MiSTer FPGA Forum

I saw the Atari 2600 got an update today adding a second fire button. I'm so glad to see that the Atari 2600 core keeps getting love since we just got pause button support recently too. I hope that one day it'll be as mature as other cores like the SNES and Genesis cores.

Anyways, I have a feature request. Some Atari 2600 games use both the Black and White switch as well as the difficulty switches as additional buttons. This excellent articles goes into detail on the functionality of the B&W switch: http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/201 ... 00s-b.html

TLDR: The B&W Switch has special functionality for these select games:
-Space Shuttle (engine controls)
-Cosmic Ark (turn on/off star field on some cartridges)
-Fantastic Voyage (pause)
-Solaris (inverts planet horizons)
-Mouse Trap (removes playfield)
-Starmaster (brings up Galactic Chart)
-Beany Bopper (pause)
-Flash Gordon (pause)
-Spacemaster X-7 (pause)
-Secret Quest (brings up Status Screen and password)

Obviously the use of a pause button is redundant, but some games like Secret Quest, Space Shuutle and Starmaster are essential to the playability of the game.

Also, the Difficulty switches don't only affect the difficulty of the game, but they also change certain settings according to this thread:https://atariage.com/forums/topic/18858 ... gs-a-or-b/

Moon Patrol, Pengo and Phoenix's music is turned on or off with the Difficulty switches. I know there are other examples of the Difficulty switches acting more as buttons for certain games than switches.

I bring this up because Stella allows you to map the B&W and Difficulty switches to buttons. I prefer to map these switches to all four shoulder buttons. It just makes things easier. Is it realistic to add the B&W and Difficulty switches as buttons as well as a switch within the core menu? I was impressed with how quickly pausing was added to the core, but I just wanted to know what the feasability of this feature is please. It could either possibly be implemented by having difficulty A being one button and difficulty B being another button or you could make the switches one button that pressed once is difficulty A and pressed again is difficulty B. I don't want to make this post too long, but is this feature likely to happen?

@KremlingKuthroat19
I suggest you add this feature request to the Atari 2600 core GitHub. That's what I did with the pause button one. There it i's more likely to get more developers attention. I also think this is a needed feature and second your request.

I'm also considering suggesting optional stereo sound for the earlier games and homebrews that support it. The original Atari 2600 project would include stereo speakers and a few earlier games were projected to take advantage of them. Though they removed the speakers for the initial release, they kept the TIA with two separate audio output, so it's an easy mod in real hardware, and most emulators also support it.

skooter wrote: ↑Sat Oct 03, 2020 3:52 pm @KremlingKuthroat19
I suggest you add this feature request to the Atari 2600 core GitHub. That's what I did with the pause button one. There it i's more likely to get more developers attention. I also think this is a needed feature and second your request.

I'm also considering suggesting optional stereo sound for the earlier games and homebrews that support it. The original Atari 2600 project would include stereo speakers and a few earlier games were projected to take advantage of them. Though they removed the speakers for the initial release, they kept the TIA with two separate audio output, so it's an easy mod in real hardware, and most emulators also support it.

Thanks for seconding my feature request Skooter . I added feature requests for the Switches being mappable as buttons and for Starpath Supercharger support: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Atari2600_MiSTer/issues.

I think these two features and obviously the compatability improving over time will make the Atari 2600 core perfect.

Okay so I tested the latest release and Tapper works well on my flat panel with origional vsync and on my CRT tv it has a slight jitter to the image but is fully playable just a bit distracting. The decombing works great and makes some games look even better than they did on native hardware. This looks like a good release!

All the Starpath Supercharger Games Do Not work on this core DragonStomper etc just garble the screen ?

I noticed Entombed is kind of "bumpy" with scrolling problems.

I captured the problem in this video:
https://youtu.be/4pkMy8BrR_I?t=122

Is anybody already tried Pitkat on the A2600 core ? I cannot get it running on my side it even crash the core
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/308669-pitkat/

Forget about, I got the answer to my question I've just seen a video on YouTube from NML32 showing the game runing on the Mister.
So now need to figure out what happens on my set-up

kathleen wrote: ↑Wed Oct 28, 2020 8:29 am Forget about, I got the answer to my question I've just seen a video on YouTube from NML32 showing the game runing on the Mister.
So now need to figure out what happens on my set-up

Change the extension to e7

Thank you so much, will try

Just wanna thank you guys for implementing my request for dedicated buttons for the B&W switch and the P1 and P2 difficulty switches. It works great! Also, adding stereo support was a nice feature I didn't expect.

Hi Mister friends, I am having trouble with Deadly Duck being jittery, any ideas on the video settings to fix, or is anyone else having this issue with this game? Please help. Thx.

Just tested and same issue here. Whatever the options (Vblank, De-com, Aspect etc) I have graphic problems (jumping up and down by few pixels and seems to be a bit faster than the original.
Edit : According to the videos I saw on the net the speed seems to be correct. It is a nervous game.

The Mister Atari2600 Compatibility Sheet is awesome that NML32 created, however I am curious if there is a way to have like an .ini files or something to somehow setup the video, audio settings, etc (core settings) for individual roms? so it is a more automatic process... just curious

I know you can setup the core settings at start in the mister.ini thx

I was trying Jr. Pac-Man for Atari 2600 on my MiSTer and while other ROMs all seem to run fine (including regular Pac-Man), Jr. Pac-Man seems to have a strange issue, where pellets do not disappear when they are eaten. The same rom works fine in Stella and RetroArch on my computer; the pellets correctly vanish upon being consumed.

I have enclosed some screenshots (taken using the win+prints-creen keys on a keyboard - I can also take a photo of the monitor if requested.)

Has anyone else noticed this, and could anyone confirm this on their MiSTer?

Thanks,
-gfish


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brief summary of my set up:

MiSTer_20201106
Atari2600_20201106.rbf
Jr. Pac-Man (USA).a26, 36c29ceee2c151b23a1ad7aa04bd529d, matching the one in the list at https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Atari2600_MiSTer
Output: HDMI to 1080p TV that I otherwise use as a secondary monitor.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@gordonfish Jr. Pacman is a SuperChip cart so just change the extension to .00s

NML32 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:27 am @gordonfish Jr. Pacman is a SuperChip cart so just change the extension to .00s

Thanks, that did it! [1] I didn't realize the file extension would make that difference. (I guess I should have read the this part of the README.md a bit closer ) I've also never seen .00s in any Atari emulator before, nor was I too keen on what games use SuperChip. Thanks again for your help.

[1]

thorr wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 10:29 pm I have an unofficial core that supports SNAC and works with my Atari Paddles.
...

Any chance that I can test this unofficial Atari core?

Cheers

Is it allowed to just share unreleased cores here? I don't want to get in trouble. I wish the SNAC code would just get included in the main build. A developer has the code but is probably super busy and hasn't gotten to including it yet.

thorr wrote: ↑Sat Nov 28, 2020 8:58 am Is it allowed to just share unreleased cores here? I don't want to get in trouble. I wish the SNAC code would just get included in the main build. A developer has the code but is probably super busy and hasn't gotten to including it yet.

Post a link.
People share unreleased cores all the time.
The core owner is the one who controls it so if they are ok with that you're 100% good to go.

I got it through a MiSTer parts seller who knows the developer and was working with me to test and fix the SNAC issues once I got it. I didn't get it directly. I don't know if the author cares or not about sharing it. I could post the name of the author, but I don't want him/her to be hounded by y'all.

thorr wrote: ↑Mon Nov 30, 2020 4:50 am I got it through a MiSTer parts seller who knows the developer and was working with me to test and fix the SNAC issues once I got it. I didn't get it directly. I don't know if the author cares or not about sharing it. I could post the name of the author, but I don't want him/her to be hounded by y'all.

Please, could you try to contact the author and ask him to share the core.

Thx

All the Starpath Supercharger games do not work on this core !!!

On my learning path into FPGA stuff, I stumbled over a course called "Learn Assembly Language by Making Games for the ATARI 2600" on Udemy. That is almost better than playing games on it. While probably most other students test their roms on soft emus like STELLA, I just turned on the MiSter, moved my file onto it via Samba connection and ... it's running. COOL
(Definitly much easier than a EEPROM burning process for a proper cartridge.)

Now what this core really needs is an optional frame buffer toggle for the few games that have weird output. Most games can handle the low latency V_Sync=2 setting no problem, but a few games are very problematic and it would be nice if one could turn on a buffer on the fly specifically for those games.

SegaSnatcher wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 3:56 pm Now what this core really needs is an optional frame buffer toggle for the few games that have weird output. Most games can handle the low latency V_Sync=2 setting no problem, but a few games are very problematic and it would be nice if one could turn on a buffer on the fly specifically for those games.

Can you give examples?

rhester72 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 4:00 pm

SegaSnatcher wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 3:56 pm Now what this core really needs is an optional frame buffer toggle for the few games that have weird output. Most games can handle the low latency V_Sync=2 setting no problem, but a few games are very problematic and it would be nice if one could turn on a buffer on the fly specifically for those games.

Can you give examples?

Air Raid and Jr. Pacman are two examples of games that loses sync on my PC monitor.

Also, I get a blank screen from Popeye and Qbert's Cubes.

Edit: Seems like Popeye and Qbert's Cubes are also broken with V_Sync=0

@SegaSnatcher are you on a CRT or something? On HDMI, Popeye and Qbert's Cubes are fine with v_sync=2 (at least on my TV)

rhester72 wrote: ↑Fri Jan 08, 2021 11:08 pm @SegaSnatcher are you on a CRT or something? On HDMI, Popeye and Qbert's Cubes are fine with v_sync=2 (at least on my TV)

I'm using HDMI out and those games crash on me. Maybe I have to add the mapper extension?

OK, next question - have you set VBlank to Regenerate? (If not, try it.)