhaps your zipped working "binary" from Stella, so I can compare it. I can't think why we would be having different results currently unfortunately. (my email is viewable on my profile).

Are you starting it from the commandline manually to test? Please can you paste me terminal output including the exact commandline you use to launch it etc? (And you are certain you are launching the new stella and not the previously installed one etc? - just to be sure as I can't think why it would behave differently )

Cheers.

mediamogul

@BuZz said in Stella 4.1.1:

Are you able to send me perhaps your zipped working "binary" from Stella

Done and done.

Are you starting it from the commandline manually to test?

I added:

default = "stella-4.7.3"
stella-4.7.3 = "/opt/retropie/configs/atari2600/temp-release/stella-release-4.7.3/stella -maxres 320x240 %ROM%"

to my /opt/retropie/configs/atari2600/emulators.cfg file.

BuZz

@mediamogul Aha. mystery sold.

I wasn't using the maxres parameter with the new one (I didn't think it should be needed since we are on sdl2 now and I was going to launch with -fullscreen 1 -tia.fsfill 1). Without that it crashes - it's fine with maxres. Interesting.

Please can you try without the -maxres 320x240 to confirm it crashes on your system too ?

mediamogul

@BuZz

Please can you try without the -maxres 320x240to confirm it crashes on your system too ?

It's strange, but it seems to be holding strong without it as well. Could it have anything to do with the new version not playing nice with the older Stella config files?

BuZz

@mediamogul You could try removing the configs from /home/pi/.stella as I'm testing with a fresh install.

mediamogul

@BuZz

I removed the config files from /home/pi/.stella and tried launching it with and without -maxres 320x240 and the memory usage remained constant both times. It did however raise to 1.7% for a short time without the entry, only to return to 1.6% pretty quickly.

BuZz

@mediamogul very odd. Not sure why it's behaving differently - I will try another RPI - perhaps something related to video resolution on my dev machine or some other difference.

Please can you remove the config folder again and launch via runcommand and give me the r/dev/shm/uncommand log - it doesn't output much but perhaps there will be a clue there. Thanks for bearing with me - I'd like to know the cause of this before pushing out an update so I don't end up with bug reports if this issue affects others (although it might be safe with the maxres parameter anyway).

mediamogul

@BuZz

Thanks for bearing with me

Not a problem. I hope this all works out. I'd love for a modern version of Stella to be available in RetroPie.

Please can you remove the config folder again and launch via runcommand and give me the r/dev/shm/uncommand log

Here you go. I left it completely unedited. Just FYI, I run a script from runcommand-onend that consolidates screenshots from the various emulators into one location and as you can see, the feedback from when no screenshots are found obviously ends up here as well.

atari2600
stella-4.7.3
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/Combat (1977) (Atari) [!].zip
/opt/retropie/configs/atari2600/temp-release/stella-release-4.7.3/stella -maxres 320x240 "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/Combat (1977) (Atari) [!].zip"
/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh: line 31: [: too many arguments
Parameters: 
Executing: /opt/retropie/configs/atari2600/temp-release/stella-release-4.7.3/stella -maxres 320x240 "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/Combat (1977) (Atari) [!].zip"
ERROR: Couldn't load settings file
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/.openMSX/screenshots/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/atari*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/grab*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/image*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/shot*.gif’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/apple2/linapple*.bmp’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/quake3/full/baseq3/screenshots/shot*.tga’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/scummvm/scummvm*.bmp’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/screenshots/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/configs/pc/capture/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/configs/ports/duke3d/duke*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/screen*.bmp’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/screenshots/*.*’: No such file or directory

BuZz

@mediamogul sorry, I meant without the maxres parameter. (After removing the configs - to simulate a fresh install).

mediamogul

@BuZz

My bad...

atari2600
stella-4.7.3
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/Combat (1977) (Atari) [!].zip
/opt/retropie/configs/atari2600/temp-release/stella-release-4.7.3/stella "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/Combat (1977) (Atari) [!].zip"
/opt/retropie/configs/all/runcommand-onstart.sh: line 31: [: too many arguments
Parameters: 
Executing: /opt/retropie/configs/atari2600/temp-release/stella-release-4.7.3/stella "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/atari2600/Combat (1977) (Atari) [!].zip"
ERROR: Couldn't load settings file
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/.openMSX/screenshots/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/atari*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/grab*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/image*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/shot*.gif’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/apple2/linapple*.bmp’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/ports/quake3/full/baseq3/screenshots/shot*.tga’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/scummvm/scummvm*.bmp’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/screenshots/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/configs/pc/capture/*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/configs/ports/duke3d/duke*.png’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/opt/retropie/emulators/daphne/screen*.bmp’: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat ‘/home/pi/RetroPie/screenshots/*.*’: No such file or directory

BuZz

@mediamogul After some more testing - it looks related to my video resolution on my dev machine.

Please can you set your video mode to 800x600 and try launching combat.

Not sure if this is an SDL2 issue or related to stella, but it crashes here on 800x600 by not if i change res to 1024x768.

mediamogul

@BuZz said

Please can you set your video mode to 800x600 and try launching combat.

800x600 was not an option in my list of video modes. I know it's not the same thing, but I did launch it with an 800x600 framebuffer and that seemed to hold strong.

BuZz

@mediamogul you will have to force it perhaps. the framebuffer won't affect it.

this might work (or not).

tvservice -e "dmt 11"; fbset -depth 8; fbset -depth 32

It's not a problem if you can't reproduce, but I suspect this could crash for others . The maxres seems to work around it , but i'm just slightly worried there will be another resolution someone has that will cause the problem. I guess we will find out when I update ;-)

mediamogul

@BuZz

Well, forcing it doesn't appear to have worked as it still reports the same video mode afterward. This did however raise a potential issue that might exist in 4.1.15, in that after the runcommand has been accessed once, it doesn't appear to be possible to access it again without a reboot. I've been successfully working quite a bit with the runcommand menu for the past few days and only noticed this after updating to 4.1.15 this morning.

BuZz

@mediamogul nothing has changed in runcommand that I'm aware of, but I'll look into it. Someone else did report a similar issue, but not sure the cause.

mediamogul

@BuZz

Hopefully this is isolated to my own setup, but it appears as though this is only a factor when launching, or perhaps exiting Stella 4.7.3. I first tried to replicate it with a few other emulators, then I switched back to Stella 4.1.1 and in each case afterwards, I was able to invoke the runcommand. Then I switched to Stella 4.7.3 and after closing it out, I was not able to launch the runcommand menu a second time.