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I say : MSX2 oriented - no ROM limit !

Perhaps it should be:

MSXdev = MSX1
MRC challenge = MSX2 (and above)

MSX1 is way more fun to work with than MSX2. Especially gfx wise. Even with its limitations.

I find MSX1 more fun to do because it's faster. There are less options, so gfx are done earlier. And as tiles our 'outlined' to 8 pixels, they're usually easy to tile or even use in another context. The only sucky bit is that the MSX1 has such a bright palette. May be fun if you're doing Super Mario, but for games with a dark atmosphere, you're stuck with candy-colors. If you ask me: MSXdev should stay MSX1, but MSX2 bonuses should be acceptable, e.g. an alternative palette on MSX2.

I wouldn't mind going back to the rules of one of the earlier msxdev, e.g. 32kB ROM 16kB RAM and no extensions. This will probably make it easier to compare entries. With a too big span of size and features its not that easy to compare games.

I also think it would bring more entries. As mentioned before, I also think that the higher the specs, the more likely it is that we get unfinished entries.

Of course it would be nice to see a Nemesis quality game in the competition but I think thats quite unlikely. It requires a very big effort to pull off something like that.

and like Huey says, there can be one compo for pure MSX1 (which msxdev kindof is) and one MSX2. There is no need I think to make msxdev cover everything.

32kB ROM 16kB RAM and no extensions
tsk tsk!

Dev5 was max 48/16 btw. And why no extensions? Don't you like scc/fm music? Would an MSX2 palette count as extension?

Our entry -on which we're still working, there's this odd scc bug that's keeping us-, eventually will have taken only a few months to make.. and that's a megarom/64k/scc/msx1/msx2 .. 1 year is more than enough for a megarom, it's just a matter of *not* starting in december. ^___^

I just think it would be nice with a raw MSX1 compo. We've been pretty good at adding extensions, the Lotus game had quite a few extensions, SCC, Screen 4, MSX2 palette, Flash support etc so I'm not opposed to it. The MRC competition gives you all that stuff and I don't think msxdev necessarily need to go the same route. I think in fact that the higher specs you allow, the fewer games you get. And it would be nice with a great competition for smaller projects.

At least! I thought I was the one wanting to go back to the roots

Well, still I am for allowing more ROM.
The fact is that a good game is matter of many ingredients
and more room for storing data does not imply better quality.

Caos Begins is a 32K entry but I'm sure that the time to develop it
is comparable or longer than the development time of more voluminous
entries with less refinements.

BTW, our WIP cannot fit in 32K, so we would be forced to sent it to the
MRC competition and this a pity as it is a pure msx1 game...

I just think it would be nice with a raw MSX1 compo

That's a bit of the problem. When considering the various MSX1 models, *what* is a raw MSX1? 64kB RAM is quite conventional, and the size of the ROM doesn't have any influence on the computer.. it's purely the size of the game. As long as Konami made 2MB roms (nem3, shalom, etc.) I'd say having such a ROM is perfectly legal.

I think in fact that the higher specs you allow, the fewer games you get

Unproven. The only thing you can say is that dev5 was the contest with the most entries -iirc-, but is that the same as stating that, as specs went up, entries declined? MRC challenges also have less entries than, say, 2003, 2004, even the simpler challenges which don't require a team showed a decline of participants. You may say that higher specs leads to less entries, however, I simply think that less entries in the later Dev editions simply follows the trend in which ppl in general are less active than 4 years ago. Is that the fault of higher specs? If you ask me: no. It's just the result of people being less active, probably due real-life situation shifts. Because we are a certain generation, there may be less new blood when the older generation become less active. Facts of life..

Again I'd like to state that our game only took roughly 2 months to make, 1 month for the inner engine, a month for minor extras, that's a megarom with scc/msx2. Had we started in november or october rather than december, we'd simply be entry number 13! As I've said earlier, I believe the size of ROM benefits artwork and maps. It's far more easy to create art than to create code. Hence, RAM size and a tiny bit o' ROM size defines the game engine code, the rest of the ROM and RAM is simply art. Deciding to allow higher specs more or less states that games may look prettier. I'd always choose for this artwork option (but that may be not much of a secret )

Furthermore: I agree it's not always easy to compare a 16KB ROM with a MegaROM. Then again, the specs are here for everyone. I rather see small games become bigger by really inviting these developers to make their game visually more attractive and support some extra soundchips, than big games become smaller by giving up all these artwork extras. Maybe it's me, but my ultimate goal of these contests is to have great games.. and it's rather easy to have all this extra artwork, I mean: you can do a platformer with 1 platform tile, but you can also define 8 such tiles, all looking a little bit different, and thus have a game screen which is less repetitive, it's really that simple. And I may be a sucker for artwork and other candy, but I hope I'm not alone here.. ^_^

In addition, I highly doubt that, when leveling the specs to 32/16, things would be easier to compare. You'd still get the situation where skilled teams use all kinds of intelligent compression schemes and media generators whereas others don't. When a small uncompressed 32k game remains 32kb in raw format, and a 32k 'compressed' game will actually be like 64k in raw format.. then the advanced teams still have the advantage.. just as it is already.

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I simply think that less entries in the later Dev editions simply follows the trend in which ppl in general are less active than 4 years ago.

I had the same feeling.
At beginning I thought that developers were moved from MRC to some other forum, but after few incursions here and there on the web, I concluded that MSX activity is just fading out. Many people just stopped developing.
Anyway this fact is unavoidable. MSX is a dead standard and development on MSX can fascinate only who,in the second half of 80thies, was young and had his first programming experiences on MSX.
The "MSX generation" is getting older and older with less and less time to spend on MSX and there isn't a new generation going to replace it.

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The "MSX generation" is getting older and older with less and less time to spend on MSX and there isn't a new generation going to replace it.

Unless someone offers a big amount of money as the main prize for MSXDev.

btw, what has happened to msx invaders by nerlaska
http://www.nerlaska.com/videogames/screenshots.php?num=1&id_pro=56&idi=2

Is the development stopped ?

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That's a bit of the problem. When considering the various MSX1 models, *what* is a raw MSX1? 64kB RAM is quite conventional, and the size of the ROM doesn't have any influence on the computer.. it's purely the size of the game. As long as Konami made 2MB roms (nem3, shalom, etc.) I'd say having such a ROM is perfectly legal.

This is not a problem at all. Just because its a raw MSX1 compo doesn't mean that you can't limit the spec. We all know that there is no absolute limit to MSX1 and I think this has been used as an argument to push msxdev into an msx2 compo (I don't say this is necessarily wrong though).

The big problem with extensions is that imo they should really at most add bonus points (e.g +1 for SCC support) and not be part of the judging. The games should be judged only on the features that lies within the spec of the competition. Everything outside of that should be ignored. This is unfortunately not that easy for a judge. For example if a game has very nice SCC or FM audio or MSX2 palette, its very easy to get moved by these features and give a more positive judgement than what the core features that is within the spec would do. This is really the main reason why I think that extra features shouldn't count at all.

Limiting the RAM or ROM size is imo not an issue at all. Competitions throughout history have had limitations on this. There is for example still a very good PC competition that limits the executable to 64kB. I'm sure most PCs can run programs bigger than that

Btw, I'm not opposed to a yearly MSX2 competition either but I don't think that is the purpose of msxdev.

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Limiting the RAM or ROM size is imo not an issue at all. Competitions throughout history have had limitations on this. There is for example still a very good PC competition that limits the executable to 64kB. I'm sure most PCs can run programs bigger than that

I think that the 64KB limitation is a MS-DOS/PC-DOS thing!
For example, when using a old fashioned compiler like Turbo C or Turbo PASCAL.

COM files should be limited to use only 64KB for file, sure that would be possible to use more units or even bigger EXE files ...
16 bits = 256x256 (65536)

Why not doing in MSXDev mroe than one category, one for MSX1 and one for MSX2 and above?