Why does everyone seem to want to develop for the craptastic VDP of the MSX1?

Prophet (3031)

02-08-2009, 21:04

if you are doing a games with a multi-direction-scroll & fast, you want to be in screen 2 or (screen 4, that is the same but only available in msx2 that support 8 sprites per line).

So, if you are doing a game with scroll, or maybe not scroll at all, but you have big bosses that are drawed with TILES, or you has a los of background activity to update every frame.... in any case, you want to be far from BITMAP solutions, because that will do the game SLOW, LIMITED on activity.... etc etc.

By example, a perfect game for MSX1 are, racing's games, games like magical tree, pippols, circus charly, spacecraft's games (with full gfx for background (Gradius by example)), these new games must like to use screen 4 plus custom palette if these founds a msx2.

Now, games PERFECT for msx2 & its bitmap modes, are SOLOMON KEYS by example.... overall PLATFORM GAMES, with fixed background, littles characters, etc. That kind of games, graphic adventures .... etc etc

By Leo

Paragon (1236)

02-08-2009, 21:05

has someone said "vintage" ? ....

ok, sometimes i feel frustrated because i feel my msx turboR could show much more
now , my 2cts guess :

the point is not getting the best graphism in absolute but it is to get the maximum of what is inside msx,
otherwise everything would be msx2+ or turbo R.
MSX1 being so much limited it then a good playground for human ingeniosity to get the best of it and
finally to propose a fun play experience on a basic hw.
Because after all, play experience is not that much a matter of zillions colors , 44khz sounds , mega pixels....
When you hear about a good and fun game on MSX1 you can almost be sure that it is because of its
originality or entertaining power and not that much of its breathtaking graphics , though sometimes some
MSX1 graphics looks really impressive ( once you know it is msx1)
...
An other point is that msx2 games that were produced back then were , imho , many ( & only) rpg's with
repetitive action . Also these games were "deeper" mainly due to multidisks while msx1 are more like 32kb roms, so if one wants to do a msx2 game "it has also to be deep" and that take a lot of time to do !
...
Some other people may say msx2 is not well balanced : cpu is too slow , no hardware scrolling , bla bla ...
...

By Latok

msx guru (3960)

02-08-2009, 21:11

In the big picture, MSX2 is just as inferior as MSX. If 'better specs' should be an argument, it doesn't make sense to develop for MSX at all. You rather start developing for more contemporary computers.

This argument and the dominancy of the current MSXdev competitions are the reasons for the popularity of the most basic MSX computer, MSX1.

In short: for many, creating on the MSX in its most RETRO form is the best way to show love for the system

By PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

02-08-2009, 21:22

The real problem is that there is a "political" interest on msx1.
Most people say that msx2 is not balanced, that the vdp is too slow for bitmap modes etc. and so on.....
But, even this is partially true, it's not a valid reason, as proved by numerous msx2 games developed in screen 5 for msx2.

Akin, coredump, ys series, spmanbow 2, kpiball etc. When talking about vertical scrollers there are gems like zanac aleste...... not bad for a machine that cannot do a lot if there is too much activity on the screen.

It's not a matter of limited power.
If it was, consider that developing for msx1 could not be the even of the programmer, with those limitations.

extremely slow vdp access (worse than on msx2)
colour clash
the beautiful limitation of 4 sprite / scan line, that makes hw sprites useless on a great number of games.

But, despite those limitations a lot of people develop for msx1. And no one willl complain about those limits.

By RyJuZo

Master (236)

02-08-2009, 21:57

Ok I have to ask, why are so many of the games that are being packaged in beautiful boxes and lovely carts developed for the lowest common denominator of the MSX world? I'm not saying that these games are not good, far from it, the one's I've experienced are excellent! My only point is, the graphics could be so much better if they were developed for the MSX2. I can't imagine that in this day and age, with all of us being as fanatic about MSX as we are, that there are many members of this board who don't own at least an MSX2. I know from looking at the system requirements thread that most of us own a High-Spec MSX, so why develop a game for the MSX one when you could make it look so much better on the MSX2? I say again that I'm not knocking the games or their developers, I'm just putting this question forward.

I once asked the same question and one of the answers I got was that there are a lot of people(that develop) who only had the privilege of experiencing the MSX 1. They never got to the MSX 2 or it never got to them.
So developing for a system that gave you so much joy when you were little gives a better buzzz than developing for some system you dont know...

it makes sense right?

By sunrise

Paragon (1091)

02-08-2009, 22:29

We all forget PA3,Akin, match maniac , the pentaro 1 and 2. You get all the idea there is totally nothing for msx2
The first two exactly 326 copies sold ,so come on !

By viejo_archivero

Paragon (1395)

03-08-2009, 00:32

"Why does everyone seem to want to develop for the craptastic VDP of the MSX1?"
Because MSX(1) rules, developing for it makes your game accesible to all MSX and -and that's the main reason imho- MSX2 developers are too busy complaining about the lack of MSX2 games instead of moving them arses and start making cool games. Period.

By PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

03-08-2009, 09:09

We all forget PA3,Akin, match maniac , the pentaro 1 and 2. You get all the idea there is totally nothing for msx2
The first two exactly 326 copies sold ,so come on !

I've told about some of msx2 games, without even think about ALL the titles, only to point that MSX1 developers always use the same reasons to justify the msx1-development. Those reasons are :

- VDP is slow (MSX1 vdp in contrast is VERY FAST with this 8us wait between vram accesses.)
- BitMapped modes are slow and does not allow fast animations (there are games like blade lords, or bombaman that proves is not always true)

But looking at the MSX2 games library you often see that is mainly a question of efforts or skill.
Of course, from a msx2 you can't expect any of the 'miracles' you could get from an AMIGA HW.

Really the limitations arise only on those types:
- If you need a horizontal scroll, especially at a variable speed, controlled by the player and you still want to use sw sprites.

In games where the screen scroll vertically or does not scroll (it's paged), you have the freedom to use vdp for SW or HW sprites combined with the beauty of screen5 gfx mode.
And no one said: 'All msx games MUST scroll horizontally'

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

03-08-2009, 09:35

Sorry, but this crap sounds just like if someone has two cars, one is OLD hobby car and other is quite new modern day car. And then someone else goes mad and starts to argue "Why that car hobbyist does not drive her new car even it is much better to drive, it´s 1.000.000 x safer, etc etc... why she keeps on driving that old rusty junk almost everyday!?!?!?"

"Why does everyone seem to want to develop for the craptastic VDP of the MSX1?"
Because MSX(1) rules, developing for it makes your game accesible to all MSX and -and that's the main reason imho- MSX2 developers are too busy complaining about the lack of MSX2 games instead of moving them arses and start making cool games. Period.

I have to confess, that I have already submitted a game about this subject to msx crap games competition...! But it is not published... maybe cesco is racistic msx2 owner...!

By PingPong

Enlighted (4155)

03-08-2009, 09:54

Sorry, but this crap sounds just like if someone has two cars, one is OLD hobby car and other is quite new modern day car. And then someone else goes mad and starts to argue "Why that car hobbyist does not drive her new car even it is much better to drive, it´s 1.000.000 x safer, etc etc... why she keeps on driving that old rusty junk almost everyday!?!?!?"

"Why does everyone seem to want to develop for the craptastic VDP of the MSX1?"
Because MSX(1) rules, developing for it makes your game accesible to all MSX and -and that's the main reason imho- MSX2 developers are too busy complaining about the lack of MSX2 games instead of moving them arses and start making cool games. Period.

I have to confess, that I have already submitted a game about this subject to msx crap games competition...! But it is not published... maybe cesco is racistic msx2 owner...!
Or maybe the crappy game competition has a little bored us. There are a lot of msx crappy games around, without the need to create new entries.