Wii2600: Difference between revisions

Wii2600
Wii2600
	File:Wii2600wii.jpg
General
Author	Raz0red
Type	Console
Version	0.2.7.8
License	Mixed
Last Updated	2019/02/04
Links
	Download
	Website
	Source

Revision as of 06:47, 3 February 2023

Wii2600 is a port of the Stella 2.7.2 emulator to the Wii.

Stella is a multi-platform Atari 2600 VCS emulator released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). Stella was originally developed for Linux by Bradford W. Mott, however, since its original release several people have joined the development team to port Stella to other operating systems such as AcornOS, AmigaOS, DOS, FreeBSD, IRIX, Linux, OS/2, MacOS, Unix, and Windows.

Installation

To install Wii2600, simply extract the zip file that this README was distributed with directly to your SD card (retain the hierarchical structure exactly).

Cartridge images should be placed in the roms directory (wii2600/roms).

Tearing, Vertical Sync, PAL/NTSC, etc.

Without the use of Vertical Sync, 2600 games that scroll (Barnstorming, River Raid, etc.) will exhibit tearing during game play.

The first time Wii2600 is started it attempts to determine whether your Wii is running in PAL (50hz) or NTSC/PAL60 (60hz) mode. Based on this determination it sets a default value for Vertical Sync.

NTSC/PAL60:

If Wii2600 determines you are in NTSC/PAL60 mode (60hz) it enables Vertical Sync by default. This should work well for both NTSC and PAL games. PAL games run fine due to the fact that they run at a slower rate than NTSC.

PAL:

If Wii2600 determines you are currently in PAL mode (50hz) it disables Vertical Sync by default. The reason it disables this setting is to be compatible with both PAL and NTSC games at 100% speed. Since the Wii console is syncing at 50hz it won't be able to maintain the required 60hz for NTSC games and as a result you will get garbled sound and slow video.

If you still want to use Vertical Sync, you can enable it via the "Advanced" menu in Wii2600. PAL games will run as they were intended, 50hz at 100% speed. Wii2600 also configures another setting "Force FPS" to "50 FPS" when you enable Vertical Sync in PAL mode. What this setting does is control the frame rate that games run at. Essentially what it will do is force all games (NTSC or PAL) to run at 50 FPS. In doing so it also adjusts audio buffer sizes, etc. so that you won't experience garbled sound. The downside is that NTSC games will now run at 50 FPS versus their intended 60 FPS, so the games will run a bit slower.

The real answer to resolve these issues is to add auto-frame skipping to Stella. That is definitely something I will be looking to add in an upcoming release.

Paddle controls

Wii2600 supports three different modes for emulating paddles support ("Roll", "IR", and "Analog"). For complete details see the controls section below.

In most cases Stella will automatically enable paddle support for the selected rom. However, in cases where it doesn't, you must configure paddle support manually. This is accomplished via the "Controller" tab found in the "Game Properties" menu of the "Options" (found in the main rom browser). For the P0 or P1 controllers specify Paddles instead of Joystick, etc.

It is also important to note how Wii2600 allocates the controls when Paddles are selected. If P0 is set to be paddles, then Wii controllers 1 and 2 will map to the two paddles that are that are plugged into the virtual P0. If P1 is also set to paddles then controllers 3 and 4 will represent the two paddles that are plugged into P1. However if P0 is set to be paddles and P1 is set to be a joystick, then Wii controller 3 will represent the joystick (1 and 2 will represent paddles). If P1 is set to joystick and P2 is set to paddles then Wii controller 1 will be the joystick while 2 and 3 will represent the paddles.