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2011 Coding and Music Competitions
Post Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 4:59 pm
Last edited by Maxim on Fri Mar 25, 2011 11:29 am; edited 6 times in total
After a year off *cough*, this year we will be having another set of annual SMS Power! Anniversary Competitions.

Prizes

Four Five Master Everdrive flash cartridges with SD card and USB support for live upload of homebrew code to a Master System!



We have real prizes! KRIKzz has just started offering the Master Everdrive Master System flash cartridge, and has kindly donated one as a competition prize. Our kind community members (well, 11 of them...) have donated money for four more (unless we get some more mystery huge donations).

We shall offer two for the music competition and three for coding.

Music competition

Make something musical that is also Sega 8-bit related. It can be a remix of a game tune, or an original composition for the PSG, or just an original composition in cool 8-bit square-wave style. Check out previous competitions for examples.

http://www.smspower.org/Competitions/Music

Also check out

* Mod2PSG2 - a tracker that makes music for the SMS/GG
* XPMCK - an MML compiler that can target the SMS/GG
* OverClocked Remix - loads of video game remixes
* 8bc - lots of new chiptunes

Coding competition

Write some new and original software that runs on a Master System, Game Gear, SG-1000, SF-7000... and impress us all. Here's the old competitions:

http://www.smspower.org/Competitions/Coding

Here's the homebrew listings, so you can see what's been done and how your cool idea is still waiting to be done...

http://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/Index

Learning to code on the Master System is fun! And really hard! Suffer with us all together!

Deadline

All entries must be received by 23:59 GMT on 26th March.

How to enter

Email your entry to

competition@smspower.org
* Put the text "competition" somewhere in your subject line to avoid spam filtering.
* Tell us your forum name and the title of your entry.
* If you want to include a comment then write it in a text file with the same name as your entry.
* File format must be one of: VGM, MP3, SMS, GG, SG, SC, SF7. Render non-standard music formats to MP3 and include the original file.
* One zip file per entry containing all accompanying files, unless you only have one VGM or MP3 anyway
mseverdrive_b.jpg (173.09 KB)
mseverdrive_b.jpg

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Post Posted: Wed Jan 12, 2011 5:12 pm
More competition discussion to come...

As ever, early work is a great idea. Competition deadlines may not be extended this year!

We are currently planning not to have prizes. Sorry, we're all really busy and don't have the resources to devote to it. But the glory... that is still up for grabs.
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Post Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 12:06 am
Well, count me in! =)
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Post Posted: Sat Jan 22, 2011 7:57 pm
Likewise. I noticed this nice and early this year so should have something to enter (already started on it). :)
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 3:02 am
Cool! Guys don't hesitate to post brief reports or infos about what you are doing if you feel so, it may motivate other people to jump in :)
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Post Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 12:02 pm
Mmm... okay...

I still didn't decide the type of the game that I will make, but right now, I'm working on a quick and dirty script that will take .asm files generated by ZX Basic and 'massage' them into a format that can be conveniently included into WLA-DX. If anyone is interested in the (very much unfinished) alpha of the translator, you can grab it from here.

Naturally, I intend to use this to make a game for the competition. =)
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 12:09 pm
I've got my entry in! :)

It's an orchestral arrangement of the first round of Wonderboy In Monsterland. :)
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 1:27 pm
gregglesaurus wrote
I've got my entry in! :)
It's an orchestral arrangement of the first round of Wonderboy In Monsterland. :)

I love that soundtrack so much, looking forward to it :)
First round from SMS or Arcade version? (the track order is different !)
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 7:33 pm
Excelent, you can expect me in either.

About the prizes, as long as we get a frontpage mention, i think it's enough.
It's not like anyone is in for the millions for dollars.


Can we submit more than one song ?
I was thinking about entering 2, but no more than 2.

I have one that is about.. 90% done.

And if i finisht the other one i just started.. can i also submit it ? Or i have to choose between both ?


Anyway, hoping for some great entries, as usual.
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 10:09 pm
For those of you who have a tracker that can spew out .it files, it2vgm might be useful. You'll need to generate a pack first. I've done some somewhat impressive stuff with this before (LOOK, ARPEGGIOS!).

Of course, you'll need Python 2.x to use it, but you should have Python 2.x installed anyway because it's a great programming language to learn and it comes in handy at times when you need to quickly hack stuff up.

Notes:

  • Txx actually DOES work.
  • Samples are ignored in the converter, so just use the pack.
  • Apparently modplug vomits when it encounters the pack. I think you'd want to either A: add a couple of \x00 bytes after the list of pointers, or B: not use modplug and do your part to not pollute the .it format any worse than it has been (OpenMPT is fine, though, but I don't know if it loads the pack or not).
  • First three channels are squares, fourth channel is for noise.
  • If the note used for noise isn't A-4, A-5, or A-6, it links to the third square channel when it's converted. Pitch slides on this channel are ignored in the converter.


The patch you might need in smspackgen if you're using modplug:
smpptrbase = fp.tell()
fp.write("\x00"*(4*3))

change it to:
smpptrbase = fp.tell()
fp.write("\x00"*(4*3+2))


Also, unlike that LSQ player I did some years ago, this thing I did in Python is a lot more accurate (note: you might want to be using not-windows for this, it also uses OSS). Yes, LSQ was pretty awful, and I don't know if I still have it.

EDIT: Is it OK to enter something I started... can't quite remember but some time last month?

EDIT 2: Is SGC permitted, or doesn't that quite have the right level of adoption just yet?
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2011 1:55 am
tibone wrote
Can we submit more than one song ?
I was thinking about entering 2, but no more than 2.

Yes! But make sure all are satisfying, no shovel submission :)
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Post Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2011 8:29 pm
thematrixeatsyou wrote
EDIT: Is it OK to enter something I started... can't quite remember but some time last month?

EDIT 2: Is SGC permitted, or doesn't that quite have the right level of adoption just yet?

#1: Yes, so long as it is not already released.
#2: Yes, so long as you provide an MP3 render. Of course, a VGM render would also be good :)
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Post Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 4:59 am
Bock wrote
gregglesaurus wrote
I've got my entry in! :)
It's an orchestral arrangement of the first round of Wonderboy In Monsterland. :)

I love that soundtrack so much, looking forward to it :)
First round from SMS or Arcade version? (the track order is different !)


SMS, of course. :) It pwns the arcade version - musically, at least - imho. :)
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Post Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 9:41 pm
On the other hand, am I allowed to, ahem, "shovel" a piece of music which I haven't quite finished/released yet (it's going into the Battle of the Bits Winter Chip 6 thing) for the code side of the competition?
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 9:29 am
You mean use a piece of music in your code entry that's going to be used elsewhere later? I don't have a problem with that, traditionally code entries have non-original music anyway :)

(My planned entry will have no sound at all...)
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Post Posted: Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:24 am
Update: we have prizes! We also have a fundraising widget annoying you on every page!
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Post Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:33 pm
Voila. I chipped in. :)
I'll see if i can whip something up for the competition.
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Post Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 3:31 am
Hmm looks like we'll have at least 4 flash cartridge to give to winners! We can announce that already, I wll ask Igor for a picture with 4 cartridges.
Should we aim for $480 to get 6 ?
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Post Posted: Tue Feb 22, 2011 8:17 pm
Why is the donation chipin status alternating between 9 and 8 contributors ? Fake niners ?
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Post Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 4:02 am
Niloct wrote
Why is the donation chipin status alternating between 9 and 8 contributors ? Fake niners ?

I think their widget is served from different servers and not always up to date. Recents contributions appears sometimes, sometimes not, but the correct is 9 indeed.
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Post Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2011 12:38 am
Game submitted :)
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 8:30 am
Four days left and the entry is far from complete (yay for me being useless at time-management) - but we'll have something to show (which will probably be submitted mere seconds before the deadline).

This thread has been worryingly quiet as of late... Is anyone else submitting an entry to the coding competition (apart from Wickeycolumbus :))?
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 9:28 am
There's more entries I didn't post yet, I think 1 coding and 2 music.

I'm officially out of this year's competition, all I have done so far is make a font. Also, coding for SF-7000 is hard! You have to manually allocate the data on disk and assemble the disk image by hand, no current assemblers seem to help with that. (Well, one alternative is to write a file system...)
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2011 10:18 pm
I also have nothing to show so far, except for two very much unfinished tests... well, at least I learned Python in the process... XD
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:34 am
I tried, but I don't think I'll have my entry ready to submit. Actually I know it wont be. It's a bit of a shame, but I've learned a lot in the process so that's huge for going forward :) I may still try to get enough to have basic navigation of the platforms to submit, but even that doesn't look too plausible currently. If anyone's interested in more info (WIP screen shot, technical info, etc) although, I'm not sure if any of that's against the rules if I do end up getting something to submit before the deadline.
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:26 am
Not against the rules, don't hesitate to share.

And guys remember we have 4-6 Master Everdrive flash cartridges to give away to the best entries. It is a great cartridge for development. You can upload code directly to the running Master System without unplugging anything :)
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:47 pm
Entry submitted.
Spent some time on it. Hopefully it will show.
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 4:24 pm
Just popped over a music entry made with thematrixeatsyou 's absolutely fab IT2VGM sms tool which they posted above in this thread - cheers for making this \o/ - its loads of fun! :O)
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 8:47 pm
Entry submitted for the coding competition. Hopefully it got through, because my email client complained a little...

I can't wait to see what your other guys managed to create!
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Date wrong?
Post Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 10:03 pm
Is the date on the front page correct? If the deadline is 23:59 GMT, shouldn't it be less than two hours now? It's currently saying about 7 hours left.
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 10:11 pm
The front page is in server time which I guess is GMT+5. Call it a grace period :)
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 10:19 pm
I'll be taking advantage of that by adding a title screen for my submission :)
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 26, 2011 11:30 pm
Well, so long as it's in before I finish posting entries tomorrow morning, it'll be fine :)
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Post Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:35 am
I just went ahead and submitted what I have working. Adding a title was giving me trouble. I'm pretty happy with what I was able to learn and complete in the time frame. I'm also glad I didn't give up like I had planed on doing earlier in the week. It's not a full game yet, but it definitely a lot closer than what I posted earlier :)
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Post Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 7:15 pm
I wanted to donate again - I promised Bock i'd donate money from a game he sent me but the box has gone from the top of the page.
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:53 am
NonShinyGoose wrote
I wanted to donate again - I promised Bock i'd donate money from a game he sent me but the box has gone from the top of the page.

Thanks! I got the money, I'll add it toward the sum for the competition fund.
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