Lemme know if I'm being dumb with this one, but with someone working on OPL4 support in Furnace, this could be considered? Maybe different formats that could be something like samples only, samples + FM, both of which could be either using the ROM samples or not, idk I'm just throwing ideas out. Haven't even checked if there's already a format for OPL4 on BotB

Supporting this as the explicit support for Moonsound would allow it to be less restrictive of MSX sound drivers than the current adlib ruleset

Also Moondriver is cool
https://youtu.be/Av66F_bNNo0

Yeah, I agree there, I have no idea how Moondriver works specifically, but if it's possible to at least make similar stuff to it in Furnace, then I'm happy.

thoughts as someone who doesn't really know much about this chip:

- there should definitely only be one format, multiple would be excessive. we could discuss how to restrict or not-restrict it, my gut says anything goes though

- i take it from pedipanol's post that there are alternate ways to go about the format besides "furnace in the future"? that's a plus, because otherwise there'd be an argument for "furnace format w/ bitpack" instead of standalone thing

- submission type would be .vgm i assume? the demo pedi posted also seems to be a .vgm. are those playable on hardware? this strikes me as a potential sticking point

it's probably worth revisiting this subject when/if furnace gets the support that is being claimed

vgm format supports opl4 since a long time ago (as we can see at vgmrips website, for example)

i think Grauw (well known in the msx retro community) is helping on opl4 support implementation on furnace tracker, as far i have seen his activity about this at furnace discord server - in his msx documentation in his website, he shares 3 pdf documentation files about opl4: https://map.grauw.nl/resources/

and more info about opl4/moonsound at msx.org: https://www.msx.org/wiki/Category:OPL4

There's a pull request on the Furnace GitHub and according to what's going on that, it'll be merged after the next update. So it's definitely happening. I also can't not see there being a way to make OPL4 music on an MSX itself, so if nothing else, there is that (plus emulators for those who don't own the real thing)

I'm more comfortable with trackers, so I, personally, will wait for Furnace.

actually opl4 was only released as cartridge for msx (mostly popular among dutch msx scene), never was supported in official manufactured msx specifications, like ay-3-8910, ym2413 and y8950 were

wwwEEEllcooMMe ttttoo mmmMMOOOOnnnssooOUUUNNnnd!

From what I can tell, there are cartridges that are still available, so if you want to go the actual hardware route, there's that option. The only way that a lack of support might cause a problem is if emulators don't include it as an option.

But it's also because of how the Dutch used it that I think there ought to be multiple formats. Most of the time, they stuck to just the ROM samples, I've only heard one music disk where they used different samples, but I've never heard them use FM along with them, no matter how they used it. I've only heard Naruto2413, a Japanese musician use both, though I couldn't tell if they were the ROM samples or not

@damifortune the format is Moondriver's own format, they used a VGM log for generating the oscilloscope on the video, but it's not a native export for it. It's got its own native players for MSX with Moonsound and can be played on hoot and mdplayer on PC.

Main format would probably VGM because of furnace but shouldn't be restricted to that, mainly given that there is a windows player for one of the alternatives, it would also discourage from trying tools other than Furnace even more.

And yeah, VGM is playable on hardware, MSX has the best VGM support out there, give it enough ram to handle the big filesizes and I'll play anything you have hooked up to it.

Other alternatives that are MSX-only include Moonblaster and the Moonsound's own MIDI support with the built-in samples.

Yeh, I was going to mention Moonblaster. It seems to have two formats for OPL4 in particular. It also seems to work in emulators too. More diversity in accepted file formats is good imo. And we don't even need to wait for Furnace. It's just that there doesn't seem to be a way to make OPL4 music on PC (as far as I know).

There were some soundcards, both by Yamaha themselves and also a German company called Miro, but I'm almost certain that no DOS emulators would support that and even if they did, the only format you could feasibly use there is MIDI.

thanks for all the info. @pedipanol, re: that last thing about MSX-only options, is that something that could be relatively easily emulated? if it were a potential valid submission type here as a BotB format, what would we be looking at - a .mid? what about Moonblaster, what would be needed for others to play back someone's submission?

trying to gather as much info as i can, since again this is not a format i really know about. it seems promising for the future, although to be clear i'm not the person making these decisions, and changes on this site can happen at a snail's pace regardless. i've been doing my best to catalog a lot of the outstanding format requests lately, though, so that's why i'm trying to fish for more info. a comprehensive write-up of options would be amazing (perhaps once furnace is ready), especially since this isn't as clear-cut as, say, .nsf or .spc or simple formats like that with one filetype.

https://www.msx.org/news/software/en/moonblaster-14-added-downloads-database there is this on Moonblaster as a whole. Getting the software is easy I guess, but playing back modules outside of an MSX doesn't seem possible yet. The source code is available, but no one has done anything for Windows as far as I know

probably you can rip opl4 vgm files from openmsx, from the console, and then be able to play these vgm files in whatever recent operating system

and as simple would be find moonblaster file format specification, as simple would be find or help the development of a converter, for example

gotcha - how easy or difficult is it to get "module on a modern PC" over to "emulated MSX" for playback, and vice-versa for those who want to write a Moonblaster module and then get it saved to PC to submit it to botb in this hypothetical format? forgive me for all the questions, i have never used an MSX or tried to emulate one lol. it seems like there's a few options

, at least

From what I've seen, people on YouTube tend to use OpenMSX to use Moonblaster. They tend to record the tracker itself over using any replayers. I think I remember some kind of MML player on Windows that played back one of Naruto's songs, but I don't know how that works at all. Looking up Naruto's song in particular didn't seem to work, but I found that the MML player is called NDP I think? The titles and descriptions are all in Japanese. More research needs to be done, but maybe it can be used for any MSX music idk

Re: Moonblaster modules

Setting up MSX emulation can be a chore, OpenMSX is definitely the option for OPL4 emulation, but it's a case of being an emulator that can do everything the MSX does well that it becomes a mess to set it up.

Done so, it should be straightforward to load a module into Moonblaster though, same for the real hardware.

Re: MIDI and other files supported

In regards to .MID I'll have to dig into it as it's something I haven't used.

the closest thing the MSX has to a NSF-type format is the .kss, unfortunately it only supports the AYM and OPLL, SCC, MSX Audio and SN74689's expansions. So it would only be a format for msxplus.

One that should probably be accepted would be a .DSK file, which is the MSX's floppy format. One probably could include the sound driver and the song module so it's plug and play in an emulator or hardware, kinda like the PRG format on the VIC20 format. This is specially so people using more niche sound drivers have a way to submit.

At any rate I'll take a deeper look if interest in the format increases and be more specific as I'm only doing it from memory. Would also volunteer to write the lyceum myself if it's approved.

Re: Naruto's songs

NDP is an MML driver for the MSX by naruto himself, but it's not what he used for the OPL4 songs or does it support it. As I told before, he used Moondriver for those tracks, which its files can be played in MDPlayer

or made in MML2VGM's IDE

.

@damifortune sad that emulator-zone didn't include webmsx - imho is the very best html5+js emulator around, very well featured and accurated on msx emulation

For what it's worth, I created a MSX-DOS based player on MSX for OPL4 (and some other soundchips) which can replay a lot of different file formats, including both versions of MoonBlaster (FM and WAVE). Full source code in C (and binaries) can be found under https://gitlab.com/torihino/roboplay. MoonBlaster format specifics can be found in mfm.c and mwm.c (the mbm format is coming from the earlier MoonBlaster for OPL1 and OPLL) . Note that this player can also replay VGM files (be it not as complete as the one from Grauw).

Arnaud De Klerk (very known in the retro msx scene) shared me this link of moonblaster running on webmsx: https://download.file-hunter.com/assets/webmsx.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdownload.file-hunter.com%2FPrograms%2FMoonBlaster%2520-%2520Program%2520%281993%29%28Moonsoft%29.zip - and reminded me that webmsx still doesnt support opl4 (moonsound) and opl1 (msx-audio)

(edit: on the webmsx active floppy icon, you can choose "save disk image", and open it on openmsx or any other msx emulator)

There is also more software I found that unfortunately doesn't have much demonstration on YouTube called Moonsound Music Studio and Meridian. The latter is pretty much impossible to find outside of a thread on the MSX Resource Center. Googling it or looking it up on YouTube turns up nothing. It's unfortunate, I'm curious about it, but I can't find anything