AGD for MSX

[jltursan]

Hi!

This is my first message here; so I'm going to quickly introducing myself

My name is Jose, an old MSX lover (although I've cheated the standard with a lot of other platforms ) and developer. Since some time I've been interested in AGD as a great developing tool with an inmense potential; so after helping a bit Pere Serrat to adapt the AGD tool to Dragon/CoCo platform I was thinking in doing a port myself to MSX and after some hard work the last two months, here're the results: imgur.com/gallery/B4pI7rG

Some images:

It's far from being finished: no music or sound (I'm not clear about how to do it in the AGD's way), memory not organizated yet, still a lot of changes needed to adapt better the MSX2 platform, etc. ; but it works enough to start a deeper betatesting.

I hope that I could get some help here

 

[oss003]

Nice job!!!!!
The results are already looking good ....
I noticed that you know Pere Serat and already talked with him about AGD but I'm also willing to help you with the MSX port.

There are suites for several platforms and it would be good to add an MSX suite to the collection.
This way you can easily convert, compile, assemble and run the games.

Keep up the good work..

Greetings
Kees

[jltursan]

I've plans to also create a MSX2 engine, it would need a slight revamping but of course first I need to stabilize the MSX1 port, I still need to learn a lot about the AGD engine. The MSX machines offer a lot of possibilities that also made these kind of ports a bit more complex.

I'm happy to think that this opens a lot of possibilities to other machines based on this setup with minimal effort, I mean, Spectravideo, Tatung Einstein, Memotech, Sord, etc.

Thanks for the support!

[Jonathan Cauldwell]

Fantastic! I'm glad you posted as I was starting to think about doing the conversion myself. Only last week I started looking at a few MSX sites for technical information. Guess I'll have to start looking at the SAM Coupe and the Next instead.

I'll add the MSX1 as an option in the editor. I'm assuming you're using the 32x192 attribute mode (screen mode 2?) so it might be a good idea for the MSX and Timex TC2048 to share graphics.

I haven't done anything with the sound in MPAGD. Most of the Spectrum developers prefer to use music in their games and in any case I've no idea how to emulate an AY-3-8912 in a Windows API program so there's no sound editor anyway...

Obviously I want to see MPAGD on as many different platforms as possible so if I can be of ANY help let me know. I've left you a private message with my email address.

[jltursan]

I'll add the MSX1 as an option in the editor. I'm assuming you're using the 32x192 attribute mode (screen mode 2?) so it might be a good idea for the MSX and Timex TC2048 to share graphics.

Indeed they're close, the MSX has higher colour capabilities as the colour attribute allows to choose between 16 different fg/bg, while the Timex, due the bright bit, only can choose between 8 "dark" fg/bg or 8 bright fg/bg. Of course MSX doesn't have FLASH capabilities.

The MSX1 has a fixed palette (like all the other machines with the Texas VDP):



RGB values:

0 0 0
0 0 0
32 200 64
88 216 120
80 80 232
120 112 247
208 80 72
64 232 240
247 80 80
247 120 120
208 192 80
224 200 128
32 176 56
200 88 184
200 200 200
255 255 255

The first colour is the transparent one so it's not really available at least in MSX1.

MSX2 machines has palette options so it can freely redefine the above.

I haven't done anything with the sound in MPAGD. Most of the Spectrum developers prefer to use music in their games and in any case I've no idea how to emulate an AY-3-8912 in a Windows API program so there's no sound editor anyway...

In Shiru's page you can download "1tracker v0.29" that seems to have some sound IC engines for Windows. Also, the AYFX Editor must have some AY routines as it's the best SFX creator for Windows. A lot of interesting software in his page :-)

The MSX engine is slowly progressing. Now it has implemented adventure mode, still debugging other engine bugs...

Some videos:

[Jonathan Cauldwell]

The block, screen and object editors are working. The MSX will share sprites with the Spectrum version so those machines will share the same sprite editor.

I just need to add the extra colour byte for the sprite positions table and a way of changing it now. Once that's done I'll send you the editors so you can test what I've done and make sure I'm outputting the data in the formats your compiler requires

[Jonathan Cauldwell]

JLTursan, the MSX editors are in. Could you try this initial build and see if the .AGD file output is what you are expecting? Let me know if anything needs changing.

WinAGD.exe (249.17 KB)

[jltursan]

Got it!, I'll check it ASAP

[jltursan]

Sprites seems to be bad generated. Check this:

Left, the real sprite block order, right what WinAGD creates.

Blocks ans SPRITEPOSITIONS (although colour seems to be always 15) are fine; but objects are also bad, seems to have a similar problem..

You're close!

[jltursan]

Now, after Jonathan efforts, another video :

[javymetal]

Is it available to download winagd msx version?

Sept 17, 2019 8:33:26 GMT jltursan said:

Now, after Jonathan efforts, another video :

[jltursan]

I've created a Github project with the AGD MSX Suite: github.com/jltursan/AGD-MSX-Suite

Feel free to test it and give some feedback!

Some details of the project:

- MSX1 support.
- Smooth gameplay (50 fps).
- Full 32 hardware sprites available.
- Sprite flickering routine.
- Full PSG support: PT3 and ayFX players integrated.
- It can generate RAM based distributions (using floppy disk images) or cartridge files (16KB or 32KB ROM files).
- High compatibility with the already existing AGD projects.

Enjoy!

[Jonathan Cauldwell]

Looks like there is plenty of interest in the MSX version, the MPAGD downloads page has been going mad for the last few days.

I'll incorporate the MSX suite in the next MPAGD release.

[sfranck72]

Hello,

I had try the MPAGD 7.5 with the MSX suite of jltursan.
I would thank you all for the work.
I'm on the pixelsoft youtube tutorial videos and reproduce it on the MSX.
It turn very well but I'm in a discovering phase yet.

I would give feedback on the MPAGD machine MSX (release 7.5):
-I can't see the sprite choosen for the directions on the scriptgenerator (I turn on another machine for that).
-I can't copy and paste frames on the Sprite editor.
-The sprite colour management is approximative. for example,I choose differents colours for each sprites and I don't see it on the sprite position editor. My player is blue on the screen 0 and I create à screen 1 but the player miss the blue colour, now is white.
-I had choose a scriptgenerator for other events. It give me a DEFINECONTROLS that finaly don't want to keep but I can't erase this option, and the agd file produce this line. I don't see a alternative other than recreate all the project.

I manipulate the agd file at the moment to manage that.

Propositions:
I would love to see the integration of the jltursan suite in the next MPAGD, that launch the emulator in one action.
I would have a shortcut for the "export source code".

And the last for jltursan : A msx2 version would be the graal !!!

Again,a big congartulation, the 2 programs are killing me when I see the amount of work to propose this adaptation.

[Jonathan Cauldwell]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll look into the issues you raised this afternoon. For now just copy and paste your sprites in Spectrum mode as the MSX and Spectrum use the same sprite bank.

A shortcut to just build and run the game has been suggested before so that went in earlier today. The next release will have a new build option in the File menu and a shortcut key, F5. To do this it has to allocate a temporary project name so I chose "deleteme", which I'm guessing won't clash with anyone's projects.