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Post Posted: Mon May 04, 2020 3:38 pm
I just want to say that you all are amazing and I highly support these efforts. I'd love to play MSX stuff on the GG :)
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Post Posted: Mon May 04, 2020 3:43 pm
segasonicfan wrote
I just want to say that you all are amazing and I highly support these efforts. I'd love to play MSX stuff on the GG :)


Thanks, and you're very welcome you have me and us to do this. :-)
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Update...
Post Posted: Mon May 04, 2020 8:17 pm
The IPS Patches work perfectly fine. he 512K BPS Patches, again, also work fine. the 4 MB Patches cause Mednafen to throw an error stating the Rom is too large.
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Post Posted: Mon May 04, 2020 8:45 pm
Zombie wrote
The IPS Patches work perfectly fine. he 512K BPS Patches, again, also work fine. the 4 MB Patches cause Mednafen to throw an error stating the Rom is too large.


That's really good to hear. :-)
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Post Posted: Thu May 07, 2020 12:57 pm
I've done two games. Othello and Zaider - Battle of Peguss. I've edited the title on Othello on the Hi-Com version, also some screenshots. Enjoy! :-)
Othello (MSX2SMS).zip (90.65 KB)

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Post Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 1:55 pm
I've done Senjyo. The graphics are garbled though. Here it is. Enjoy! :-)
Senjyo (MSX2SMS).zip (183.2 KB)

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Post Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 2:35 pm
1 PLAY START BUTT or 2 PLAY START BUTT. :D :P
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Post Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 2:38 pm
KingMike wrote
1 PLAY START BUTT or 2 PLAY START BUTT. :D :P


*Laughs*
Yeah, that's what happens when you play SG-1000 or MSX on Game Gear. :-)
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Post Posted: Sat May 09, 2020 8:32 pm
I've done Final Justice which was the beginning of this forum here. Enjoy! :-)

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Post Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 6:15 pm
Stokes wrote
Finished, if there are any problems or requests, send it to me. Enjoy! :-)

thanks! :)
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Post Posted: Mon May 11, 2020 6:42 pm
nitrofurano wrote
Stokes wrote
Finished, if there are any problems or requests, send it to me. Enjoy! :-)

thanks! :)


You're very welcome. :-)
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Guide on how to do it or roms?
Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 3:21 pm
Nevermind, the roms are neatly organized and compiled in zips, i'm an ass. Thanks for everything.
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Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 3:33 pm
cheaptools wrote
Although this thread is absolutely incredible, it's a bit too long, I can't really go through all of it.
Could someone please direct me on how to do these conversions or point me towards roms? I know the latter is illegal, so a PM would suffice. Thanks!


If you want to do these, you should get an MSX ROM, find a MSX loader tool (you can find the tools on page 5), put the loader in first then the MSX game last and merge it, or hex would be to copy the whole thing from 0x00000000 - 0x00003FFF and paste it in the beginning, I hope this helps. :-)
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Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 3:34 pm
cheaptools wrote
Nevermind, the roms are neatly organized and compiled in zips, i'm an ass. Thanks for everything.


Well, I wouldn't say your a total private, but I really hope the thing helps. You're very welcome. :-)
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Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 3:48 pm
Stokes wrote
cheaptools wrote
Although this thread is absolutely incredible, it's a bit too long, I can't really go through all of it.
Could someone please direct me on how to do these conversions or point me towards roms? I know the latter is illegal, so a PM would suffice. Thanks!


If you want to do these, you should get an MSX ROM, find a MSX loader tool (you can find the tools on page 5), put the loader in first then the MSX game last and merge it, or hex would be to copy the whole thing from 0x00000000 - 0x00003FFF and paste it in the beginning, I hope this helps. :-)

I'm trying with rally x and donkey kong, but I only get a black screen. Could ya do that for me maybe? Pretty please? :3
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Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 4:55 pm
cheaptools wrote
Stokes wrote
cheaptools wrote
Although this thread is absolutely incredible, it's a bit too long, I can't really go through all of it.
Could someone please direct me on how to do these conversions or point me towards roms? I know the latter is illegal, so a PM would suffice. Thanks!


If you want to do these, you should get an MSX ROM, find a MSX loader tool (you can find the tools on page 5), put the loader in first then the MSX game last and merge it, or hex would be to copy the whole thing from 0x00000000 - 0x00003FFF and paste it in the beginning, I hope this helps. :-)

I'm trying with rally x and donkey kong, but I only get a black screen. Could ya do that for me maybe? Pretty please? :3


Rally-X is in page 3, I might try to do Donkey Kong, although it isn't going to work.
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Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 8:25 pm
Zombie wrote
I saw what you did to Knightmare I and I would like to know how difficult this process would be to do to Knightmare II: The Maze of Galleous, or more ambitiously, Vampire Killer.

I have Knightmare II and Mednafen will not start it. (there are several other roms that fall in this bracket)


i guess that would be not an exaggeration saying that converting an msx2 to sms would be like converting an msx1 to zx-spectrum - it's not impossible at all (see King's Valley (Konami), from Retroworks), but perhaps it might be a "huge" work (i'd love playing Hinotori, Usas and Undeadline on sms for sure!!!) - at least all of the graphic assets needs to be converted, since "screen 5" (most used on msx2 games) is quite different from "mode 4" (most used on sms games) - just talking about the palettes, almost all games uses "or-colour" (boolean operation resulting in a third colour when 2 sprites are overimposed - sprites on msx is only 1 bitdepth, when from mode 4 is always 4 bitdepth) - most msx2 games uses 212 lines, so it need to be cropped to fit in 192 on sms (only talking about the first sms, since sms games using 224 or 240 lines are quite rare) - sms has 64 colours from palette, msx2 has 512 - sms has 2 16 colour palettes, msx2 has 1 - background bitmaps are arranged in a different way (msx2 is like ega, sms is like amiga) - etc...
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Post Posted: Tue May 12, 2020 10:00 pm
[/quote]I might try to do Donkey Kong, although it isn't going to work.[/quote]
Does it use a mapper or something?
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 11:41 am
nitrofurano wrote
Zombie wrote
I saw what you did to Knightmare I and I would like to know how difficult this process would be to do to Knightmare II: The Maze of Galleous, or more ambitiously, Vampire Killer.

I have Knightmare II and Mednafen will not start it. (there are several other roms that fall in this bracket)


i guess that would be not an exaggeration saying that converting an msx2 to sms would be like converting an msx1 to zx-spectrum - it's not impossible at all (see King's Valley (Konami), from Retroworks), but perhaps it might be a "huge" work (i'd love playing Hinotori, Usas and Undeadline on sms for sure!!!) - at least all of the graphic assets needs to be converted, since "screen 5" (most used on msx2 games) is quite different from "mode 4" (most used on sms games) - just talking about the palettes, almost all games uses "or-colour" (boolean operation resulting in a third colour when 2 sprites are overimposed - sprites on msx is only 1 bitdepth, when from mode 4 is always 4 bitdepth) - most msx2 games uses 212 lines, so it need to be cropped to fit in 192 on sms (only talking about the first sms, since sms games using 224 or 240 lines are quite rare) - sms has 64 colours from palette, msx2 has 512 - sms has 2 16 colour palettes, msx2 has 1 - background bitmaps are arranged in a different way (msx2 is like ega, sms is like amiga) - etc...


Okay, you basically got me wrong saying that the MSX2 has 256 colors, but good research.
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SMS Upgrades for MSX Conversions
Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 11:56 am
These conversions are amazing, but, would it be possible for us to give these conversions upgrades such as better graphics. These ports look more like SG-1000 games than SMS games. I'd like to know how hard it would be to enhance these roms.
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 12:05 pm
Zombie wrote
These conversions are amazing, but, would it be possible for us to give these conversions upgrades such as better graphics. These ports look more like SG-1000 games than SMS games. I'd like to know how hard it would be to enhance these roms.


That might be good, like for an example, just replacing the Pac-Man MSX sprites into the Game Gear (Master System colored) sprites.
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 12:05 pm
cheaptools wrote
I might try to do Donkey Kong, although it isn't going to work.[/quote]
Does it use a mapper or something?[/quote]

Basically, I used the cracked version, it's 48kB, and it doesn't work.
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 12:29 pm
Last edited by Wafer on Wed May 13, 2020 1:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
Zombie wrote
These conversions are amazing, but, would it be possible for us to give these conversions upgrades such as better graphics. These ports look more like SG-1000 games than SMS games. I'd like to know how hard it would be to enhance these roms.


It's "replacing every graphics routine and art asset in the game" hard.

It's certainly possible for some games, but it would take a lot of work, at least a significant fraction of the work required to make the original game, and it would be well beyond the current skills of most of the people involved in doing these conversions. Some games might not be able to take advantage of SMS video modes at all, because of the requirements of the content.

They look like SG-1000 games because the MSX and SG-1000 are very similar.

Edit: You could potentially make changes to the palette relatively easily if the ROMs were running on a Game Gear, but you'd still have a limited palette, unless you replaced the graphics routines.

Edit 2: Someone could potentially get lucky if they found one or more games that exclusively use the BIOS graphics routines in such a way that the BIOS could be written to take advantage of the SMS VDP. They'd probably still need to replace at least some art assets, though.
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 12:54 pm
Stokes wrote
nitrofurano wrote
Zombie wrote
I saw what you did to Knightmare I and I would like to know how difficult this process would be to do to Knightmare II: The Maze of Galleous, or more ambitiously, Vampire Killer.

I have Knightmare II and Mednafen will not start it. (there are several other roms that fall in this bracket)


i guess that would be not an exaggeration saying that converting an msx2 to sms would be like converting an msx1 to zx-spectrum - it's not impossible at all (see King's Valley (Konami), from Retroworks), but perhaps it might be a "huge" work (i'd love playing Hinotori, Usas and Undeadline on sms for sure!!!) - at least all of the graphic assets needs to be converted, since "screen 5" (most used on msx2 games) is quite different from "mode 4" (most used on sms games) - just talking about the palettes, almost all games uses "or-colour" (boolean operation resulting in a third colour when 2 sprites are overimposed - sprites on msx is only 1 bitdepth, when from mode 4 is always 4 bitdepth) - most msx2 games uses 212 lines, so it need to be cropped to fit in 192 on sms (only talking about the first sms, since sms games using 224 or 240 lines are quite rare) - sms has 64 colours from palette, msx2 has 512 - sms has 2 16 colour palettes, msx2 has 1 - background bitmaps are arranged in a different way (msx2 is like ega, sms is like amiga) - etc...


Okay, you basically got me wrong saying that the MSX2 has 256 colors, but good research.


the confusion might be that screen 8 (rarely used on msx2 games - like Starship Rendezvous) is a mode using 256 colours, but the whole palette is 9bit just like used on Megadrive (i think) (screen 8 is a fixed palette mode that ignores the least significant bit from blue primary)
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 12:59 pm
Zombie wrote
These conversions are amazing, but, would it be possible for us to give these conversions upgrades such as better graphics. These ports look more like SG-1000 games than SMS games. I'd like to know how hard it would be to enhance these roms.


those people from msx.org forum, that implemented smooth scroll on Nemesis 2 (i think), and other things, might know how to do that (and perhaps they are also curious about sms vdp and help there? who knows?) - but almost for sure that they had to disassemble the whole binary code from the rom files and reseach/experiment a lot...
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 1:03 pm
Stokes wrote
Zombie wrote
These conversions are amazing, but, would it be possible for us to give these conversions upgrades such as better graphics. These ports look more like SG-1000 games than SMS games. I'd like to know how hard it would be to enhance these roms.


That might be good, like for an example, just replacing the Pac-Man MSX sprites into the Game Gear (Master System colored) sprites.

I LOVED the pac man port but I wish clyde could be orange so that I knew who he was. Other than that I think the simpler sprites give it a very nice look
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 1:06 pm
and about these msx2gg games, i tried to extract the first 16kb (Hi-Com KR bios), and concatenate msx games after that (as i used on the previous experiences, using other kr/tw sms bios), and even repeating the game concatenation until reaching 48kb, and didn't work (that flashing coloured boot screen isn't appearing at all) - what am i doing wrong? tried with Road Fighter, Frogger; Sky Jaguar... - they are all 49152 bytes long
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Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 1:15 pm
nitrofurano wrote
and about these msx2gg games, i tried to extract the first 16kb (Hi-Com KR bios), and concatenate msx games after that (as i used on the previous experiences, using other kr/tw sms bios), and even repeating the game concatenation until reaching 48kb, and didn't work (that flashing coloured boot screen isn't appearing at all) - what am i doing wrong? tried with Road Fighter, Frogger; Sky Jaguar... - they are all 49152 bytes long


I think the Game Gear emulator might not be able to do it because it doesn't support SG-1000 or it does, but it has video problems. try using Genesis Plus GX.
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Post Posted: Thu May 14, 2020 9:39 pm
Stokes wrote
nitrofurano wrote
and about these msx2gg games, i tried to extract the first 16kb (Hi-Com KR bios), and concatenate msx games after that (as i used on the previous experiences, using other kr/tw sms bios), and even repeating the game concatenation until reaching 48kb, and didn't work (that flashing coloured boot screen isn't appearing at all) - what am i doing wrong? tried with Road Fighter, Frogger; Sky Jaguar... - they are all 49152 bytes long


I think the Game Gear emulator might not be able to do it because it doesn't support SG-1000 or it does, but it has video problems. try using Genesis Plus GX.


not this issue, because most of the shared ones, like Galaga, Bosconian, Majou Densetsu, Twin Bee, Konami's Boxing, etc., are working perfectly fine - tested on mame (mess) and mednafen

on gnu/linux, i used dd for extracting the starting 16kb from bios, and cat for concatenating the bios with the msx game files - exactly as i used (often successfully) using other bioses
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Post Posted: Fri May 15, 2020 10:18 am
nitrofurano wrote
Stokes wrote
nitrofurano wrote
and about these msx2gg games, i tried to extract the first 16kb (Hi-Com KR bios), and concatenate msx games after that (as i used on the previous experiences, using other kr/tw sms bios), and even repeating the game concatenation until reaching 48kb, and didn't work (that flashing coloured boot screen isn't appearing at all) - what am i doing wrong? tried with Road Fighter, Frogger; Sky Jaguar... - they are all 49152 bytes long


I think the Game Gear emulator might not be able to do it because it doesn't support SG-1000 or it does, but it has video problems. try using Genesis Plus GX.


not this issue, because most of the shared ones, like Galaga, Bosconian, Majou Densetsu, Twin Bee, Konami's Boxing, etc., are working perfectly fine - tested on mame (mess) and mednafen

on gnu/linux, i used dd for extracting the starting 16kb from bios, and cat for concatenating the bios with the msx game files - exactly as i used (often successfully) using other bioses


Okay, that sounds good.
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Post Posted: Sun May 17, 2020 9:18 pm
Can Burgertime be done? I'm getting a black screen but now I think I know what I'm doing
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Post Posted: Mon May 18, 2020 12:28 am
cheaptools wrote
Can Burgertime be done? I'm getting a black screen but now I think I know what I'm doing


I do have BurgerTime from Dempa. I might try to do this.
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Post Posted: Mon May 18, 2020 9:54 am
cheaptools wrote
Can Burgertime be done? I'm getting a black screen but now I think I know what I'm doing


Basically, this game doesn't work too.
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Post Posted: Fri May 29, 2020 1:48 am
Last edited by Stokes on Fri May 29, 2020 11:37 am; edited 1 time in total
Converted a new cobinee game called Ace Gun, it's Galaxian, but with a robot using it's laser to destroy them and save the universe. Enjoy! :-)
Also, Aaronix 1 is the DahJee RAM Extension. Aaronix 1 is now The Castle title version. Sorry about that. :-P
Ace Gun (MSX2SMS).zip (96.56 KB)

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Post Posted: Fri May 29, 2020 3:26 am
Hey Stokes, great conversions so far, I asked for Super Swanggi and Knightmare, is a conversion for these games feasible?
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Post Posted: Fri May 29, 2020 11:28 am
FeRcHuLeS wrote
Hey Stokes, great conversions so far, I asked for Super Swanggi and Knightmare, is a conversion for these games feasible?


I actually do have Knightmare. I might send that in, Is there a version of Super Swanggi that is less than 64kB?
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Post Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 12:37 am
I've converted four Cobinee games. Enjoy! :-)
It would've been real better if 3, 4, MayQII, and Z would've played the MSX-Music, which is basically the Sega Mark III FM Sound Unit (the Yamaha YM2413).

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Post Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 3:10 pm
Stokes wrote
I actually do have Knightmare. I might send that in, Is there a version of Super Swanggi that is less than 64kB?


As far as I know Super Swanggi is 64KB size :(, about Knightmare is there a way to include invincible or lives cheats? maybe support the Genesis/Mega Drive joypad since the SMS's lacks enough buttons to do so.
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Post Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 3:16 pm
FeRcHuLeS wrote
Stokes wrote
I actually do have Knightmare. I might send that in, Is there a version of Super Swanggi that is less than 64kB?


As far as I know Super Swanggi is 64KB size :(, about Knightmare is there a way to include invincible or lives cheats? maybe support the Genesis/Mega Drive joypad since the SMS's lacks enough buttons to do so.


Well, I tried cropping it down to 32kB, but it was glitchy, and at the start of the game, you just only hear a frozen version of the beginning. Also, I don't know if I can do that, and for Genesis, you might want to do some control conversions to do that.
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Post Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 3:32 pm
I know that conversions need the game to be less than 32KB, thanks for trying the conversion even having in mind is not possible, about the Genesis/Megadrive pad, I'm unable to do so. :( but there are talented hackers here, I'm curious to read replies from them since I never heard of that kind of control hacks for these conversions.
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Post Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 8:28 pm
Are we talking about existing cheats that aren't available due to the lack of a keyboard?

If so, the process would be to hunt down the logic for the cheat, and then implement game-specific controller code, either in the loader or the game itself.

Seems doable on paper, but there are things I'd prefer to spend time on (like porting C-BIOS).

If on the other hand we're talking all-new cheats, that's a whole different ball game.
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Post Posted: Sat May 30, 2020 10:56 pm
Wafer wrote
Are we talking about existing cheats that aren't available due to the lack of a keyboard?

If so, the process would be to hunt down the logic for the cheat, and then implement game-specific controller code, either in the loader or the game itself.

Seems doable on paper, but there are things I'd prefer to spend time on (like porting C-BIOS).

If on the other hand we're talking all-new cheats, that's a whole different ball game.


If you need a keyboard, you might need the SK-1100, SC-3000, or the SF-7000 for that
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Post Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 4:21 am
Wafer wrote
Are we talking about existing cheats that aren't available due to the lack of a keyboard?

If so, the process would be to hunt down the logic for the cheat, and then implement game-specific controller code, either in the loader or the game itself.

Seems doable on paper, but there are things I'd prefer to spend time on (like porting C-BIOS).

If on the other hand we're talking all-new cheats, that's a whole different ball game.


I'm afraid the cheats aren't new, they are at gamefaqs and similar sites:

Knightmare – Cheats
25 Lives   Hold Left + Right + N + Select and keep holding until you start the game.
Invincible   Hold Left + Right + Y + Select and keep holding until you start the game. While playing, press Select.
Invincible and 25 Lives   Hold Left + Right + I + N + Select and keep holding until you start the game.


Maybe changing the code of the buttons requirements would be enough, I'm just speculating since I don't understand how it might break the game.
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Post Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 4:59 am
I'm guessing the problem with porting games over 32KB is having to port mapper logic as well? (a topic only particularly common among NES games, due to its bajillion mappers of varying technical capability)
Particularly if a game used 8KB mapping, that would not work out well for SG1000/SMS?
(as I understand, the BIOS used $0000-3FFF and cart games map to $4000-BFFF which was still bankable. But again... that 8KB bank size on some mappers. Would probably need game-specific analysis done to it to work around.
I had not looked at floppy games but I assume those could load data all over the place and would not convert well or at all?)
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Post Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 11:16 am
Stokes wrote
If you need a keyboard, you might need the SK-1100, SC-3000, or the SF-7000 for that

With respect, you're selling short the hackers in the community. You may as well have told Henry Ford that he might need a train or horses to move people over land.

Most cheats should be expressed as boolean values in memory. Keyboard access for these games is almost guaranteed to be through BIOS calls, as is controller access. Even if they aren't, the SMS hacking toolchain has never been as strong as it is right now, and we've already added support for peripherals to numerous games that they were never intended for.

The most likely barrier is motivation and time.

KingMike wrote
I'm guessing the problem with porting games over 32KB is having to port mapper logic as well?
[...]
I had not looked at floppy games but I assume those could load data all over the place and would not convert well or at all?)

In short: yes to both. The best scenario you could hope for with floppy games is that the entire game gets loaded at once to RAM. Then, a hacker could write a routine to load that from cartridge instead of floppy. You could only do this for very small games, though. This is somewhat similar to the way that snapshots work for the Spectrum.

If the game streams content from the disk throughout the game as-and-when it's needed, then it would most likely take significant work to even try to port it to the Master System.

The point with both of these topics is that there are possible solutions, but they require doing something more than slapping two binary files together in a hex editor and seeing if it works, and often each game would need to be hacked individually. Most of the people doing these conversions currently just don't have the necessary skills.
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Post Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 2:05 pm
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If the game streams content from the disk throughout the game as-and-when it's needed, then it would most likely take significant work to even try to port it to the Master System.

The point with both of these topics is that there are possible solutions, but they require doing something more than slapping two binary files together in a hex editor and seeing if it works, and often each game would need to be hacked individually. Most of the people doing these conversions currently just don't have the necessary skills.


In the case of disk access, maybe one could, at the very minimum, patch the disk-related routines of the BIOS to treat the bankswitched cartridge ROM as a disk.
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Post Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 2:17 pm
haroldoop wrote
In the case of disk access, maybe one could, at the very minimum, patch the disk-related routines of the BIOS to treat the bankswitched cartridge ROM as a disk.


You're right, of course. I keep forgetting how low capacity floppy disks are.
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Post Posted: Sun May 31, 2020 2:30 pm
Wafer wrote
haroldoop wrote
In the case of disk access, maybe one could, at the very minimum, patch the disk-related routines of the BIOS to treat the bankswitched cartridge ROM as a disk.


You're right, of course. I keep forgetting how low capacity floppy disks are.


If you use a 1 megabyte (8 megabits) SMS cartridge, you could easily fit a single 720 KB floppy on it.
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Post Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2020 2:35 am
Would anyone want to play Actman or Angelo on their Master System? I got it working on the Xyzolog loader.
Looks like anyone can make an MSX game to work easily on it, especially Car Fighter. :-)
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Post Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2020 12:57 am
I'm doing Sky Jaguar for SG-1000, it's an Aaronix port. So, anybody let me know if they want to see my attempts.
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