Forums

Announced here:

http://www.smspower.org/forums/15267-SMSPower18thAnniversaryCompetitions

Let's keep all the discussion in here.

Ultra-short rules: the same as every year.

Slightly longer rules:

Deadline is 27th March 2015. You may choose to interpret that in any reasonable way.

There are two competitions: coding and music.

Coding competition

Write something that runs on a Sega 8-bit home system.

Music competition

Make some music that either uses the sound chip(s) from an Sega 8-bit home system, or is an arrangement of music from commercial software for that system.

The small print

Super-offensive or overly illegal content will get your entry rejected. Be nice.
Entries should be either made for this competition, or substantially different to any earlier release.
Coding entries must be in a format that works with a wide variety of emulators, i.e. raw ROM image or disk images. Tape images and wacky custom formats are no good.
Music entries can be in any format you like, provided it's VGM or MP3. You are welcome to also provide the same music in some other format alongside it.

Email competition entries to:

competition@smspower.org

You should receive an automatic response when it is received. To make sure you do:

- Attach the file(s), don't link to RapidPirateUpload.com
- Mention the word "competition" in your subject line

Please include your forum name and any description you'd like to include with your entry. For music, say if it's original or a cover (and what of); including cover art makes you 20% more awesome. Of course, including source (for both music and code) is great.

I have a keyboard with this sound chip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM3812
This sound chip is a direct relative to this, which was used in the Master System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM2413
If I used it, only the remixes would be valid in the competition, even though it can sound A LOT like the Master System FM chip at times, correct?

P.S. This is a video of the keyboard:

That's right.

Ok, thanks!

Really looking forward to the this years entries!

Me too. If we could beat last year...

@Zipper and @sverx

Both of you guys are brewing on something for this year's compo, right? Come on, you can tell me :)

too early to say if I'll be entering :|

Every year I want to but then time passes too quick and the contest is over before I even got started.

I'm a bad planner with little free time.

You still have 26 days.
Start today and go for it. :)

I tried to submit something and didn't get an automated response. Is the competition@smspower.org address working?

It's working, but it seems the auto reply was not working. It is now.

I plan on entering the competition soon, I've resumed a project I started on a year ago now that I'm a bit more experienced at programming. Going pretty well, so far! (also I'll probably stop lurking lol)

I plan to (most likely poorly) recreate the racing song in this game:

So silent here today... everybody's coding? :D

... and without disclosing too much, can we know how many submissions are we going to have?

As for me, I think I finally have got something worth... made with devkitSMS during these days... but I won't say more than that.

Cool!

I'm going to enter the compo as well. My contribution will utilize zoomed sprites to such a modest extent, that it will be fully compatible with a regular SMS I :)

I'll probably have some music coming in right before the deadline haha.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to do something in time, but I gotta try, anyway, ;)

Two weeks left! Are we all doing well?

I've very barely started! And now I'll be gone all weekend. It's gonna be a sprint.

i might submit a simple 8kb game for sms

Maxim wrote

Two weeks left! Are we all doing well?

Yes! :) I'm so excited to be in the compo this year! I'll bring around 16 kb of fast-paced action.

So are we going to have more than 10 entries? :)

Let's wait and see. There's two submissions so far.

I'm working hard every spare minute I have.

I hope to have something. Afraid it will not work on real HW due to fast video updates. :(

Can submissions be updated as long as the deadline isn't reached?

sverx wrote

Can submissions be updated as long as the deadline isn't reached?

Yes.

To be fair you can probably update them after the deadline (if there's a minor fix to include) nobody will hold a grudge against you for that.

I'll be submitting music, again.
Coding the SMS is not for me.

But, i need to add finishing touches to my track, before submitting.
And i definitely need a better bass sound, but i can't afford a new bass. So, it's going to EQ to hell and beyond, until it sounds good.

Still to busy with my current project to start any new for the competition. Maybe I'll submit a piece of music, but I'm not sure I can squeeze it into what limited time I have.

tibone wrote

I'll be submitting music, again.
Coding the SMS is not for me.

But, i need to add finishing touches to my track, before submitting.
And i definitely need a better bass sound, but i can't afford a new bass. So, it's going to EQ to hell and beyond, until it sounds good.

i think coding for SMS is simpler than you can imagine! it's actually among the simplest z80-based hardware around...

Considering i only know javascript and php, i think even z80 hardware is a bit out of my grasp. (especially for this year competition).

But i would love to learn, i just don't even know where to start.

When will someone release a html5 > sms converter? :)
Then i can make some games, hehe

I've created locked threads for the entries received so far...

I think you're spoilering a bit...

It's what I've done in previous years, but I'll mask things out if you like.

It seems to me last year you posted everything after the deadline, or am I wrong? I would have posted later but... well, not a big problem.
Hopefully it's not spoilering too much.
Or you could mask the title for few days :)

I wanted to show that people had entered, and I figured titles don't give too much away - but maybe more so for yours :) They're all hidden now, so I'm sure most people will not have seen anything. I certainly don't want to discourage early submission.

Thank you :)

i'm a bit "uncomfortable" with the e-mail attachment sending process, since i'm very "revision-focused" (i never know if i can have a "final" and "working" version done, and i'm never "satisfacted" with the versions i made) - can we send revisions via e-mail over and over again?

I did it already, but I wasn't planning it...

tibone wrote

Considering i only know javascript and php, i think even z80 hardware is a bit out of my grasp. (especially for this year competition).

But i would love to learn, i just don't even know where to start.

When will someone release a html5 > sms converter? :)
Then i can make some games, hehe

would be an idea - and i think haroldoop made some converters, btw? ;)

and see that the development tools might increase overtime - i'm using Boriel's ZX-Basic Compiler (and probably haroldoop might use it too ), and there are people using WLA-DX, Z88DK, etc. - and probably converting from Arcade Game Designer (ZX-Spectrum), SEUCK, etc., might be not impossible at all, and probably converting from html5 would fit somewhere there - once (around 10 years ago) i wanted to start making a HotSoupProcessor (Onitama, Nec-PC88) compiler for z80 - would be cool even if we could compile code from Scratch to z80! :D (i guess haroldoop is doing this as well, or something like? )

You can send as many revisions as you like, we'll post the latest one on the 27th. After that you can post updates on the forum or on the homebrew page. You should still try to finish before the deadline, though...

Maxim wrote

You can send as many revisions as you like, we'll post the latest one on the 27th. After that you can post updates on the forum or on the homebrew page. You should still try to finish before the deadline, though...

thanks! :)

another question: can we submit games as team, and with a version of the same game released to other platforms? (a bit like when Jon "Viejo Archivero" Cortazar submitted msx ports of Mojon Twins games to Karoshi's MSXDev contest)

Ports are fine so long as they're not excessively simple.

My game's going pretty well so far. It's just about finished, I just need to add a score counter and see if I can figure out how to do sound; If not, I'll leave the sound out. Then I just have to finish my box art, and it'll be done!

PSGlib? ;)

If you need inspiration regarding a simple way to keep and display score, I recommend Jonathan Cauldwell's guide: http://www.smspower.org/Development/GettingStarted

I look forward to try your game!

Cheers for the advice, you two. I'll take a look at PSGLib and the guide when I can. I should say that this game isn't an original idea, it's a reworking of a modern game to the SMS. Hopefully that's alright.

Author	Message
Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Competitions 2015: status thread Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:20 pm Last edited by Maxim on Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:57 pm; edited 1 time in total
	Announced here: http://www.smspower.org/forums/15267-SMSPower18thAnniversaryCompetitions Let's keep all the discussion in here.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Rules Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:34 pm Last edited by Maxim on Fri Feb 20, 2015 8:39 am; edited 1 time in total
	Ultra-short rules: the same as every year. Slightly longer rules: Deadline is 27th March 2015. You may choose to interpret that in any reasonable way. There are two competitions: coding and music. Coding competition Write something that runs on a Sega 8-bit home system. Music competition Make some music that either uses the sound chip(s) from an Sega 8-bit home system, or is an arrangement of music from commercial software for that system. The small print Super-offensive or overly illegal content will get your entry rejected. Be nice. Entries should be either made for this competition, or substantially different to any earlier release. Coding entries must be in a format that works with a wide variety of emulators, i.e. raw ROM image or disk images. Tape images and wacky custom formats are no good. Music entries can be in any format you like, provided it's VGM or MP3. You are welcome to also provide the same music in some other format alongside it.

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	How to enter Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2015 2:35 pm
	Email competition entries to: competition@smspower.org You should receive an automatic response when it is received. To make sure you do: - Attach the file(s), don't link to RapidPirateUpload.com - Mention the word "competition" in your subject line Please include your forum name and any description you'd like to include with your entry. For music, say if it's original or a cover (and what of); including cover art makes you 20% more awesome. Of course, including source (for both music and code) is great.

Capt. 2110 Joined: 27 Apr 2014 Posts: 281 Location: Texas	Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 12:56 am
	I have a keyboard with this sound chip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM3812 This sound chip is a direct relative to this, which was used in the Master System: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YM2413 If I used it, only the remixes would be valid in the competition, even though it can sound A LOT like the Master System FM chip at times, correct? P.S. This is a video of the keyboard:

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 9:32 am
	That's right.

Capt. 2110 Joined: 27 Apr 2014 Posts: 281 Location: Texas	Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2015 8:43 pm
	Ok, thanks!

Zipper Joined: 06 Apr 2011 Posts: 250 Location: Netherlands	Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 4:39 pm
	Really looking forward to the this years entries!

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 8:16 pm
	Me too. If we could beat last year...

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Sun Mar 01, 2015 9:28 pm
	@Zipper and @sverx Both of you guys are brewing on something for this year's compo, right? Come on, you can tell me :)

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:05 am
	too early to say if I'll be entering :\|

Zipper Joined: 06 Apr 2011 Posts: 250 Location: Netherlands	Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:36 am
	Every year I want to but then time passes too quick and the contest is over before I even got started. I'm a bad planner with little free time.

tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 280	Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 1:24 pm
tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 280	You still have 26 days. Start today and go for it. :)

dragonfeet Joined: 08 Oct 2012 Posts: 108 Location: Colmar PA, United States	submission problem Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 5:19 pm
	I tried to submit something and didn't get an automated response. Is the competition@smspower.org address working?

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 6:33 pm
	It's working, but it seems the auto reply was not working. It is now.

BrambleG Joined: 08 Apr 2014 Posts: 34	Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 8:22 pm
BrambleG Joined: 08 Apr 2014 Posts: 34	I plan on entering the competition soon, I've resumed a project I started on a year ago now that I'm a bit more experienced at programming. Going pretty well, so far! (also I'll probably stop lurking lol)

Capt. 2110 Joined: 27 Apr 2014 Posts: 281 Location: Texas	Posted: Mon Mar 02, 2015 10:59 pm
	I plan to (most likely poorly) recreate the racing song in this game:

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 1:56 pm
	So silent here today... everybody's coding? :D ... and without disclosing too much, can we know how many submissions are we going to have? As for me, I think I finally have got something worth... made with devkitSMS during these days... but I won't say more than that.

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Fri Mar 06, 2015 2:33 pm
	Cool! I'm going to enter the compo as well. My contribution will utilize zoomed sprites to such a modest extent, that it will be fully compatible with a regular SMS I :)

TmEE Joined: 31 Oct 2007 Posts: 853 Location: Estonia, Rapla city	Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2015 12:08 am
	I'll probably have some music coming in right before the deadline haha.

haroldoop Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 852 Location: Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil	Posted: Sun Mar 08, 2015 10:12 am
	I'm not sure if I'll be able to do something in time, but I gotta try, anyway, ;)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:30 pm
	Two weeks left! Are we all doing well?

Sanqui Joined: 11 Feb 2014 Posts: 10	Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 9:33 pm
Sanqui Joined: 11 Feb 2014 Posts: 10	I've very barely started! And now I'll be gone all weekend. It's gonna be a sprint.

nitrofurano Joined: 01 Aug 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 10:40 pm
	i might submit a simple 8kb game for sms

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2015 10:46 pm
	Maxim wrote Two weeks left! Are we all doing well? Yes! :) I'm so excited to be in the compo this year! I'll bring around 16 kb of fast-paced action.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:33 am
	So are we going to have more than 10 entries? :)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:41 am
	Let's wait and see. There's two submissions so far.

Zipper Joined: 06 Apr 2011 Posts: 250 Location: Netherlands	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:44 am
	I'm working hard every spare minute I have. I hope to have something. Afraid it will not work on real HW due to fast video updates. :(

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:09 am
	Can submissions be updated as long as the deadline isn't reached?

Bock Site Admin Joined: 08 Jul 2001 Posts: 8606 Location: Paris, France	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:11 am
	sverx wrote Can submissions be updated as long as the deadline isn't reached? Yes. To be fair you can probably update them after the deadline (if there's a minor fix to include) nobody will hold a grudge against you for that.

tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 280	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 12:47 pm
tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 280	I'll be submitting music, again. Coding the SMS is not for me. But, i need to add finishing touches to my track, before submitting. And i definitely need a better bass sound, but i can't afford a new bass. So, it's going to EQ to hell and beyond, until it sounds good.

Kagesan Joined: 01 Feb 2014 Posts: 823	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 1:21 pm
Kagesan Joined: 01 Feb 2014 Posts: 823	Still to busy with my current project to start any new for the competition. Maybe I'll submit a piece of music, but I'm not sure I can squeeze it into what limited time I have.

nitrofurano Joined: 01 Aug 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 6:15 pm
	tibone wrote I'll be submitting music, again. Coding the SMS is not for me. But, i need to add finishing touches to my track, before submitting. And i definitely need a better bass sound, but i can't afford a new bass. So, it's going to EQ to hell and beyond, until it sounds good. i think coding for SMS is simpler than you can imagine! it's actually among the simplest z80-based hardware around...

tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 280	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:33 pm
tibone Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 280	Considering i only know javascript and php, i think even z80 hardware is a bit out of my grasp. (especially for this year competition). But i would love to learn, i just don't even know where to start. When will someone release a html5 > sms converter? :) Then i can make some games, hehe

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:55 pm
	I've created locked threads for the entries received so far...

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 8:23 pm
	I think you're spoilering a bit...

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 9:54 pm
	It's what I've done in previous years, but I'll mask things out if you like.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:04 pm
	It seems to me last year you posted everything after the deadline, or am I wrong? I would have posted later but... well, not a big problem. Hopefully it's not spoilering too much. Or you could mask the title for few days :)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:09 pm
	I wanted to show that people had entered, and I figured titles don't give too much away - but maybe more so for yours :) They're all hidden now, so I'm sure most people will not have seen anything. I certainly don't want to discourage early submission.

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:13 pm
	Thank you :)

nitrofurano Joined: 01 Aug 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:14 pm Last edited by nitrofurano on Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:16 pm; edited 1 time in total
	i'm a bit "uncomfortable" with the e-mail attachment sending process, since i'm very "revision-focused" (i never know if i can have a "final" and "working" version done, and i'm never "satisfacted" with the versions i made) - can we send revisions via e-mail over and over again?

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:15 pm
	I did it already, but I wasn't planning it...

nitrofurano Joined: 01 Aug 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Fri Mar 13, 2015 10:25 pm
	tibone wrote Considering i only know javascript and php, i think even z80 hardware is a bit out of my grasp. (especially for this year competition). But i would love to learn, i just don't even know where to start. When will someone release a html5 > sms converter? :) Then i can make some games, hehe would be an idea - and i think haroldoop made some converters, btw? ;) and see that the development tools might increase overtime - i'm using Boriel's ZX-Basic Compiler (and probably haroldoop might use it too ), and there are people using WLA-DX, Z88DK, etc. - and probably converting from Arcade Game Designer (ZX-Spectrum), SEUCK, etc., might be not impossible at all, and probably converting from html5 would fit somewhere there - once (around 10 years ago) i wanted to start making a HotSoupProcessor (Onitama, Nec-PC88) compiler for z80 - would be cool even if we could compile code from Scratch to z80! :D (i guess haroldoop is doing this as well, or something like? )

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 10:00 am
	You can send as many revisions as you like, we'll post the latest one on the 27th. After that you can post updates on the forum or on the homebrew page. You should still try to finish before the deadline, though...

nitrofurano Joined: 01 Aug 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Sat Mar 14, 2015 2:10 pm
	Maxim wrote You can send as many revisions as you like, we'll post the latest one on the 27th. After that you can post updates on the forum or on the homebrew page. You should still try to finish before the deadline, though... thanks! :)

nitrofurano Joined: 01 Aug 2012 Posts: 318 Location: Porto, Portugal	Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 4:16 pm
	another question: can we submit games as team, and with a version of the same game released to other platforms? (a bit like when Jon "Viejo Archivero" Cortazar submitted msx ports of Mojon Twins games to Karoshi's MSXDev contest)

Maxim Site Admin Joined: 19 Oct 1999 Posts: 14563 Location: London	Posted: Sun Mar 15, 2015 7:05 pm
	Ports are fine so long as they're not excessively simple.

BrambleG Joined: 08 Apr 2014 Posts: 34	Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 9:57 am
BrambleG Joined: 08 Apr 2014 Posts: 34	My game's going pretty well so far. It's just about finished, I just need to add a score counter and see if I can figure out how to do sound; If not, I'll leave the sound out. Then I just have to finish my box art, and it'll be done!

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3586 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 10:05 am
	PSGlib? ;)

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 11:28 am
	If you need inspiration regarding a simple way to keep and display score, I recommend Jonathan Cauldwell's guide: http://www.smspower.org/Development/GettingStarted I look forward to try your game!

BrambleG Joined: 08 Apr 2014 Posts: 34	Posted: Mon Mar 16, 2015 1:07 pm
BrambleG Joined: 08 Apr 2014 Posts: 34	Cheers for the advice, you two. I'll take a look at PSGLib and the guide when I can. I should say that this game isn't an original idea, it's a reworking of a modern game to the SMS. Hopefully that's alright.

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