Boriel ZXBASIC compiler ported to SMS (and hopefully on msx?)

By PingPong

Prophet (3885)

05-09-2012, 21:41

http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=72146

By 19rsn007

Rookie (24)

06-09-2012, 15:53

this is a pretty interessting development....now all we have to do is wait for the msx version of this.

By nitrofurano

Champion (300)

15-06-2013, 13:45

hey guys! some interesting recent improvements on the MSX version! - http://www.boriel.com/forum/wishlist/started-msx-version-hel... (tried sprites, text, keyboard, msx2+ screen modes, etc., working perfectly! \o/ )

By jltursan

Prophet (2619)

15-06-2013, 14:21

Looks promising!. As seems that you've thoroughly tested it, what's your overall opinion?, is it fast? (I mean, compared with assembler and C, I guess that it's far superior than BASIC )
I know that the Speccy version is very mature, does the MSX version benefits from that or is it a very different conversion?

By nitrofurano

Champion (300)

15-06-2013, 20:54

In my opinion, i think it could be an amazing tool for coding easily and fast for msx (and amazing how easily libraries related to msx2+, msx-music, moonsound, gfx9990, and etc. can be added) - and as well, you can enter inline assembly in parts where performance might be critical.

The situations i found there were the same or very close that Haroldo found when trying to do the same for Sega-SMS, like the need of some scripting (i just used a bash script which converts the resulting binary into .rom, and perhaps bloadable or msx-dos binaries)

Overally, the care we should have on coding there is to avoid commands related to zx-spectrum (such as ink, paper, pause, etc.), and associate each variable to between the 0xC000 and 0xFFFF ram area (as the examples i posted there in the forum)

The very best goal would be if more people wish to help Boriel's ZX-Basic Compiler development, whatever on coding libraries, forking it to specifically cross-compiling to MSX, etc.

By nitrofurano

Champion (300)

22-06-2013, 13:04

btw, i'm constantly updating http://www.boriel.com/forum/post4575.html with new tests, and also http://karoshi.auic.es/index.php?topic=2479.0 - be welcome using these sources and improving them with your ideas and experiences! :)

By nitrofurano

Champion (300)

22-06-2013, 22:15

next step is gfx9990 support (msx2+ display modes seems to work fine! \o/ )
i'm now struggling with the msx1 sound, and i'm curious about SCC, MSX-Music and Moonsound support as well
on the msx1 support, i'm also curious about the game consoles with similar components, like ColecoVision and SG-1000