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A small Java tool to convert short animation loops to be played on MSX computers. This is the code that was used to generate the flag animation in the game XRacing ( https://github.com/santiontanon/xracing ).

The input is a GIF file, and the output is a collection of .asm file with the data necessary to play the animation. The data is divded into 2 parts:

Tiles/attributes: to be copied to each of the three banks of the VDP (the converted assumes MSX1 with Screen 2).
Name tables: the name tables of each of the animation frames, to be copied to the VDP at each frame.
Additionally, just to see the animation in an MSX. The tool prepares a small .asm file to show how to play the animation, and compiles it into a ROM that can directly be open on an MSX emulator.

The way the program works is by figuring out all the different tiles needed in each of the 3 banks to play the animation. Since only 256 tiles can be loaded at once, it assumes that only the name table can change from frame to frame, and it uses an automated clustering algorithm (k-medoids) to reduce the number of tiles to 256 (or to a smaller number if specified), in order to get an approximation of the animation.

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Make GB games in minutes. Play in an emulator or your browser.

A free and easy to use retro adventure game creator for your favourite handheld video game system.

Create Real ROM files: Run your games on any compatible emulator, if you've got a flash cart you can play them on a real console!

Simple Setup: No complicated dependencies to install, just a single application with everything you need to get started.

No knowledge required: Simple visual scripting means you don't need to have made a game already. GB Studio also hides much of the complexity in building GB games so you can concentrate on telling a great story.

Build for the web: GB Studio comes with a web based emulator that even works great on mobile. You can quickly export your games to play in a browser or even upload to Itch.io.

- Visual game builder with no programming knowledge required.
- Design your graphics in any editor that can output PNG files e.g. Photoshop, Tiled, Aseprite.
- Example project included to get started right away.
- Make top down 2D JRPG style adventure games.
- Build real GB Rom files which can be played in an emulator or on device using USB Carts.
- Build a HTML5 playable game that also works on mobile and can deployed to any webserver or uploaded to Itch.io.
- Built for macOS, Windows and Linux.
- Supports both macOS light and dark mode.
- Includes the full tools that were used to build Untitled GB Game, free to play on Itch.io.

gbstudio.png (172.33 KB)

Scrrenshot

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In this paper, we propose an audio mosaicing method that converts Pop songs into a specific music style called “chiptune,” or “8-bit music.” The goal is to reproduce Pop songs by using the sound of the chips on the old game consoles in 1980s/1990s. The proposed method goes through a procedure that first analyzes the pitches of an incoming Pop song in the frequency domain, and then synthesizes the song with template waveforms in the time domain to make it sound like 8-bit music. Because a Pop song is usually composed of the vocal melody and the instrumental accompaniment, in the analysis stage we use a singing voice separation algorithm to separate the vocals from the instruments, and then apply different pitch detection algorithms to transcribe the two separated sources. We validate through a subjective listening test that the proposed method creates much better 8-bit music than existing nonnegative matrix factorization based methods can do.
Moreover, we find that synthesis in the time domain is important for this task.

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Millfork

A middle-level programming language targeting 6502-based, 8080-based and Z80-based microcomputers.



- high performance, due to being designed and optimized for 8-bit microprocessors

- multiple targets:

-- Commodore 64 (the primary target)

-- Commodore 64 with SuperCPU (experimental, incomplete and very buggy)

-- other Commodore computers: C16, Plus/4, C128, PET, VIC-20 (stock or with RAM extensions)

-- other 6502-based machines: Famicom/NES, Atari 8-bit computers, BBC Micro, Apple II+/IIe/Enhanced IIe, Atari 2600 (experimental)

-- Z80-based machines: ZX Spectrum 48k, NEC PC-88, Amstrad CPC, MSX

-- CP/M

-- Game Boy (experimental)

-- MS-DOS (very experimental, via 8080-to-8086 translation)

- multiple supported target processors:

-- well supported: MOS 6502, Ricoh 2A03/2A07, WDC 65C02, Intel 8080, Intel 8085, Zilog Z80

-- reasonably well supported: Sharp LR35902, CSG 65CE02

-- partially supported: Hudson Soft HuC6280, WDC 65816, Intel 8086

- inline assembly

- simple macros

- pay only for what you use: not a single byte of memory is used unless for code or explicitly declared variables

- a simple memory model that avoids using the stack

- multi-pass whole-program optimizer (that will even optimize your hand-written assembly if you ask it to)

- support for multi-file programs (Commodore only) and banked cartridges

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z80 code in c++.

all z80 compilers are C (or you can use assemblers). I want to use C++.

strategy: write some C++ that optimizes beautifully, compile to x86, convert to z80.

it's that or write a compiler backend for z80 for llvm/clang.

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z80rogue, a roguelike game for MSX/Colecovision/Memotech
by Oscar Toledo G. Sep/29/2019.

You can edit internally the definitions for assembly for MSX,
Colecovision, or Memotech (put 1 to your selected platform,
and zero for all others).

It should be easily portable to any computer/console with
Z80 CPU and TMS9928 video processor.

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apultra is a command-line tool and a library that compresses bitstreams in the apLib format.

The tool produces files that are 5 to 7% smaller on average than appack, the apLib compressor. Unlike the similar cap compressor, apultra can compress files larger than 64K (for files smaller than 64K, cap compresses 0.2% better on average).

apultra is written in portable C. It is fully open-source under a liberal license. You can continue to use the regular apLib decompression libraries for your target environment. You can do whatever you like with it.

Example compression with vmlinux-5.3.0-1-amd64

original 27923676 (100,00%)
appack 7370129 (26,39%)
gzip 1.8 7166179 (25,66%)
apultra 1.0.0 6947024 (24,88%)

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Hi!

Bitsy is a little editor for little games or worlds. The goal is to make it easy to make games where you can walk around and talk to people and be somewhere. I hope you enjoy using it!

- Adam

BitsyTilesAnimated.gif (31.25 KB)

Estelios wrote

Might be interesting this for someone: A developer explains how he did a golf game for the NES.

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Meet the ZedRipper – a 16-core, 83 MHz Z80 powerhouse as portable as it is impractical.

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It works by forcing the phase generator to hold on a specified phase using test register bit 2. This allows it to index into the sine table and produce accurate near 8-bit sample playback with a simple inverse lookup table.