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SMS Power! 15th Anniversary Competitions
Post Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:20 pm
Last edited by Maxim on Thu Feb 02, 2012 6:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
We will be holding our annual coding and music competitions again this year, in time for our upcoming 15th anniversary on 27th March. Every year people complain that they ran out of time or didn't realise it was happening, so maybe you should start working on your entry now?

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Post Posted: Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:34 pm
This thread is suitable for all discussion of the competitions.

We are currently planning some super-secret prize ideas, but new ideas are welcome (especially if you can organise them). We will start fundraising later.

The competitions will be as in previous years:

Music competition

Compose some music, either music that plays on a Sega 8-bit system or some other music based on music from a Sega 8-bit game. See previous years' competitions for inspiration.

Coding competition

Write something that runs on a Sega 8-bit console. It helps if it's fun and/or awesome. Some reuse of existing resources is permitted (e.g. sprite or music engine rips, game clones) but translations/hacks are not. See the Homebrew section for inspiration.

Also see our Coding Competition progress report/discussions thread.

Collaborations are welcome for both competitions but there will be a maximum of one prize per entry.
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 1:39 am
The last month or so I have been working on a Sokoban-like game. I'm working in collaboration with the user BG. He's making the (awesome!) graphics, and I'm making the code. Sometime in the near future I'm gonna make a thread that presents a small demo and try to recruit someone who wants to spend a little time making a bit of music/sound fx for the game :)

Will that be a suitable entry?
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 7:53 am
Normally we prefer the entries to be unreleased before the competition, as it's a bit of an advantage to get public feedback. But the collaboration is fine. I'm sure the available musicians will be happy to get a private demo. Having said that, there's not any rule against it and it's no worse than KunKun 2 as an entry :)
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 9:44 am
WHAT!
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 12:09 pm
Okay, I've made a very discrete recruitment thread in the music section :)
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Post Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 3:29 pm
I hope to get something up this year, on the coding part at least :)
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:50 pm
I'll try to submit something for both competitions this year too...
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Post Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 3:49 am
I'm keen to do some code this year as well as music. I might use a custom driver rather than it2vgm.py this time, as it's kinda limited (but at least it has arps).

This was my entry to Ludum Dare #22. Ludum Dare is a 48 hour game making competition. The entry I linked used my LD19 entry's code cut down / cleaned up as base code... and THAT entry was done from scratch.

OK, so given effectively 4 days, I could come up with that. (I then spent the next 3 days teaching myself how to code for the Mega Drive, and ported it to that (with a scrolling bug, sadly).)

From the time of posting we have a bit over 2 months. That's 15x more time than I had. So there's one thing I can say here...

I think you guys can do better than what I did for Ludum Dare #22.

Oh, by the way, if you're doing any music, here are the new links for it2vgm.py and smspackgen.py:
http://gm.64pixels.org/stuff/it2vgm.py.txt
http://gm.64pixels.org/stuff/smspackgen.py.txt -- with last minute hack to help modplug not chunder

If you have it already, and it's working, don't worry about redownloading unless there's some bug (but PLEASE keep a backup as the link might be a slightly older version!).

EDIT: Took about 10 minutes to get my Makefile + link file + various things set up. I'm now ready to code.
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 9:38 am
I started on my first SMS project this weekend.

Maxim wrote
Normally we prefer the entries to be unreleased before the competition, as it's a bit of an advantage to get public feedback.


1) Is it OK to show screen-shots and/or videos of the development progress without releasing a ROM?
2) Is it OK to share parts of the code (e.g. music re-player, collision detection) for public use before the deadline?
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 10:12 am
Zipper wrote
I started on my first SMS project this weekend.

Maxim wrote
Normally we prefer the entries to be unreleased before the competition, as it's a bit of an advantage to get public feedback.


1) Is it OK to show screen-shots and/or videos of the development progress without releasing a ROM?
2) Is it OK to share parts of the code (e.g. music re-player, collision detection) for public use before the deadline?


1) Yes. Keep it in the spirit of motivating others :)
2) is definitively great and encouraged.
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 12:08 pm
Where would one put screenshots and progress reports etc ? Development forum ?
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Post Posted: Wed Jan 18, 2012 1:01 pm
Yes. Lets open a shared thread to share ideas and progress!
http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13542
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Post Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 5:21 pm
Just to be sure; The deadline to submit an entry is at 23:59:59 on the 27th of March?
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Post Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 6:17 pm
Last edited by Maxim on Sun Feb 19, 2012 7:38 pm; edited 1 time in total
At this point, the precise deadline ought not to be a significant issue. However...

- There is no hard deadline.
- The soft deadline is 0:00:00 UTC on 27th March (2012-03-27).
- When I get entries, I will post them in the competitions forum with the entry title and submitter's name in a locked poll post.
- Posts will be unlocked by me on 27th March when I finish work. I will also add any last-minute entries at that time. So that's likely to be a 19-hour extension.
- Entries submitted soon after that time may be treated charitably - but it's better to submit and update, see below.
- Updates are permitted during the voting period (and after that), provided it's not ridiculous, but bear in mind that some votes may be cast before you update.
- Polls will be a vote from 1 (poor) to 9 (excellent), as in previous years.
- Polls will be audited to exclude suspicious votes.

As for how to submit:

- Email files to competition@smspower.org . One email per entry. Include your forum name, register if you don't have one!
- Music files must be in MP3 format, 128kbps or thereabouts. Yes, that sucks. You can provide an additional format (e.g. VGM, tracker, GarageBand) if you like. You must mention whether it's an original composition (using Sega 8-bit system technology, i.e. SN76489/YM2413) or an arrangement (if so, name the game and track, referring to the VGM track title if available). It'd be awesome if you also provide some artwork and text you'd like to accompany the entry.
- Coding entries should be in a normal emulator format (.sms, .gg, .sf7, etc) inside a zip file. The game (or demo, or productivity app, or whatever...) should be the first entry in the zip to maximise emulator compatibility (i.e. zip the game first, then add any other files to the zip). If you provide source, it should be in another zip file. If you email me executables, your mail will be blocked. Again, some accompanying material (text, cover artwork) is nice.

Entering the competition constitutes granting us the right to post whatever you sent on this website (we won't reveal your sending email address, but if you put it in the readme we might post that). We will also post the music entries to YouTube to make it easier for some people to listen. You can expect that lots of other websites will eventually post the same thing without permission...
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Post Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2012 8:01 pm
Also: please donate!

http://www.chipin.com/contribute/id/6eb5b4b1ca3ddc4b
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 4:35 am
Where is the music comp entries sent too?
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 11, 2012 9:10 am
furanku wrote
Where is the music comp entries sent too?


http://www.smspower.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=69956#69956
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