SofaRun v2.0 teasers

Prophet (2465)

01-09-2015, 12:50

I'm finishing documentation and web page for SofaRun v2.0. I'll be adding some tutorial videos on it, but waiting for the final release, that can be used as "teasers" of the new functionnalities:

Here's a first one showing disk images support and joystick controlled disk change:
SofaRun v2.0 teaser - Keyboardless SD Snatcher play

Por Guillian

Prophet (3517)

01-09-2015, 13:01

Wow! Amazing work, as usual (^_^)

Por Grauw

Ascended (10772)

01-09-2015, 13:30

Very nice .

As for the button combination, I wonder would this not interfere with action games where you would often press A and B at the same time (e.g. Aleste), or games where the A+B button combination has some function (e.g. it brings up the menu in Xak)?

Por Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

01-09-2015, 13:51

Hi Grauw,

The combination to switch disk is to keep a single button pressed on disk access (can be A or B). The fake disk-driver then wait for presses on the other button, until you release the first button. Both buttons need to be checked because in XAK, B button is for validating, and in SD Snatcher it's the A button (which leads to canceling the disk loading / saving if you keep it pressed !).

I was planning to use JoyMega extra buttons for the disk change, but this would not work with mouse-controlled games (like Might & Magic book 2).

The only drawback of the method for now is that if you have unexpected disk access in an action game, the disk driver will stop until you release the button... If you are really unlucky, you can accidentally change disks if you press the other button meanwhile, but this does not happen often. I could maybe add an option for JoyMega or disabling this feature.

Another benefit of the joystick disk change is that it does not output a character to the screen when used on MSX-DOS or BASIC :-)

Por giuseve

Paladin (787)

01-09-2015, 14:46

Wow Wow!
About DSK
If I saw right SofaRun execute DSK directly without flashing it to MFRSCC+SD.
Is it true?
How many RAM is necessary to do that?
You said that a lot of dsk now are compatible with, more than with RUNIT: this is simply incredible.

About ROM.
SofaRun run directly roms<= 32K and flashes to MFRSCC+SD roms=>32K, right? Or it depends on Ram equipment?

About Screenshots.
They work in fullscreen mode: no way to have a splitscreen with menu on the left and 2 screenshots on the right?
No way to use for example the ready made extra-screenshots provided by BLUEMSX LAUNCHER or screenshots from GENERATION MSX (uh, is it possible to download them in any way?)

About Game Master.
In precedent version I found many problems with GM2, while GM1 worked well. Any news about with sofarun 2.0 ?

Conclusions
Hey, your work is simply great !!!
I'm going to prepare my SD NOW !!

Por Opethian

Master (147)

01-09-2015, 15:07

This is awesome work I would love to try this out!

Por Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

01-09-2015, 17:04

giuseve wrote:

Wow Wow! If I saw right SofaRun execute DSK directly without flashing it to MFRSCC+SD. Is it true?

SofaRun v2.0 teasers - Running file-base BASIC disk image

giuseve wrote:

How many RAM is necessary to do that?

For disk images, you'll need 49152 extra RAM bytes free in the main RAM slot. Type "memory" in MSX-DOS 2 command line to check how much RAM you have. If the game you launch is using mapper memory (like english-translated SD Snatcher, or cracked Konami Game Collections), you'll need more RAM. The other good news is that SofaRunIt does not rely on memory-mapper readback capabilities.

giuseve wrote:

SofaRun run directly roms<= 32K and flashes to MFRSCC+SD roms=>32K, right? Or it depends on Ram equipment?

You can now choose to force flash even for "small roms". Here are the memory requirements:

* ROM image with Game Master 1 :
- 16384 RAM bytes free
- A flash device

* ROM image with Game Master 2
- 114688 RAM bytes free
- A flash device

* Small ROM image (<32KB) in RAM with Game Master 1:
- (size of the ROM + 16384) RAM bytes free

giuseve wrote:

They work in fullscreen mode: no way to have a splitscreen with menu on the left and 2 screenshots on the right?

Maybe in an MSX 2 version of SofaRun one day... What I'd really like to have first is long filename support, using only 8 characters is too short when you have lots of games in different versions on your SD card !

giuseve wrote:

No way to use for example the ready made extra-screenshots provided by BLUEMSX LAUNCHER or screenshots from GENERATION MSX (uh, is it possible to download them in any way?)

Yes, thanks for the link, those could definitely be re-used to create SofaRun snapshots (conversion can be done with MifUi).

giuseve wrote:

About Game Master.
In precedent version I found many problems with GM2, while GM1 worked well. Any news about with sofarun 2.0 ?

Lots of memory/slot related things have been improved. It might be better but I give no warranty until you have tested that on your machine !

Por mfeingol

Champion (293)

02-09-2015, 08:18

Is that a Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad you're using? That works with a JoyMega adapter?

Por Louthrax

Prophet (2465)

03-09-2015, 14:41

mfeingol wrote:

Is that a Microsoft Sidewinder gamepad you're using? That works with a JoyMega adapter?

Yes, that's a Sidewinder. That's one of my favorite game pad, I find it accurate and comfortable at the same time.
It's not JoyMega modified, I just cut the internal connections and rewired everything to MSX using a DB9 plug. It's quite easy to do as there are free soldering locations for each button in the internal PCB. I also wired the green led to MSX +5V to have it lighten when MSX is powered on.

I wire the 3 bottom buttons (A,B and C) this way:
A -> MSX button 2
B -> MSX button 1
C -> MSX button 2
This way, you can always have "shoot" on the left and "jump" on the right, even with games that are inverting that (that's something I really don't like, too much body-memory I guess )

I think it would be quite possible to fit a megadrive PCB controller card inside this model (you can get one from the cheap chinese megadrive pads available on the net), along with a small JoyMega converter. I'll maybe try it.

Por eebuckeye

Resident (33)

03-09-2015, 15:44

This software is amazing!! Incredible work!

Por Jipe

Paragon (1614)

07-09-2015, 18:01

Question : sofarunit can running a multi-disk files same of HDDEMU on only in concat files ?