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Alp
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by Alp »

zzo38 wrote:Allow to opt out of prizes.
Or in my case, opt out of receiving credit, with an anonymous entry. For... reasons.
calima wrote:To me, naming it as a game jam would be a branding mistake. Game jams have all had the common features that they are short (1, 2, 7, 10, 14 days) and only accepting content made during that time period. Here we'd have substantially more relaxed rules, seven months and previous work were mentioned.
I agree that it would be unwise. The term "Game Jam" has also become off-putting to many experienced programmers, from the lack of quality resulting from these events. (With projects often thrown together haphazardly, in the last few available hours.)
darryl.revok wrote:NintendoAge community
Speaking of lack of quality... :roll:
If you want to appeal to them, just release: "PONG: SUPER-LIMITED 2016 EDITION" :lol:
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dougeff
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by dougeff »

PONG: SUPER-LIMITED 2016 EDITION
LOL

;)
Last edited by dougeff on Sat Apr 23, 2016 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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infiniteneslives
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by infiniteneslives »

Let's please show respect for the Nintendoage community and its members. There are many good reasons to do so especially in this thread, but one shouldn't need justification for showing respect.

Thank you.

I'm unfamiliar with the term game jam. Based on what you guys are saying there is not much reason to rename anything IMO.
If you're gonna play the Game Boy, you gotta learn to play it right. -Kenny Rogers
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darryl.revok
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by darryl.revok »

infiniteneslives wrote:That would be great! We have no such dedication. Perhaps we need a separate Tshirt thread.. I'm curious on details of pricing based on qty and number of colors, etc.
I'll do it at cost, so the biggest difference in price will be the shirts. I haven't priced shirts in a while so I'll have to double check, but I remember the prices being around $2 for a cheap shirt up to around $5 for a nice t-shirt like an American Apparel. Maybe another dollar or so for consumables. The setup of burning a screen for each color is the biggest consumable expense for what I'm assuming is going to be a pretty small print run.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'd rather go for the more expensive shirt. Especially since I'm not aiming to do this for profit.

It's a hobby I haven't done for a while, but I think I'm pretty decent at it. Here's an example of a shirt I designed and printed:
IMG_0248.JPG
That one consists of two separate color discharge underbases, one being blue (underbase for metal) and one being light brown. (underbase for wood, difficult to see in photo) There are also two halftone layers printed in water-based ink for the details of the image. I like to work almost exclusively with discharge and water-based inks, because I'm not a fan of plastisol or the way it feels.

My press is limited to 4 colors, but I think there's a lot one can do with 4 colors if they're creative.

If there are people who might be interested in buying a shirt rather than getting one as a reward for contribution, maybe it would be worth considering printing extras, and putting the profits toward rewards. I'd be happy with that if all of the proceeds go to the compilation.
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by NovaSquirrel »

darryl.revok wrote:My press is limited to 4 colors, but I think there's a lot one can do with 4 colors if they're creative.
Making something cool with limited resources is a lot of what nesdev is about anyway, so it's fitting :p
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Punch
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by Punch »

darryl.revok wrote:My press is limited to 4 colors, but I think there's a lot one can do with 4 colors if they're creative.
What a coincidence :lol:
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Myask
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by Myask »

Now let me present my entry for NesDev compo 2014...wait, it's 2016?

Hmm. Has anyone tried CMYK as a NES palette? Is the resolution far too low for that to work? ...no, it's that there's also white, which means you have five colors, which means decisions...
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by Punch »

I guess I should start planning for my game right now. If the deadline is new year's, I think I can do something more complex so I should start thinking seriously about the design of the game right now so I can spend time actually making it during the competition.
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NESHomebrew
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by NESHomebrew »

Great ideas so far guys. I will agree that changing it to a "game jam" doesn't really fit. I think that two categories would be good. NROM and Anything Goes.

There had been previous talk of a theme, which is more of a game jam type of format. I think for game jams, it helps to have a theme since you have to JAM as much content into such a short period of time that you don't have time to keep changing your mind on what you are going to do. Honestly I think this fits pretty well with the NESDev compo. As others have said, spending your spare time working on a project for 7 months there is plenty of time to procrastinate. Keeping a goal in mind I think would be useful.

I'd be glad to help again with the organizing, voting and such. I plan on totally revamping the website. Hosted on Nintendoage... lets keep it clean people :beer:
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by freem »

Despite being the guy who tried to enter two projects in the 2014 compo and failed, I still think the idea of a competition is a good idea.

Going through the rest of the thread from the beginning...
infiniteneslives wrote:1- 3months isn't really enough time for most people to create something significant from scratch. 3months is better for something along the lines of a mini game. Mini games are great and all, but if we're hoping for more significant entries a longer timeline is needed.
Agreeing with this for obvious reasons :p
infiniteneslives wrote:2- would be nice to have some sort of annual timeline that can be relied upon. This would combat the time constraint above. If compo entries are expected to be due the same time every year, then people could start whenever they wanted and not have to question when the next compo will be, or if it will occur.
I like this idea in general; however, I don't know if New Year's day would be the best option, due to parties and/or possible hangovers. :p
The 7-8 months deadline sounds reasonable enough.

I have no real ideas or requests regarding prizes/rewards.
Sharing progress (or not) should be up to the author, but I'm not sure if that should include in-progress demos or not.

The idea of calling it a "game jam" seems wrong (based on the multi-month timeline [see calima's post])...
However, I recall miau working on a NES game or two for Ludum Dare, so it's apparently possible once if you know the system like the back of your hand...

In order to get to that point though...
Punch wrote:2 - Create good tutorials (nerdy nights but more polished and with more content); could be for ASM, the C compiler or even Family BASIC (more on that later). Again, this helps to bring more new people to something as daunting as "programming a game that runs on a real NES".
This is a very good idea; the wiki is a great resource, but newcomers won't really have an idea where to begin.
Punch wrote:3 - Create open-source/PD version of Hudson's Family BASIC
This is also a good idea, but not without its caveats (see posts by tepples).
Punch wrote:what about PC tools?
IIRC, this is the approach Shiru(?) wanted to take, but I can't recall the status of the project.

"NROM only" and "anything goes" seems fine as far as category split.
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by dougeff »

I was looking at the 2014 guidelines, and I have some questions. I know nothing is set in stone yet for 2016, but let's run with the assumption that the multicart will be similar if not identical to 2014...

It says 8k and 64k enteries, with a list of compatible mappers, but it's not clear to me how CHR-ROM is handled....

If I were going to make an NROM game, I would assume 32k PRG and 8k CHR-ROM, but the inclusion of AxROM and BNROM makes me think the multicart will be CHR-RAM, which doesn't make sense for NROM...makes me think you should reserve 8k of that 32k for the CHR.

But then, for the 8k entries, does that mean you'd have another 8k allowed for CHR, or would you have to have CHR and PRG jammed into that 8k space?

I guess, how should a standard entry be set up?
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by tepples »

If a game has CHR ROM, the Action 53 multicart builder compresses the CHR ROM data into an otherwise unused part of PRG ROM, and then the menu decompresses it before jumping to the game's reset vector.
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by infiniteneslives »

darryl.revok wrote:My press is limited to 4 colors, but I think there's a lot one can do with 4 colors if they're creative.

If there are people who might be interested in buying a shirt rather than getting one as a reward for contribution, maybe it would be worth considering printing extras, and putting the profits toward rewards. I'd be happy with that if all of the proceeds go to the compilation.
Yeah don't forget background always counts as a color! :) 4 colors + bkgnd is plenty to work with. Honestly I prefer clever designs that only use one ink color. I'd be in favor of making it less effort for your volunteered labor, but that's up to you and the design proposals we get. I agree with better quality shirts too, sounds like in all $10 will cover everything then? That seems like a good price to me. I think it's safe to say other people will want Tshirts, we have time to figure all that out though as we probably won't be ordering the shirts until around the compo's end.

pubby wrote:I don't think I would enter a "half-way submission" contest, due partly to my belief that releasing work before it is finished kills motivation, but that is just me and I am a curmudgeon. Others will probably find a half-way contest to be helpful though, so I say aim high and do whatever you think will work.

Bounties offered by non-organizers would be an interesting way to handle this. People would put up their own money for games/programs they'd like to see made, and then when the contest is over they would get to decide the winner of their prize.
My idea of a half-way point wouldn't have to include submission of a WIP rom. A progress thread that's showing general progress of the game would satisfy my thought. The half-way point 'check-up' had two intents. Firstly to prevent issues like we have had previously were we can't accept submissions due to copyright or other reasons. This would allow feedback to the developer early enough to allow them to modify their game. Secondly that was when I had planned to distribute something along the lines of a 'hardware dev kit'. So it could be made use of during this year's compo. Doesn't sound like such a kit is of interest here which might make be due to none of us are new-comers.
I like this idea in general; however, I don't know if New Year's day would be the best option, due to parties and/or possible hangovers. :p
The 7-8 months deadline sounds reasonable enough.
Yeah new year's day probably isn't the best choice. The months of Dec/Nov didn't sound good either as people are usually busy with holidays, travel, and/or end of semester obligations. Sometime mid-late January would be good.
It says 8k and 64k enteries, with a list of compatible mappers, but it's not clear to me how CHR-ROM is handled....
All CHR-ROM games are converted to CHR-RAM in the creation of the multigame. Contestants still submit standard NROM .nes files, Tepples has handled the conversion for everyone in the past.

I would like to keep the standard submission category a limit of 64KB like we did last time. The final hardware has CHR-RAM so no good reason to artificially limit developer's use of it's benefits by requiring all submissions to be NROM. We can have the limit of 64KB with all possible mappers, but recommend/suggest NROM as it's the popular choice.
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by nicklausw »

So wait, with mappers and the 64k NROM limit: what about UNROM? From what I've seen, it can be 64k.

Or am I being stupid, and the "NROM" in "UNROM" answers this for me?
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Re: NesDev compo 2016

Post by infiniteneslives »

Yes UNROM is one of the several mappers supported by the multi-discrete board/mapper created for action53 cartridge publishing. See the nesdev wiki for mapper 28 for more details.

EDIT: In reality if someone created something larger than 64KB and was interested in it's inclusion on the cartridge we could do it like we did with Streemerz for volume 1. 64KB is more than enough for compo entries based on history though..
If you're gonna play the Game Boy, you gotta learn to play it right. -Kenny Rogers
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