


Maybe in the future I can write a new, modern and optimized Pascal compiler (maybe a cross-compiler) for MSX machines, but this is another dream. And also how to avoid not optimized coding style when you’re programming for machines with low resources. In fact I’m using this good, but not so optimized compiler, to learn about new optimization techniques and about the Turbo Pascal internals. I’m really thinking to start writing code to MSX using modern compilers, like SDCC C compiler, which is known to be one of the most powerful and optimized compilers for small devices, but I have written a lot of code to the old Turbo Pascal 3 for CP-M80/MSX for years and my framework has increased a lot its capabilities to handle several standard devices present in MSX world. The VGM format contains all data samples sent to the sound chips using a speed rate of 41,000 samples per second, so your library must be very fast and precise to deal with VGM files in an accurate way and basically just assembly codes can reach this performance using all of the chip’s power….right ?

Pop!Art supports all VGM version’s format, since 1.0 to 1.70 and the GD3 tag format is partially implemented in Pop!Art engine but will be finished in future releases. The GD3 format is the same format used by MP3 files to store several tracks information, like author, song name and so on. The VGM format has a GD3 metadata present in file header specification.
