Relearning MSX: Roadmap
Posted by Javi Lavandeira in How-to, MSX, Retro, Technology | October 12, 2015
Wow, it’s been already almost 30 posts of the Relearning MSX series. Thanks so much for your encouragement and nice comments! And especial thanks to the supporters who are making this possible.
I think this is a good time to see what’s going to come in the future posts. The remaining subjects covering MSX-C are these:
- Loops
- Other control structures (break, continue, case…)
- Handling numeric values with printf()
- How values are stored in the MSX memory
- Formatted output with printf()
- Screen control characters
- Escape sequences
- Graphical characters
- Functions (2-3 chapters)
- Storage classes and scope of variables
- Pointers (2-3 chapters)
- String arrays
- Structured data and creating types (1-2 chapters)
- Creating and reading files (2-3 chapters)
- Essential library functions (3-5 chapters)
This will keep us busy for about 25-30 more chapters and the schedule is well defined already. After completing these we’ll have a pretty solid base of the C language to tackle what’s coming next: the fun stuff, the MSX-especific subjects.
In no particular order:
- The MSX graphic modes
- Organization of the video memory
- Sprites
- Game control: cursor keys, triggers, joystick, mouse
- Interrupts
- Slots and subslots
- Memory mappers
- Sound effects
- Playing music
- BIOS routines
- System work area and variables
- PCM
- etc
All these subjects will come from the several books I have here:
- MSX2 Technical Handbook
- MSX turbo R Technical Handbook
- MSX-Datapack I, II and III
- …and others
There’s no schedule decided for these yet. We’ll talk about these subjects in the order we need them, so if there’s anything you’d like to see covered, don’t wait and just ask for it!
And now the important part: please support these posts with a small donation, because I write during my free time and sometimes other priorities take precedence. Increasing the amount of donations increases the priority of writing these articles.
Thanks for your support!
Awesome roadmap! I have to admit that when it was a book I would skip the first chapters and jump to “The MSX graphic modes” :) But also in the other chapters I’m still learning new things about C and how my MSX works :)
Thanks for doing this!