What could be changed for MSXdev09?

The rules should allow and rate also the use of extra HW, eg. SCC/AUDIO, etc for music or MSX2/2+ VDP's or even GFX9000 for video, provided that the game respects the minimal specifications.

The score should weight the rating at full HW with the rating with minimal specs.

See Montana John to have an idea of what I mean.

I disagree. What make the MSX famous was that most of the software could be played into every MSX microcomputer around the globe. Giving extra point for high spec microcomputers would not be fair , imagine countries like Brazil that only had the first generation of MSX microcomputers. The MSX-VIDEO is amazing for a 8-bit microcomputer, but not every body has this specs. The same logic would be valid if someone produce something for MSX that use two video outputs, the MSX-VIDEO is present into some 80 columns cards.

About the extra points for sound, it is questionable since some MSX games only has MSX-MUSIC tracks. About the SCC music, it is nice for Konami games and homebrew stuff.

I again vote for freedom. Let the guy who's designing the game decide what's best for him.

And also there's another factor: The lower specs doesn't mean lower development cycles. In most cases, it can get much more time to develop, since there are a lot of limitations that the programmer will spend time trying to overcome just reinventing a wheel that is solved by hardware on the higher specs MSXzes. This is the clear case of the smooth scroll. As a MSX programmer I find really impressive to see a smooth scroll on a MSX1 game and the guys who did it have kudos from me, but how much time that took to achieve?

And I feel pity for the programmers that have to compress everything so it fits inside the 128KB ROM limit, or when he have to "play tetris with the data on RAM", using any minimal space he could find so that the game fits on the 64KB of RAM.

And for the 3.57MHz, even Konami had thrown the towel for that limit of the CPU back then. As the TurboFixes are proving, they simply started ignoring that clock and designed the games to require more CPU power than that. Otherwise they would have spend hours and hours they didn't had optimizing the code, leading to project delays they couldn't afford.

Don't get me wrong, this is just my 2 cents. As I always say, MSXdev is a great idea by itself. I hope only to improve it a bit more.

That may be so, but as you're saying: it's what MSX made famous... .. when? In the 80's! Let's look at what specs people have today!

There is the MSX revival (MSX-MAGAZINE), the 1chipmsx and even some enforces like the NINTENDO WIIWARE.

But as you're more the Brazilian expert than I am, what's -today- a typical MSX config in Brazil? (MSX generation, RAM, sound extensions etc.)

It is difficulty to tell, in the past most hard core MSX users had upgraded to 2/2+ , FDD and MEGARAM. The last interactions of the MSX2+ kit had FM sound and 256 KB Memory Mapper .

But there are some machines that are plain old MSX1 models, in fact one problem with the Gradiente Expert is that there was to much interference when using the microcomputer. There was not a proper RF shielding.

It is a very nice suggestion arnold_m . It seems to be a polite and clearly way to propose something over a discussion board.

Very nice idea indeed, Arnold!

I have just one suggestion: get rid of the mandatory ROM format!

So people can freely develop the games in BASIC, Pascal, C, Asm... whatever they feel like, for disk, tape, rom or whatever!

As for machines on Brazil... the most common are MSX2 and up. It's rare to see someone with a plain MSX1 on fairs...

On Brazilian MSX list (MSXBR-L) there is around 300-400 readers, most of them just use emulators. The minority (around 50-100?) have MSXs, and the majority of those have MSX2 or 2+ and higher (thanks mainly to Ademir, who made so many upgrade kits, and his "Ace"s and "Ciel" computers)

Yes, MRC2k9

The lists do not work very well for most statistics about users too ... for one example I am not in the Brazilian list. But I am on the MSX newsgroup, like most of the posters over here. There are a lot of people that only read the messages, normal people that do not like confusions and would like to play games for *FREE*.

One warning.
Be award, not everybody would avoid trouble.

As for the languages. PASCAL,C and ASM can compile binary files to be used as ROM Images. Strange, the type of thing that some persons reported about the time line could not be exact true for some cases.

I find it interesting to see that some people who own MSX1s (or come from countries where MSX1s are the norm) vote for allowing MSX1 only. Those in favour of allowing MSX2 never raise their voice to allow MSX2 only but merely ask for allowing MSX2 as well. An interesting nuance in how to promote the system that is dearest to you.

I think the jury is perfectly capable of judging entries based on the platform they run on and the restrictions of the type of game in question. Games such as I Need Speed, Danger Tower and even Peek-a-Boo being able to compete score-wise with La Corona Encantada and Deep Dungeon, which due to their nature have a much broader scope and gameplay, demonstrates this.

I would vote for a free competition where everyone can create their entries as they please, and the score taking into account both originality, gameplay and system restrictions. Not voting in the poll however, as an entry reflecting my opinion seems to have conveniently been left out.

PassionMSX in itself already seems a protest initiative that apparently some found necessary because MSX2 had been ignored for half a decade. I believe it is quite insane to further fragment the already tiny MSX community based on personal preference of MSX-flavour. Nor does the number of entries that did get submitted to MSXDEV08 (or PassionMSX thus far) give rise to specialization and fragmentation of contests. It might if both attracted dozens of entries but we won't ever see that again.

Using the existence of such a counter initiative to demonstrate that we should continue only targeting MSX1 seems weird, unless there is some formal policy that MRC is only an MSX1 community and MSX2 developments indeed belong somewhere else.

A *really* freestyle option (like MSX2) has been left out because:
- I know viejo, he'd die first before allowing and moving towards MSX2 So it would be pointless to have it as option. The Something Else option compensates for this.
- With the PassionMSX2 contest there already is an MSX2 contest at the moment. This poll is for MSXdev09, not challenges in general.

dude, relax.

we promote every MSX generation
MSXdev promotes MSX1 (or more specific, they promote that entries should work on all MSX-generations, starting from MSX1)

The MSXdev organizers are three people:
- viejo -> is an MSX1 geek
- Mars2k -> co-organizes an MSX2 contest on PassionMSX (which probably emerged because MSXdev kept its focus on MSX1)
- BodyHammer -> uhm .. BodyHammer.. (I dunno your preferences, BH )

To me it would seem logical that 2 out of 3 MSXdev organizers would favor MSXdev for MSX1 and have other contests focus on MSX2. Thus, the poll options were designed with this in mind. I can imagine there is a moment where one can ask all kinds of general contest things, in which every MSX generation and all the relevant MSX extensions count. But that would be a general challenge poll, this here is an MSXdev poll.

But apart from all this: there *is* an option labeled 'something else' in this poll. If you want anything MSX2 in it, use this option and state why in the reactions. It's that simple. It's not like 'something else' votes are not valid or something.

Oh No! A Flame war, and I'm not included!
How can I change my vote to the most controversy option? I would like to change my vote to Turbo-R with Moonsound, GFX9000 and NoWind as minimum specs.

The fact that it must work on an MSX1 keeps the technical architecture down to MSX1. Just adding a palette to a screen 2 image when detecting an MSX2 VDP isn't the same as making a screen 5 game with hardware scrolling etc. From this point of view, MSXdev is a contest "aiming at all MSX generations starting from MSX1", which still makes it -technically- an MSX1 contest.. Unless people really store 2 independent games (screen 2 version and screen 5 version) into 1 rom, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. ^^

Compare: Disney makes 'family movies' (equals "all MSX generations" ). A typical family includes Peek-A-Boo toddlers, Starship Rendezvous teenagers, Sudoku mothers and F1-Spirit fathers. Do you agree with me that the inclusion of the kids brings the age recommendations down for a Disney movie? There can't be any killing, blood or gore in it, no?

Anyway, I suggest to leave it be for another 2 weeks, just await more votes (or Something Else details) and we'll see in 2 weeks which option wins.

(my sleeping hours were limited last night, if I'm talking toddlertalk, then don't mind ^^)

Right, which is fine with me, really. But it typically makes it an MSX1 contest then, with palettes, alternative tiles and perhaps non-gameplay scrolling (think MJTT: the block thuds) as a bonus for MSX2. I don't see it as a problem when a contest restricts itself to a certain MSX-generation btw, so don't see it as criticism.

I got a sense-making remark from one of the megachallenge jury members, some months ago. As you know I kinda prefer to let MJTT live its life as an MSX2 game. However, I got this remark: "It's no MSX2 game.", "why not?", "Well, do you think it looks like Usas?". That summarizes the whole thing. Of course it's no MSX2 game. On MSX2 it's still an MSX1 game but with a palette, slightly different screen 2 tiles and some non-gameplay scrolling.

I was stuck with a multi spec games (msx1/msx2) with a scoring system that weights the two partial scores gained on msx1 and msx2, but I would subscribe Manuel's proposal, provided that the jury will be able to accurately set scores with respect to the limit of the chosen configurations.

An outstanding msx1 game cannot compete with a good TR game (for graphic, music, and number of things moving on the screen).
But, compared to the limits of their respective target machines, one is outstanding while the other is just good, so the score should reflect this situation, allowing to the msx1 game to win over the TR game...

I think it would be very hard to judge. Just look at how hard it is to give a toddler game proper credit for game play. I think its better to have two separate competitions, maybe split it up so that an MSX1 competition has the deadline in October and the MSX2 competition in March. Then some folks would compete in both and some pick the one that they feel more for.

The concept for this is years old already, not just what system one has, but many more questions which may be interesting for developers. It's just that MRC2k7 became MRC2k8 became MRC2k9, so these things get delayed a bit..

Why not make a general contest in which any MSX game can be entered? So, no restrictions on MSX type at all?

YES! Freedom at last!!! Where do I vote on this option?

An outstanding msx1 game cannot compete with a good TR game (for graphic, music, and number of things moving on the screen).

ARTRAG,

That is a fallacy, you know. On a bunch of games I have here, the MSX1 games beat the TurboR-only games hands down. Lets have a better look at it:

- "2021 Snooky!" sucks. I do prefer play a lot of other MSX1 games over it.
- "Die Frage II" is boring. I don't even see why that requires a Turbo-R to run.
- Except for the sound/music, Seed of Dragon is not better than any ZX-Spectrum port for the MSX1. It in fact looks like a ZX-Spectrum game.

- Merash is interesting at a first glance, but its background is composed only of a few stars and this gets boring after a few minutes of play. Its not much better than MSX1's Galaga, and Zanac is a lot better than it.

- Gekihara is no match to Year Kung Fu 1 or 2.

- And Zone Terra? Even Star Soldier, a 32KB MSX1 ROM, beats it easily in playability and soundtrack.

In fact, I'm yet to find really good MSX TurboR-only games. The only ones I did found were those:

- Parallel Dreams. But this one is written in BASIC. It's very easy to make it run on a turbo MSX2+.

- Moonlight Saga seems to be very good, except it's all in Japanese... Without a translation, I can't play it.

- Braindrive is cool.

So, what's my point with all of this? It's that what makes a good game are not the specs. Its creativity. And that can only be expressed though freedom. And the list above proves that it is a fallacy that an MSX1 game would not have a fare competition against a Turbo-R game based only on the specs.

In fact, I'm yet to find really good MSX TurboR-only games
Try F-Nano2 and Fnano2'

What I still don't get it is why those people who want to code MSX2/2+(only) games can't simply join passionMSX or any other MSX2 contest
THAT is the question

What I still don't get it is why those people who want to code MSX2/2+(only) games can't simply join passionMSX or any other MSX2 contest. Somehow I have the feeling that, if MSX-DEV changes its rules to allow any kind of MSX game to be developed without any restriction, not only many of those people who wants MSX-DEV to change will not submit games to this new MSX-DEV competition, but it will also make some of the msx1 developers (that are currently submitting games to MSX-DEV) give up of MSX-DEV. I hope no one gets angry with me for saying this (it is not my intention to hurt anyone's feeling), but I think this is the way things are. I believe MSX-DEV is a great success today because of its rules, if you do big changes in its rules, you might ruin this great competition.

IMHO splitting the developers on two competitions would kill both competitions.
The scene is simply too small.

Maybe allowing multi platform games in one competition (I'm again on the idea of msx1/msx2 games like montana john) could be a comprimise to allow:

1) all (4 or 5) developers still alive can compete in one competition having one year to thing to their game

2) people looking for msx2 games will feel less disappointed of the outcame

3) sorry for repeating myself, we could find easily a scoring system able to valorize the game in both running modes and in exteme case alble to allow pure msx2 or pure msx1 games to win over the other games

PS
I know: TR has no good games. My example was pure theory ;-)

hmm yeah, it's somehow strange to have the main focus on downward compatibility,
imagine sony would command that every ps3 game had to be ps1 compatible... that'd be pretty sad.
I mean, msx2 has been invented as a follow up and all those games are compatible with msx2 systems.
Maybe msx2's haven't been as available worldwide as they were in holland, but it's 2009 and everyone can have one
of them by now. And if not there are plenty of emulators to play them in.
So have msxdev open for everything and judge the entries on its own merits, I can imagine there would be
programmers who would be able to do a lot more with advanced specs, and it would only benefit the amount
(and quality) of games.

I know: TR has no good games. My example was pure theory ;-)

And there's an embarrassing aspect on that, like when presenting the Turbo-R to your friends:

Friend: "So, this is that marvelous machine you talk so much about? And that your girlfriend (wife, etc) says you spend a lot of bucks buying accessories for it? Is it better then the MSX2 we played back then?"

You: "Oh, yes! It is an impressive machine. Its very fast and has many improvements over the previous generations."

Friend: "Well, then show me how powerful it is! Show me its games, or some demo!"

You: "Well... Huh... Let me show you Space Manbow!"

Friend: "Wait, wait! Isn't Space Manbow an MSX2 game? We played that already! I asked you to show me what THIS machine can do. Show me something new! Isn't it TWO generations newer and blablabla?"

You: "Hummm... Let me show Aleste-2 then!"

Friend: "I'm sure you understood what I said".

You: "Ok, ok. So... That's Illusion City!"

Friend: "Wasn't that the game some crazy guy from Brazil translated and proved that it can run on a turbo MSX2?" And don't get me wrong, but this game is not showing me that much evolution over the MSX2 games we played at your home back in the nineties..., like Xak-2"

You: "(#%@~%@*@%) Aw, yes! Here it is! Zone Terra! 19268 colours! PCM sound!"

Friend: "Humm.. Looks interesting!"

[He plays for about 5 minutes...]

Friend: So... What were you talking about Space Manbow? Can I see it again? Or maybe Aleste-2?

===END===

Well... To avoid those situations I believe we need to stimulate more Turbo-R games development. )

By viejo_archivero on March 04 2009, 10:13
manuel: "Why limits, other than making the scope a bit limited, as some kind of self-protection for developers?"

Limits are there to force things to be completed:

On the other hand, with limits one do not even to try to start a game development!

When discussing MSX1 vs 2, specifically the differences in screen formats are relevant. I guess having plenty of screen 5 or 8 graphics in a game quickly fills a MegaRom. Can anybody that has experience with coding graphics for MSX2 *and* for MSX1 comment on how labour intensive each is? I don't have experience myself, but I can imagine creating good looking screen 2 tilesets by hand pixeling can take just as long (if not longer) as screen 5 or 8 images.

the pattern based modes are easy to animate, but due to their color limits are a true pain to work with, if one want to make good gfx

Can anybody that has experience with coding graphics for MSX2 *and* for MSX1 comment on how labour intensive each is?
To me, programming scr2 is a pain in the arse. It requires a lot more time for both artwork and coding than scr5:

• Coding: scr2 coordinate system is bizarre. It needs a horrible formula just to discover where a damn pixel is on the VRAM. And then there are three tables to deal with it: the pattern table, the tile table and the color table. The system is so complicated that speccy game porters just gave up and did everything in RAM. After that they did blit the entire screen to the VRAM. This is why many speccy games are so slow on the MSX. And the reason they did it this way? It requires too much development time to code it properly and they didn't had time to waste
• Coding: Everything must be done in software, thus must be coded (more time required). There's no hardware blitter to help you.
• Coding: In scr5 the VRAM is linear and direct. On a V9958 the horizontal scroll helps you so much that you can program a high quality game like ParaDream even in BASIC. Now try doing a ParaDream-like game in BASIC, with smooth scroll and everything, on the scr2.
• Art: You can even use The Gimp or Photoshop to quickly draw graphics for any MSX2 screen mode. But to draw graphics for the scr2, it's again a pain in the arse. You have use specific tools and waste a lot of time worrying about the colorbleed. On many cases, you'll have to code some special routine just to cover the colorbleed with sprites to get some decent result.

But this is my experience, so YMMV. I am incomparably more productive doing things for scr>=5 than I am on doing the same things on scr<5. To the point I just give up if I have to deal with those unbearable restrains that the scr2 puts on my creativity and productivity. If I am to code anything on my free time, I will code something that gives me realization on doing it. After all, that the whole point of having a hobby, isn't it?

Not sure about that motivation statement, it deserves another poll or thread I think.

Yes, point being?

There're people doing demos, games etc. without any contest. So, it's not that people 'need' a contest in order to do something. It sure helps, but if a contest would die out, it's not like ppl are sitting still from that moment.

For MSX2 games there is the passionmsx contest which have a big first price. Imo, its better to keep msxdev for MSX1 only.

I don't think the reason for the relatively low quality of the games in msxdev'08 is because people want to make msx2 games instead. Several great developers have chosen not to participate in msxdev for other reasons, e.g. they want to release their games like normal game releases, not submit them to a contest. I don't think expanding to msx2 would help.

I encourage every developer that wants to do something for msx2 to consider the passionmsx competition instead of complaining about msxdev.

Are u sure u would have startd Montana just to do something for msx?
That's hard to say, isn't it? If we knew at forehand that we were to miss the deadline we may have had a different architecture, more like Usas (screen 5). My point is rather that we've now planned to not do a challenge for a while (tho perhaps we could submit our dev08 entry to dev09, given that the specs don't get lower ), because
1) the specs are dull (see point 3)
2) we never make deadlines anyway
3) we want to do a g9k/moonsound game, there's currently no contest for that, and an ad hoc g9k/moonsound contest would gain perhaps only 2 or 3 contestants, which is dull too
4) we still need to finish BttW, which is a 2+ game, also no contest for that

dvik/joyrex also didn't need a contest to release their MSX1 demos, no?

The point I want to make is that it may be interesting to find out why people are doing the things they are doing. Perhaps we *think* it's challenges that motivates them, but perhaps it's something else. Who knows..

For MSX2 games there is the passionmsx contest which have a big first price.
For a contest with such a prize, and a contest generally seen as -technically- the MSX2 equivalent of MSXdev, it has been awfully quiet so far. And I'm not talking about reporting on the possible releases, because there aren't any yet, ..but just bumping it, reminders, igniting a bit o' gossip, rumors and action, that's what such a contest needs. Have you seen any of that since the concept went airborne? (over 8 months ago!)

So, anyone on my proposal?
I.e. allowing msx1/msx2 games and giving as a score the weighted average of the scores in the two working modes ?

btw, I think we should formally define the term "MSX1+"

An MSX1 game with non-architectural MSX2 features. Such as palette, non-gameplay scrolling, screen 4, extra sprites etc.

Maybe MSXdev'09 should officially become the first MSX1+ contest.. ^_^ (meaning that, like dev07, MSX2 bonuses do get bonuspoints)

For the next dev I would change the way users think I would leave the dev as it is now and will encourage users to waste less time discussing the rules Edu (no more now), Viejo, etc... decide (since its their work) and invert more time in creating games, which is the main purpose of this dev and of this thread.

This way, people like me who can do MSX development but have absolutely no idea of how to develop a game can do something as well.

MSXdev itsef could have a incredible potential to stimulate MSX development in general.

"Developed anything interesting for the MSX system? Is it a game? A utility? A hack? FAT32 support? Lets us know, and you might get this year's prize for that!"

PS: Just kidding about the FAT32 part.

@ konamiman:

NestorBASIC is already a winner. Epic win, to be exact.

Umh, As suspected, the first choice in the final race, will get the sligthly higher score than others...

...
There is no reason to keep the votes secret
Why not adding the names of those who voted close to each option?
It would allows us to see if the polling system works correctly

Disappointed so many people? How?

It's not implemented now, and until MRC2k9 there won't be any critical changes to the current MRC. It's not certain whether logged poll voting will be implemented anyway, needs to be discussed internally.

I was talking about the secret voting, e.g. logging who voted what. I dunno why you seem to have problems with the poll, hadn't heard such an issue earlier. Anyway, I can't fix it.