I'm sooo very happy !!

It was very expensive but worth every penny !!!

I now have the following msxes:

NMS 8250 with 1mb and a V9958

NMS 8280 with 1mb and a V9958

Panasonic FSA1 WSX MSX2+ 512k

and now the

Panasonic TURBO-R GT 512k...

I was wondering how many people also have a turbo-r on this forum ??

because after my little knightmare 3(msx1) project I want to develop a game especially for the turbo-r...
(are there any other specific turbo-r games ??)


I want to see what this baby can do ....

There's not much dedicated tR software. Apart from the more or less MSX2/128KB 'standard' that was assumed/used in the 90's, a reason could be that graphics-wise it's an MSX2+, which is nice for displaying photos and for the scrolling registers, but otherwise it's not a very practical game chip.. unlike the proposed v9978 and later on the Graphics9000.

So, on what screen would you want to make your tR game? Any of the MSX2 screens? Or actually a 2+ screen? Scrolling?

I've got one! Actually there are almost NO games for TR.

It arrived too late, when all the major developers had already abandoned msx for other systems.

IMHO the major step is the vdp with the horizontal HW scrolling (but than, msx2+ was already there)

The R800 allows just less optimized code to do the same things you would have done with the z80 in ASM by carefully studying the algorithms.


Kidding, btw do not expect miracles:

R800 has a moderate speed up wrt z80
PCM sound has no buffers or DMA support (this makes it practically unusable)
The VDP is SLOW (DAMN! copy and commands are slower than in msx2!!)
The I/O to VRAM slows down the code!! (the VRAM access has some particular behaviours jet to be studied and documented)

Definitely you (we) have paid for the "idea", not the machine...

Got one and I'd love to see a dedicated turboR game that uses it to the max!! The R800 is just blazingly fast

Also have a Turbo-r GT and would like to see some turbo-r games with of cource MIDI and FM-Pac music and S-ram Save games.
And i forgot PCM samples for some cool effects.

Congratulations .. i have another TurboR-GT more!

Also have a GT which is crying for some custommade software

I have an ST... And I love to play turboR-only F-Nano'2 on it

Got one... A GT

me too
a GT

Got an ST with internal 1MB and 230V

Ok I see there is a cravin' for a dedicated turbo-r game....so it's going to be done !

any suggestions of what kind of game ?? maybe a remake of and existing ?

I'm thinking something with parallax scrolling (ofcourse) ....and some nasty algorithims to generate some stunning gfx effects in memory first(cause it's faster in ram)...and then blit the results to the screen. Ofcourse I still have to do some test-runs.

BTW which emulator emulates the turbo-r the BEST ? cause doing the first tests on an emulator speeds up development...

Generally openMSX and BlueMSX are regarded as the best emulators. Whereas most people will say that BlueMSX is more suitable for the occasional gamer (or otherwise easy users) and openMSX is more for the tech-junkies. Try them both I'd say (and copy the blueMSX roms to the openmsx roms directly, because openmsx which comes only with some C-BIOS roms by default )

As for games: you seem to want to try the best of the best, the hardest of the hardest: try an RPG like XAK, Dragonslayer 6 or SD-Snatcher.

Quote:

Ok I see there is a cravin' for a dedicated turbo-r game....so it's going to be done ! any suggestions of what kind of game ?? maybe a remake of and existing ? I'm thinking something with parallax scrolling (ofcourse) ....and some nasty algorithims to generate some stunning gfx effects in memory first(cause it's faster in ram)...and then blit the results to the screen. Ofcourse I still have to do some test-runs. BTW which emulator emulates the turbo-r the BEST ? cause doing the first tests on an emulator speeds up development...

I started a parallax version of Total Parody
Actually the game is doable also on msx2, evn if i have to admit that on msx2+ I would have saved the VDP time to emulate borders...

The idea is quite simple:

the screen is build by tiles of 16x16 pixels

You work on two pages:
one is displayed, one is hidden: you build the screen in the hidden page

the two pages are swapped each 16 steps
You need also a bit of room in a 3rd page for speeding up border emulation (optional)

At each step, in the displayed page, you :

1) move the screen of one pixel using VDP registers
2) cancel with a black line the border of the window that has to disappear
3) copy a line of the area that has to appear (you take this line, or building it on fly, or by copying it from the working page)

[on msx2+ and TR you save 2) and 3), provided that you have build under the HW border the part of screen you need]

in the hidden page, you
4) plot 1/16 of the next frame to be displayed (eg. if the window is 15x8 tiles of 16x16 pixels, you can plot 7 1/2 tiles)
here you can have parallax: just build some tiles using transparency by overlapping two layers at different speed

in the working page, you
5) plot 1/16 of the next column/row you need to emulate borders (optional, if you have msx2+ or TR this can be done under the HW border)

once you have moved the screen of 16 pixels you
1) reset the VDP registers
2) swap the pages
3) repeat the loop.


The parallax limitation is in the speed, as the two layers can move each other just once each 16 steps

Using tiles 8x8 yje swapping rate can rise at once each 8 frames and you can update the parallax faster
but the VP copy becomes very inefficient

I have a turboR GT, i am considering selling it, lack of cash mainly. I'll stick with a 8245 MSX2, i can use that for most of my MSX desires.