What programming languages did coders use back in the days
of Kings Valley and yar kung fu ? Was it all done in z80 assembly ?
Can anyone sugest a good set of development tools for the z80 nowadays,
even if for the emulator ?(outputing .bins) ?

Thanks

Rafael

assembly all the way, afaik.

Tools? Everyone has his own preferences. Regarding cross-assembly: one uses tniasm, another one uses sjasm. One uses openmsx as emulator/developer, another one uses bluemsx.

Z80 assembly? I don't think so. AFAIK, King's Valley I and II were coded using an innovative low level languaje called BF, also known as BrainFuck. But maybe I'm wrong and they were coded in FORTRAN or ALGOL

Neh, Z80 asm is soooo eighties....
oh, wait....

Yeah, man. ASM all the way.
There's some good development shit out there. Dunno outbout crossdevelopment tho, I'm more into hardcore coding. Ye know, ON MSX. Tho I often use BlueMSX (emulater) for that. gheh, go figure.
I'm using "WBASS2" as coding environment. Some hate it, I love it.

Probably konami as well as other companies used cross platforms for the final code.I dont think tools existed back then that would allow them to do such wonders on the machines.Most probably expensive workstation machines that could be used as crossassembly platforms.

yeah, that remains a mystery I reck'n... would love to have my hands on them Konami tools

I am sure in some forums i have seen some info regarding such machines.They probably costed a lot more than normal workstations.Probably had some tools that allowed them to create code for msx as well as other machines,i am pretty sure that graphics were designed there too and adopted to msx after.

Do not forget that konami ported games to other z80 machines,such as spectrum,c64.Though about the later i am sure programers were hired to port the code to that machines.

So it must have been special mainframe machines.

Reason i believe in this cross platform theory?

If you check some old konami roms, they have IM 1 instruction just in the execution address of the rom.As far as i know only some yamaha msx music machines use im2 for some of the software they have onboard,but it does not explain why would someone need an IM 1 instruction,when msx is in im1 state when machines boots.

My theory?An instruction that was left from the sources of the game when it had to be ported to some other platform that needed that IM 1 instruction.Developers just forgot to remove that instruction from the msx when they created the msx version.

Konami did not code adaptations for other european Z80 based computers. Ocean - Imagine did.

Quote:

Konami did not code adaptations for other european Z80 based computers.

Well, at least one game it did (maybe not for "european computers", but for other computers and/or consoles) - Antartic Adventure!
It has versions for MSX, NES, ColecoVision and Game Boy/Game Boy Color!

And I see, "Animal Wars" (or Penguin-Kun Wars) was also released for the GBC

I dont know if some sort of cross-assembler was used, or maybe they just did some "cross-programming" back then, just like nowadays people code the same program for multiple OS's

Update: I also stand corrected, as it seems Konami did made some games for the Spectrum: Nemesis and Salamander!
Don't know if they were direct ports, or if there was done from scratch...

Nemesis and Salamander for Spectrum/Commodore/Amstrad were coded by Imagine Play the Game (UK based company) and published by Ocean. They were "licensed conversions", such as Green Beret, Shaolin's Road, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Gryzor, Wec Le Mans and many others.

Konami coded and published games for MSX, NES, ColecoVision and later for Gameboy and different consoles.

Penguin Kun Wars was neither coded nor published by Konami. The MSX version was produced and distributed by ASCII itself.

When I program in ASM, I do a lot of tests, I do not like having to compile, saving a DSK and run in the emulator.
I program directly from the emulator (BLUEMSX), using TED, and compile using the emulator with the GEN80 (putting the emulator to "full speed", well, I do not have to change the software.
It would be great an emulator of MSX looks like WINAPE,have a code editor, and compile to memory

If someone is interested: one could use the command control "API" of openMSX to compile directly to memory. More info about the API is here: http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/manual/openmsx-control.html

manuel: would it be possible for a future openMSX release to automatically keep files synchronized when using the dir_as_disk feature? With gedit I can e.g. modify a text file, while the emulator is running and I'd like the emulator to immediately see the changes.

Thanks manuel, I will read this
D-Tail, Like WINAPE

Quote:

manuel: would it be possible for a future openMSX release to automatically keep files synchronized when using the dir_as_disk feature?

This has been in there from the first version of dir_as_disk. Files that were changed/grown/shrunk on the host-OS did this in the msx version at the same time. Ofcourse if you used a disk caching program in your emulated MSX (or used a Turbo-R machine which does it in hardware) this will not work! If you're planning to use the dir_as_disk a lot you better emulate a regular msx 2/2+

Quote:

With gedit I can e.g. modify a text file, while the emulator is running and I'd like the emulator to immediately see the changes.

In the latest svn versions I altered the Dir_as_disk routines so that it will now also pick up new files if that is what you're asking for. The older version didn't. And most importantly, it will now also sync back from the openMSX to the host-OS without using the hidden sectorcache file. So this version should be more intuitive for most people