Hi all,

I'm new here - hello!

I'm also the author of a development environment called TommyGun.
http://www.users.on.net/~tonyt73/TommyGun/
Some people have emailed me and suggested I add MSX1/MSX2 support to it.

Would many people here be interested using it to develop with?
It currently supports many computers such as:
* ZX Spectrum
* Sam Coupe
* C64
* Jupiter ACE/4000
* Amstrad CPC
* Enterprise 64/128

I think the MSX computers use the same VDP as the Enterprise does a TI-9929.
So it would be easy to add MSX support for this VDP.
Are there other VDPs used on other MSX machines?

It only works on Windows for the moment - but will enough interest I plan to change to wxWidgets and support Mac/Linux/Windows in the future.

Anyway if your interested in MSX support being added please post here.

Cheers,
Tony

welcome!
TommyGun looks great i realy like to see a version with MSX support!

I've been waiting a project like that on MSX systems! Hopefully we'll see this project supporting MSX soon.
And Wellcome kiwi73

the msx2 uses the yamaha v9938 vdp.

imo the 2 most needed features from that chip in a game development environment are the ability to put 2 sprites over eachother where a 3rd color (= color 1 | color 2 ) is shown for the pixel that was set on both sprites. this means a sprite editor where you can edit 3 colors on a sprite. see http://www.konamiman.com/msx/th-4a.txt near the end for the full story.

the 2nd of the most used features would be screen 5 tiles (graphic 4), this screen mode allows for 256x212 pixels on screen with a choice of 16 colors per pixel (from a rgb palette that has 3 bits per red, green and blue value, so 512 colors total). the tiles are usually copied with hardware accelerated bitmap copy functions, color 0 can be set to not copy and this would optionally make that color transperant. the amount of tiles is not defined nor is the size of them, although the whole game must run in 4 pages (256x256 pixels) max normally. that includes the current on screen page and other things like sprites (and depending on the design choice even the tile maps themselves). see http://www.konamiman.com/msx/th-4b.txt for more on hardware accelerated bitmap copy functions.

there are of course a lot more features on the v9938 vdp, but other features would be less pressing to implement msx2 game development support (i would think).


i'm going to check out your DE soon, since i always thought that a good tile editor for the msx screen 2 mode was lacking on the PC. i hope writing assembler on your DE is as much fun as it was using the wbass2 assembler on the msx itself.

Hi Kiwi73 and welcome!

I'm glad that you finally considered the MSX version. Here you'll find a lot of people interested in your project
As a suggestion, if you implement the MSX plugins, stay with the MSX1 graphics specs, VDP TMS9918 (it's not the same on the Enterprise!!). It'll be a lot easier for you as a start. The closest plugins will be the Spectrum ones (tiles & sprites) as basically there're only some differences on color resolution.

Of course, you can ask for anything you need to know...

Wow, seems a great piece of software!
Please implement msx support!!!

Thanks guys I will get on to it after I complete the Enterprise support.
Which should be the end of this week.
So I should be able to add MSX1 support (like jltursan suggests) and then I try the MSX2 stuff which seems a little more difficult.
Rest assured I will be back to ask more questions.
Thanks again.

The MSX2 VDP has some modes very close to the ones you can get programming "Nick" on the Enterprise. You'll get 16 color modes (with color palette) with 2 pixels per byte (every nibble contains a color) and 256 color modes with one pixel per byte. As you can see you'll find most of the hard work done!

Great thing! But please consider using Qt instead of WxWidgets. We've (the openMSX Team) had some very nasty problems with Wx when making crossplatform applications.

Qt is a commercial product and my software is completely freeware.
I know Wx has its issues, but its free!

You may also say that Qt has the open source version which is free.
True - but the license says your software must also be open source of which mine is not at the moment.
I may release it eventually as open source but at the moment it isn't.
No real reason not to release it as open source other than I don't have time and the code needs a little tidy up - plus I would have to document the design which would take a long time as well.
Need the time to add more features!

you do not have to license your code as gplif you read section 2 of the GPL license it clearly says that your don't have to make your software GLP if you use some GPL program with it. so you can just use the GPL version of QT and still leave your program freeware.

a few quote from section 2 of the GPL license: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works." this means that as long as your program doesn't claim to be QT then it is a clearly seperate work and does not have to be GPL.

"Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program." again it says that they do not intend to steal your code if it is completely yours, if your code is an addition (e.g. bugfix, extra feature) of the work then it is a different story.

"In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this License." here they even state that if you combine the 2 works (your freeware and QT) on one disk or in 1 zip/installer it still did not mean that your work becomes GPL automatically.


i guess they read back their license and either realised that it said something there that they never meant to say or they realised it was pure BS (excuse my french)

And what about GTK2, is it an option?

Quote:

I think the MSX computers use the same VDP as the Enterprise does a TI-9929.

welcome! great idea, and yes, please add MSX.

However, I think your assumption regarding the EP VDP is not correct. The Enterprise uses a VDP called "Nick", which is different from the MSX VDP, I think.

But I see you already posted the same questions on
Enterprise Forever forum, so it'll be good :-)

Very cool idea, I certainly will check it out, even if it's only to play around with. Btw, I'd love to see a multi-platform version of your tool though (since I'm a Mac user), and I do prefer Qt as well.

Quote:

And what about GTK2, is it an option?

Yep, it looks like its another candidate for cross-platform application development.

I must stress though that this cross-platform version of my application would be a long time coming as it has taken around 2-3 years to create TommyGun as it stands now and my main aim for this year is to complete it.
This mainly means completing the music composer plugin and polishing the other plugins (image/code/map editors).
If I manage to complete TommyGun I would definitely start on the cross-platform version, but in the process I would change the design of a few things and so the underlying architecture would change - but the main application would still pretty much work the same in principle.
One of my major problems to investigate first with a cross-platform version is how to implement plugins in a platform independent way.
Currently plugins are implemented in TommyGun using Win32 DLL's.
I know Linux has a similar feature, but I don't know much about the Mac.

Another option is to implement the base application framework in C++ using Qt/Wx/GTK and to implement the plugins using a script language - like Pawn or Lua.
But Qt has a script component so that could be an advantage as well.

Anyway the future of a cross-platform TommyGun is a little way off for now, but with enough serious interest it may become a reality soon rather than latter. (like towards the end of the year)

For now though I plan to concentrate on the Win32 version.

Sorry if any of my previous comments gave the impression that I would be doing a cross-platform version now.
I am serious about doing a cross-platform version, but just not right now.