PSP2600: Atari 2600 emulator for PSP v1.0.1

[zx-81]

http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/images/psp2600-snap-1.jpg

Hi All,

Stella is the best emulator of Atari 2600 game console, running on many
different systems, such as Linux, Solaris, Windows, MacOS/X WinCE, OS/2, GP2X.

It has been written initially by Bradford Mott, see Stella's site (http://stella.sourceforge.net) for details.

PSP2600 is a port on PSP of the version v2.2 of Stella. It's based on the work
of David Voswinkel, who was the first to port Stella to PSP.

It has been developped on linux for Firmware 1.5 and i hope it works also
for 2.x using the great eloader (0.99x) from http://www.noobz.eu/.

How to use it ? Everything is in the README.txt file.

Sources are included, and this package is under the GNU public license,
read COPYING.txt file for more information about it.

Many thanks to Gelon for his beautiful icons, to the Stella team
for this nice emulator, and to all PSPSDK developpers.

Enjoy, :thumbup:

Zx.

UPDATE: The first who ported Stella to PSP was Aenea ...
Sorry for this mistake (His name wasn't on the official stella web site, it might explain my error) ...

[whitey75]

This is awesome news. Been waiting for an update to Stella for ages. ZX u are da man!

BTW.....u ever gunna succumb to the pressure and make a MAME emulator?

Keep up the great work.

PS. How come this isn't showing up in the RSS feed. That's basically all I ever look at.

Cheers

[bah]

ZX, I once again owe you a huge thankyou :)

I had one of the really late consoles with something like 256 games built in, strongly remember a game where you play as a mouth (with no body) and have to eat certain types of food flying at you.

2600 had some really random game ideas, some worked more than others :)

[indianajonesilm]

How is this version compared to Aenea's port?
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/stellapsp.shtml

[SSaxdude]

ZX thanks for updating a 2600 emulator.

[Turn2]

I'm just curious if I'm overlooking it in the readme.txt but is there a limit to the number of roms you can put in the roms folder? When I go to load rom it does not show a list of games and the menu becomes un-responsive. I can however use the home key to exit so it doesn't lock up the PSP itself. I have 550 roms in the directory.

[Veskgar]

Many thanks to you zx-81. Lots of us were really hoping you would try your hand at a 2600 EMU.

You continue to impress and amaze!

Best wishes go out to you zx-81.

[zx-81]

I'm just curious if I'm overlooking it in the readme.txt but is there a limit to the number of roms you can put in the roms folder? When I go to load rom it does not show a list of games and the menu becomes un-responsive. I can however use the home key to exit so it doesn't lock up the PSP itself. I have 550 roms in the directory.

Personnaly i dont put 500 roms in the same folder, but in separate folders such as a-g h-p q-z etc ... :D

[zx-81]

How is this version compared to Aenea's port?
http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/stellapsp.shtml

I don't know, it seems that Aenea has taken the same source code, using the same PSP port done by David Voswinkel ... What i've done is to put my classical user interface, add speed limiters, render mode, keyboard settings etc ...

[ACID]

You are still my Hero. Man i wish all coders had your devotion. Thanks ZX for another great emulator in your line of all great emulators.

[gunntims0103]

Thanks much for the emulator zx-81, im really starting to get into Atari :D

[Turn2]

The emulator works great. the limit is somewhere around 440 ( got rid of 20 at a time until I hit it ) If anyone think that it works a little slow be sure to check your settings. when I installed it, it was defaulted to 40 fps, should be 60 I believe. Thanks for the great work as always zx-81

[zx-81]

The emulator works great. the limit is somewhere around 440 ( got rid of 20 at a time until I hit it ) If anyone think that it works a little slow be sure to check your settings. when I installed it, it was defaulted to 40 fps, should be 60 I believe. Thanks for the great work as always zx-81

Yes, it put the default value to 40 because i thought it was too fast at 60 ... but you're right, many games required 60 fps.

[carpy]

Bugtesting:

The swap analog/d-pad option doesn't work.

Pitfall II Teh Lost Caverns runs too slow to be playable, but this is also the case in Aenea's port. I believe the clock speed of the PSP just isn't enough.

Brightness mode changes (gets really dark when you hit reset) in game Yar's Revenge. Don't know if it's the PSP or the source code of Stella.

But besides that, the GOOD thing is, since we can switch controllers on the fly in game, Raiders of the Lost Ark is now playable.

Max render mode gets a little pixely in places, but it's a little better than the blurry mess in aenea's port.

There are 559 Original 2600 correct roms. there are also hundreds of hacks and homebrews, but most people don't have those. I'm thinking if we can up the Rom folder limit to 600, that will solve the problem for most people.

[Turn2]

Bugtesting:




the GOOD thing is, since we can switch controllers on the fly in game, Raiders of the Lost Ark is now playable.




this alone is worth a Woo Hoo!!

as far as the rom limit thing goes I'd suspect it is an issue with the way the names are called up and displayed in the menu and not necassary to fix when you can use sub folders ( at least for my part ) and might not be worth the effort to fix.

I'm happy with Raiders:thumbup:

[carpy]

I can't imagine it's too much effort. Even though aenea's port had a very limited "menu" it didn't have a ROM limit, and all 883 of my ROMs showed up fine.

But yeah, if it's a lot of work Zx - don't bother. It's all good.

[zx-81]

I can't imagine it's too much effort. Even though aenea's port had a very limited "menu" it didn't have a ROM limit, and all 883 of my ROMs showed up fine.

But yeah, if it's a lot of work Zx - don't bother. It's all good.

No it's not a hard work, only one line to change lol ... Anyway i've found another bug : the change joystick player option doesn't work (i've forgotten to copy some few lines in the code from atari 7800 :o). The swap analog / d-pad doesn't work either (from the same reason).

For Pitfall II Teh Lost Caverns i will try to see what happens ...

[The_It]

oh god, this is sooooooooooooooooooo......oooooooo
sweet, I have been waiting sooooooooo long, I luv 2600.

[gelon]

The "others"

PIC1

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a43/stranno/atari2600_another_one_PIC1.png

ICON0

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a43/stranno/atari2600_another_one_ICON0.png

background (conver to JPG and rename it as background.jpg in main 2600 directory)

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a43/stranno/atari2600_background.png

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a43/stranno/atari2600_another_background.png

[The_It]

whats with the horrible flickering? how do I fix it?

[Zefrem23]

Hi ZX, first off awesome work, it's really been a long time coming. I was a little disappointed to see that the emulator is beset by the same problem the other PSP port of Stella had, which is over-pronounced flickering on many games. The two games I checked on, Asteroids and Space Invaders, both suffer from this. In Asteroids the lower half of the screen is too dark and flickers quite badly, and in Space Invaders the bullets of the invaders are almost too dark to see. I would hope that this is something not too hard to fix, because it would be a shame if this problem makes some games less fun to play because of it.

Thanks again for your great effort!

[Turn2]

I'm not sure if it is what you are talking about but some of the games can't be fixed from this as the 2600 low amount of memory made it to where some of the sprites have to alternate frames on screen. setting the fps upto 60fps helps this out a bit 40 just makes it a bit more pronounced.

[Zefrem23]

Thanks for the input, Turn2 - setting the FPS to 60 definitely makes a lot of the flickering go away, and I understand that there'll always be a certain amount of flickering due to the limitations of the original hardware. The bullets shot by the invaders in Space Invaders still seem *very* dark to me though. I compared the PC version of StellaX and PCAEwin just to confirm this, and even with the PSP screen at maximum brightness the bullets are still very dark grey rather than the off-white that they should be. Can anyone else confirm or deny this phenomenon - I'm starting to wonder if it's just me seeing this.

Thanks guys!

[zx-81]

I'm using double buffering, may be using simple buffering there will be less flickering ... I've to try this.

Anyway this is a stella port, so all bugs found in previous stella port will still appear on this version, until they are fixed.

[The_It]

maby there could be like a slight motion blur filter so the flickering won't be as noticeable

[The_It]

is this supposed to have paddle support?

[carpy]

I'm not sure if it is what you are talking about but some of the games can't be fixed from this as the 2600 low amount of memory made it to where some of the sprites have to alternate frames on screen. setting the fps upto 60fps helps this out a bit 40 just makes it a bit more pronounced.

Yeah, well sort of. It was not so much different frames, as displaying them at a different(lower) frequency, so they could display more sprites on screen at the same time.

Some of the PC emulators make up for this with double and triple buffering. But they also coded the emulators to display the 30mhz and 15mhz sprites to display at 60mhz, which isn't really accurate, but much better on the eyes. However, I believe this was done using direct-x in the windows API, and wouldn't be present in the basic Stella core code.

The previos port of Stella for the psp is plagued with the same flicker problems. This port is considerably better with it, due to the double buffering at 60 fps.

[zx-81]

The previos port of Stella for the psp is plagued with the same flicker problems. This port is considerably better with it, due to the double buffering at 60 fps.

Using very simple hack in the source code, i can play space invaders without any flick problem :) using only 40 fps ...

[aries2k4]

Great work again Zx-81. Thanks for all the time you put into making these emus better. This one gos way back but had some really fun games. limited grafics doesn´t mean limited fun.
Cheers

[teller]

I waited long time for a finally crisp (not blurry) ATARI 2600 emulation on the PSP! Comparing ACTIVISION HITS REMIXED, your work does a much better job! Finally I can play Demon Attack & Spider Fighter on my PSP! Thanks a lot and keep up the good work!
:thumbup: balduin

[[JPN]_Nerima_Daikon]

Zx-81 ! ! ! You are my hero too ! :-)

Thanks so much ! !

[Turn2]

Yeah, well sort of. It was not so much different frames, as displaying them at a different(lower) frequency, so they could display more sprites on screen at the same time.

.


This is what I was trying to explain with out getting to technical about it. but thanks for pointing it out:thumbup:
Here is my reasoning for suspecting this to be the cause of the dark flicker.
59.997Hz interlaced or 30fps, sprites @ every other frame or every 4 Hz or 15 times a second and if you cut that by a third youve got a sprite showing up just 10 times a second. I just wasn't sure if the emus 60fps was a true 60fps or just a deinterlaced 30fps. Of course

I didn't think about buffering either as I'm an electronics dude and not a programer and of course the original 2600 does not have anything like that.

[carpy]

Right. The 2600 didn't have buffering capabilites at all. It relied entirely on the timing of the 60hz NTSC cycle to update the video.

Which is why Activision's games on the 2600 are the most impressive, visually. Their programmers were expressly forbidden from developing any games with the 30hz flickering.

[Poem58]

ZX!!!!!

You are freakin awsome...2600 already!
I so can't wait to try this out!!!

If I were rich I would make you a millionaire...
If I were a woman I would make your babies!
:thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

I told you there were alot of people waiting for a better release!

[Poem58]

initial test with space invaders and pitfall etc...they look great aside from the hard to see fire in space invaders problem discusssed earlier here...but there is one major problem...the pitch of the sound effects is much to high....maybe an entire octave.....

ZX...is there a way assuming we can send you some sort of link to a real sound effect that the pitch of the Audio can be lowered...I don't recall PC stella having the sound effects this high pitched but maybe?
Of course if it's too difficult...
Just curious....I spent many an hour playing Atari 2600 as a kid...and have those games burned into my brain....I notice the little things :)

[falconsfan79]

Althought this is a great emulator its NOT the best atleast for the windows OS IMO. I have found that although stella is great overall, it lacks 100% true sound emulation. Having played atari forever it seems, I have all of the sounds of my favorite game (Frostbite) tattoo'd in my brain, and although game play on stella is 100% the sounds are lacking... one emu that I know is opensource that seems to have 100% sound emulation is Z26. (http://www.whimsey.com/z26/z26.html) it would be nice if someone could mess around with this emu, and get it running on PSP.

PS - There is a Linux source as well at the link above.

Nice job though! please don't get me wrong I'm not bashing this release as its not a flaw of the port rather of the emulator. If you don't believe me, play frostbite with stella then play it with z26 you will here the differences. but again nice job ;) :thumbup:

[Poem58]

Yeah I guess Stella PC was off too...audio wise.
I've noticed some curious things that are probably more Atari hardware/software issues then emu's or ports...

The flicker problem...using asteroids I found using frameskip of 1-3 made the asteroids solid but then your ship dissapears OR when you start all that is there is your ship....
Must be due to the coding tricks they used for more objects on screen I've read about....

Obviously the sound...which appears to be complete...just at a higher pitch. Not like it's corrupted or missing...
My guess...Stella coder didn't play much Atari if at all or didn't remember what the sounds were like and just got sound working and quit.

Definite problem with space invaders projectile color...this I believe is once again due to the trick used to add more sprites to the screen...not an emu problem...
Not sure what could be done...

Quiting using home button...freezes my PSP...can't understand why.

All in all....version 1.0.1 appears much better that Stella PSP for me....if this gets to 1.0.4 like the 7800 emu it too may be perfect.
Thanks ZX...you have done exactly as I expected!
Made a really good one here!
I love it! Thanks so much!

[Turn2]

Definite problem with space invaders projectile color...this I believe is once again due to the trick used to add more sprites to the screen...not an emu problem...
Not sure what could be done...

Quiting using home button...freezes my PSP...can't understand why.




I'm pretty sure it is because if you can line up one of your shots to pass directly over one of the invaders shots it will turn white as it passes which makes it lool like they are rendered on two different frames.

Home button made mine feeze after getting the rom count down enough to display them (see earlier post) so I just use the L+R+S or the exit from the menu.

Again thanks Zx I played for about 2 hours last night :)

[classicgmr]

After reading through the thread I installed the emulator this morning and broke my ROM directory into #-M and N-Z. It works fine that way so I avoided the one big issue so far without any headaches. :)

1) I absolutely love the interface to this emulator.
- It has a lot of color to it and you can change the background.jpg file. I grabbed the black background with the angled Pitfall screenshot (http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=334208&postcount=19) from earlier in the thread. :)
- "Tabbing" through the rom files using the left/right buttons instead of forced scrolling.

2) Much better options in this emulator than the StellaPSP.
- Full screen, 1.25x and normal resolutions
- Key mapping possible for each game
- screenshots
- 5 save states per game

3) From an "anal organizer"(me) or "easy set-up" standpoint I like the fact everything is in ONE place(rom count limit notwithstanding) and not on different areas of the card.

These are all the same reasons I like ZX's 7800 (http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/psp7800-atari-7800-emulator-for-psp-v1-0-4-game-compatibility--49943.html), Intellivision (http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/emulators-for-psp-42746.html)(no save states though) and ColecoVision (http://psp-news.dcemu.co.uk/pspcolem-a-colecovision-emulator-for-psp-v1-0-7-bug-fix--47712.html) emulators also... It's the same interface I like using already.

A big "Thank You!" from me ZX. I love your work! :thumbup:

[zx-81]

initial test with space invaders and pitfall etc...they look great aside from the hard to see fire in space invaders problem discusssed earlier here...but there is one major problem...the pitch of the sound effects is much to high....maybe an entire octave.....

Stella sound samples should be played at 33Khz, and they are played at 44K in the PSP version ... This might explain your problem. I have to add a 33k to 44k audio conversion ...

[SmashinGit]

Thanks zx-81, you are the psp man! :D

[carlosjuliopr]

hi

this emu crashes on my 2.60 / ta-082 psp, using eboot loader "kriek" edition, it simply runs and it shows the menu but if yuo press a key it crashes with an "bus error" how comes??? i'm the only one or do the eboot has a fixed path???

[carpy]

downgrade that thing already.

[Poem58]

Stella sound samples should be played at 33Khz, and they are played at 44K in the PSP version ... This might explain your problem. I have to add a 33k to 44k audio conversion ...

If this could be done easily I would be eternally grateful...however I am already anyway....

[madcupid]

i have about 516 roms in the same folder running at 60fts and havent had a problem yet. maybe my roms are different?? dont know... they do not have the extension a26 and the names are short and no spaces....maybe that helps...e.g.

ROADRUNR
RIVRAID2
BUGSBUN

btw....excellent emulator ZX...thanks alot and keep it up man...youre one of the greatest!!!

[madcupid]

when i try to exit using the home button it freezes and all i see is "please wait"...then i have to reset the psp...

[zx-81]

when i try to exit using the home button it freezes and all i see is "please wait"...then i have to reset the psp...


The home button works only inside the emulator menu ... :o

[zx-81]

i have about 516 roms in the same folder running at 60fts and havent had a problem yet. maybe my roms are different?? dont know... they do not have the extension a26 and the names are short and no spaces....maybe that helps...e.g.

ROADRUNR
RIVRAID2
BUGSBUN

btw....excellent emulator ZX...thanks alot and keep it up man...youre one of the greatest!!!

The bug is simple, it's due to the quick sort algorithm i use to sort the file by alphabetic order. This algorithm is fast in most of the case, but very very long when the list is already sorted ! which is the case when you unzip files from a sorted archive.

[Poem58]

Hey ZX...sorry I PM'd you but after the 2600 dropped of the news page I can't find where the discussion went. The like an Idiot I remembered It would be listed on the emu section of the page.:o

Let me start with of course,I have no clue how you do what you do or so fast at that...but it is appreciated.

I don't tknow how these emulators work enough to know their limitations etc.

But I had a thought....
For the flicker problem on the 2600.

If the emulator can run at 60 FPS...and we were watching it on our TV's on the real thing at an interlaced 30 FPS....

Would it be possible to make the emu have a 30/60 mode where it combined 2 frames at a time and ran that at 30 FPS?

Either by way of interlacing or just plain combining the two frames? Doing so should thoretically eliminate flicker and allow all objects to appear and should still run rather close if not normal speed?

Hope that sparks an idea...but it seems to me..if that was workable and the sound was fixed along with control swap..(paddle support would be nice but usually are impractical without real paddles) then the emu would be perfect as it seems to run all the games already.

It does amaze me at how well you port something!
in one port you've exceeded the 2 version's previously done. I knew you could do it based on your other ports quality and ease of use and thank you so much. You bring back lot's of memories to us all.

[zx-81]

But I had a thought....
For the flicker problem on the 2600.

If the emulator can run at 60 FPS...and we were watching it on our TV's on the real thing at an interlaced 30 FPS....

Would it be possible to make the emu have a 30/60 mode where it combined 2 frames at a time and ran that at 30 FPS?

Either by way of interlacing or just plain combining the two frames? Doing so should thoretically eliminate flicker and allow all objects to appear and should still run rather close if not normal speed?

That's what i've done, and it works great. In newer emulator version, they (Stella team) develop such a feature (They call it Phosphor render), and it takes two frames to draw the current one.

What i've done, is 3 kinds of methods, the first was the one i've found for Asteroid, the background is black, and using a simple comparison, i can merge two frames to do the new one, and it works great.

Another method consist of computing an average color for each pixel, using the two frames (the current one, and the previous one).

The third method consist of using a pre-computed tables, to compute a "phosphor" color using the two presious frames.

Thus, all those methods will be available in the new version, i plan to release this evenning (if everything is going alright).



Hope that sparks an idea...but it seems to me..if that was workable and the sound was fixed along with control swap..(paddle support would be nice but usually are impractical without real paddles) then the emu would be perfect as it seems to run all the games already.


I've merge the change from the Stella v2.0 beta 1 and the Stella v2.2 in psp2600 (it was not so easy because there were many divergences in the code). Anyway, i've succeed to do it, and the paddle is supported in v2.2, so psp2600 is now able to use the paddle (i've modified the psp part, to use left/right keys of the PSP as paddle, and i've put some new settings for the paddle speed etc ...

I've also fixed the bug for the roms folder, when it contains many roms.

I'm working now on the sound part to translat 33k smaple in 44k ... I cross fingers, but it's not too hard to do, and it can be an option if the sound is not so good.

[gmoney13]

zx-81

Do you think you can work on a Daphne emulator for the psp---Let me know----