Re: [stella] Euchre: Beta

[Erik Eid <eeid@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thursday 26 September 2002 08:18 am, Eckhard Stolberg wrote:
> > It's very difficult to set the colors properly, since the NTSC convention
> > of high four bytes for hue and low four > bytes for luminance doesn't seem
> > to apply to PAL.
> That is a bug in Stella up to version 1.1. It was corrected in version
> 1.2.

That might explain it!  I originally selected the PAL colors under 1.1.  I've 
since installed 1.2.  The colors appear to generally be darker than before 
and not so washed out.

I used the latest Z26 and your color tester to try to get the colors in the 
PAL version closer to those in the NTSC version.  Some subtle shades don't 
seem to be available in PAL, but that's fine.

I attached a new PAL version.  Please let me know if the colors (particularly 
the reds) are more reasonable.

> > How's the stability?  Does the screen shudder at all?  I'd like to know
> > if I have the right number of scan lines.
> I didn't really play the game, so I can't say much about stability.
> But just loading and starting the game with RESET didn't cause any
> problems on my system. Z26 shows you how many scanlines you do per
> frame if you use video mode 9. There I noticed that you are generating
> less scanlines while the RESET button is pressed. But that is the
> case in the NTSC version as well. It's no real problem though.

There's two reasons for that.  First, when Reset is pressed, the code jumps 
immediately to the program restart without finishing the frame.  Second, even 
though I thought the shuffling routine uses the same number of scan lines as 
normal play, it apparently uses much less in the PAL version - 290 instead of 
312.  (Strangely, in NTSC, it's 263 lines during shuffle and 262 during play. 
 I think this is due to me using T1024T in PAL and TIM64T in NTSC to use up 
scan lines.  The loss of lines due to rounding is much more severe in PAL.)  
However, with the screen completely blanked during the shuffle, it shouldn't 
be noticeable.

The PAL version was stable on my NTSC TV once I fixed the vertical hold, so I 
think it's fine.

Thanks again for your help!

Attachment: EuchrePAL.bin
Description: Euchre ROM (PAL version) - color test