Would you like to take part in the content of an MSX magazine?

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By wolf_

Ambassador_ (10135)

wolf_'s picture

24-05-2023, 10:19

Naturally it has a cool-factor, and paper can indeed be more calming than a screen. My criticism (as far as you call it that) isn't related to the product itself, but to the process of making it. Again, the first edition will be great. But then what? The problem I see is continuity. At some point people have other things to do, or they're out of ideas, or they just don't care anymore. Look at how MCCW went down-under after only three issues.

Another thing to consider is that many developments are actually interactive forum threads. A magazine article isn't interactive. So, if someone learns assembly here in the forum, the learning steps can all be seen. Post by post, question after question, all tiny baby steps. An article in a magazine is one large chunk in which you need to rely on the author to do it write, there's no steering wheel. So, a question could be whether full non-interactive tutorial articles make much sense these days. You would need outstanding authors making such articles. They may find a few of them, but if those experts decide to do somthing else, the continuity is gone. It's very hard to have a backup plan in those situations.

Again, I'd loud anyone who succeeds making a proper MSX magazine these days, but, as you (ro) once pointed out somewhere, it's often like whistling the national anthem while eating a banana. Wink

By DamnedAngel

Champion (286)

DamnedAngel's picture

26-05-2023, 20:47

Similarly to Ericb59, I am not on twitter, so I will just answer here.

Between 2020 and 2021, I offered a 20-part MSX Game development in C/ASM workshop for a selected Brazilian audience. The course went from the very basics of setting the dev environment up to finishing a Snake-like game in C ans Assembler. It turns out I have the very detailed scripts for all sessions, ready to be adapted to a magazine format.

The content of the workshop is the following:
Session 0: Development Environment Setup
Session 1: Using Project Templates
Session 2: Starting the Development
Session 3: Screens of the Game
Session 4: Animating the Snake
Session 5: VDP Basics and Collision Detection
Session 6: MSX's Interrupt System and Game Timing
Session 7: Permanent Motion of the Snake
Session 8: C Pointers and Snake's Head and Tail
Session 9: Apple of Good and Evil (Implementing the Snake's food)
Session 10: Handling Joysticks, Level Progression and Customized Character Font
Session 11: Screen 1 Graphics and Pattern Table
Session 12: (More) Tiles and Colors
Session 13: PSG Workshop (featuring MRC's user Parn)
Session 14: Visual Effects and Animations
Session 15: Sound Effects
Session 16a: Sprites - Part 1
Session 16b: Sprites - Part 2 (Fusion-C Bugs Correction)
Session 17: Assembly and the Grass
Session 18: A Quick Look on OpenMSX Debugger

The playlist of sessions (in Portuguese) are available here.

It will be my pleasure to translate the material if you find the content adequate to the magazine.

[]'s

By tanuki

Rookie (17)

tanuki's picture

31-05-2023, 13:52

Hello DamnedAngel, It's great, and of course it could be part of a magazine!

We're still in the feasibility study phase. We're looking at costs, pagination and so on. Give us a little time, and we'll officially announce the magazine.

By raymond

Hero (653)

raymond's picture

11-06-2023, 08:42

I do like the idea of a physical magazine. PDF is nice and works OK, however I prefer a paper magazine!

By Bengalack

Paladin (805)

Bengalack's picture

11-06-2023, 10:53

But... there are already several msx mags in print. At least some from Brazil I think. ClubeMSX does international editions from time to time too.

By tanuki

Rookie (17)

tanuki's picture

11-06-2023, 17:24

Yes, we know clubemsx but there's no reason why we can't work together.

By eimaster

Champion (285)

eimaster's picture

28-06-2023, 15:04

Hi all. I'm an Arab from Yemen so don't mind my English mistakes.

I encourage any new MSX stuff especially Books or magazines 'cos that's how I learnt MSX and computers basics but for me and for many Arabs it wasn't enough.
In Arab world there isn't enough computer books and magazines back in the days. And what was there were only BASIC centered. And Alalamiah company never distributed other company's nor produced any serious programming languages such as C, Pascal, or Assembly or any books about them. Either Alalamiah viewed it's Arabic customers as idiots who would not understand how to understand such serious programming languages or it simply did not want to produce a future generation who are powerful-Arabic-programmers. Maybe it wanted to monopolies the good programmers within it's employees. That's why I feel how much computer knowledge especially MSX's we have missed when I browse non-Arabic Books and magazines especially non-English (Dutch/Spanish/Portuguese/French, etc.). That's why I wish if there will be a magazine which will publish or republish many of those educational articles but in English so it could compensate and teach all MSX lovers who do not understand those languages. Do not think as an expert who think that all the others of MSX community are experts too, 'cos we all are not.
It would be educationally excellent to present an advanced BASIC program/utility/tool/game and explain it's functionality line-by-line. By advanced I mean it uses BASIC to it's limit. Also BIOS/BASIC/DOS subroutines' explanation with examples if possible. I know that there are many excellent English books/sites which teach Z80 and/or MSX Assembly programming but not very few teaches standard MSX-BASIC or other faster MSX BASIC with examples explained.

Forgive my long comment but put your legs in my shoes to know how I feel when browsing a Dutch magazine containing too much examples and information which I cannot understand. I only type the BASIC program hoping to understand how it works and what it do to do it's things. For example, in many programs I see this line:
Linenumber POKE &HFCC1,1
but no explanation of what that memory address is and what values other than 1 it can have and what every value means. (i think it has something to do with CTRL+STOP pressing in order to stop the user from stopping the execution of the program (a quick alternative to BASIC's ON STOP GOSUB nn:STOP ON routine).

Lastly, getting a physical paper magazine is close to impossible for me, so I suggest it to be a PDF magazine or at least both so I can easily download the PDF version.

That's the least I could say now.

Keep MSX alive not just by producing new MSX software but also by teaching others what you know so others can participate in producing new software as well.

Bye.

By eimaster

Champion (285)

eimaster's picture

28-06-2023, 14:59

DamnedAngel wrote:

Similarly to Ericb59, I am not on twitter, so I will just answer here.

Between 2020 and 2021, I offered a 20-part MSX Game development in C/ASM workshop for a selected Brazilian audience. The course went from the very basics of setting the dev environment up to finishing a Snake-like game in C ans Assembler. It turns out I have the very detailed scripts for all sessions, ready to be adapted to a magazine format.

The content of the workshop is the following:
Session 0: Development Environment Setup
Session 1: Using Project Templates
Session 2: Starting the Development
Session 3: Screens of the Game
Session 4: Animating the Snake
Session 5: VDP Basics and Collision Detection
Session 6: MSX's Interrupt System and Game Timing
Session 7: Permanent Motion of the Snake
Session 8: C Pointers and Snake's Head and Tail
Session 9: Apple of Good and Evil (Implementing the Snake's food)
Session 10: Handling Joysticks, Level Progression and Customized Character Font
Session 11: Screen 1 Graphics and Pattern Table
Session 12: (More) Tiles and Colors
Session 13: PSG Workshop (featuring MRC's user Parn)
Session 14: Visual Effects and Animations
Session 15: Sound Effects
Session 16a: Sprites - Part 1
Session 16b: Sprites - Part 2 (Fusion-C Bugs Correction)
Session 17: Assembly and the Grass
Session 18: A Quick Look on OpenMSX Debugger

The playlist of sessions (in Portuguese) are available here.

It will be my pleasure to translate the material if you find the content adequate to the magazine.

[]'s

That's what I meant in my comment. I encourage you to do so. Translating to English any game making processes or Translating to English any BASIC listing explanation is a very good educational way of teaching. Please do it.

By tanuki

Rookie (17)

tanuki's picture

15-07-2023, 10:18

@eimaster : understood Wink

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