Re: [Stella-main] Sound problems with stella.x11 & .sdl, stella 1.3

[Stephen A. <ste...@ro...>]

On March 20, 2004 05:52 pm, Thomas Boutell wrote:

> First, thanks for Stella, it's great stuff.
>
> Now, the problem:
>
> On a Debian Woody system running Linux 2.4.23, with sound working
> correctly for other applications, I find that both stella.x11 and
> stella.sdl have problems when sound support is turned on.
> Specifically, both of these will allow the game to function for
> a split second, then FREEZE for a second, then allow a bit more
> normal-speed movement, etc. stella.sdl (and possibly stella.x11,
> it's hard to be sure) produces some stuttery sound at these times.
>
> The presence or absence of -accurate makes no difference.
>
> I have tried both -sound oss (with stella.x11) and
> -sound sdl (with stella.sdl).
>
> If I specify -sound 0, games run at full speed and the CPU isn't
> working very hard according to top (it's a PIII).

Sound seems to be broken for some people with the 1.3 release.  I'm in 
the process of rewriting it for Stella 1.4.  Other than that, I'm sorry 
that there is no immediate solution.  I know the problem (somewhat), 
but the solution is harder to fix that I originally thought.

> I have done a great deal of googling on the subject and haven't
> found any specifics, other than some warnings about KDE that
> don't apply to me (I am not running arts, in fact I'm not running
> KDE at all, I run stella as the only X client in the system).
>
> Help? Suggestions? Ideas? Thank you!

I don't have any suggestions right now at all.  I'm in the process of 
porting the z26 assembly sound code to C++ for Stella.  Hopefully, this 
will take care of it.  I won't say when it'll be released though.  
Twice in the past I've said that a new release will be out soon, and 
twice it's been delayed (due to work commitments and myself being the 
only active developer at the moment).  So all I can say is that a new 
release will be out when it's done, and it won't be done until the 
sound problem is fixed for good :(

> P.S. I've put this into a little custom table which has four
> USB trackballs attached as game controllers. They are really
> cheap on EBay and I am (very, very slowly) creating custom
> games for the resulting party table. Today I hacked stella to
> support these as paddles one through four, which works really
> well for Warlords. If only I could get the sound, I would
> be a very happy man. Yes, I do plan to release my changes
> as a patch as the GPL requires. No, it is not the source
> of the sound problem -- with my changes completely #ifdeffed out
> the sound is still broken, and with sound turned off it's
> perfectly happy.

I'd be interested in getting this patch, as multiple paddle controllers 
are something that quite a few people have requested.  The next release 
will have greatly improved controller support, in that you'll be able 
to remap almost every Stella function to different keyboard keys or 
controllers.  The only thing missing is support for multiple paddles, 
since I don't have any hardware to test it on.

Finally, if anyone knows x86 assembly and C/C++, I'm asking that someone 
help me port the assembly sound code from z26.  Email me for more info.

Thanks,
Steve