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Quote: Gimme the hardware, and I can at least draw the game and make the music. Now all I need is a skilled programmer (and the HW ofcourse). No, really. If the VDU will be produced I am willing to participate in a demogame-project for it. You dont need it...! VDU use 4 normal VDP's, so anything you draw suported by a normal 2+, will be the same on VDU - just imagine you have 4 layers to work with, being color 0,0,0 transparent (It's so compatible, you can run *any* msx game on *any* VDP!) Also why would you need a VDU to make music...?! But let's not rush things, developing a complete game now - while the project is still unfinished could be a waste of time; since other stuff is being implemented, whatever you code for today's prototype, could be done best (or even easier) in the final unit

You're right there Slotman, especially about the music part . But what are the changes that the VDU actually will be produced? I really like the idea making a demogame with some skilled MSX'ers though.

Nice VDU demonstration.

Also mind the part after 02:20.

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Can someone make an "oficial" list of games still to be adapted from tape to disk? And - as a separated list - the games that don't fully work (and what's wrong with them, example: Batman the Movie - adapted to disk - only loads first level then hangs, etc) This would help a lot on further adaptations...!

Now I must go to bed (this week I work at night) but sure, I will do a good list.

Nice work!

About the idea of using sprites for the main character of 'Altered Beast'... were you thinking about a substitution or using sprites over the character made by patterns??

Slotman here you have a little quick list. Actually, I think most of tape-disk conversions must be fixed to work under MSX-DOS 2 or BASIC 2.0. Many tape games, also, didn't work on MSX-2

- Alien Syndrome - It doesn't work under MSX 2
- Double Dragon - It doesn't work under MSX 2
- Dragon Ninja - Disk conversion hangs when you finish the 1st stage
- Gemini Wing - Original tape has even the original "Sinclair - Kempston" options and game is very slow. It hangs sometimes.
- Hypsys - You must to select stage 1 or 2. Stage 1 doesn't work under MSX 2.
- Karateka - This game hasn't been converted to disk from tape.
- Klax - It doesn't work under MSX-DOS 2 or BASIC 2.0 (as most of the dumps which were done by the bumper which appears in the intro credits)
- Mystical - This game hasn't been converted to disk from tape.
- Narco Police - This game hasn't been converted to disk from tape.
- North & South - This game hasn't been converted to disk from tape
- OutRun - It doesn't work under MSX 2. The disk conversion works under MSX2, but only under MSX-DOS 2 or BASIC 2.x with MAP.COM
- Passing Shot - It doesn't work under MSX-DOS 2 or BASIC 2.0
- Saint Dragon - Stage 3 fails. Disk conversion sometimes hangs.
- Scramble Spirits - This game hasn't been converted to disk from tape. Original game only works on MSX-1.
- SWIV - This game hassn't been converted to disk from tape - It requires always 128 KB RAM
- Thunder Blade - You must to select the stages. Complete game isn't playable.
- Toobin - Original tape doesn't work under MSX2. Disk conversion doesnt work under MSX-DOS 2 or BASIC 2.0
- Tour 91 - You must to select the stages. Complete game isn't playable.
- Wec Le Mans - It doesn't work under MSX-DOS 2 or BASIC 2.0. Original tape doesn't work under MSX2.

Wec Le Mans was a great game on msx1.
Smooth and fast even if with pure Spectrum GPX.
I remember it was by far the best racing game on MSX
for game play and physics (among those with view
from back).
I do not remember how good are the others.

Do these games run faster in the Spectrum, if so, is it because of bad conversions?

And in case of bad conversions, wouldn´t be easier/better to convert them directly from their Spectrum ports?

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Do these games run faster in the Spectrum, if so, is it because of bad conversions? And in case of bad conversions, wouldn't be easier/better to convert them directly from their Spectrum ports?

Not so sure, very often, due to the HW differences, the "bad" conversion has no alternative.

Generally speaking, conversion of Speccy games that minimize the VRAM accesses (e.g. only one sequential RAM->VRAM) work fine.
In this case the strategy is: leave the Speccy code work in RAM and at each frame dump it on the tiles in VRAM.
If the Speccy code was light, even with this overhead, the game works fine also in MSX.
If the Speccy code was heavy, the (unavoidable) overhead results in a slow and frustrating game.

Anyway BAD conversions exist. Bad conversions translate each access to the RAM that the ZX used as VRAM to
an ACTUAL VRAM ACCESS!! This results 99% of the times in crappy games, as everyone can easily imagine.
Reading and writing from VRAM to set a mask of bits is the worst thing to do on MSX and takes ages compared to the
direct LD instructions of z80.

ARTRAG, I have here a good disk conversion of WEC LE MANS which was done as far as I know by Martos near 3 years ago. It features the loading screen and in a simple MSX 2 works very good . The problem is that I haven't been able to run it from DOS-2 - BASIC 2.X

spl: thanks for that list, it will help a lot!

There is a convertion of Wec LeMans that works from DOS2, even on my turboR - made by Martos! It runs great with turbo

I also clearly remember playing Dragon Ninja to the end... must test it again, and if all versions do hang, I'll dig my old disk here

The thing with Spectrum convertions being slower, in most of cases is due to VDP access on MSX being tons of times slower than on Spectrum - it isnt the programmers fault!

99% of convertions uses a framebuffer where it draws everything on RAM - then it makes just one HUGE RAM->VRAM transfer. This on Spectrum is VERY fast, since you get direct access to VRAM (ADVRAM anyone? ) - on MSX, it is much slower.

So for a convertion to run at full speed, on MSX1 without turbo - the game would have to be completly rewritten - (to use sprites, minimize screen rewrites, etc) and in some cases it wouldn't be possible at all!

Some games (like Time Scanner and Alteread Beast) try to output data as fast as possible to VRAM - but then, on some MSX1s this would cause garbage on screen... so in this case, for the game to be better adapted, you have to slow some things down *even more*!

Also on Spectrum, the video mode is linear - so writing on VRAM 8 bytes would fill from 0,0 -> 7,0; on MSX writing 8 bytes to VRAM will fill from 0,0 -> 0,7; so extra coding is necessary on this when converting the game...

There are several architeture differences between MSX and Spectrum which makes the game "ported" slower on MSX by default. I'm not saying that Spectrum is superior to MSX - but in VRAM access speed, Spectrum wins, hands down. Now who has the better image quality, Spectrum can't touch the MSX

Thanks for the answers, guys...

Or to put it simple, the price of the better image quality of the MSX is its slower speed.

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Not so sure, very often, due to the HW differences, the "bad" conversion has no alternative.

As said by Artrag, most of the times a direct emulated conversion is not the best thing.
zx does not have pattern modes like in msx1. this means that on zx programmers are forced to scroll the screen via brute force, moving 6144 bytes of screen every scroll. this could be done because zx have vram directly accesible from cpu and we can use ldir for example. This approach is often unpraticable on msx due to the slowness of otir, combined with the vdp inability to keep at those speed.

However, as often happens, using specific features of the hw is the best choice. msx does have patternizzed mode that used correctly helps a lot. take into consideration the gng demo by dvik. He showed what is possible to do with pattern mode.

Most of the zx spectrum games could be re made using this approach and of course moving only 768 bytes instead of 6144 can compensate for the slow vram access...

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ARTRAG, I have here a good disk conversion of WEC LE MANS which was done as far as I know by Martos near 3 years ago. It features the loading screen and in a simple MSX 2 works very good . The problem is that I haven't been able to run it from DOS-2 - BASIC 2.X

I bought Wec Le Mans in the 1980s, and I don´t remember it has loading screen.... unless you mean simple screen 1 or screen 0 message:

WEC LE MANS IS LOADING

PLEASE WAIT

(or something like that)

and I think that text was in a box made of characters taken from MSX ROM.

So your loading screen must be taken from spectrum original which didn´t exist on msx.... "very good" spectrum-->msx conversion indeed... like too many msx games....

WEC LE MANS has the best 3D simulation of the landscape I've never seen
in any msx racing game.
Rising and descending hills is smooth and realistic, where the horizon line
moves accordingly to the distance of the hills that hide threes and mountains.

I´d say the same about Wec Le Mans, by far the best racing engine for the MSX. Life in the Fast Lane is cool too, too bad this game sucks. And please, let´s not talk about MSX OutRu(i)n(ned).

The interesting part in creating a terrain with hills like that is the fact you just need a very single amount of extra processing and memory. However, to put masked objects into the scenery, well, that would be something completely different.