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| | | | Thursday, March 20, 2008 - 19:56 Submitted by: wolf_ Topic: Games & Demos | | From Amusement Factory Software comes an MSX port of a game which the MSX seemed to have missed over the years: Sim City! This is a port from a game originally made on the Spectrum computers, and contains quite some extras compared to the original version. A lot of background information regarding the game and the port can be read on the relevant website.
Relevant link: Sim City |
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| By ARTRAG on March 20 2008, 20:59 | great conversion
well done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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| By Whizzy on March 20 2008, 21:04 | Amazing ! never thought this could or would be done for MSX !! 
Superb game 
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| By only_69 on March 20 2008, 22:11 | Great as always. Congratulations Daniel! 
Keep them coming 
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| By wolf_ on March 20 2008, 22:17 | only_69 .. will you make a map of this one?
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| By Whizzy on March 20 2008, 22:21 | Hmmz.. doesnt run very well on a sony HBF700D from an IDE-CF card..
I have gfx distortion all over the place.. may have to do with the MSX2+ video chip?
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| By manuel on March 20 2008, 23:37 | Superb!! Really amazing, I'd never have imagined this on MSX, I only learned of the spectrum version a few months ago. 
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| By SLotman on March 20 2008, 23:42 | Whizzy: that's strange... it was tested on *real* MSX1, MSX2, MSX2+ and turbo-R. What kind of distortion is it? Where/how does it happens?
Looking on the MSX Faq your MSX has a superimpose built-in... maybe that's the problem... 
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| By NYYRIKKI on March 21 2008, 00:17 | Moving in menus is a bit jerky expetially on mouse and you have to push buttons down for loooong, but the game it self is really great!
BTW when you move the map with mouse, the left/right movement is inverted compared to moving with keyboard.
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| By manuel on March 21 2008, 09:51 | The F700 does not have superimpose, I think you're confused with the 900. I have had a 900 for a long time and I never saw any problems with it.
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| By ant0niutti on March 21 2008, 11:35 | Great conversion, thanks DJC!
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| By Latok on March 21 2008, 12:02 | The LZH-download is corrupted?
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| By hap on March 21 2008, 16:38 | thanks for porting it
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| By Fudeba on March 21 2008, 18:29 | Whizzy:
> Hmmz.. doesnt run very well on a sony HBF700D from an IDE-CF card..
> I have gfx distortion all over the place.. may have to do with the MSX2+ video chip?
The problem happens when loading from other devices? There should be no problems on MSX2+
computers, since there are different output routines for TMS9128, V9938/58 and one for timed
output machines (those MSX2 and better with turbo mode). What kind of distortion happens? I
noticed that sometimes the "space" character has a strange dot when loading from disk on MSX1,
but I was not able to find the reason (yet), since it only happens on real machine *and* only happens
sometimes...
NYYRIKKI:
> Moving in menus is a bit jerky expetially on mouse and you have to push buttons down for loooong, but the game it self is really great!
Well, I was not able to improve it (it's a bug (?) from the original game). In the case of menus, mouse movement is just translated as keys pressed (and the jerkiness is result of the jerky movement of the keyboard). The keyboard reading is done at interrupt time, in a buffer, and then processed. But since in menus there is nothing much being done, this should not happen... but it happens, indeed. Anyway, things are a lot better "in game", where I could do some tricks.
Anyway, the performance is much better (even on menus) on faster machines.
> BTW when you move the map with mouse, the left/right movement is inverted compared to moving with keyboard.
Ops! I hadn't noticed it. I will fix it on a future release.
Latok:
>The LZH-download is corrupted?
No, I tested it and everything is fine with the archive. Try downloading again or something.
Everyone else:
Thanks for the support. It was hard work to bring this game to MSX (supporting all of its features and making it more playable than original ZX version, which has an awful playability, IMHO) and it's nice to know it was not a waste of time.
PS: It's a bit off-topic, but I released Ghosts' n Goblins v1.1.0 also, correcting the problems were making the game unplayable on real MSX1 machines (VDP timing issues)
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| By wolf_ on March 21 2008, 18:38 | a good game is never a waste of time..
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| By pitpan on March 21 2008, 18:53 | Congratulations! I asked for this game when we were discussing the release of Ghost and Goblins as an excellent candidate for a further conversion. Glad to see it released without delays!
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| By AuroraMSX on March 21 2008, 19:15 | Quote:
| PS: It's a bit off-topic, but I released Ghosts' n Goblins v1.1.0 also, correcting the problems were making the game unplayable on real MSX1 machines (VDP timing issues)
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Submit news!
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| By Fudeba on March 22 2008, 01:35 | Whizzy,
> A clue: i hear some relais clicking once after started. (casette port?)
Well, nothing should happen with cassette motor driver. Anyway, the problem
seems to be the speed of your VDP. For some unknown (and weird) reason,
it is slower than others V9958, or your machine starts with VDP configured
different from other MSX2+ machines (at least, I did not change the 9958
R#25 which enable/disable CPU wait states). I thought the default was start
with this bit enabled (waits enabled) on MSX2+ and better (since the fixed
3.57MHz was not part of the standard anymore).
Do you use the email in your profile? I would like to do some closed beta
tests with you, to solve this problem. Is it possible?
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| By Whizzy on March 22 2008, 13:59 | Yes, that is still a valid email address. No problem, glad to be of help.
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| By Sonic_aka_T on March 23 2008, 14:46 | Finally! This game was due so many years! Great game guys! Will you be releasing an MSX2 version later on? (Say yes, say yes, say yes!)
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| By Fudeba on March 23 2008, 15:10 | MSX2 Version: most probably not. It would require a complete change in the way the game draws the screen (really rewrite everything from scratch), since it writes the entire screen almost every interrupt, in order do create game scenery animations.
I am not saying it is impossible to make a SimCity in Screen 5 or even 7; I really believe it is. Unfortunately, it is just "not possible" with this engine. It would become too slow and sluggish.
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| By Sonic_aka_T on March 23 2008, 15:45 | Does the game use a fixed tileset for the map or are the tiles dynamically rewritten?
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| By Fudeba on March 23 2008, 18:26 | It uses a fixed tileset, but:
A) the tileset is large (bigger than 256 tiles)
B) The game changes the colors of some tiles "on the fly", depending on the need. On MSX2 this means even more tiles.
Again: of course it maybe would be possible to change everything to make work on higher screens and so on. I just don't think the
amount of work involved would be justified for the final results, since it most probably would require a very special machine
(MSX2 with 7MHz turbo, 128K VRAM, and maybe 256KB of mapper RAM... which means almost a turboR) and it would run
slower than the version we have now.
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| By NYYRIKKI on March 23 2008, 21:54 | Quote:
| In the case of menus, mouse movement is just translated as keys pressed (and the jerkiness is result of the jerky movement of the keyboard). The keyboard reading is done at interrupt time, in a buffer, and then processed. But since in menus there is nothing much being done, this should not happen... but it happens, indeed.
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Do you think that prosessing could be also partly put into interrupt? This is very anoying problem. (at least save the button state for processing) Expetially the map-menu is totally impossible as it seems that selection changes almost randomly (buggy also in original?). Also the fact that you can jump from last entry to first and vice versa causes the need for mouse to move much more than needed. Expetially when the automatic budged is not activated.
Also maybe you could implement the mouse a bit more different way as now the selection might change just at the moment you are just trying to press button. I think that I don't need to go into details. 
Anyway as I said before this is really good port. This is also a port that I've wanted to see for a long time. I hope that the gaming experience can be just adjusted so much that it also feels good to play. You have done a great job on every other part!
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| By spl on March 23 2008, 23:01 | Thanks very much!!!
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| By Huey on March 25 2008, 16:10 | Exellent game conversion!!!!!
Although a bit slow very addicting and fun to play.
I always thought it was not possible for MSX1.
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