Hi all,

I hope you got attracted by the controversial topic name

Anyway, I've heard from some people on MRC that they "don't like openMSX". I'm very interested to know why, so that we can make openMSX better!

So, please post the top 5 of reasons why you don't like openMSX and also a top 5 of things we should change to make you like openMSX What is missing? What is bad? What is wrong?

Some things I can imagine you will come up with:

• GUI. Indeed, openMSX has no GUI. However, you can use openMSX Catapult for the most occuring actions. Starting with the next release of openMSX, an open interface will become available, so that everyone can make a GUI for it. Let's hope some non-openMSX developers will create one. It will be very simple to make, I think. Example code is included in that next release Before that, just use Catapult or the commandline and the console
  
• a debugger. There are going to be some debugging commands available, which can be used by an external GUI (see above) to get the debugging info and display it. So, we're making steps to that
  
• speed: openMSX is really not slow, compared to its accuracy. If you need more speed, just make openMSX less accurate. See the tips in the Setup Guide (http://openmsx.sf.net/manual).
  
• 'boosted' custom MSX configs. Working on that, will probably be in next release. No promises, though.
  
• (multiple) screenshot feature: partial code for that is in CVS, but not used yet. If some developer feels like making this work it will be in some future release... On the other hand: any external program can do this for you, probably.
  

Also, if you have positive comments about openMSX, feel free to post them too, so that the developers get a bit of moral support too

And last but not least: you can of course also use our normal feedback system (trackers, e-mail, IRC) to tell us about your problems/wishes/complaints. But to make it even easier, I opened this topic.

Surprise me! (Wow, many smilies....)

I think that, to many people, openMSX is just way too extended. Most people just want to 'click and play', which explains the success of RuMSX and the recent newcomers BlueMSX and RedMSX.

Exactly Snout! Although openMSX is by far the most accurate MSX emu (in my opinion) it's also the one of the most non-userfriendly (also in my opinion). End-users just want to click the .exe, select a ROM or DSK and start to play. Supplying a default GUI with the Windows port should be enough to boost the popularity of openMSX. (I'm not talking about the original Linux version on purpose... Linux and userfriendliness is like water and fire imho).

I don't think openmsx is too extented. It just isn't 'plug & play'. The main problem is that the system roms are not included.
I don't care about a gui, however it would be nice if it would be possible to change a diskimage while running the emulator (OK, that had nothing to do with guis ).
Futhermore, a 'machineeditor' would be nice. I have no problem editing xml (actually: I don't like xml a bit) but a editor where you could drag&drop your msx machine would be nice.
And general msx, msx2, tweeplus and turbor machines would be nice, most people don't
care about emulating a specific machine, just a standard is enough.

But openMSX is (next to no$msx for the debugger) my fist choice emulator. (Moonsound emulation could be improved btw, some songs sound like shit )

Quote:

I don't care about a gui, however it would be nice if it would be possible to change a diskimage while running the emulator (OK, that had nothing to do with guis ).

F10, diska 'filename', F10
use "diska eject" to eject a disk.

Most of the things already mentioned should be solved by a GUI!

for me, no openMSX gui please. bash> openmsx -ext fmpac game.rom works fine. BUT.. one major problem remains..

if i receive an IM from someone, i switch back from fullscreen with prt scr/sys rq, But, sometimes i accidentally press F12!! please do something about that. the F12 button is too close to some other buttons

I think the keys are already remapable..

I don't want to repeat what I have already exposed about the comparison between NLMSX, openMSX and the fMSX clones (like blueMSX and RedMX) .... See the following page :

http://www.msx.org/newspost1645.html

But the first reactions in this thread gives me the confirmation about one major thing : MSX users want to emulate general machines (and not specific machines). So, there should be 2 versions of openMSX :

- a light version for the common users with emulation of 9 or 10 general boosted machines (like in NLMSX)

- an extended version for the lovers of specific machines

Don't say me that it has no sense to make that ! Everyone knows ICQ, a very extended program to communicate on Internet ! There are so many features in ICQ that the common user can have some problems to use it .... The solution exists, it's ICQlite !!!

I don't understand why you want 2 versions.
2 versions means 2x more work for developers, or a lot of #IFDEF stuff in the source code.

Again, a simple frontend can solve this problem.

Actually, Catapult already is solving most of the user-friendly 'problems'

Quote:

F10, diska 'filename', F10 use "diska eject" to eject a disk.

Seems I was using the 'wrong' slashes. Thanks anyway.

OK, here my first reaction to your reaction.

Quote:

I think that, to many people, openMSX is just way too extended. Most people just want to 'click and play', which explains the success of RuMSX and the recent newcomers BlueMSX and RedMSX.

openMSX can do a lot indeed. But you won't notice it if you don't use it. So, I think this is not a good argument. You can still click and play. E.g. try to drag and drop a ROM file on the openMSX binary in Windows. Will work. With a GUI it will be even better of course, but I already mentioned that.
As I said above, Catapult already solves most of that. Why not use that people?
(So, I can now skip most of the other reactions, since they're all abuit GUI...

Quote:

The main problem is that the system roms are not included.

Nothing we can do about that of course. Copyrights are copyrights.

Quote:

Futhermore, a 'machineeditor' would be nice. I have no problem editing xml (actually: I don't like xml a bit) but a editor where you could drag&drop your msx machine would be nice. And general msx, msx2, tweeplus and turbor machines would be nice, most people don't care about emulating a specific machine, just a standard is enough.

As I already said in the original post: we are going to add some standard machines with loads of extensions. A machine editor is currently out of the scope of openMSX. Anyone can make such a thing though. Someone may include it in a complete GUI or so.

Mars2000you: as I said in that other post: 2 versions doesn't seem to be a good option. Adding the aforementioned boosted configs does.

Quote:

if i receive an IM from someone, i switch back from fullscreen with prt scr/sys rq, But, sometimes i accidentally press F12!! please do something about that. the F12 button is too close to some other buttons

You can change the default key bindings in share/settings.xml

So, actually, there's nothing that I haven't mentioned yet or that is possible come on! You guys can do bettter!

End-users don't want to download more then 1 zip/rar/tar/tgz/etc. to get what they want. So offering a 2nd party GUI to openMSX is just not enough for Windows users(allright, I'll admit, the whole GUI thing is only important to the users of the win port).

Example; if one would like to use openMSX, they'll have to download openMSX win port, rom package and catapult. that 3 things from 3 different websites. On the openMSX website (http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/) I cannot even find any links to Catapult (just a 5 minute search). And I know it exists. How should anyone who doesn't visit MRC (or any other MSX news site for that matter) be able to find Catapult?

Make sure the end-user will find what he came for. The whole package. Not just some obscure tarballs.

I'm speaking from a Windows end-user point of view, because I think that's an audience openMSX should give more attention to. As long as the team doesn't see this, openMSX will never reach the popularity of, a technically weaker, emulator like ruMSX.

Quote:

I don't understand why you want 2 versions. 2 versions means 2x more work for developers, or a lot of #IFDEF stuff in the source code. Again, a simple frontend can solve this problem.

It's simply not true ! I've just tested a "new" emulator called liteMSX on my harddisk.
liteMSX is the light version of openMSX that is created by
- deleting all specific machines and replacing by the general boosted configurations that you can download on my site http://www.marsupone.com
- deleting all extensions that seems me no useful, as my configurations are boosted with MSX-AUDIO, MSX-MUSIC, Moonsound, 2 drives, 2Mb Mapper, 2Mb Megaram, X-BASIC (I only keep the following extensions : debugdevice, ide, msxdos2, rs232, scc, scc+)

You know what ? liteMSX works even good as openMSX, with or without a frontend !

Conclusion : no real double work for the programmers, but a good step in the right direction if openMSX wants to become really more populair 8)

hmm, the current openMSX is still aimed at developers, as i read on their homepage. since im still a developer, i like the thing! let is become truly a astonishing emu which is for the n00bs and judge again

n00bs should simply (still) stay away from openMSX... until later