Stella 3.5 released

[Robert]

Stella emulates the Atari 2600.

 

Get it here --> http://stella.source...t/downloads.php

 

December 29, 2011

 

Stella release 3.5 for Linux, MacOS X and Windows is now available.

• Stella is now DonationWare! Please see the DonationWare link on the main webpage for more information.
  
• Added several improvements to the joystick management code. Joystick event mapping is now saved per device, meaning that if you map events to a certain joystick device, remove the device and then later insert it again, Stella will remember the original mapping.
  
• Added 'mcontrol' commandline argument, which can specify to use each mouse axis as a separate paddle. The old (and default) behaviour can be activated by setting this argument to 'auto'. Related to this, removed redundant 'usemouse' argument.
  
• Huge restructuring of the OpenGL code, making it compatible with OpenGL 2.x+ features (such as vertex buffer objects), while at the same time keeping compatibility with OpenGL 1.5 / OpenGL ES. Because of the required changes, TV effects were removed (they will be added again for the next release).
  
• Improvements to audio handling, particularly for certain cases of Windows, ATI video cards, and OpenGL mode. The sound device is now opened only once when Stella starts, and is paused between loading different ROMs. This fixes a problem whereby sound could possibly not be functional after loading the first ROM. Related to this, removed the 'audiofirst' commandline argument as it's now redundant.
  
• Added logging facility, whereby the output of the application is available within Stella itself. This can still be printed to the console, or also saved to a file. Add the 'loglevel' and 'logtoconsole' commandline arguments which control these settings, and removed the 'showinfo' argument as it's now redundant.
  
• Updated DPC+ bankswitching scheme to latest code provided by SpiceWare.
  
• Added MAMCR handling to the Thumb ARM emulation code. Note that MAMCR isn't actually emulated, it is just ignored for now. This fixes a bug whereby accessing MAMCR would crash the ARM emulation.
  
• Updated default snapshot directory to be much saner and easier to find. For most systems, it now defaults to the users 'Desktop'. Note that the commandline argument has changed to 'snapdir'.
  
• The debugger 'print' command now indicates "special" addresses if they are read-only ®, write-only (W) or read-write (R/W).
  
• Fixed a bug where scrolling the mouse-wheel in certain debugger UI items would cause the program to crash; scrolling now works as expected.
  
• Fixed compile issues in the latest versions of Ubuntu and Debian, and fixed UNIX desktop file so that Stella will launch with a ROM when selected from its icon. Thanks go to Stephen Kitt for this code.
  
• Updated included PNG library to latest stable version.
  
• Updated the credits list in the documentation, listing people that have donated hardware to the Stella team.