Contribute

This page lists the ways you can contribute to improving MSXgl.

If you're interested, the most convenient way to start is by joining the project's Discord server.

How can I contribute?

Knowledge base

• Create MSXgl based programs and share the source code. If you can film the creation and share the video, that's even better. 😎
  • This is useful for game creators, as they can see how others solve challenges they may also face, and it can serve as a tutorial for people discovering the MSXgl library and tools chain.
  • It's also very helpful for MSXgl creator, as it provides programs that can serve as actual test cases when there are impactful changes to the library or build tool.

• Review the documentation and report errors, omissions, or unclear parts. If you can provide improved version, it's even better. 🖤
  • The articles on this wiki.
  • The source code documentation.

• Improve the modules documentation by adding more code example and giving deeper explanation (for example about the library options).

• Improve sample programs documentation, in particular through source code comments. To do this, you can use Push requests (PR) via the project's GitHub.

• Use #MSXgl hash tag on social media to help people found resources about the library.

Assembly code

⚠️ All assembly codes must be created by people who are familiar with the Z80 assembler and who are able to create code optimized for both speed and size.

Even providing only minimalist assembly code and a usage example is sufficient. The MSXgl creator can easily take care of the C wrapping and integration into the library.

• Complete the unpacker code. Especially:
  • Create MSX2 version of VRAM unpacker for Pletter and BitBuster modules to access the whole 128 KB of VRAM.
  • Create VRAM unpacker for LZ48 and ZX0 modules (MSX1 & MSX2).
  • Add new unpacker from optimized assembler code.

• Complete the music replayers. Especially:
  • TriloTracker FM replayer (and update of the new SCC replayer).
  • Realfun 3 replayer.
  • Re-Play replayer (from Grauw).
  • Voice synthesis on the ISR replayer (from ARTRAG).
  • Moonblaster replayer.
  • Lovely Composer replayer.
  • ADX replayer.
  • KSS replayer.
  • MGSP2 replayer.

• Create a memory mapper loader to start a game in ASCII-16 format from disk (on an MSX with sufficient memory).

SDCC

• Create a tool to remove unused codes and variables. Currently, a large number of functions and variables can end up in the final binary file, potentially causing a big waste in terms of size. The SDCC team seems open to creating this feature directly in SDCC, but without some effort on our part, it could be several years before we can actually use it.

  An alternative would be to add to the Build tool a script to parse all the assembly files generated, to go down the function hierarchy from main() and thus establish a list of used functions and variables. In a second step, further parsing could be used to remove what is not being used. The problem with this method is that functions are not well delimited in the assembler code. In any case, we'd need to find a way of forcing functions not to be eliminated in order to deal with very specific cases.

• Report any SDCC bugs or non-optimal code generation (in terms of speed or size) to the SDCC support site. This is the best way to help SDCC to become better and improve not only MSXgl projects, but also all other libraries based on SDCC.

Tool

• Create an MSXgl project creation wizard which allows the user to choose all the options he wants for his new project (MSX generation, target media, modules, ...) and which will generate the directory containing all the files needed to get started (library and project configuration, and source code template). The tool should not require the installation of any additional tools. It is therefore preferable that the tool be written either in Node.js (already supplied with the MSXgl package), or in C.