Hi all,
It's been a long time since I last posted something here (moving into a new house, lots of home-improvements, including repairing the wood-boiler before winter...). Anyway, I had time to restore my MSX game room last month, and to finish a project I started a while ago, as an MSX Christmas gift :-)
It's called SofaRun, and it allows you to enjoy MSX games without moving from you sofa (or even if your MSX keyboard does not work anymore). You just need a JoyMega adapter, and a MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD if you plan to play MegaRoms. It also features Soft Reset, and a "snapshot" option to display whatever you want about a game (controls, tips, manual...). There are lots of other settings that you can find in the help file below.
Here's a small demo video:
SofaRun v1.0 for MSX
The download page will be there when validated by the adminstrators: SofaRun - v1.0
You can grab it directly from here waiting for that: sofarun1.0.zip
That's the first release of the program, and I was a bit short in time before the Christmas vacations. There might be some bugs or errors in the help file, please don't hesitate to report that to me.
Here are some snapshots :
Title screen:
ROM browser:
Start menu:
Controls snapshots (MSX 1 and MSX 2 versions):
Some Metal Gear snapshots (the game manual is readable on a CRT TV if you don't need glasses):
Have fun & nice Christmas vacations for those who have :-)
Here's the help:
SofaRun 1.0
===========
coded by Louthrax in December 2014
Introduction
============
SofaRun is an MSX program that allows you to run ROM images.
It features a joystick-controlled file browser, and options to
map JoyMega buttons to keyboard keys and even the reset button,
allowing you to play lying on your sofa just like a lazy penguin!
It requires an MSX computer with MSX-DOS 2, and some extra
memory available depending on what you want to do.
It also features:
* Disk access to MSX-DOS 2 drives when running ROMs. You can
save and load, for example, your King's Valley stages or Game
Masters game states to a specific directory.
* Snapshots for each ROM game. You can add as many images as
you want (snapshots, manual scans, tips or keys used...), and
display them by clicking on "Snapshots" in the ROM settings
menu.
* Game Master 1 and Game Master 2 support. Game Master 2 can be
used only with a MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD cartridge, but Game
Master 1 works without.
* Soft reset: if you have selected JoyMega support, you can
reset the game by pressing the [A] and [Start] button
simultaneously.
* Editable SOFARUN.INI file. You can add your Game
Masters and "saves" locations here, and also define your
JoyMega to keyboard mappings and custom palettes.
* Default (global) settings. Those settings are inherited by
all games, but you can override them for each one.
* Save of all settings for each game, so that you don't have
to set them every time.
* Save of the last started ROM: the file browser comes back
automatically to the ROM location.
* MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD support to run MegaROMs. MegaFlashROM SCC+
only (not SD) is not supported yet, but this should be
available soon.
** You need to have OPFXSD.COM somewhere in your PATH so that
SofaRun can flash your cartridge when needed **
* Metal Gear 2 specific fix to make it work on MegaFlashROM
SCC+ SD with disk access.
* Support of Konami's Game Collection SCC+ ROMs.
* Support of external SCC or SCC+ sound cartridge,if you want to
hear the "real thing".
* Various settings, like all other ROM loaders (video mode,
language, CPU mode, MSX version).
Installing SofaRun
==================
The minimal configuration for SofaRun is MSX 1 with MSX-DOS 2 and
32KB of available mapped memory. You'll need 128KB if you want to
use the Game Masters, and a MSX 2 to access the palette and video
settings. Running ROMs bigger than 32KB or ROMs along with Game
Master 2 requires a MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD cartridge.
Copy SOFARUN.COM and SOFARUN.INI somewhere in your path. If you want
to use your MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD cartridge, you'll need to have
OPFXSD.COM in your path too.
Just type SOFARUN from the MSX-DOS2 command line to start.
SOFARUN.COM takes no parameters. You are just allowed to pass a
single dummy parameter to SOFARUN.COM to skip the display of the
title screen.
Controls
========
Everything in SofaRun can be controlled with either the keyboard
or the joystick in port 1.
To validate something, you can press [Space] key, [Enter] key
or joystick [Button A]. This is referred later in this document
as [Validate].
To cancel something, you can press [ESC] key or joystick [Button
B]. This is referred later in this document as [Cancel].
The ROM browser
===============
This is what you get when you launch SofaRun: a list of all
*.ROM files and directories.
You can move in the entries here using the keyboard arrows or
the joystick.
To open the "Start" menu in order to launch you game, or change
to another directory, just push [Validate].
Push [Cancel] to enter the "Main" menu.
The "Start" menu
================
Here, you can adjust lots of settings before starting the ROM.
You can change a setting with the [Left] and [Right] cursor keys
or with the joystick in port 1.
At first, all settings are set to the default values. If you change
a setting, it will be displayed with a star ("*"). This indicates
that this setting is changed.
You can toggle a setting between its default and ROM-specific
value by pushing [Validate].
Following is a description of each menu entry.
** Start **
Simply starts the ROM. If the ROM has not been already loaded
and patched, the process might take some time.
** Start with re-patch and reload**
Force re-patching and reloading the ROM into the MegaFlashROM
SCC+ SD. SofaRun keeps track of what's happening (last file
loaded/flashed and last settings patched), but you might need to
use this when things go wrong.
** Snapshot **
If a .MIF file with the same base name as the ROM is available
(for example KMARE.ROM and KMARE.MIF), this option will be
available and the MIF file will be displayed. You can concatenate
several MIF files together using MSX- DOS command "copy /B". Push
[Validate] to display the next file or [Cancel] to cancel.
** Reset settings to default **
This resets all ROM settings to the default ones.
** Save settings **
This explicitly saves the settings for this ROM. Settings are also
saved each time you start the ROM, but this can be use full if you
want to modify settings for lots of ROMs.
** Game Master: **
You can select to launch a game with Konami's Game Masters here. The
Game Masters ROMs have to be named GMASTER1.ROM and
GMASTER2.ROM. They must be placed in the ROMPATH directory. This can
be defined in the SOFARUN.INI file.
Game Master 2 can only be used if you have a MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD
cartridge.
** CPU mode: **
(TurboR only)
If you're the happy owner of a TurboR MSX, you can define which CPU
mode to use here.
** Video mode: **
(MSX2 only)
You can choose between 50Hz or 60Hz video modes here.
** Palette: **
(MSX2 only)
This allows you to choose between different color palettes for
the game. Palettes can be defined in the SOFARUN.INI file. You can
for example use the MSX1 palette to have the original look and feel
of a game on an MSX2. The "CoolColors" palette by FRS also looks
very well on lots of ROMs! See the "SOFARUN.INI" section below for
more details.
** SCC mode: **
If you want to play some ROMs using SCC+, like the Konami's Game
collection ones, set this to SCC+.
** Metal Gear 2 fix: **
Metal Gear 2 does not like that the disk and the game ROMs are
placed in the same slot on MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD. This option fixes
the problem by enabling the subslots before each disk access, and
re-enabling it after. This way, the Metal Gear 2 boots and can save
and load games from SDCard.
** MSX version: **
(requires patching)
You can lie about the version of your MSX here. This allows to play
Gradius 3 in MSX1 mode for example. Well, there's little interest in
that, but if you are playing a game with the Game Master 2 and want
to use a custom palette, this might be useful: the Game Master 2 in
MSX2 mode sets its own palette, and erases the custom palette before
launching the ROM. This won't happen if you set the MSX version to
MSX1!
** Language: **
(requires patching)
Sets this to "Internatonal" to play the ROM in English instead of
Japanese.
** Force SCC slot: **
(requires patching)
MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD emulates both SCC and SCC+ very well, but if
you are a "vintage integrist", you can set this to "Yes" to use an
SCC or SCC+ cartridge instead. If you're the happy owner of a
Snatcher or SD Snatcher SCC+ cartridge, these can be used for both
SCC and SCC+ games.
** SCC slot: **
(requires patching)
This specifies the slot to use when "Force SCC slot" is enabled.
You'll usually set this value in the default settings only.
** JoyMega: **
(requires patching)
If you have a JoyMega adapter and a Megadrive joypad, you can choose
between different configurations here. Some "generic" configurations
are provided in the default SOFARUN.INI file, but you can add as
many configurations as you want in this file. See the "SOFARUN.INI"
section below for more details.
The 3 buttons configurations will be a bit faster compared to the 6
buttons one, but only [A] and [Start] buttons are available.
** JoyMega disable keyboard: **
(requires patching)
If you enable this, the keyboard will not be read and be inactive.
As reading the JoyMega and converting buttons to keys takes a while,
this might speeds things up a bit. Use this if you experience some
slowdowns when JoyMega is enabled.
** Back **
Returns to the ROM browser.
The "Main" menu
===============
This menu is invoked by pushing [Cancel] in the ROM browser.
Following is a description of each menu entry.
** Edit default settings **
You'll see the same settings are as the one for the ROMs. You can
change them, they will be used in each specific ROM if nothing is
defined.
There's just a new option here: "Save default settings". If you do
not choose to save your settings, they will be kept for the current
session and next game started, but will be lost after that.
** Display all files: **
Toggles displaying all files or only .ROM files. You can use this to
check your hard disk or SDCard for other files.
Note that nothing happens if you click on non-ROM file. An
interesting future extension of SofaRun would be to launch .BAT or
.DSK files (while keeping the "settings" and "snapshots" features).
** Quit SofaRun **
Returns to MSX-DOS 2.
** Bytes free: **
This displays the memory available for the ROM browser. It
changes depending on the number of ROMs stored in the current
directory. Up to 2,000 ROMs should be supported.
** Back **
Returns to the ROM browser.
The SOFARUN.INI file
====================
You can setup different things in this file. As an example, here is
the default SOFARUN.INI file provided with SofaRun:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
# Path searched for GMASTER1.ROM and GMASTER2.ROM. If there's a GM1
# or GM2 subdirectory in there, SofaRun will use them depending on
# the Game Master version used.
ROMPATH=A:\ROMS\KONAMI
# Path where your ROM or Game Masters saves will be placed
SAVEPATH=A:\SAVES
# JoyMega configurations
#
# Format is j={;}*.
#
# is the name displayed in SofaRun.
#
# can be 3 or 6. A JoyMega pad can be used in 3 or 6 buttons
# mode. 3 buttons mode is faster but only [Start] and [A] buttons
# are available.
#
# can by X, Y, Z, A, M or S in 6 buttons mode, but only A
# or S in 3 buttons mode.
#
# specifies the autofire delay for the specified button.
# Set this to 0 for no auto-fire. Finding a good auto-fire value is
# not so easy, this setting is very game-specific. Do not set this
# too low, because the ROM might think that the buttons is always
# pressed if it does not check it too frequently.
#
# is a list of keyboard keys that will be "pressed"
# when the specified button is pressed. Several keys can be
# specified, they will be pressed together. This allows you to
# combine [F1] and [F5] keys on the same JoyMega button for Konami
# games. But beware, Parodius for example does not like it: you have
# to press [F1] and only [F1] to pause the game (that's why a
# specific "Parodius" setting is provided). A keycode is made of 2
# digits, that can be retrieved in the table below (row first, then
# column). For example, the key code of the [Space] key is 80.
#
# bit 7 bit 6 bit 5 bit 4 bit 3 bit 2 bit 1 bit 0
#row 0 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0
#row 1 ; : ] } [ { \ = + - _ 9 8
#row 2 B A DEAD / ? . > , < ` ~ ' "
#row 3 J I H G F E D C
#row 4 R Q P O N M L K
#row 5 Z Y X W V U T S
#row 6 F3 F2 F1 CODE CAPS GRAPH CTRL SHIFT
#row 7 RET SELECT BS STOP TAB ESC F5 F4
#row 8 RIGHT DOWN UP LEFT DEL INS HOME SPACE
#row 9 NUM4 NUM3 NUM2 NUM1 NUM0 NUM/ NUM+ NUM*
#row 10 NUM. NUM, NUM- NUM9 NUM8 NUM7 NUM6 NUM5
jGeneric (3Btns)=3S0657174;A066;.
jGeneric (6Btns)=6Z080;Y067;X066;S06574;M071;A070;.
jAutofire 1 (3Btns)=3S0657174;A180;.
jAutofire 2 (3Btns)=3S0657174;A280;.
jAutofire 3 (3Btns)=3S0657174;A380;.
jGoonies (3Btns)=3S065;A085;.
jParodius (3Btns)=3S065;A071;.
jM.O.G. (6Btns)=6S066;A065;Y08577;X280;Z242;M061;.
jM.O.G. Tototek (6Btns)=6S066;Z065;X08577;A380;Y342;M061;.
# Palette configurations
#
# Format is p=*16
#
# is the name displayed in SofaRun.
#
# is composed of 3 digits between 0 and 7, in RGB
# order. For example 700 is red, 070 is green, 007 is blue, and 777
# is white.
pCoolColors= 000 000 253 364 125 236 521 357 632 742 762 774 142 524 555 777
pMSX1= 000 000 252 363 225 437 521 267 632 743 662 664 141 535 666 777
pMSX2= 000 000 161 373 117 237 511 267 711 733 661 664 141 625 555 777
pGray scales= 000 000 444 555 222 333 222 555 333 444 555 666 333 444 666 777
pGreen scales=000 000 040 050 020 030 020 050 030 040 050 060 030 040 060 070
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks
======
Thanks to FRS for his help on JoyMega and the CoolColors palette,
Manuel Pazos for the MegaFlashROM cartridges and his help on how
to program it, and Nestor Soriano for Nextor!
