MSX Software

MSX is an 8-bit home computer that became popular in the '80s, but some devoted users continue to develop software. Here I collect all my software experiments for MSX, hope you enjoy them.

The I.N.E.R.T.I.A. project

I.N.E.R.T.I.A. game with C sources and building HOWTO: setting up the SDCC compiler to build MSX ROMs wasn't immediate, so I wrote a short howto to help other MSX C programmers. As an additional gift, along the tutorial you'll find a link to download the full I.N.E.R.T.I.A. source code! Hope you enjoy. The howto was written for Windows users, but similar steps can be done for Linux environments.

The game participated to the MSXDEV'06 game programming contest, an event that delivers several new MSX games every year. 

HOWTO: Win+SDCC+Eclipse

Eclipse+SDCC: Eclipse is a programming environment fairly popular among Java programmers. A set of plugins ("CDT") adds support for gcc-style compilers like SDCC. The combination was used to compile some C programs for MSX.

HOWTO: parse a Bison grammar on MSX (with sources)

Bison grammar on MSX: a brief tutorial describes the steps I followed to compile a simple Bison grammar on the sdcc compiler. Final result was an MSX ROM that runs correctly on BlueMSX (and hopefully on your real MSXes having at least 32KB of RAM).

The Relocated Games Initiative

Snowclimber Demo, relocated version: a nice demo game written by Vincent Van Dam, initially packaged as a ROM at $4000; source code was available so I recompiled it as a .BIN file, it's now BLOADable at address $C000 so you can load it from cassette even on MSX machines with only 32 or 16KB or RAM.

The iMsx Launcher project (contribute from a friend)

iMsx Launcher for BlueMSX (news! iMsx v.2 sv.0006 is now available): this nice and colorful tool for BlueMSX was created by Aci, an italian MSX developer; he asked me to host it on my website; don't miss it if you make intense use of BlueMSX! Please read carefully the instructions page for correct install and usage of the software, and also note that some specific requirements must be satisfied to make it work (i.e. you should have installed a recent version of .NET runtime, further details on the instructions). If you want to contribute with any feedback information, please email directly to Aci, as I don't know the program's tech details, and I don't own the source code.

img2spr sprite generator utility

img2spr v.1.2 [ZIP, 1.2 MB]: draw a 16x16 color image (24 bit png format, but some other file formats supported by the OpenCV library should work as well, try it by yourself...:) and run img2spr to extract the sprite patterns, ready to be cut-and-pasted in your game source!

Program outputs data to screen, but you can redirect it to a text file with the usual ">" redirect operator.

After obtaining the output, you'll need to do some retouch by hand: you'll have to assign the correct color codes. Since v.1.1, a color may be optionally defined as transparent.

Here's a screenshot  that shows typical usage of the program; source code of img2spr is available in the zip file if you wish to change sources by yourself, but you'll need to download theOpenCV Library.

img2spr was written in C language and compiled using gcc-MinGW. This is a rough command line utility for game developers, so it's everything but user friendly, sorry. Anyway it might have future enhancements, so stay tuned :)

MSX Sprite Editor 8x8 version or 16x16 version

Here's an online sprite editor for MSX. Draw your multicolor sprites, click the "Generate" button and grab the source code that can generate your sprite on the MSX! Note: browser have evolved over time, you may wish to use the much more advanced TinySprite editor written by Rafael Jannone. Unfortunately TinySprite does not work on old versions Internet Explorer: you're stuck to my editor in that case.

Other MSX games and software

AcaBoom: a small BASIC puzzle game in which explosive tiles propagate fire to neighbourhood; try to clear the board in the lowest number of trials. It's released only in source code form (to run it you just have use the BASIC LOAD command).

Crazy Bullet Editor [MS-DOS, ZIP file]: level editor for Crazy Bullet, a MSX game for 1 or 2 players.

Blagger Editor [WIN95+, ZIP file]: level editor for Blagger, a 1 player game for MSX.

Sudoku [MS-DOS and MSX, ZIP file]: a sudoku solver for MSX, with C source for both PC and MSX version.

Some simple demos and examples

Mandelbrot (BASIC on .CAS file): plot your own Mandelbrot fractal in screen3! Note: it requires some minutes to plot, please have patience.

Fading example (BASIC on .CAS file): a very simple way to fade from black to white in screen1.

MSX related photos

A big gift from SHOCK-THE-DEV!: after the MSXDEV'06 contest, all participants received a great prize; I did some photos of the gift opening, enjoy!