Mega Drive Research and Development Center

Sik · Post by **Sik** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 7:07 pm

Because about 20GB of the disk space got filled in about one month x_X Also, I don't want to have repeated data :/ Not to mention it takes long to download all that. Trust me, it's the main reason I didn't upload all the tech documents at the first try.

Chilly Willy · Post by **Chilly Willy** » Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:45 pm

Sik wrote:I checked and ASMX is MRI compatible, so don't worry. However it's missing DCB and macro parameters don't seem to work properly :/ (what, it only accepts one parameter per macro?). Hence Ninja Fight didn't assemble with it.

Well, it IS open source. When a problem is found, it can be looked into. With things like SNASM, we're stuck with how it is.

I'll try to find some time to look into the macro bug and adding DCB.

Also, you don't need cygwin to use it under Windows. I just compiled all C files together as a console application and it worked perfectly. The reason is simple, it's pure ANSI C using only the standard library, so it isn't platform-dependant.

Even better!

For that I could instead upload it directly to the host as the rest of the files. The host hard disk space is "infinite" (Sepwich doesn't have any kind of limitations besides the hardware itself, which is very huge), my computer hard disk space isn't

Well, here's the two latest toolchains. They're the latest (released Feb 4, 2008). I 7zipped the files so that you have a way to verify the integrity after downloading. It also makes them just a smidgen smaller.

Windows: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?91niv9hj1ru

linux: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?gmwcxgbjdin

HardWareMan · Post by **HardWareMan** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:06 am

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:who knows... I have 2x 250GB HDDs and both are pretty filled up... I really should burn some stuff to DVDs but I'd rather buy another HDD...

[OffTop]
Familiar problem. I have the 4 drives, which is already filled almost to the limit:
HD: [C:System] 35.30/39.57 GB [D:320Gb] 3.72/298.09 GB [E:320Gb] 1.05/298.09 GB [Z:TEMP] 42.03/227.87 GB
Total Free: 82.10 GB/863.62 GB
And mobile drive status is [F:Diskette] 53.23/145.23GB
Aside from some 400+ DVDR disks on the shelf... But storing data on DVD discs is very inconvenient when you need to find to something - it's just torture... Even useing an DVD catalog does not helps.

Sik · Post by **Sik** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:22 am

If you have problem finding stuff on DVDs you've burned (and labeled, otherwise it's understandable

), then I guess you'll have a lot of trouble finding the same stuff if it was on the HD too

By the way, back on-topic, I may upload Videolib 2 for the next update. A patched version because the original one had a bug that prevented it from running on the real hardware. Videolib is a very powerful library to handle the VDP, and you'll find it very useful, so there you go. Be warned through that Videolib requires a lot of accuracy as it's meant to be used on real hardware and not emulators, so it's easy for it to crash if the VDP isn't emulated properly. And the library is in assembler, mind you

Stuff you can do in Videolib 2 (maybe I'm forgetting something):

H32 and H40 modes.
V28 and V40 modes.
Interlaced modes.
Waiting for VBlank without using VBI.
RAM/ROM->VRAM DMA subroutine.
Loading entire palettes.
Fade in and fade out effects.
Loading normal tiles, both using DMA and not.
Loading 1BPP tiles.
Loading tiles applying a fake transparency effect.
Writing arrays of data to the scroll planes.
Sprite support using a table in RAM which then gets refreshed in VRAM.
All scrolling modes.

Some stuff that will come in Videolib 3:

Shadow and highlighting.
Window support.
Filling blocks in scrolls with a specific value.
Filling blocks in scrolls with consecutive values.
Writing to scroll ASCIIZ strings.
Fake bitmap support.
I may add more stuff...

I guess you may want to give it a try

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 5:41 am

This looks pretty interesting. My Tiido's Mega Library for SNASM68K can do most of these stuffs, but I'm gonna rewrite all... too much unoptimized stuff

Sik · Post by **Sik** » Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:16 pm

Page updated

No new examples, but added tools and VideoLib 2. Also added Mega CD docs, so there you go

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 3:07 pm

recommendation : use RAR instead of ZIP

I'm gonna look into / try your VL2.

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 4:04 pm

TmEE co.(TM) wrote:recommendation : use RAR instead of ZIP

That is a bad recommendation. ZIP support is built-in into Windows starting from XP. RAR is a stand-alone commercial program, which many people does not have. Though RAR has wide spread in RuNet (because it's originally russian program, I think), and possibly in your country too, it's not so wide spreaded in the world. If you want to better compression for really big files, use 7-zip instead, it's free at least.

TmEE co.(TM) · Post by **TmEE co.(TM)** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 5:07 pm

RAR deserves support, and it compresses much better than ZIP, is available for all major OS and can be used on quite some formats. I will stay using RAR on my site... and having relatively slow connection, having to DL smaller files is better for me (even if the file I DL is some KB big).
I had no idea it originated from Russia... and I have no idea how many people use RAR here...

Sik · Post by **Sik** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 6:43 pm

Listen, if it was for me, I would use 7zip instead. It's way better than both ZIP and RAR when it comes to compression. The problem? Not many people have something to decompress 7zip. And this is true for RAR too. ZIP is the only format I can be sure most people (if not all) will be able to decompress. And even if I put a link to 7zip, a lot of people would not download the files just because they would have to download another program first.

So, that's why I'm using ZIP. In an ideal world, everybody would be using 7zip. But this is the real world, so no. And anyways, the SegaCD tech docs already came in a ZIP, and so are the 32x ones (which I didn't upload yet). Decompressing them just to recompress them in 7zip would eat a lot of resources in my computer, considering their size. Direct convertion, and I'm dead

Sik · Post by **Sik** » Thu Apr 24, 2008 11:22 pm

*double post for update*

Hey, can you suggest ideas for the examples? Remember, examples must be simple subroutines/functions that do something specific. They must be simple through that doesn't mean slow, look at the code I made for example

Feel free to suggest ideas for examples

tails92 · Post by **tails92** » Sun May 04, 2008 10:22 pm

You should add Stef's dev kit to the page, if you haven't done so already.
It's a big time saver, if you don't want to deal with quirks and asm.

Sik · Post by **Sik** » Sun May 04, 2008 10:26 pm

Yeah, good idea, I really never took a look at it, but probably it's useful. Also remind me to update, last time was weeks ago o_o' I still have to upload the 32x docs, argh. And I need to make more examples :/