I'm really proud to announce that finally I manage to release the very first Beta release of OpenMSX Peashooter...
OpenMSX shooter is a frontend for OpenMSX that should run on any computer running Mac Os X 10.4 or above (hmmm... (M)ac o(S) (X)... MSX... can it be a coincidence?). I developed it because I think that, while being a superb emulator, OpenMSX suffers from the lack of an integrated IDE to manage files. Launching games and applications from the terminal isn't very user friendly, and it's almost a pain in the *ss for a lot of users. That's why I wanted to develop something that the people could use in conjunction with OpenMSX to experience again some of the fabulous games made for the MSX standard.



List of the currently available features:

* Its internal database can identify immediately over 1360 files, giving their real name, the year of publication and the publisher. But there's more: for many games (more than 260 actually) it can also show you a brief description of the game and a small screenshot of it
* Support for MSX-1-Mania disks as well, including the exact description of the contents of every disk released in the collection
* Manage ROMs, Disk and tape images in different subfolders. You can also keep MSX1, MSX2 and MSX2+ ROMs separated
* Create a list of your favourite MSX games: ROMs, Disk and tape images can be listed together in your very own favourite list
* Sort your files by their names, publisher and year of publication
* You can choose different machine configurations for each category... how about a good Philips VG8020 for the good old MSX1 games and a more performant NMS 8255 for MSX2 games ? Just remember to add the system ROMs into the proper openMSX subfolder in order to be able to use them...
* Works with OpenMSX 0.6.1 and 0.6.2
* Universal binary

What you need in order to use it:

* A copy of OpenMSX for Mac OS X in the Application Folder, or in the Desktop folder of your account.
* A folder named "OpenMSX User Data" under your Document folder. if you don't have created it yet, *DO NOT* create that manually: Let OpenMSX Peashooter create it for you... it will ask you if it can create that folders for you the very first time you will launch it... do this since it will also create all the subfolder requested (and also because I just discovered a bug that crashes the frontend when it doesn't find a particular folder)

License agreement:

In order to use OpenMSX peashooter you must agree to the following facts of life:

* MSX1 Rules
* Xyzolog Rules
* Mac OS X Rules
* If you are living in Holland, you must agree to this additional sentence: MARCO VAN BASTEN IS GOD (Cruijff who?!)


Ok, now you can download Peashooter from -> this link <-
And let me know if you have any problems with it...

Hmm... I tried it, but when I told it to create the directory in Documents, I got this:



I think this has to do with the fact that it tries to create a dir /Oscar/Users/jorrith/Documents/OpenMSX User Data (where Oscar is the name of my Macbook running 10.4.9 in Dutch). I think that the computer name shouldn't be in that path, but I might be wrong...

Also, when I _did_ create the dir manually, it gave the same message. Ie. it's looking at the wrong place.

Hmm... maybe this could be caused by problems in creating the folders.

Try to download this file: peashooter_folders.zip
and uncompress it in your Documents folder.

Or go in your documents folder and manually create this sub-folders:

OpenMSX User Data
OpenMSX User Data/MSX1 ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/MSX2 ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/MSX2+ ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/Disks
OpenMSX User Data/Tapes
OpenMSX User Data/Screenshots/MSX1 ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/Screenshots/MSX2 ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/Screenshots/MSX2+ ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/Screenshots/Disks
OpenMSX User Data/Screenshots/Tapes
OpenMSX User Data/Manuals/MSX1 ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/Manuals/MSX2 ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/Manuals/MSX2+ ROMs
OpenMSX User Data/Manuals/Disks
OpenMSX User Data/Manuals/Tapes

Then launch OpenMSX Peashooter again and see if this helps

nifty

Nope, doesn't work, I still get the same error. I'm quite sure that this has to do with the directories it wants to create in the wrong place. Check the screenie to see that the OpenMSX User Data dir is in the right place: http://www.jorito.net/files/peas2.png

Ok, now I think that I have found from where this bug comes... there is a function inside the application that should return the path to the document folder of a user, but when the hard disk name is not "Macintosh HD" (its default value) it gives a wrong path. Don't know why, but I'm fixing that problem right now...

I think that I have fixed that bug, along with the other bug I was aware of...
I have tried changing the name of my hard disk to many different names and now Peashooter seems to find the path to the documents folder always as it should be.

You can download BETA 2 from this link and let me know if this time it's working.

Jay! This one works fine

I did notice that the menu items were in Italian tho, maybe it's better to have them in English by default. (and later properly translate them with some .plist files).

Also... about the screenshots. Wouldn't it be a nice idea if you could link the internal software db to Generation-MSX, and retrieve the/a screenshot from there, if an internet connection exists? This would be a very interesting feature to have in openMSX and its frontends, and in blueMSX as well!

Loading images from generation-msx would not be that easy. I don't know how could I make the frontend search for images since generation-msx shows games inside a page with a URL like "http://www.generation-msx.nl/softwareinfo/1234", where I suppose that "1234" is the internal code of the game displayed in their database, so apparently there isn't a way to identify universally a game without knowing exactly its code on generation-msx.

On my internal database I use the original HASH code of a game as primary key, this means that the database is bigger but potentially every emulator or every other frontend could connect to the database and seek for the desired screenshot with a single SQL statement, like:

SELECT Picture FROM Previews WHERE Base = << Insert the HASH code here >>

They would just to calculate the HASH code of the file and seek if there is an image of it in the database. Since different ROM dumps exists for a same cartridge, there is also a table with all the possible variants of the HASH code

As for the menu in Italian... my fault, I forgot to change the language of build from default to english, and since my copy of Mac OS X is in Italian the default language is the same. This problem will be fixed in the next release.

Actually, there's a long term plan on storing the sha1sum HASH codes on Generation MSX as well. This will make it easier to integrate GenMSX data into launcher applications You could use a dump for offline usage. Anyway, it will take some time, but we are definately planning to implement this.

If you want to download Peashooter please go to this website:


www.cescoware.com

Do not use any of the previous links to download the application, as they aren't working anymore
Sorry for the inconvenient and thank you for trying my frontend.