MSXDev'07 specs - discussion

(continued from here)

After a lot of argueing and discussing, it was suggested to continue on the forum.

In the end of the newspost discussion a few larger posts have been made:

wolf_:

If the megarom has a negative effect on entry-count then I'd like to invite last year's participants, who don't compete this year, here to discuss along.

In any case what's clear to me is that there might be two different groups of developers:

- a group who want to make retro/old/small games, truly not meant to be big games (in a way UU and The Cure are exceptions in last year's competition already, not so much for ROM size, but more in terms of gamesize/concept). In a way (I don't mean it very negatively!) this group could be seen as conservative towards MSX1. Which, on its own, is not bad ofcourse.. it's, say, 'loyal'.

- a group who want to squeeze the last drop from the MSX within the limits of the competition. Specs to beat Konami with. That alone is quite scene'ish. It's usually a scene (also on other systems) who wants to beat official companies and softwarehouses by doing the same product in the same quality.. but then as scene, thus 'amateurs'! From this urge to outrule 'the system' as a 'rebel', a lot of initiatives came. So this urge is good. I actually believe the 3d cards on PC (mid 90's) had quite some PC demosceners involved, as those sceners were clearly doing superfast 3d already, years before cards like 3dfx came.
So, as Konami made megaroms, and even 2megaroms for MSX1, you can bet that the rebels want to outperform that. Compression is in vogue recently (thanks to bitbuster), so it's highly appealing for these rebels to actually fit a double sized ROM in a ROM.. (2m in 1m, 4m in 2m). Those are developments I like, it simply raises the quality. From that pov it's highly sad that TNI and XL2s withdrew their entries.
So, this second group could be called 'progressive'.

You could perhaps summarize this 2nd group as MSX2 developers, who also have an MSX2 history, who make insane turns and twists to fit their games into an MSX1 ROM. The first group could perhaps be summarized as genuine MSX1 users.

It's just a theory, perhaps I'm wrong :P

So, towards which type of user was MSXdev '03 '04 and '05 aimed? I think it's clearly the first group, with UU and The Cure being the rebels, because these games would've clearly been MegaROMs if they were produced in the 80's. The interesting question ofcourse is.. 'towards which type of user is dev'06 aimed?' !

If I try to morph JJ's annoyance with >16kb into my theoretical two groups, then he would fit the first one. I think Karoshi is a bit of a mixed bag, and Infinite, TNI, XL2s etc. would fit the second group. Dunno about other participants yet.. forgive me. :D

So, this is perhaps where some of the misunderstandings come from... perhaps.. :P

mars2k:

Wolf, I like very well your analyse and it seems to be in relation with 2 different MSX levels of popularity.

In countries such as Japan and the Netherlands, because MSX2 (and higher for Japan) was a real commercial success, MSX1 development seems not so attractive although you can produce excellent games also on this platform. I remember the remark on Gigamix when presenting MSXdev'2006 : they were speaking about a MSX1 contest although MSX2 is viewed as 'the real standard' in Japan (and when Japanese speak about MSX2+ and Turbo-R, it's from their pov just enhanced MSX2's !).

In countries such as Brazil and Spain where the MSX standard was introduced lately, MSX1 is more populair than MSX2. And we can understand why the MSXdev' contest is first and mainly a MSX1 contest, as it has been created by a Spanish MSX fan and developer. Also in this 2006 edition, the contest is first a MSX1 contest, although for the first time bonus points can be given for extra features, what includes MSX2 (and higher) features.

If I take a look at the amateur revival from the gamer's side, there's also an evidence : the most populair classic games are ... Konami games. Most of them are MSX1 games, but Konami has also released some giant MSX2 games ! As said by wolf, you can see the MSXdev contest as an opportunity to show that amateur talented developers can now do it better on a technical side than Konami ! But other developers will only to create a game with the same level of intuition and creativity than Konami. And in some cases, you can try to combine best of both worlds !!!

I take the example to Konami (and the developers trying to surpass Konami), just to show that MSX1 and MSX2 are not in contradiction, and new games could be developed for both platforms, probably with some differences for the requested features between MSX1 and MSX2. I think personnally that to combine both approaches, the 2007 edition could be the first with 2 contests in one : the 'classical' MSX1 contest and the 'new' MSX2 contest. But we"ll decide that eventually after the final 2006 results, because 'experience leads to wisdom' oO

pitpan:

I really liked Wolf's analysis about the "MSXdev tendencies". I think that it is a very lucid disertation about the MSX situation nowadays. Besides the loyal/progresist contraposition (I consider myself a "loyal" or "conservative" MSX user and developer), I think that there are several elements to be considered when deciding a set of rules:

Bigger specs -> Bigger expectations -> More ambitious projects -> More time required -> More cancelations.

Then, what we've got here is a big dilema. And it is up to the MSXdev team decide about it, of course, paying attention to the community's feedback.

As a programmer, I would say that I want big specs. Well, just bigger MSX1 specs ;) (first generation forever). As a user, I would say that I just want more new games. I prefer a simple but released game rather than a bunch of canceled promising projects.

The original purpose of MSXdev was to revive the MSX1 developement. MSX1 scene was almost dead because most developers were focused on MSX2 systems.

What is positive about it is that it has helped the whole MSX community. Let me explain this: a MSX2 developer that programs for MSX1 has to be more creative, program better and optimize both code and data size. This technical improvements will help any further development for any platform.

I would like to know your views on this topic. But maybe it would be better to start a new forum thread and discuss this subject properly.

So, this is the spot where we continue, in a nutshell: do raised specs for MSXDev'06 scare away developers? Are there two major groups to identify (conservative msx1 and progessive msx2)? What should MSXDev'07 look like?

Your input please.. :P