Stella (1996)
The Stella project was created by Bradford W. Mott in late 1995, alongside Aaron Giles, Seunghee Lee, Jeff Miller and Darrell Spice Jr.. Its name is inspired by the codename that the project that created the Atari VCS (later known as Atari 2600) adopted at its beginning. The emulator was also known as An Atari 2600 VCS Emulator. Its first release was on May 4, 1996, with the name Stella 96, only for Linux and without running any games. Its second version, released in June 1996, was only for MS-DOS ported by Keith Wilkins and already running games. The third version, released in July 1996, in addition to coming with the Linux and MS-DOS versions, also came with the UNIX/X11 versions by Bradford, the Windows version by Jeff Miller and the MacOS version by Aaron Giles. This was a release pattern that continued until February 1997. In the third version, it also supported some games using the mouse. From September 1996, in its fourth version, the emulator began to be called simply Stella. In the fifth version of the emulator in November 1996, it began to support sound, adding the TIASound sound emulator by Ron Fries. In this version, it also began to support the OS/2 system by Darrell Spice Jr., also released simultaneously until February 1997, when the sixth version of the emulator was released. In January 1997, Jim Pragit, from outside the project, released the first front-end for Stella, called Game Menu for MS-DOS. This was a well-known front-end that supported several DOS-mode emulators of the time. It was available for download on the Stella website. Game Menu was updated until January 1998. The following month, the sixth version of Stella was released, adding VSync mode, which synchronizes video frames. In March 1997, the second front-end created for Stella, called FEFA (Front End For ATARI), was released for Windows, created by Israel Geron, also outside the project. It also worked with the PC Atari Emulator. It was discontinued in July 2004. The DOS version of Stella was taken care of by Brandford from June 1997, due to Keith's lack of time for it. In the same month, its seventh version was released, which added two 6507 emulators (alternative version of the 6502) for different functions, the Supercharger expansion cartridge and pause support for the DOS and UNIX versions. At this stage, it also supported reset, and the Color TV options, adding the colors seen on a TV to the PC screen, and Black And White, so that the game would also be black and white with the aspects that were seen on a television. In March 1998, Jeff's Windows version became StellaX, running on several Windows versions and with its own front-end. After a year-long hiatus without a release, Brandford released the first beta version of Stella in July 1998, 1.0b1. In this version, it began to support joypads and other types of controls,the new M6502 CPU emulation and palettes in NTSC and PAL formats. From October 1998 onwards, releases were made simultaneously for DOS, Linux and UNIX. In that month, version 1.0 was released, with support for 320x200 and 320x240 resolutions for the MS-DOS version. In February 1999, version 1.1 of the emulator was released. In September 1999, John Stiles created another port for MacOS, especially for PowerMacs, replacing Aaron's. In November 1999, its last front-end, KStella, developed by Stephen Anthony for Linux, was released and was updated until August 2004. In July 2001, John also began supporting MacOS X in his Mac port. The Windows version, StellaX, ended its releases in May 2000, launching the options menu, with the option of ROM path, use of mouse paddle and high resolution video selection mode.
In April 2002, after three years without updates to the original project, Stephen Anthony from the Linux front-end KStella replaced Bradford as project leader and released version 1.2 of the emulator. In this version, he created a port of the emulator to SDL. I believe that this is when the Linux versions began to have KStella as the default front-end. In that month, he also migrated the page and the project to the development site, Source Forge. In May 2002, Stephen also began to take care of the Windows version, releasing Cyberstella. The emulator came with a completely new front-end. In February 2003, the releases for MS-DOS and UNIX ended. In July 2004, Stephen created another version for Windows, using Jeff's StellaX front-end. From that date on, the emulator releases began to be made simultaneously for Linux, Windows and MacOS X, the latter being created by Mark Grebe. The UNIX version is merged into the Linux version from this version onwards. The additions of this version are OpenGL driver selection (later becoming part of the renderer mode), volume increase, snapshot, save state, color/black and white mode, game difficulty mode, among others. In October 2005, Stella stops using the StellaX and KStella front-ends and creates a standardized front-end for the Linux, MacOS X and Windows versions.
As for its updates, from 2006 onwards, it supports video options, such as rendering through Direct3D, OpenGL and OpenGLES, screen zoom, fullscreen, option to change color palettes to the Z26 emulator, TV Effects, with texture and noise changes, resembling the TV screen and palette customization, with changes in contrast, gamma, brightness and saturation. Sound, such as changes in output frequency and the original console sound, changes in hz, quality and fragments and changes in audio devices. Emulation, such as emulation speed, turbo mode, fast SuperCharger load, VSync and debugger. Game, such as cartridge information, changes in cartridge type, between stereo and mono sound, TV color type, game difficulty, game controller type and screen format (ex NTSC). In addition to cheat mode, it has its own menu for snapshots, with several options for the function, changing paths for save state, cheats, palettes, ROMs and snapshots, save state, configuring various controls, changing the TIA, with the option of specific chips for certain games and customizing your own chip. Among many other functions. Regarding its front-end, it has undergone several changes over the years. I highlight the main ones, such as window size and the expansion of menus from then on in January 2007. Change from black and green to beige, light beige and dark orange in August 2007, becoming the standard colors to this day. Window reduction and smaller font without bold in March 2008. Increased font of letters and ROM search on the main screen in January 2009. Changes to the appearance of the options menu in December 2018. Bold returning to letters in March 2020. Screen enlargement with side option for snapshots and ROM information in January 2021. And lower buttons starting to be grouped into a single button at the top of the front in June 2022. Basically the front-end remains the same for 12 years, between 03/08 to 11/20. The front-end also started to receive interface changes, with GP2X mode on 01/07, Classic, Standard and Light modes on 12/18 and Dark mode on 10/20. There are also some project dates that are important to highlight, such as May 2008, with the addition of the AtariVox voice and music synthesizer. January 2009, with support for 64-bit versions of the emulator. July 2017, when the project website migrates from SourceForge to Github. And February 2018, when it begins emulating the Atari 7800 console.
Several other influencers helped the project over time, such as Ron Fries, with his TIASound library, Dan Boris, creator of the Atari 5200 Virtual Super System, with technical information about the Supercharger expansion cartridge, among others. The emulator ended up becoming the most famous to emulate the Atari 2600, which led to it gaining many other ports, such as for the Atari Falcon, Atari ST, Atari TT and Amiga computers, Linux, Android and Windows Phone systems, as well as consoles such as Xbox, Dreamcast, PS2, PS3 and Nintendo Wii and portable devices such as PSP, Nintendo DS and GP2X. Stephen currently takes care of the project together with Christian Speckner and Thomas Jentzsch, who make up the current Stella Team. The latest version of the emulator was released in October 2024. In 2014, it became part of the OpenEmu multi-emulator, which ran several consoles from Sega, Nintendo, Atari and NEC for MacOS. Stella has been released simultaneously for 26 years, with a total of approximately 108 versions released, being one of the emulators that has been in development for the longest time and with one of the largest number of versions released for a console emulator.
- Over the years, the emulator has undergone several changes, starting in December 2006, when it added the multiple snapshots option.
- In January 2007, it had its first major update to its front-end and the emulator itself, increasing the size of the front and expanding its menus, with video mode, with screen zoom options, fullscreen, VSync and color palettes like the Z26 emulator, for example, in addition to bringing back the drive option (here called renderer) with OpenGL option, sound mode, with output frequency HZ and TIA frequency control (original console sound, in addition to fragment size (later called sample), input mode, with save state and configuration of various controls, UI mode, with the option to change the size of the front-end window and change the interface to that of GP2X, groups the ROM path and snapshots functions in a single mode, the files and snapshots mode, the help mode with shortcut keys, in addition to the cheat mode and game property modes, among others.
- In August 2007, the front-end was changed from black and green to beige, light beige and dark orange, and the file configuration mode was added, the old files and snapshots, with paths to save state, cheats, palettes, roms, snapshots and others.
- In March 2008, the front-end size was reduced, the font was removed from bold and the game property mode, which had been inactive until then, was enabled, showing cartridge information, with changes to the cartridge type, between stereo or mono sound, TV color type, game difficulty, game controller type, screen format (e.g. NTSC) among others.
- In May 2008, adds support for the AtariVox speech and music synthesizer.
- In January 2009, it increased the font of its letters and added the ROM filter option, to find ROMs on the main screen more easily, in addition to starting to support 64-bit versions of the emulator.
- In June 2009, TV Effects mode was added, with texture, noise and other options to resemble a classic TV screen. In December 2011, file configuration mode was renamed to path configuration mode.
- In February 2013, it leaves only the standard sound HZ control, the output one.
- In June 2013, a specific menu was created for snapshots, with several options for the function.
- In July 2014, added Direct3D and OpenGLES 1 and 2 renderers.
- In July 2017, the project website migrates from SourceForge to Github.
- From 2018 onwards, the emulator has several additions in its updates, starting in February 2018, emulating the Atari 7800, the creation of developer mode, with the option of loading ROM and CPU, changing console (between 26k/78k), changing video effects and color, time machine option with changes in frames and others and debug mode.
- In June 2018, MacOS X releases are replaced by MacOS releases.
- In December 2018, the change was mainly in the field of aesthetics, changing the UI mode to user interface mode, and adding theme change between classic (the old black and green from 2005), standard (used since 2007) and black and white (called light), in addition to modifications in the appearance of the options menu, changing the rom selection on the home page from green to red and adding resampling quality in the sound menu.
- In March 2020, changes the font of the ROM list to bold, adds the option to change the TIA (console video) in developer mode, with the option of specific chips for certain games and customization of your own chip.
- In April 2020, the path configuration mode ceases to exist and the rom path change moves to the user interface mode.
- In June 2020, they combined video and audio mode, and added palette customization, with changes in contrast, gamma, brightness, saturation and others, in addition to creating emulation mode, with the options emulation speed, VSync, turbo mode, fast SuperCharger load, among others.
- In October 2020, creates dark theme (gray and black) for front-end in user interface mode and adds audio device change option.
- In January 2021, they expanded the size of the front-end, leaving an option on the right side to display snapshots and technical information about the ROM.
- And finally in June 2022, it groups all the old bottom buttons on the front into a single options button in the top left corner, as well as adding the Direct3D11 renderer, among others.
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