nesdev.org

Is there any interest in a coding compo for nes? (nrom)
I'm thinking of hosting one.
We'd have to establish these things:
1.) rules
2.) deadline
3.) i'm probably forgetting something

edit: chr ram now allowed

edit 2: it's on. Rules in this post.

I'd like to see some kind of a prize. Maybe everyone could chip in a little bit for a powerpak or some other cool NESdev-related thing?

I'll probably enter something, depending on how long I have.

As for rules: Compare a GBA competition.

But why no CHR RAM? Do you plan to compile the top entries into a multicart that uses a CHR ROM mapper?

No chr ram because some emulators don't support it. Also i'm not sure if the powerpak does. I might allow it if the powerpak does.

Ian Bell's tank demo is NROM with CHR RAM, and it runs fine on my PowerPak. Change the mapper to 34 (BNROM) and even the most pedantic emulator should support it.

If you're restricting games to NROM, then no CHR-RAM makes sense, because the cartridges don't have it. But why the restriction to NROM only?

If powerpak allows it ok then you can use it.

edit: btw I think it might be a good idea to have a game coding compo....tech demos are fun...for 3 minutes. But I'd like to see more games.

Wow jeroen, you finally got me to post on the forum after 7 months of IRC'ing with #nesdev.

I'm already in one compo ... but maybe something more specific and unusual than "a game compo." A light zapper compo? A compo that is neither game nor demo, such as a utility, or an embedded language interpreter a la BASIC?

hi everybody who's never on IRC but on here.

With utils you run into the issue of very specific uses. Wether they're usefull is very dependent on the user. Whereas a game can in theory be enjoyed by everyone. (stil to a degree taste but less.)

I think NROM GAME is pretty specific, it says make something with only 40k to work with. Using CHR-RAM takes away 8k.

I don't see why not.

I always wanted to make something for a compo, but I don't know if I would be willing to pause the development of my main project for this.

BTW, I'm not aware of any emulators that don't support CHR-RAM. It's a pretty common thing, and a shitload of NES games use it. If there actually is an emulator that doesn't support it, I bet it's not very popular.

CHR-RAM isn't the issue, it's CHR-RAM combined with Mapper 0 (NROM). Some newer emulators may reject it, probably for the same reason they reject CNROM with more than 32k of CHR-ROM.

Are you saying that an NROM board cannot support CHR RAM simply by soldering it in place of the CHR ROM? That is, you'd have to reroute some traces for it to be writable and addressed properly, thus making it not an NROM anymore? If so, it's too bad that emulators don't support CHR RAM with NROM as a simple extension, interpreting it as an NROM-like board with routing for CHR RAM.

I see... Still, I don't know why sometimes compos are so restrictive. Is that so entries will be easier to judge (since one will not be superior to others because of hardware features)?

Even though I don't really understand, the possibility of seeing a bunch of new NROM games is kinda exciting for some reason.