Posted: 11/17/2021 8:37 PM
Post subject: MSXHawk Development
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Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3821)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2829
Location: US
GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
MSXHawk is an MSX1 emulator. It currently has nearly complete support for games 64kb and under. I just added support for basic Konami games with larger sizes, so ex. penguin adventure and knightmare II now work. I don't really plan to put too much time into this core, but since it's nearly done (at least for MSX1) I figured I'd make a thread for it so it doesn't just go to waste. I'll most likely be setting this core to 'released' in the next release of BizHawk. I'll slowly try to add more mapper compatibility, but for the most part I'll only work on things if someone specifically wants to make a TAS for a particular game. (Also, if anyone wants to develop the core further themselves I'd be happy to answer any questions.)
Posted: 11/25/2021 9:42 PM
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Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3821)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2829
Location: US
GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
I finished adding SCC support for Konami games, so now games like Gradius II sound good and I have set the core to released.
Posted: 11/26/2021 8:55 PM
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CoolKirby
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4036
Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 NES TAS of 2013
Thanks for implementing this, Alyosha! Definitely easier to TAS with than openMSX, and being able to remap keyboard keys is a great feature. I found some minor bugs while testing (Penguin Adventure, Galaga, Back to the Future and Rally-X) and they seem to affect all games on the core:
  • Sound only comes from the left stereo speaker. My computer can play the audio from NESHawk games and mono MP3s from both speakers, so this seems to be an MSXHawk issue.
  • Loading a savestate doesn't display the screen at that state right away. You have to advance a frame for the screen to update. Works normally in NESHawk and other cores.
  • Changing either of the MSX Sync Settings does not cause the "Core reboot needed for this setting" message to appear, even though they should both require a reboot so that they can't be changed mid-TAS.
I hope it's not too much trouble to fix these. Thanks in advance.
Posted: 11/26/2021 10:34 PM
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Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3821)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2829
Location: US
GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
Thanks for testing, those issues should now be fixed in the dev build.
Posted: 11/27/2021 5:50 AM
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CoolKirby
Editor, Experienced player (570)
Joined: 11/8/2010
Posts: 4036
Exotic platforms TASer of 2014 NES TAS of 2013
Yes, they are all fixed. Thanks again!
Posted: 11/30/2021 10:08 PM
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NLeseul
They/Them
Joined: 8/25/2020
Posts: 2
Very exciting! I've been using the TAS features in openMSX to develop RNG manipulations for the speedrun of Dragon Slayer IV (MSX1), and it will be really nice to one day have access to TAStudio and other BizHawk features for MSX.
Posted: 12/1/2021 12:09 AM
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Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3821)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2829
Location: US
GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
NLeseul wrote:
Very exciting! I've been using the TAS features in openMSX to develop RNG manipulations for the speedrun of Dragon Slayer IV (MSX1), and it will be really nice to one day have access to TAStudio and other BizHawk features for MSX.
I just added support for ascii 8kb mapped games, so now Dragon Slayer IV (and many other games that use that mapper) work now.
Posted: 12/1/2021 11:12 PM
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NLeseul
They/Them
Joined: 8/25/2020
Posts: 2
Alyosha wrote:
I just added support for ascii 8kb mapped games, so now Dragon Slayer IV (and many other games that use that mapper) work now.
Thanks so much! I pulled latest to verify, and it looks great. I was able to boot the game, walk around a little in TAStudio, and find some basic information in the RAM search tool. The essential workflow is definitely usable.
Posted: 6/27/2022 8:10 PM
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EZGames69
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Publisher, Reviewer, Expert player (4460)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2761
DS TAS of 2023 SNES TASer of 2022 SNES TASer of 2021 SNES TAS of 2021 Exotic platforms TAS of 2021 TASer of 2020 SNES TASer of 2020 Sega TASer of 2020 TASer of 2019 Sega TASer of 2019 Exotic platforms TAS of 2018
I am unable to get a game running even after obtaining the BIOS files. it boots up into this screen but I can't go past it the only reason I even got here in the first place is because bizhawk does not open up .dsk files, since it just loads up Apple ][. I have to rename the file extention to .xyz or .rom in order to work, and then I have to specify it to boot into MSX.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Posted: 6/28/2022 12:37 AM
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CasualPokePlayer
Emulator Coder, Judge, Experienced player (729)
Joined: 2/26/2020
Posts: 781
Location: California
Arcade TAS of 2023 TASer of 2021 Gameboy TASer of 2021 Rookie of 2020 Gameboy TASer of 2020 Lucky TAS of 2020
Seems like dsks aren't actually supported, only rom files are. I've updated MSXHawk to reject non-.rom files.
Posted: 6/28/2022 12:52 PM
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phoenix1291
Joined: 7/17/2012
Posts: 543
Location: Switzerland
I actually feel sorry for Alyosha, whose work I admire on the many cores he's worked on, and everything else. But since he announced to work on MSXhawk, I have the impression that from the beginning he was not very motivated with the MSX. He preferred to work on the MSX1, and lost motivation over time for one reason or another. So, despite the comfort and the tools that Bizhawk provides, I don't see the reason to use this core rather than OpenMSX, which has been there for years, is very complete, very accurate, has a lot of tools also and is also very easy to use.
My Citra 3DS rerecording movie files test repositery: https://cutt.ly/vdM0jzl Youtube playlist "Citra Tests": https://cutt.ly/AdM0wg9 http://www.youtube.com/user/phoenix1291