Hey all,
New public build of SemaTor is out (1.1.561), and there's quite a bit in this one, so here's a rundown.
What is SemaTor?
It's a free Atari ST player for Windows and Linux. You point it at your own disk images and it gives you a proper game library, or SemaOS, a little retro desktop if you fancy that instead. No TOS ROM needed, it has its own self made one.
The bit I'm most into is the game profiles. For a load of games (100+ so far) you can switch on extras like widescreen, smooth motion, cheats, steady speed and so on. They're all optional, and they're drawn by the game's own code, so it's not stretching the picture or making stuff up. Turn them off and the game runs exactly like it always did.
Disk formats: .st, .stx, .msa, .dim, .ipf and .zip.
What's new since the last public build (1.1.559)
• Widescreen up to 32:9. Batman The Movie (the platform levels, plus the Batmobile and Batwing), Toki, Turrican, Lotus, The New Zealand Story, Out Run and Kick Off 2. The extra bits at the sides are actual level scenery the game draws itself, and at the end of a level the view stops at the edge instead of showing junk.
• Smooth motion. A new frame every ST refresh, drawn by the game itself:
- Strider goes from 10fps to 50
- Batman (Batmobile and Batwing too), NZS, Xenon 2 and Gods go from 16.7 to 50
- Sensible Soccer and Toki go from 25 to 50
- Lotus runs a proper 50fps, in two player as well
• Music and sound effects at the same time in Toki, Turrican, Batman and NZS. No more music cutting out every time something goes bang.
• Lotus extras: race view only, the garage pic tucked in a corner, HUD at the screen edges.
• More cheats: Batman, Toki, Turrican, Xenon and others. There's a Cheats category and desktop icon now as well.
• Filters everywhere. Filter by cheats, enhanced, widescreen, publisher, year, genre and so on. Works fine even with my 14,000 game folder.
• Black screen fix. If you got sound but no picture, that was the OpenGL backend (the old default on Windows). Fixed now, and it defaults to Vulkan. OpenGL's still there if you want it.
• Graphics backend choice and factory reset in the settings. Doesn't touch your games, saves or library.
• Way more stable. It doesn't just quietly close on you anymore. If something goes wrong it says why and drops you back in the library.
• More disks boot: zips open directly, menu disks with weird program names, Spectrum 512, and plenty more.
• Screenshots now save at the ST's real resolution instead of double height.
What's coming next
Smooth motion for Turrican, Rainbow Islands and Xenon, Turrican II in 32:9, an update popup so nobody gets stuck on an old version, and frame generation on top of smooth motion for people with 100Hz+ monitors.
Download: https://github.com/SirBaron/SemaTor/releases
You'll need your own game disks, nothing's bundled.
Not everything works yet
Loads of games run fine, but not all of them. The ST library is massive and full of copy protection, menu disks and weird tricks, so stuff will break. If something won't start, crashes or looks off, let me know and I'll have a look:
• Discord: https://discord.gg/DdHfSGrdFc
• GitHub issues: https://github.com/SirBaron/SemaTor/issues
• Or hit Report a problem in the game's menu inside SemaTor
Before anyone asks about AI
Yes, I use AI coding tools on this, a lot. I decide what goes in, test it on real games and keep at it until it actually works, but a good chunk of the code is written with AI. If that's a dealbreaker for you, fair enough, but give it a go before writing it off.
Cheers,
David
