StellaDS Phoenix Edition

StellaDS Phoenix Edition
StellaDS Phoenix Edition
General
Author	Dave Bernazzani (wavemotion)
Type	Console
Version	5.5
License	Mixed
Last Updated	2022/10/12
Links
	Download
	Website
	Source

StellaDS is an Atari 2600 console emulator for the DS/DSi, based on AlekMaul's StellaDS.

This is the Phoenix Edition with improvements of speed, compatibility and accuracy to the emulation on the DSi. It also added new features such as instruction manuals and high score support.

Features

High level of compability to make games playable.
Paddle and Keypad emulation is included.
Improved emulator core for better performance:
- Most games you remember fondly run nearly full speed on a DSi in native 133MHz mode.
- For the older DS-LITE and DS-PHAT, only the more simple games are going to run close to full speed.
Full console emulation including Reset, Select, Difficulty Switches, TV Type.
Wide range of controllers including joystick, paddles, driving controller, booster grip, keypad, Genesis 2-button and more Savekey Support with backing 32K EEPROM.
FA2 and Cherity supported with backing EEPROM support.
Most popular bankswitching is supported up to 128K/256K BF/EF/DF/SB and 512K 3E and 3F schemes with up to 32K of RAM.
High score support with up to 10 scores for each game.
Manuals for more than 100 of the common games included.
Keypad overlay for Star Raiders.
Frame Blending to help smooth out flicker.

Installation

Note: To use this emulator, you must use compatibles rom with a26/bin format.

DIDL patch the StellaDS.nds file depending on the flash card (if it does not have auto-patching).

Copy it into a directory of your flash/(micro)SD/MMC card.

Put the a26/bin files where you want on your flashcard. If you are using Twilight Menu++, you may need to rename the .bin to .a26 in order to use.

User guide

When the emulator starts, click on the cartridge slot to choose a file.

Use Up/Down to select a file, then use A to load it.

Supported ROMS

See Comatiblity.txt for the list of the supported ROMS.

Generally these are going to be NTSC No-Intro roms (mostly developed for American market in the early days of video games).

PAL roms (that were later ported for Europe market) may cut off at the bottom of the screen and may not run at the right speed.

In other words while PAL is supported, you are generally going to get the most genuine Atari 2600 experience with NTSC roms.

Configuration

The gear icon on the main screen allows you to set a number of configuration parameters related specifically to the game you are running. In addition to the parameters shown, the difficulty switches (Left/Right A/B) are also saved on a per-game basis.

If you change any configuration settings, you really should re-load the game after saving out your configuration - some settings such as Bank Switching and NTSC vs PAL are only applied when the game is first loaded.

Here is a description of the configuration items you can adjust. Be sure to press the START button to save out your configuration after making changes:

Controller - Most games use the Left-Joystick but you can change this.
Bankswitch - The system tries to auto-detect the correct bankswitching scheme.
Frame Blend - Normal is fastest. Flicker free is slowest but blends frames. You can also try Flicker Reduce Background/Black which is mid-ground.
TV Type - NTSC vs PAL. Reload your game after saving this setting.
Sound - Normally ON. Can be turned OFF which will render screen faster.
ABXY Button - Default to FIRE button but you can change this.
HBLANK Zero: - Whether system clears pixels on horizontal blanks. Turn off at your own risk (it will speed up emulation which helps with older DS-LITE).
VBLANK Zero - Whether system clears pixels on vertical blanks. Turn off at your own risk (it will speed up emulation which helps with older DS-LITE).
Analog Sens - Default is 10 (1.0x speed). You can ajust how the paddle emulation responds.
Start Scanline - Starting Scanline setting. When the TV first starts output of scanlines.
Num Scanlines - Number of scanlines to display. Don't touch if you don't understand this.
Offset/Scale - You can ajust the screen scaling and offset positions for the game.

Controls

D-Pad - Joystick

A/B/Y - Fire button

Select - Atari Select switch

Start - Atari Reset switch

X - Show FPS (Frames per Second)

L - Toggle Full Speed (no trottle to 60FPS)

R+D-Pad - Shift display offset in the D-PAD direction

L+D-Pad - Change Scaling of the Y-Screen (Up/Down scaling only)

L+R+A - Swap LCD top/bottom

Use Stylus on buttons for other actions on bottom screen.

Screenshots

Known issues

DPC+ and CDFJ/CDFJ+ games can't be emulated - that requires a coprocessor running at 70MHz (more than the speed of an original DS!).
Pitfall II DPC support is incomplete and the background music will not play correctly (game is otherwise fine to play).
Cherity music fetchers are incomplete and the background music will not play correctly (game is otherwise fine to play).
Game filenames can be no longer than 168 characters including the extension. Rename to shorter if needed.
No more than 1200 files can be shown in a directory. You can break up your games into multiple directories if needed.
The original DS-Lite and DS-Phat are running at half the speed (67MHz vs 134MHz) of the DSi/DSi-XL and as such you will find that only a subset of games run at full speed... Fortunately many of the best games will runfine - Space Invaders, Missile Command, Asteroids, Yars Revenge, Adventure, Phoenix, Chopper Command, Megamania, Pitfall!, Cosmic Ark, Demon Attack and lots more will be at your fingertips.

Changelog

V5.5 2022/10/12

V5.4 2022/10/07

Added DF bank switching scheme (missed when DFSC was added).
New core execution loop that gives us another 2 frames of performance.
Optimized F4 driver to make some of the 32K games playable on DS-Lite.
Cleanup across the board.

V5.3 2022/10/03

Added Chetiry (CTY) bank switching scheme with EEPROM support (but no music fetchers).
Improved memory handling across the board for another frame of performance.
Fixed SP+ so it runs properly again.
Improved driver for Midnight Magic and Realsports Tennis so both now run at 60FPS!

V5.2 2022/09/30

Fixed goof in F6, F4 and related F6SC and F4SC drivers!
Another frame of increased performance
More accurate AR cart handling for Supercharger games
V5.2a: 3E and related fix

V5.1 2022/09/29

Improved all bankswitching for more speed and greater copatibility.
New F6 driver for DS-LITE to support 16K games - many at full speed!
Cleanups across the board.

V5.0 2022/09/27

Added new bankswitching scheme: X07 (Stella's Stocking).
Improved 4K/2K driver to squeese out a couple more frames of performance.
New special F8 driver to support more 8K games on the DS-Lite.
Lots of cleanup across the board in the database to make more games playable.
Updated to 5.0c with another frame of improvement for 4K and 8K games!

V4.9 2022/09/18

Added new bankswitching schemes: TVBOY, UASW and 0840 (Econobanking).
Fixed UA bankswitching scheme to allow more games to run.

V4.8 2022/09/11

Fixed Super Bank (SB) scheme.

V4.7 2022/03/24

Added per-game configuration settings.
Fixed 3E/3F and UA bankswitching schemes.

V4.6 2022/03/20

Added SaveKey support - standard games will have a virtual SaveKey in the right controller jack and will be auto-backed to a 32K /data/StellaDS.EE file.
Added EF, EFSC, DFSC and SB (SuperBank) support for games as large as 256K!

V4.5 2021/11/05

New sound output core - no more zingers.

V4.4 2021/08/22

Minor cleanups across the board. Improved AR cart speed by ~1FPS.
Added horizontal stretch - use the Left Shoulder + L/R D-Pad.
The Y button is now auto-fire.

V4.3 2021/08/09

Massive overhaul of the non-bank-switched engine so now the older DS-Lite and DS-Phat will run many games at full speed.

V4.2 2021/08/02

New overlay graphic for Star Raiders (plus manual).
A half dozen odd games got their controllers straightened out.
About 100 graphical tweaks for various games to make them look as good as possible.

V4.1 2021/07/28

Found another 1-2% speed up in TIA rendering.
Bumper Bash now plays correctly (you can use the shoulder buttons too).
Kool-Aid-Man now plays correctly.
Meltdown graphics improvements (but not fixed... but playable).
Alpha Beam, Big Bird and Cookie Monster games all work with joystick controls now.

V4.0 2021/07/24

Found another 3-5% speed up in TIA rendering! Official Frogger now at 60FPS.
Press and hold L+R+A to swap LCD screens.
Other minor cleanups and polish.

Release notes.

Credits

Thanks to:

Bradford W. Mott for Stella.
Alekmaul for porting Stella to the DS.
Robz for Twilight-Menu++ which rekindled emulation on the classic handheld.

External links

GitHub - https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/StellaDS
GBAtemp - https://gbatemp.net/threads/stella-ds-improved.577691