Are there any good sites with manuals and howto's for MSX game and graphics programming?
I'm writing a rpg like game in Flash MX actionscript and want to port it later to MSX2 standard.
I have a standard pascal manual at home. It is still on my desk sinds a left the HIO in 1995 ;-).

here's one for asm.. http://map.tni.nl/
on msx it's either asm or basic orso .. pascal or c never really took off, afaik.

Uhm, Alex Wulms/Xelasoft was really cool with it. Better be on the lookout for ASCII C or Hitech C. Once you find one of those compilers, read the limitations -- one can't hande booleans orso, the other has but 16 bits integers instead of 32, dunno the details... C is quite cool ... Having seen the statement 'HIO', I can safely assume you speak Dutch. Download some of the Sunrise magazines also (find them in our downloads database), they contain great stuff concerning C programming.

wolf_ and [D-Tail]: Thanks for the quick response.

Programming for the msx is fun and cool.
I have a MSX2 basic manual, but I think basic has it's limitations in graphics speed.
So I think I go for C.

BASIC can be accelerated easily. Check out the possibilities of NestorBASIC (NBASIC), right here. You can use it in combination with NestorPreTer/NPR, to be found on the very same page. With NBASIC there comes a simple 'CALL TURBO ON' instruction which will greatly accelerate your BASIC program... It's how I made Blub 'n' Breathe (4th link), tho the game itself was never finished. Nevertheless it shows pretty much what the possibilities of NBASIC are. Good luck!

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on msx it's either asm or basic orso ..

orso ...? But not Pascal?

BASIC -- on homecomputers like MSX -- is good for small to medium sized programms,
which need not be very fast, but shall be implemented very fast. Asm is good for very small
programs or for fast routines called form high level languages like BASIC or Pascal.

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pascal or c never really took off, afaik.

That's wrong. There was Turbo Pascal 3.0 for MSX. For MSX, it's just the best!

I worked with Turbo Pascal for many years and I would still do it, if I had a working MSX. I used it for programming and as texteditor. The control sequences follow wordstar and can be changed by the user. TP is an almost perfect program. It's very professional.

The manual I got was a book with just something about 300 pages, containing the description of the language, of the editor, the compiler, and some of the several implementations for CP/M, MSDOS, etc, so you need not read everything in the book. It's a very good manual! TP uses about 30 KB, the runtime library is about 8 KB. You can use it interactively, almost like BASIC, with compiler, sourctext and executable code in memory. You can compile it to a file as well. You can split up your source using include files. You can code in MC by the means of the inline statement. Thats what I did to access BIOS routines. Turbo Pascal itself generates mc code, so the executable code you get by the TP compiler is very fast.

In TP, you have data type string implemented with length byte followed by the string characters. TP has strict type checking to avoid errors. Only for string types, it can be less strict, if you allow it by compiler phragma.

There's data type boolean, byte, integer, real, char, and pointer denoted as ^. You can define your own enumeration types, you can make arrays and records out of all types in any complexity. You even can directly access the memory.

Pascal is easy to learn, you can write very clear and well structured source textes, using Pascal leads to a very good programming style, if you be aware of writing tricky code, what is not nescessary at all. BASIC -- and other languages -- force the programmer to do tricky code to overcome speed limitations, or code which isn't readable by other programmers. That's unprofessional.

If you already know BASIC, then it's easy to learn Pascal.

There were made some cool graphic demos in Turbo Pascal, too!

As far as I have heard many years ago, the MSX rights for Turbo Pascal are owned by the MSX Club Gouda.

http://members.chello.nl/h.otten/pascompiler.htm

There's even an enhanced version made by Frits Hilderink, author of NLMSX !

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http://members.chello.nl/h.otten/pascompiler.htm There's even an enhanced version made by Frits Hilderink, author of NLMSX !

I followed the link. The introduction about Blaise Pascal is very good.

I also browsed over the text about writing good programs. But I don't think thats good for beginners. The style of the exemple programs is very bad, to much unnescessarily huge gaps in it. The parenthesisation is very bad, because opening and closing parentheses aren't in the
same column, if the parenthesised construct is more than one line. I also don't understand
why the separation between functions and procedures should be bad.

Programming in TP on MSX is pretty great! Also in C it works quite well. In both languages many programs have been made. More than you think!

So, Wolf: FOEI!

I have downloaded the hitech-c and pascal versions from the funet site to take a look at it.
I'm planning to write the game with the openMSX emulator and create the graphics with The Gimp.
I'm a GNU/Linux addict too. (Vector Linux, slackware based, fast and rock solid)

Take a look at http://www.iconsoft.tk - go to Apps->MSXPad there,which is an IDE for windows to program MSX Pascal stuff... all my games are done with it

For some examples, check out my site The MSX Files, specially games like "Maximmum Penalty", "SCSICide" and "Snow Fighters" - those 3 come with complete source code

Webmouse, if you're going for the HiTech C/openMSX/Linux combo, take a look at this (section 'Utilities'). Manuel and I put together a bashscript that will use the GCC pre-processor on your C sources, and then call the appropriate HiTech C programs - using cpmemu - to compile and link your app. Pretty comfy developing, I may say

In case of troubles, don't hesitate to contact me ( eric AT auroramsx DOT nl ) or manuel or visit the #openmsx IRC-channel at freenode.

Happy progging!

Aurora, your link seems dead :|... I myself am interested in this as well

In Turbo Pascal, you don't need preprocessing and linking, you just compile it!