Feature Requests for STeem

[bjjones37]

I posted this elsewhere. I guess I should have put it here.

This is a feature request. I have several parallel installs of STeem SSE with different TOSes and emulating different machines. I would like to be able to make an entry in the steem.ini file that would rename the title bar from "STeem SSE 3.6.4" to "Mega ST4" or Mega STE" or something similar. That way It would be easy to discern which was which when I had more than one running simultaneously. Or when I had one open for awhile and could not remember which it was. Could this be implemented?

Additionally

Is it possible to mount two Pasti HDD images at the same time?
I am using the 1G ACSI images and they work great but it would be much easier if I could mount two at the same time.

And can the option to use Pasti only for STX images be configured to leave the hard drive HDD image enabled?
I have floppy images that Pasti cannot read (902K, 1.44M, etc) that I would like to be able to use with the Pasti HDD image.

[Steven Seagal]

Hi
I'll keep those requests someplace, but right now I don't know if any of this is possible.
I thought HDD emu wasn't affected by option 'Pasti only for STX'.

[bjjones37]

Hi
I thought HDD emu wasn't affected by option 'Pasti only for STX'.

I just confirmed it. When I enable the option, I lose access to my hard drive image. However the mounted Windows filesystems do still work.

BTW, I always thought that STeem was a wonderful product, but I particularly like the enhancements you have added to it! Thank you for your efforts.

[Steven Seagal]

I can reproduce this...
Argh! Then it's a bug. It worked in v3.6.0 but I somehow broke it in v3.6.4.
Will fix it again for v3.7.
Thx for reporting.

[Triads]

Is there a way to incorporate Telnet functionality to the Serial port(s).. For those of use wanting to reanimate our ST BBS's? Or even dial out to other Telnet BBS's. I know there are ways of using a virtual modem, or even real hardware like LanTronix, I would just like to be able to Telnet to Steem and cut out all the middle men.

Thanks

[Steven Seagal]

I posted this elsewhere. I guess I should have put it here.

This is a feature request. I have several parallel installs of STeem SSE with different TOSes and emulating different machines. I would like to be able to make an entry in the steem.ini file that would rename the title bar from "STeem SSE 3.6.4" to "Mega ST4" or Mega STE" or something similar. That way It would be easy to discern which was which when I had more than one running simultaneously. Or when I had one open for awhile and could not remember which it was. Could this be implemented?

This will be in v3.7.

INI file options
_________________

WindowTitle

You can change the name that is displayed as window title and in the task bar
by adding a line in the [main] part of steem.ini, for example:
WindowTitle=Steem SSE teh best
It is useful if you mean to run several specialised instances, each in its
own folder.
Limitation: mustn't be longer than 20 characters.

Additionally

Is it possible to mount two Pasti HDD images at the same time?
I am using the 1G ACSI images and they work great but it would be much easier if I could mount two at the same time.

I think it isn't up to Steem but to pasti.dll.

[Steven Seagal]

Is there a way to incorporate Telnet functionality to the Serial port(s).. For those of use wanting to reanimate our ST BBS's? Or even dial out to other Telnet BBS's. I know there are ways of using a virtual modem, or even real hardware like LanTronix, I would just like to be able to Telnet to Steem and cut out all the middle men.

Thanks

On the contrary I favour middle men when it's possible to keep Steem itself lean.
For example, Steem uses dlls like capsimg, pasti, unrar, ... for this feature it would be appropriate as well.
There are solutions, mostly commercial though, and that's the real problem.
I found those free utilities:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/com0com/
http://astrogeeks.com/AstroGeeks/COM2TCP/download.html

You would create a virtual COM port, connect it to the internet, and assign it to Steem.
But maybe it's missing the virtual modem?

[wietze]

With regards to snapshots;

would it be possible to add the feature to the shortcuts to load a specific filename for snapshot.

E.g. load snapshot `thissnapshot.sts', instead only the last snapshot.

[Steven Seagal]

With regards to snapshots;

would it be possible to add the feature to the shortcuts to load a specific filename for snapshot.

E.g. load snapshot `thissnapshot.sts', instead only the last snapshot.

Would you be happy with a (single) snapshot specified in ini file?

[wietze]

With regards to snapshots;

would it be possible to add the feature to the shortcuts to load a specific filename for snapshot.

E.g. load snapshot `thissnapshot.sts', instead only the last snapshot.

Would you be happy with a (single) snapshot specified in ini file?

As long as it is in addition to the `last' snapshot, that would work for me

[Eraph]

G'day, folks. Firstly I'd like to say what an outstanding job you're doing on STeem SSE, love it to pieces. Just wish I'd kept all my old ST disks!
Anyway, feature request! Fullscreen works brilliantly in Windows 8.1 using Direct3D, but doesn't work at all without it. That's fine, but would it be possible to add an option to disable smoothing? Me, I like them big blocky pixels.

Cheers!

[Steven Seagal]

Welcome to the forum!
The most important thing is that fullscreen works on your system, despite directdraw not working.
Mission accomplished.
I may add options in the future, but it's important to keep it simple too.

[Steven Seagal]

You got it kid!

steem372_full_filtered.png

1st screenshot is current D3D fullscreen, filtered
The big STEEM SSE logo shows that technically the method used is "stretch"

steem372_full_crisp.png

2nd screenshot is future optional D3D full, crisp with big pixels.
Same big logo, same method, but DirectX instructed not to "antialias".
You may notice the screen's a bit smaller than 1st screen. It's rounded down to 3x instead of 3.3333x in this case.

steem372_full_bad.png

It's because otherwise ugly artefacts appear as in 3rd screenshot.

important note: if screenshots are resized by forum software, rendering isn't faithful. Download the pics.
The hard part will be to change the options for that.

[Eraph]

Nice one mate, that's perfect. Looking forward to seeing it in a release!

[Steven Seagal]

That was easy, like I said the harder part is fitting the option:

optiond3d_crisp.png

First I thought of a toggle with "ST aspect ratio", but that restricts choice.
If you check both options, picture will not be perfect.
Don't forget there's also ''Interpolated scanlines" on the SSE page (it is there because it also works with windows).

[bjjones37]

Thanks for implementing the Title Bar, that has really come in handy.

I am curious about something. I have GamebaseST installed on both my WinXP desktop and my Win81 laptop. I use STeem for emulation and I found that while everything works just fine on WinXP, almost nothing works on Win81. For example, I tried SainT 1.61, 1.99, 2.00, 2.14, 2.21, 2.31 and STeem 3.1, 3.2, 3.30, 3.41, 3,54, 3.64, and 3.71 under GBST and the only three that actually worked were STeem SSE 3.64 and STeem 3.2 and 3.1. I kind of wondered what was special about 3.64 that made it work (thank goodness it did) when I call it from GBST under Windows 8.1.

Just to clarify, they all work fine as standalone programs under Win81.

[Steven Seagal]

I don't have Win 8.1, so it's tough.
Could you check other versions, 3.6.x and 3.7.0?
When it doesn't work, what precisely happens?

[bjjones37]

Okay, I tested STeem versions 3.1, 3.2, 3.30, 3.40, 3.41, 3.50, 3.51, 3.52, 3.53, 3.54, 3.60, 3.61, 3.62, 3.63, 3.64, 3.70, and 3.71.

Of these, 3.1, 3.2, 3.52, 3.60, and 3.64 worked.

The remainder gave the message "There was and error running the following program:". Then it lists the path and filename.

I created a gemus.dat file on my XP computer and used it with the setup wizard to configure the emulators on the laptop so I know they are set up properly.

[DrCoolZic]

Not sure if this is the right place?
I want to talk about Steem SSE 3.8 but could not find the place where to discuss?

You are saying that support of ACSI by Pasti has limitations. What limitations are you talking about?
I have been using ACSI with Pasti for a long time and the only limitation I am aware of is the max size of the disk.
I cant remember if it is 1 or 4 GB?

If you are doing ACSI support by far the most important feature (beyond basic support) is the support of the ICD extensions.
Pasti supports the ICD extension correctly with the caveat of the size of the drive being limited.

So just want to make sure you will support ACSI with ICD extension and with "ICD size limit"

[AtariZoll]

Not sure if this is the right place?
I want to talk about Steem SSE 3.8 but could not find the place where to discuss?

You are saying that support of ACSI by Pasti has limitations. What limitations are you talking about?
I have been using ACSI with Pasti for a long time and the only limitation I am aware of is the max size of the disk.
I cant remember if it is 1 or 4 GB?

If you are doing ACSI support by far the most important feature (beyond basic support) is the support of the ICD extensions.
Pasti supports the ICD extension correctly with the caveat of the size of the drive being limited.

So just want to make sure you will support ACSI with ICD extension and with "ICD size limit"

Pasti has only very limited, not usable ICD extension support - for instance read10 command works not . And it means that 1 GB is max usable image size. Then, there is support for only 1 ACSI target, and transfer speed is very high on newer PCs, and no accurate speed mode.
Just to add here that Hatari's ICD support is limited too, so some commands/functions necessary for hot swap are not emulated. Image size in Windows is practically limited to 2 GB because 32-bit file access code.
I guess that basic ICD would be fine for start, what can be improved by time. That will make usage easier than with Pasti.

[DrCoolZic]

I thought ICD support was better. I new about the 1GB limit as well as one drive but thought read10 was working correctly (apart from 1gb limit).
I do not have time to make tests now

Another reason why Steem SSE should do a good job in fully supporting ICD extension (should not be a big deal apart from lack of documentation but I am sure you can help in this area. Another expert is Jookie as he fully implement ICD extension.

[Steven Seagal]

Not sure if this is the right place?
I want to talk about Steem SSE 3.8 but could not find the place where to discuss?

This or a new 'ACSI' thread was fine.
There's already a brag page on my site because I was first going to add it to v3.7.2, but it's beter to save such new feature for a major version.
This is "ACSI" only, so no SCSI, no IDE, no "ICD" emulation, not sure those are necessary.

[DrCoolZic]

Not sure what you mean by ICD emulation?
What is needed is that your ACSI support the few commands added by ICD. It is not a big deal but a must to support large drive

[ssj]

Would it be possible to allow window manual resizing to the emulator? I'm trying to run the emulator with some bezels on its sides and as it is the emulator window is always too small on my monitor and even by setting it to quadruple size is still not large enough.

I'm also having an issue when I have a HDD mounted where I keep getting a warning message stating GEMDOS HDD emulation works better with TOS 1.04 or 1.62, I've been warned ... but is there any way to disable this dialog to popup?

Thanks for all your work on this, ST emulation is just getting better and better!

[RikusMaximus]

HELLO!
Love Steem SSE and really glad to see its development continue.
I have some requests for you...
1: Ability to map any Atari ST keyboard keycode to a any joystick button. Example of this could be mapping spacebar to 360 controllers Y button for using the special attack in Turrican.
2: Option to have per game controller configs. I imagine these would work much like the Patch files. This is however much bigger task due to the amount of design to get the menus making sense and allowing a default configuration or several controller profiles easy to select etc etc etc

This is probably not the place but I would like to mention I had a go at compiling the Steem SSE source and run into some issues like :
Steem\code\SSE\SSEHfe.cpp(80) : error C2065: 'FullScreen' : undeclared identifier
I mention this as I am an experienced C++ programmer and thought I could have a stab at adding these features myself, then contribute back to the project.

CHEERS!