Stella 3.7 Released

[Alastor]

A Multi-Platform Atari 2600 VCS Emulator

http://stella.sourceforge.net/

June 1, 2012

Stella release 3.7 for Linux, MacOS X and Windows is now available.

-Added Blargg TV effects, with presets for Composite, S-video, RGB, and badly adjusted TV, and well as a custom mode with full configurability of contrast, brightness, gamma, etc. Many keyboard shortcuts and commandline arguments were added to support this; see the documentation for a detailed explanation. These effects are OpenGL-only. Special thanks to Ian Bogost and the Georgia Tech Atari Team for the preliminary implementation.
-Updated the CompuMate keyboard handler to recognize more keys on an actual keyboard, instead of having to remember the weird combinations used on the original CompuMate keyboard (although those original keys will continue to work). Related to this, fixed bug whereby 'ghost keys' would be detected by the CompuMate, particularly after pressing 'Enter' to start a game from the ROM launcher.
-Added emulation for MindLink controller using the mouse; the 'Bionic Breakthrough' and 'Telepathy' ROMs now work.
-Updated FA2 bankswitch scheme (Star Castle) to emulate load/save high score functionality to the Harmony cart flash RAM.
-Added ability for ROM launcher to 'descend' into ZIP files when it contains more than one ROM file. This means you no longer have to unzip a multi-file archive before using each ROM. Thanks go to Roland Schabenberger (webOS maintainer) for this idea and sample code.
-Several improvements to the debugger/disassembler:
The 'resolvedata', 'showaddr' and 'gfxformat' commandline arguments are renamed to start with 'dis', indicating that they're used with the built-in disassembler.
Zero-page code addresses no longer have their high-byte truncated, and system equates (TIA and I/O registers) are now properly marked as such.
The Distella '-r' option (Relocate calls out of address range) is no longer the default, resulting in output more consistent with normal usage of Distella. Related to this, added the '-dis.relocate' commandline argument (and associated UI item) to toggle this dynamically.
-Fixed bug in EFSC bankswitch scheme state saving; the Superchip RAM wasn't actually being loaded and saved to state files.
-Improved speed of loading and saving state files, as well as slightly reducing their size. Because of this, old state files will not work with this release.
-Replaced commandline argument 'uselauncher' with 'exitlauncher'. The new option specifies the behaviour of the ROM launcher when exiting a ROM (always exit to launcher, or only when the launcher was actually used). This setting can now be changed in the GUI.
-Several updates to the internal properties database:
'Juno First' ROMs now use an AtariVox/SaveKey when possible
'Astroblast' ROMs now use the paddles by default
'Star Castle 2600' ROMs added
-Changed key-combo for enabling TIA objects and collisions to be toggled on and off with the Alt-period and Shift-Alt-period respectively (instead of having two separate keys to turn them on and off).
-When working on the commandline, relative filenames are now correctly handled (current working directory is used).
-The Windows 98/ME/2000 builds have been discontinued, due to code and features that are only available on Windows XP/SP3 and later.
-Updated included PNG library to latest stable version.

Have Fun!