In 1997 (already over 4 years ago!) some guy named d-fader thought it was necessary to learn Z80 ASM code. So he tried and tried and he even got better and better. After a few months he thought he was quite good. Things he couldn't do at that time was e.g. making a scroll on MSX. He once in the summer of 1997 visited a friend to do some computer related stuff. When he was there, his brother interrupted the conversation and asked if he already coded MSX Z80 ASM. He knew him from a few years before that, but their contact somehow broke. As he asked, d-fader answered "Sure! Though I still can't make a good scroll in ASM", so the brother (from now on identified as HeXx) said: "Aaaah! It's been a while for me, but it's quite easy: Just do this and then this, after that do that and then it should work". He talked about bit shifting, anding stuff, also he talked about some MSX2 copy routine and such stuff...
So d-fader answered: "Hmmm... Ehmz.... eeh... Okay!". HeXx KNEW d-fader didn't understand a word he said. So he said to d-fader: "Tomorrow, 8:30, you WILL be here. See you tomorrow." and he left. As you probably can imagine, d-fader was quite astonished about what he said... He had gone home, not understanding and the next day, as HeXx said, he was there at 8.30. HeXx opened the door. He started: "We're gonna make a scroll. I'm NOT gonna learn you MSX ASM, I'm just gonna give you a little push in the right direction".
So the two got the dusty VG8245 of HeXx, plugged it in, started it, started WBASS2 and they were ready to go. The last time HeXx even started WBASS2 was about 6 years (!) before that! After that he said okay. Now... First a great thing of MSX2, he started.
HeXx : You know Metal Gear right?
d-fader : Yes.
HeXx : You also know Metal Gear is screen 5?
d-fader : Yes.
HeXx : Ever asked yourself how come Metal Gear builds up its screens so damn fast?
d-fader : No. Fast? Hmm. You're right! A normal 'copy' command is quite slow!
HeXx : Exactemondo.
HeXx : And that has a reason. The VDP of the MSX can copy REALLY fast! Just not by using the normal 'copy' routine!
d-fader : Wow! How?
HeXx : That's what we're gonna find out now!
At that time we didn't have any docs, no VDP docs, no nothing, just some MSX1 Z80 machine code book. He said we were gonna look for a magazine where the 'fast' copy routine was explained. After a while looking they found it and they started coding. Actually d-fader just looked how HeXx coded :D.
As it was 6 years HeXx didn't do Z80, he forgot a whole lot, didn't have any significant sources anymore and the sources he still had, had nothing to do with MSX2 copy routines. So they (together) made the copy routine. After about a day they finished it and HeXx was back in business, he could code Z80 again. It had all came back. The days after (wednesday-friday) they coded on the scroll routines. It was a really HOT week. 35 degrees every day and no ventilation. But they coded from 8.30AM to 5PM every day.
Friday they had a working scroll with some star background and vdp scroll in it. That day, the guy now known as Chaos came back from vacation and d-fader would go the week after that (starting on Saturday). So d-fader visited Chaos that night and he showed the demo. Chaos just was amazed! He asked HOW'D you do THAT??
D-fader told the HeXx story (and the calls HeXx would made at 8.15AM to check if d-fader already was out of bed :D). Chaos didn't know what to say.
D-faders week of vacation followed and after that he returned to HeXx, which had coded even more stuff... He was really liking it! :D
As they discussed d-faders vacation and HeXx his code stuff, d-fader came up with the idea to form a new MSX demo group. The intention of this group would be that they would've been quite different than other MSX groups in a good way. As HeXx liked the idea a lot, they soon came up with the question what the name of the group should be... At that moment the brother of HeXx came in the room where they were and he started thinking of a name. After a while he already came up with several ideas. One of them was TeddyWareZ. Though at first they thought it was not the best idea, after a short while they came to the conclusion that TeddyWareZ was the best idea and they already started to like it...
So far so good. A new group was born, though no one else knew it... After that the group started to develop. They would make a first demo-disk which would've been 50% ASM. After 1 and a half year of developing it was finished. Teddy's In Action was released at Zandvoort '98. Though we had a stand, it was more like a wooden table with some computers on it. Visitors of the fair didn't even see us, the only thing they saw were the big stands of FD and such. At about 4PM (one hour before the fair would end) everybody had seen all the big stands and everybody walked up to us looking at us questioning who we were... We demonstrated TIA whole day, nobody seemed to care but after 4PM everybody came to our stand buying TIA.
We also gave most of the dutch magazines a review disk and TeddyWareZ was known to the public!
Now you might ask, what has this to do with the product I'm now reading the help of? The answer is quite simple, I'm gonna get to that right now. Teddy's In Action was created using WBASS2. A great assembler / IDE, the difference with most (all?) other groups at that time was that we didn't use WBASS on MSX. We used an MSX emulator (MSX4PC) and in that emulator we used WBASS to create the complete disk! Also we've used Graph Saurus with this emulator. We really liked this approach. To make a long story short, we almost quit MSX after the release of TIA. At that time d-fader wanted to continue on the TI-83 (calculator of Texas Instruments) scene, which also has a Z80 processor. As d-fader started looking for an assembler he thought of maybe using the editor he would find for MSX.
He found a REALLY neat wrapper for TASM (Telemarks cross ASseMbler) called Chaos Assembler 2 (CA2). The rest of the products TeddyWareZ has released until now, are written using CA2 (this includes USW and SCC-Blaffer NT)!
Though CA2 was a great wrapper, it was actually a wrapper for the TI-83 calculators and so it had nothing to do with MSX. Soon raise the question if CA2 could be adapted for MSX usage. At a certain time we contacted the author of CA2, and he even replied and he was willing to adapt it for MSX usage! As time passed by we lost contact with him and d-fader started developing Win32 applications and then the idea came to him to make an CA2 for MSX usage. The intention was to create a program with the same options as CA2, but as time passed by, the product became more and more extensive. That's when the idea came to call it Chaos Assembler 3.
Chaos Assembler 3 has most options of CA2 (and thus also we used TASM to compile your sources), but CA3 has about a zillion options more!
TeddyWareZ is VERY proud of this product and we hope this product will fit the MSXers in coding there own projects together.