Works In Progress: obeybrew.com and PC-FX homebrew! :)

[nodtveidt]

Yep.

obeybrew.com is to be the definitive guide to all things PCE homebrew. Currently, I'm working on documenting all of HuC, including previously-undocumented features. It will also have lots of example source code, tutorials, and other such goodies. Arkhan will be contributing as well, not the least of which will be some documentation and whatnot on MML. The site uses mediawiki, but I am only allowing authorized people to make changes. Proper documentation is hard enough without having some joker go in and muck it all up to be "funny".

Also, PC-FX homebrew is on the horizon. The author of mednafen had been working on a toolchain for quite some time, but I guess gave it up due to overall lack of interest. Well, it was picked up by someone else (trap15) and has evolved into a completely working toolchain. It's now possible to develop new PC-FX games! The library for the PC-FX is still somewhat low-level, but I will be working on high-level functionality to bring it up to the coder-friendliness of HuC (or better, preferably). The toolchain is designed for a Unix environment, but on ObeyBrew, I document a way to get it working with cygwin for Windows users.

Here's one of trap15's examples (fxbmp.c), built entirely on my Windows system:



Not too impressive just yet of course, but it does show that yes, legitimate PC-FX homebrew has finally become a reality and can only grow from here.

[nodtveidt]

Oh... and if anyone has a serious PCE or PC-FX homebrew project, let me know and I'll put up a page on the wiki about it. Only interested in serious stuff though.

[Arkhan]

Sweet, PCFX Homebrew finally.

Aetherbyte has dibs on MML for the PC-FX, lol.

Considering the sound chip is almost the same, I bet they maybe used the same BIOS, so maybe itll be pretty easy lol.  THAT WOULD RULE.


I plan on giving some MML tutorials, along with the Squirrel documentation.  That Readme in Squirrel is pretty awesome. 

Once Retrocade winds down, I may do a few "how to get shit done" tutorials.  I've found I'm kind of good at explaining things without being overly technical.



PS: Your sig is annoying.  I like it.

[Bernie]

Ahhh..  one more reason I should go ahead and buy a PC-FX.  Awesome news! 

P.S  I like the sig as well Rover! 

[Arkhan]

The thing about the PC-FX homebrew that could be awesome, is we could fill the library with a few games to make the "whuaaaaa its a white dating sim box" people shut up fo realz.

The system has moar juice than the PCE, so here's to hopin'.

[nodtveidt]

I gotz mad plans for the PC-FX. All the games I wanna do on the PCE but can't do on the PCE can be done on the PC-FX, such as my epic RPG and my all-lady fighting game. The system needs shooters too... and it's got more than enough MEGA POWA for that.

What the library is mainly missing right now is CDROM access functions. That's been one of the big pains in the tail, apparently. Also, the RAINBOW chip isn't fully exploited yet. So apparently for now, stuff has to fit into one program. The library for the "7up" chips (these are normal HuC6270s, just like in the PC Engine, making the PC-FX similar to a SuperGrafx... if these are the only graphics chips you use), the HuC6230 (the "soundbox", which has a PSG device similar to the PC Engine, plus two stereo ADPCM channels), and the gamepad functions are all low-level right now. I'll be writing some high-level functions for them at some point, especially for the 7ups.

[Senshi]

Now i'll have a reason to buy a PC-FX

[Arkhan]

I'm curious how similar the soundbox is really.   I dont do much with the PCFX except play all the games.  When Mednafen dumped the PCFX project, I got sad.  At least its going again finally.

Are the PCFXGA tools any help at all?  I've got them all sitting here,

[nodtveidt]

The FXGA is a different beast and seems to place way too much priority on the 6273, which isn't present in the PC-FX.

[Arkhan]

Right, but it comes with a bunch of little tools and doodads, lol.

IIRC there were some graphics conversion utilities and crap.  I have Same Game FX, which I thought was made with it, maybe.

[nodtveidt]

Tools might be useful, especially graphics converters.

[Arkhan]

I'm a tool.

I'll dig around when I get a chance today and see what all was in it.  There was a bunch of crap.

I'd say I'll also mess with the FXGA crap but FallingJunk never pulled through on that one because Alex is an idiot.

[nodtveidt]

OK... apparently, Ryphecha had SCSI functions in the original PC-FX library, but liberis is missing them. Looks like liberis might be getting said addition shortly... that will really open this sucker up.

[Arkhan]

Who the hells liberis

[nodtveidt]

If you'd paid attention to the links I posted on obeybrew.com, you'd know.