Posts

Grid-based 400+ MSX models overview for quick comparisons

Image
I have made a handy utility for developers: a grid-based overview tool with all known MSX models listed on the msx.org wiki pages as well as those emulated in openmsx . Totalling of 426 models at the time of this writing (including localized variants).

The tricks behind the video renderer in Go Figure

Image
New article about video rendering is up, part of the "Under the hood" Go Figure series.

Doing proper compression in the O4S-stream (OPL4)

Image
In the previous audio article  I talked about how to improve the compression. Well — I took a deep dive, and now I present the results here. Spoiler alert: While I'm satisfied with the results, but they are not massive. As expected.

Parallax effect in Go Figure

Image
A little write-up on how the parallax effect in Go Figure is constructed — with performance numbers and other juice.

Fast screen 5 bitmap scroll

Image
New how-to from Go Figure is up. This time about doing nearly fullscreen fast bitmap scroll on the MSX2. That is on the V9938 VDP which is quite slow. Three pages and a video.

Compression light in the O4S-stream (OPL4)

Image
In the Go Figure  Under the hood for OPL4/O4S  there was an "open question": "...  adding compression could be one idea and a nice challenge. " Now that the MSXdev deadline has passed, I could not leave that one, un-investigated. I immediately thought of a way that could be a low hanging fruit. Could I make compression  without sacrificing performance at all ? Or at least keep the same requirement, make all tunes from  Go Figure  below 5000 cycles per frame?

"Under the hood" - new series for Go Figure

Image
Wave channels from the intro shown in openMSX Go Figure was just submitted for MSXdev25. A title full of creative solutions to the well known performance challenges on the good old 8bit Z80 -based MSX2 computer. Starting off with a deep dive into the audio realm where we see how we push the limits this time around.