I'm using the following tools to create the FM Towns version.
mkisofs - Creates ISO and adds IPL track. The IPL track has to be manually modified to point to the correct sector of the IO.SYS file (Byte 32 of the IPL). Also, the IO.SYS should (maybe needs) to be the first file in the file system.
RawToFMT - Custom written command line utility to convert graphics from 24 bit raw files to 16 bit raw files in FM Towns format (GBR 655 format). I also use bin2elf, from the NeoDev environment, to link the graphics into the application. I would like to have the graphics stored on the CD and read in when the program starts, but there seems to be some problem with this. The correct number of bytes are read, but the buffer isn't changed.
Dosbox - Dosbox is required, since the compiler files are .exp files and require EXE386. Exe386 only runs in a non DPMI mode.
The EGB and Snd libraries are used for graphics and joystick control. The EGB was very difficult to figure out, since all the documents are in Japanese and are very concise. It's very hard to find sample programs or source that uses EGB. I've posted many times on the UNZ message board (
http://tcup7122.at.infoseek.co.jp/townsemu/bbs) to get clarification on EGB parameters. The message board is 95% Japanese, but the emulator author and a few others speak English well enough to help out.
I thought about using hardware sprites, using the SPR library, but it only supports a 256 x 240 resolution for sprites. This would've been a problem, since the program is written assuming a 320 x 224(+) screen size and 16x16 and 24x16 or 32x16 sprites. I could've done the conversions in the routines, but that would've been a big challenge, and probably wouldn't have worked correctly.
I use the UNZ FM Towns emulator for testing of the game most of the time. I burn a CD, every two or three days, to ensure it still works on the real hardware.
All my projects use Photoshop for graphics editing and Paint Shop Pro to save pcx (as needed) files correctly.
I use Visual Studio for all the projects, most of them are compiled directly from Visual Studio using a nmake compatible makefile. The FM Towns version cannot be compiled directly from Visual Studio, since it uses Dosbox.
I would eventually like to get Watcom working as a compiler. Watcom can output the .exp format, but I need to figure out which format to use (since there are 3 or 4 varieties). I've already done some of the work to convert the EGB library to NASM (and Watcom) format.
