Good news for you MSX programmers.

I know that the flex/bison tools aim to mantain a wide compatibility range, but I wouldn't have bet that bison parsers could work on sdcc; but surprise, I now have my small parser in an MSX ROM file...



Together with the ROM, I want to share with you the sources and a small HOWTO describing the procedure I followed; in the MSX Software section on the right, look for the Bison Grammar on MSX entry.

(by the way, bison output ran rather straightforward on sdcc, but I could not get the same results (not yet :) with the flex tool)

In the MSX Software section you'll find a new version of iMsx, the game launcher created by our friend Aci.



Main changes are in the game search/filter procedure, and only involve the main executable, so you don't really need to reinstall this new version, you may just replace the old iMsx.exe file with the new one.

Hope you enjoy Aci's efforts and have fun with his product, my best regards to you all!

Andrea

Just a fast update:

1) some small errors fixed in img2spr, latest version is now 1.2
2) some errors fixed in MSX Sprite Editor 16x16, latest version is now 3.1

I uploaded a 1.1 version with a small improvement: support to a transparent colors (you have to pass it on the command line). I also reformatted a bit the produced output of asm and C formats.

Please check the "MSX Software" section menu on the right, I also changed the screenshot example, should be explicative enough.

In the "MSX Software" section, you'll find a new entry highlighted by the icon: it's the img2spr utility.

Draw a 16x16x24bit image using whatever program you wish, then convert it to our familiar 32-byte sprite pattern format; sprite is now ready to be included in your game source.

The utility is small and rough: that was enough for me, but it might be of help to you developers, so why not to share it? Hope you enjoy!

This weekend I wrote a small simple utility to help myself in sprite creation, and I'm planning to share it soon with you MSX developers. News will follow, stay tuned!

Here's a simple fractal I've drawn recently with Fractint (the good old DOS version, it still works under WinXP if you run it as an administrative user):



It's a pretty simple fractal, and it was the ideal candidate to convert it to 3D; after some simple adjusting, here's the final results:



If you have 3D red/blue glasses and want to take a 3D look, please follow the related link below (it's also available under the "PC Software" menu.

Well it's my birthday today; the gift I'd wish is some more spare time (well, if I had it, be sure that some of it would be devoted to MSX developing).

About MSX: recently I tried the Karoshi's Caruso PSG Tracker, that's an interesting tool for MSX developers, have a look if you never did.

Bye, Andrea.