When a "port" or a "remake" of a games come to be ilegal or is legal? where is the law line? (General discussion MSX Forum)MSX Resource Center               
              
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General discussion - When a "port" or a "remake" of a games come to be ilegal or is legal? where is the law line?

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When a "port" or a "remake" of a games come to be ilegal or is legal? where is the law line?

dhau
msx master
Posts: 1057
Posted: May 25 2004, 00:50   
Quote:

This trick was well-known in Brazil because it was documented in the book "100 Dicas para MSX", and almost all brazilian programmers have this book.



Is there an english translation of this book? Would someone do such a translation?

All the english-speaking MSXers will be very grateful
ricbit
msx lover
Posts: 116
Posted: May 25 2004, 02:02   
Quote:

Is there an english translation of this book? Would someone do such a translation?
All the english-speaking MSXers will be very grateful



There's no translation I know of, but the original can be downloaded here:
www.geocities.com/msxland/msxlivros.html

Anyway, if all you want is to learn how to use the undocumented modes of the MSX-1 VDP, you will do better by downloading Sean Young's documentation at:
www.msxnet.org/tech/tms9918a.txt
dhau
msx master
Posts: 1057
Posted: May 25 2004, 02:24   
Uhm, thanks

My girlfriend is Portugese, but I think she will kill me if I ask her to translate the book

Besides she's not very technical
pitpan
msx master
Posts: 1389
Posted: May 25 2004, 08:59   
Thank you, Ricardo. I will have a look to that book, because I have been looking for that trick for ages!

How could you translate "dicas"? It is like "tricks", isn't it?

pitpan
msx master
Posts: 1389
Posted: May 25 2004, 11:59   
As I expected, Ricardo, the trick that the "100 dicas" book uses is quite crappy: it simply copies the first tile bank to the second and third banks. That is what I do, but I was looking for a hardware trick to do that.

In the excelent Sean Young's documentation he doesn't mention anything close to this.

It is possible to do this in any V9938/V9958 VDP, but not in the standard TMS9918/TMS9928 MSX1 VDP.

If anyone knows how to do this, I would like to know. TMS9918 in "screen 2" mode needs to use 3 tile banks.

Guillian
msx professional
Posts: 642
Posted: May 25 2004, 12:18   
I think it can be done. I'll check and tell you the results.
BiFi
msx guru
Posts: 3142
Posted: May 25 2004, 12:21   
VDP(0)=2
VDP(2)=6
VDP(3)=159
VDP(4)=0

should do the trick just fine.
pitpan
msx master
Posts: 1389
Posted: May 25 2004, 12:35   
Congratulations, Bifi!

I have been looking for this trick for months! And I have tested it in both V9938/V9958 and TMS9929 machines and it works perfectly with all of them.

Thank you very much, BiFi.

Regards,

Ed Robsy

Guillian
msx professional
Posts: 642
Posted: May 25 2004, 13:01   
Bifi is faster than me XD

Anyway, my idea was to use one bank at #0000 and not at #2000.

screen 2
vdp(3)=&h1f
vdp(4)=0

pitpan
msx master
Posts: 1389
Posted: May 25 2004, 13:37   
I will try this one too. Thanks, Guillian!


Grauw
msx professional
Posts: 1006
Posted: May 25 2004, 14:11   
Quote:

Note:
As a memember of the FutureDisk team I am legally bound to say that Sunrise Magazine sucks and Stefan Boer is an idiot.

Disclaimer:
As a member of the MSX Resource Center I am legally bound to distance myself from the above statement and note that the MRC does not condone nor endorse these kinds of statements.


*grins abundantly* ^__^


~Grauw
[WYZ]
msx lover
Posts: 95
Posted: May 25 2004, 16:45   
Quote:

In the excelent Sean Young's documentation he doesn't mention anything close to this.

If anyone knows how to do this, I would like to know. TMS9918 in "screen 2" mode needs to use 3 tile banks.



Take a look for this. There is a link in Sean's webpage:

Hybrid bitmap modes:

http://www.stanford.edu/~thierry1/ti99/tms9918a.htm#hybrid%20bitmap


ricbit
msx lover
Posts: 116
Posted: May 25 2004, 16:56   
Quote:

As I expected, Ricardo, the trick that the "100 dicas" book uses is quite crappy: it simply copies the first tile bank to the second and third banks. That is what I do, but I was looking for a hardware trick to do that.



Yeah, my memory failed me.

Quote:

In the excelent Sean Young's documentation he doesn't mention anything close to this.



It does, I guess you just skipped this part. The trick is the AND mask

Control register #4 which sets the PG address of the PG has a different
function in mode 2. Only bit 2, PG13, sets the address of the PG (so it's either
address 0 or 2000h). Bits 0 and 1 are an AND mask over the character number.
The character number is 0 - 767 (2FFh) and these two bits are ANDed over the
two highest bits of this value (2FFh is 10 bits, so over bit 8 and 9). So in
effect, if bit 0 of control register #4 is set, the second array of 256
patterns in the PG is used for the middle 8 rows of characters, otherwise the
first 256 patterns. If bit 1 is set, the third array of patterns is used in
the PG, otherwise the first.
pitpan
msx master
Posts: 1389
Posted: May 26 2004, 09:09   
Thank you, Ricardo. Now it is absolutely clear.

Expect next Karoshi productions to do strange things!

Yukio
msx professional
Posts: 824
Posted: January 30 2008, 14:04   
I have read that Space Invaders is registered, but only the name ...
Now, for Scramble there seems to be some strange restrictions! Something to do with a video tape!
Xbox Live Arcade, there could be a lot of popular games, well Super Cobra was popular too! There was even a contest to win some Jackets for the Atari 2600 VCS version of the game ...

 
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