Stella core ( not 2014 ) has issues with games detected as using Quadtari

[greenchili2]

First and foremost consider this:

• Only RetroArch bugs should be filed here. Not core bugs or game bugs
• This is not a forum or a help section, this is strictly developer oriented

Description

Joystick controller does not work in any game that Stella detects as using the Quadtari on the left port and savekey on right port. Notable homebrew games are Galagon, Gorf Arcade Game, Wizard Of Wor Arcade Demo and Zoo Keeper Demo by champ games and chaser.

Expected behavior

After pressing 'reset' to begin a game the player should be able to move their ship/character and use the fire button to fire, etc.

Actual behavior

Movement of the joystick and pressing the fire button results in no action.

Steps to reproduce the bug

1. Load the game
2. Press button assigned to "reset"
3. Once the game gives control of your ship/character try to use the controls assigned to left, right, up, down or fire. Ship player will not move.

Bisect Results

Likely either happened when Quadtari support was added or the games were added to the stella internal database as having Quadtari support.

Version/Commit

You can find this information under Information/System Information

• RetroArch: [6.6_pre/ae527a7]

Environment information

• OS: Windows 10
• Compiler: [In case you are running local builds]

[greenchili2]

I did some more investigation and found that if the following games "detect" quadtari support they will display "Quadtari detected" after displaying "savekey detected". The Quadtari detected message does not display in the retroarch stella. However it does display when loading the games with the stella emulator on a pc.

The games are Galagon, Gorf Arcade and Wizard Of War Arcade.

[Augusto7743]

exactly Galagon and anothers games even not using quadtari break input control

[Dion-Guy]

I can confirm this happens with Stella in RetroArch (version 6.6_pre 84b3f02) but not in Stella standalone Windows version (6.5.3). I am using RetroArch 1.9.5 64-bit on Windows 10.

I found this bug report because I was searching for a solution as to why the demos of both Gorf Arcade and Zoo-Keeper (by Champ Games) let you start the game, but you cannot move the ship / player character or fire / jump.

As greenchili2 said, the demos display "Quadtari found" in Stella (standalone) and work perfectly, but this message isn't displayed in Stella RetroArch and the controls don't work.

[thrust26]

Some info:

Stella auto detects the controllers statically, by searching the code for certain pattern (here "QUADTARI"). The ROMs are detecting the QuadTari at run time. They expect certain pins in a certain state.
Stella prepares these pins accordingly:

// QuadTari auto detection setting
setPin(AnalogPin::Five, AnalogReadout::connectToVcc());
setPin(AnalogPin::Nine, AnalogReadout::connectToGround());

So if the message is not displayed by the ROM, either Stella has not found the pattern. Or it has not prepared the pins correctly.

Also, if Stella detects QuadTari code, it will default to joystick controllers. This can be overwritten using Stella's game properties. Finally, if a game supports the SaveKey, Stella will detect this too. Since the SaveKey detection has priority over QuadTari, the result will be, that QuadTari is set for left port (with two joysticks) and SaveKey for the right port.

I hope this helps.

BTW: Does the Retroarch provide any info (e.g. UI or logging) what Stella has detected?

[hizzlekizzle]

Not that I know of.

We probably need to hook up SaveKey and QuadTari and then add core options to force-disable them, if desired.

[greenchili2]

Not that I know of.

We probably need to hook up SaveKey and QuadTari and then add core options to force-disable them, if desired.

Yeah that seems to be the appropriate solution for that.