openMSX, blueMSX "unique" and "1st" features

Indeed, fMSX-DOS used it differently, you mean the unique v-DRIVE feature?:
Virtual Drive (aka blue v-DRIVE)

-What's blue v-DRIVE?
v-DRIVE is an blueMSX unique function introduced in v1.3.0. So what does it do? Well it's a simple yet powerful hotkey for users to swap disk without going the file selection window. v-DRIVE hotkey will let users toggle between available contiguous dsk file of your choice. (Works similar to ' ALT+TAB' task switcher in your Windows.) Users will find it quite handy when playing games with massive disk exchange!

Check out this message, posted by me on the NLMSX beta mailinglist, dated May 26th 2002:

Subject: [NLMSX Beta] disk image idea

hi,

i've got an idea regarding changing of disk images. many games have multiple disks, almost everyone has them named:

name of game - disk a
name of game - disk 1
nameofgameA
nameofgame1

so a system could be implemented to increment and decrement the disk number with the push of a button, without having to change the disk manually:

eg. disk increment key=f7, disk decrement key=f6 (yes, i know these buttons are in use right now ;p )

user places Alese2A.dsk and runs it and watches the demo,
aleste 2 asks for disk 2,
user presses f7,

nlmsx looks at the last char of the filename of Aleste2A.dsk (no extension). it then should easily increment the character number; b comes after a, B comes after A, 2 comes after 1.

if it can find Aleste2B.dsk, it will insert that disk, if it can't it will give an error and leave the A disk.

decrementation would go the same way.

Afterwards, it's been posted to the online NLMSX to-do list (that's been deleted when NLMSX got inactive). I guess the person who submitted the idea as their own actually got it from that list, since the v-DRIVE feature is exactly as I suggested it .. Can you understand why I think this "unique" and "1st" is a bad idea? (PS, not blaming you personally dvik, nor am I upset by this, I just don't think it's a good idea)

Yeah, the competition's great. In return, it creates more motivation to work on their emulators. And I agree mentioning unique features is meaningful, though it could be worded differently than the way it is now.

Or for some added humour, openMSX should think about adding "1st - "unique" and "1st" in the featurelist" to their featurelist

Note that many of the uniques and 1st in those lists are for MSX emulators. You can find many of the unique features in other emus. For example the disk change feature exists in other emus as well and has done so for quite some time. blueMSX was just the first MSX emu that implemented that particular feature.

And as manuel said, the lists are not scientific lists. I made it for blueMSX based on what I know. A few people has corrected some things but its not science and if you have other comments I'll change it too.

Its more of a fun thing and both emus have quite a few 1st's and uniques which more shows that they are taking the MSX emus to a new level of accuracy and feature richness.

And I should update the blueMSX list to reflect changes in the last openMSX release.

For MSX emulator terms, it might be called innovative. But in reality, most unique/1st features were probably implemented without knowing they already existed in emulators for other systems, because the authors don't run emulators for other systems

Ok, it's your rule.

In my eyes an emulator is an emulator, I wouldn't call a feature unique, even if it actually is among MSX emulators. For example, my NES emulator supports changing the ROM type in the open dialog, the same way it's done in blueMSX. My rule is I don't claim uniqueness or "1st", I just give credit where I got the original idea from, in this case dvik

off-topic: manuel, the openMSX featurelist looks buggy in Internet Explorer 7, the icons on the left are shifted upward.