SofaRun 7.0 released | MSX Resource Center (Page 6/11)

Enlighted (6210)

24-05-2020, 12:41

Latok wrote:

Of course I know this keyboard matrix and I even thought of programming such a tsr myself, but I don't know where in memory something like that should be and whether it's just a matter of hooking this program to #fd9f?

I have already asked how he manages to divert the keys but no answer. I think it moves the BIOS to RAM and apply a patch. So this should mainly work for MSX1 games in Rom. For the rest, it is not a reliable method.

Par mfeingol

Champion (293)

27-05-2020, 06:23

@louthrax:

Just in case you missed it, here are the images you requested:

https://www.msx.pics/image/jlvD4
https://www.msx.pics/image/jlfJr

Btw, just to make sure my Playsoniq setup is working in general, I ran sega.bas from the original Playsoniq tools with the same copy of aleste.sms and it worked fine (with no audio, to be fair).

Par Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

28-05-2020, 00:54

Okay, there was a bug in the "default settings" processing. SofaSMS sets different default settings for SG-1000 (*.SG) and SMS (*.SMS) ROMs, but the settings were always set to SG-1000

This has been fixed, along with the "slot not expanded" issue reported by GDX.

You can just redownload and give that a try. Thanks to you both GDX and Max for reporting these issues!

Par Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

28-05-2020, 12:49

Thinking about the SMS soundschip emulation, it could be possible to emulate it better by using the SCC for the "tone" channels and the MSX PSG for the extra noise channel ? SofaSMS is currently only emulation the tone channels (so no "boom" sounds on games that are using noise, like H.E.R.O.).

Didn't Muffie used something like that (SCC) for his Colecovision ports ?

Par mfeingol

Champion (293)

28-05-2020, 20:48

@louthrax: thanks for the fix!

I can confirm that aleste.sms now runs on my setup using mostly default settings, with the only changes required that mapper be set to Playsoniq, and slot to 2-0.

A question: for games like Aleste that run with no sound, is the problem that the Playsoniq doesn't provide the right sound chips, or is it a software issue?

Par Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

01-06-2020, 19:02

Hi Max,

Yes, you have to disable the "FM detection" in the settings if you do not have an FM-PAC extenstion on your MSX (that way, you'll get the standard sounds). The Playsoniq does not have an internal FM-PAC chip, it can just translate the ports to the MSX FM-PAC.

Par Latok

msx guru (3938)

01-06-2020, 22:56

Latok wrote:

Sofarun really is great stuff. Nowadays I mainly use my MSX for gaming and listening to music. For the latter, I use many DOS utils such as vgmplay, nmp, muplay. For graphics, I use bls. Anyhow, all these utils require pressing ESC to exit. But there is no ESC button on my joypad. So I still constantly have to get out of my Sofa to press ESC.

So I thought, there should be some TSR program which maps for example the combination of DOWN and BUTTON B to the ESC button. This TSR program should also work within these forementioned DOS utils.

Then I read the Sofarun manual and discovered the SROM.INI in which this keymapping is present! But as it looks like, only for special controllers? And only to work within ROM images? How does this syntax work anyway?

Of course I know this keyboard matrix and I even thought of programming such a tsr myself, but I don't know where in memory something like that should be and whether it's just a matter of hooking this program to #fd9f?

Any help would be much appreciated. In short, in Sofarun, is it possible, with a regular joypad, to map the combination of e.g. DOWN and BUTTON B to keyboard ESC button? And does this then work in DOS utils? How?

Thanks

Anyone?

Par Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

01-06-2020, 23:16

Hi Latok,

GDX summarized well the situation. That could be done with a Terminate and Stay Resident program that would scan joystick(s) and feed keys in the MSX standard buffer (SofaRun is already kind of doing that internally).

This TSR could even be launched independently from SofaRun. But that would not work with all programs (those doing direct reads), and maybe could cause stability issues.

Anyway, this is interesting to try, I might work on this. I just need to finish SG-1000 noise emulation with PSG+SCC first for SofaSMS...

Par Pencioner

Scribe (1563)

02-06-2020, 13:32

I think it would be better to patch common tools to read also joystick button for exiting or so... it wouldn't have any stability issues then and wouldn't require running TSR from autoexec. And for newly developed tools might be good idea to support joystick so it is handy to use with SofaRun

Par gaula82

Resident (45)

02-06-2020, 22:36

@Louthrax

I am trying to load a ROM with GAME MASTER 2 support enabled in SETTINGS, but I get:
Loading Game Master 2:
*** Can't open A:\SR\SROM.SROM.GM2

...but the strange thing is that I have a file called A:\SR\SROM.GM2.
So what is going on here? I tried copying A:\SR\SROM.GM2 to A:\SR\SROM.SROM.GM2, but for NEXTOR it's an invalid path, as expected.