Atari stella wrong resolution on exit, using Mala

[squirrellydw]

I have z26 and when I exit the resolution is not right?  I have an arcade monitor with the AVGA card.  Any idea? 

[squirrellydw]

edit

[squirrellydw]

Also can you use a U360 with this or would I be better off using another emulator?

edit...got this working

[squirrellydw]

I just setup stella and I can launch the games fine but I have a problem with it.  When I exit it and go back to the Mala menu the resolution is different so the menu is all mess up. 

thanks

[unclet]

I just setup stella and I can launch the games fine but I have two problems with it.  When I exit it and go back to the Mala menu the resolution is different so the menu is all mess up.  Also I can't seem to map the esc key to it.  Is there a file I can edit?  I looked at the ini file but didn't seem to see the exit key.

thanks

When you exit the emulator and the resolution changed, does the display of the MALA game menu list move to the bottom left of the screen some so part of the game list is out of the display screen area?  Perhaps post a picture of what your "bad resolution" looks like or describe it a bit more (if a picture will not help us out).

As for exiting stella, I use "Ctrl-Q"  to exit.   My keyboard encoder can be programmed to issue these two key presses when "one" button is pressed.    I am assuming your encoder can not do this, so I would recommend having MALA send the "Ctrl-Q" for you when you press a specific button (ie: ESC).   I believe MALA can intecept a keypress (ex: ESC) and then send some a key sequence to the emulator (ex: "Ctrl-Q").   

Check this out to see how to use it --->   http://mala.arcadezentrum.com/hotkeys.html

[squirrellydw]

I will post a pic in a few minutes.  I was finally able to get stella setup with my controls and exiting is working now.  I just need to get this resolution thing fixed on exiting stella and all should be good.

[squirrellydw]

You can see by the two pics that it doesn't exit back to the correct resolution.  I also have two emulators setup for NES and SNES and they work fine.

[unclet]

The resolution thing looks like a question for swindus ......  I would PM directly if he does not chime into this thread ...

[squirrellydw]

I tried to use a fixed resolution and that didn't work either.  My monitor supports up to 1024x768 and all the other EMUs work fine, its just Stella causing the problem on exit.  Is there a setting in Stella I need to change?   Any idea?

[unclet]

In MALA I start stella by using the following "Executable/Command Line" options:

   -fullscreen 1 -gl_fsmax 1 "%path%\%rom%.%ext%"

It seems the "-gl_fsmax 1" option is related to resolution.   Try that option and see if it helps.

If this does not help, then you might want to read through stella help text which explains each command line option available and play around with some to see if anything works for you.  There should be a "docs" directory where you UnZip'd the stella code.   In this "docs" directory there should be an "index.html" file which you should open and search for the text "Command Line".   You can then read about all the available options.

[squirrellydw]

grrrrr......I tried that and still the same thing.

[unclet]

The more I look at the pics you posted, the more I believe this might be a MALA layout issue.  It seems the game list text seems to be displayed properly, it is just the blue square border colors which are moved around and no longer line up correctly.

I would recommend posting a new post with the word "MALA" in the subject as well so Loadman and/or swindus might stop and take a look.   Your current subject title indicates it is a Stella resolution problem, but perhaps this is really a "Mala resolution problem".

I just find it hard to believe it is a stella problem when some parts of your display seem to be displayed properly.    If it was a stella problem I would have believe the complete display would be wrong, not just the colored blue border boxes.

Sorry, but I have no more ideas .......

[squirrellydw]

I do think you are right, I looked at it again and that does seem to be the problem.  But why would Stella be the only one doing this?  I also tried the standard layout and it had the same problem so it's not the layout I am using.

[unclet]

Possibly the problem only happens when you have a certain number of games loaded or a certain numbers of games which start with the letter "G", etc .... etc ....   Programming can be weird at times.   Your best bet is to keep everything configured the same and hope swindus can find something wrong.  Perhaps if you contact him directly he would provide a "debug" MALA version which will grab a lot of information for him to look through to try and fine the problem.

Just for fun, why dont you try to configure a new emulator called "Stella2" within MALA and only add about 10 games and see if the problem still occurs.   Does the stella emulator in MALA have it's own MALA layout which is only used for stella or is that layout shared with other emulators as well?  If it is only used by stella, then possibly try playing around with the layout properties and see if the problem goes away by simply positioning the boxes at different locations (ie: move things around a bit).    If the MALA layout is used for stella as well as other emulators, then does the same display problem occur with any of the other emulators which share the same layout?  Any tests which you could perform would be good to help narrow down the problem.

Anyway, just giving you some ideas. 

I had a problem very similiar to yours a long time ago (which I believe was never resolved) in which only a couple of my layouts (out of the 30+ I use) would be shifted to the lower right-hand corner of the screen when exiting a game occurred and the gamelist was displayed again.   The difference between your problem and mind is that mine resulted in the "complete" layout being shifted to the lower righthand corner while you are experiencing only parts of the layout being shifted.   I no longer use those two emulators (I think one was Virtual Jaguar and the other might have been Chankast .... it was a long time ago).  Might not be related but this is what originally got me interested in your resolution problem (ie: wondering if the shifting problem was back).



 

[squirrellydw]

I will try the stelle2 thing.  It shares the layout with my other emulators I have and they all work fine, it's just stella thats is doing this.

[unclet]

Well I just looked at my emulator list and I still had the VirtualJaguar emulator configured.  I ran it and got the same problem you ar experiencing.   It only looked like the entire layout moved to the lower right, but I was wrong.  The gamelist and snapshot image stays where it should, but the background image moves to the lower-right.

Anyway, this is exactly what I believe you are experiencing.  I will now follow your other thread   

[squirrellydw]

   I fixed it.  I enabled openGL in the stella option and it fixed it.  woohoo

[unclet]

Great news.    You should definitely post this news in your other thread as it might help swindus fine the root cause of the problem.  Possibly MALA just is not compatible with some of the resolution settings which some emulators use.    I posted a couple of pics of the problem I am still encountering in your other post.

It is not a real necessity to fix this problem for me since I do not really use my Virtual Jaguar emulator, but I am convince it is MALA compatibility issue, so perhaps swindus would be interested in your finding.

RULE 122:
When stuff does not work, simply play around with the emulator-specific options until it does work.