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Saturn Coding Contest

Daniel Eriksson - Mar 3, 2003

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		Daniel Eriksson		Mar 3, 2003
			When we started the Sat Dev section, we talked about having a Saturn Coding Contest. What contest would you want to participe in? There might be prizes. :cheers

		slinga		Mar 3, 2003
			Vote: Free for all Great idea! Leave the contest open ended, I'm sure we'll have tons of creative entries. Besides, the Saturn community is too small for something like original game programming. You might get three entries. On a side note, let's make up special rules. Like you have to make use of one of the Saturn's accessories like the backup cart or the multitap. Also, have all entrants document everything they do, as detailed as possible. After the contest is over, we'll have tons of original notes to grow the dev scene. That way everyone wins. Oh yeah, give a few months for the contest to run, say until June 1st?

		DBOY		Mar 4, 2003
			I would really like to see a homebrew platform game. I was very impressed with CMU's work on Sack of Flour, Heart of Gold. I think one more release would have resulted ina very professionally polished game. I imagine something like that with better graphics would be very doable on a saturn. The thing that makes platform games awesome and a great project is simple, familiar gameplay mechanics and creativity. Every good platform game has some kinds of wacky of cool creative twist ont he same basic concept. An awesome example of this is that Naughty Kokkun Gourmet game on NES. Almost any crazy idea you can cast a side-scrolling jumping hero into can be made into a very cool platform game.

		mal		Mar 4, 2003
			I think you should start with a demo contest and go from there. See what people are capable of in terms of sound and graphics before going any further.

		wonder_k		Mar 4, 2003
			i think not only games should be thought about when talking about a contest. what about a mediaplayer or something with a textbased menu. maybe it's even possible to port some GNU/mp3 code (written in C of course ). right now i'm messing around with mp3blaster, guess by the end of this month i either have already given up or i'm going to release something...

		AntiPasta		Mar 4, 2003
			I'm afraid MP3 isn't possible (at least not high quality)... you'd be surprised if you saw how many times it has been tried (or asked about) in the PSXdev scene, and no-one got it fully working... now I'm not saying that the Saturn can't do it, you can have an edge over the PSX when you effectively use both SH2's, the DSPs and perhaps the 68k, and maybe even the expansion RAM... personally I think a MOD/S3M/XM/etc. player will have more chance (heck, the sound system on its own is fast enough to decode modules) and would be mighty cool as well... anyway I think I'll be participating with either a small demo or a CHIP8 emulator... Keep on coding!

		antime		Mar 4, 2003
			The biggest problem with the PSX is that it can't play uncompressed audio, and compressing in real-time is far too expensive.

Daniel Eriksson

Mar 4, 2003

	
	
		
		
			On a side note, let's make up special rules. Like you have to make use of one of the Saturn's accessories like the backup cart or the multitap.

Good idea, but it might make it harder, and thus, less people might participe. I have no idea on how to program for the multitap. I maybe should read through more of those docs.

It would be very cool though. Id like to create something like Deathtank.

	
	
		
		
			Oh yeah, give a few months for the contest to run, say until June 1st?

Yes, I though about 3 months. That should be ok.

	
	
		
		
			I would really like to see a homebrew platform game. I was very impressed with CMU's work on Sack of Flour, Heart of Gold. I think one more release would have resulted ina very professionally polished game. I imagine something like that with better graphics would be very doable on a saturn.

Indeed, platform games would be a cool idea. It might be a little hard though. You decide... If there is a Free For All contest, platform games would be a possibility.

	
	
		
		
			Also, have all entrants document everything they do, as detailed as possible. After the contest is over, we'll have tons of original notes to grow the dev scene. That way everyone wins.

That is a very good idea! I will put that up on the contest page that im making.

	
	
		
		
			 i think not only games should be thought about when talking about a contest. what about a mediaplayer or something with a textbased menu

Also a good idea. I though about adding Audio to the poll, but i removed it. Might have been a bad idea. Vote on other if you want Audio-programming.

I keep the poll open for some day. I am trying to find some good, semi-rare Saturn game as a prize. Also, Iceman has said that the winner can get a custom title. Any other ideas, please post them.

		AntiPasta		Mar 5, 2003
			antime: That ADPCM thing sucks indeed... strange as the PSX actually CAN decode uncompressed audio but only from the CD... and to think that someone mentioned the ADPCM thing as an advantage the PSX had over the Saturn

		antime		Mar 5, 2003
			If you're playing samples from sound RAM, it is a big advantage. The 512K or however much it has is not that much, but with compressed samples it's quite a decent amount.

		AntiPasta		Mar 5, 2003
			well I think they should at least give you the opportunity to play normal PCM sounds... it's a pain creating proper compressed PSX sound files... just as they could have implemented SOME compression in the SCSP (heck, even my 1990 8-bit Soundblaster can do ADPCM)

		wonder_k		Mar 6, 2003
			you guys are right about that a mp3-player would be hard to do on the saturn but i just finished some gui-related things yesterday night (though it still looks awful only in text-mode ). anyway, i will mess around with pcm tonight. what goes for the MOD/S3M thing: haven't gave much thought to this but hey, i like that idea too as i already have a mod-player core for the 68K. an issue stays: as far as i know now, the sound-hardware only has direct access to it's quite limited own memory - if i did get it right that is. so i really need to leave a lot of features my mod-player has behind. though it's written in ASM far too much optimization is to be done for me to handle in a reasonable amount of time. what about MIDI? anyway, i'd like to do sound for saturn maybe someone whant's to share the fame letting me do sound for some sort of demo or whatever? :smash

		AntiPasta		Mar 6, 2003
			yeah that'd be nice... I'm thinking of writing a 1993-style demo (i.e. Unreal or Crystal Dreams-like), but I know zip about sound programming, nor am I able of composing my own tunes...

wonder_k

Mar 6, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by AntiPasta@Mar 6, 2003 @ 05:48 PM



 yeah that'd be nice... I'm thinking of writing a 1993-style demo (i.e. Unreal or Crystal Dreams-like), but I know zip



about sound programming, nor am I able of composing my own tunes...

well, and i'm the crappiest guy to talk about graphics with. all i can do by now is displaying some polygons as some sort of background layer with text on it for not letting my TUI (yeah, that's TextUserInterface) look too B/W.

guess i'll study some more docs over the upcoming weekend and see what comes out as during the week my shedule is kinda stuffed with things all about my job... too bad...

BTW, what about "saturn related projects"?? the point what i am trying to make is that the current compiler is sure death for (at least) any (of my) development setups. Rhide is nice but isn't to handy when one must debug using soemthing like satourne. ever since i started messing with my old buddy saturn i dreamt of having a nice IDE+Compiler software just like KDevelop. another major problem for me is that no compiler (as i expect after some nights looking) running on linux is out there and i'm too subborn (or stupid) to set one up by my own hands...

PS: going to PM you

		TakaIsSilly		Mar 6, 2003
			Kpit offers a "ready-to-use" Hitachi compiler on a RedHat package: http://www.kpit.com/products/support.htm... Look for GNUSH v0301 Tool Chain and download the one for COFF format. It is fully compatible with the SGL and remaining libraries, as long as paths are correctly set. As for development under Win32, I used a Windows tool called Programmer's IDE+ to keep the code sections next to me(it was a panned window like the one in Visual Studio), and EditPad for editing purposes. A couple of .BAT files allowed simple compile, build, mount and unmount of CD's via Daemon Tools. UltraEdit also comes very highly rated, and seems to be the favorite tool for programmers, since it has advanced setup for compilers... What I really, really miss, is a debug console to know what the heck the Saturn is up to. Even Satourne isn't up to the point in sections like sound...

antime

Mar 6, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by wonder_k@Mar 6, 2003 @ 07:59 PM



another major problem for me is that no compiler (as i expect after some nights looking) running on linux is out there and i'm too subborn (or stupid) to set one up by my own hands...

KPIT's GNUSH... is also available as precompiled Linux binaries (RPM only).

As for IDEs, anything aimed at GCC should do. I just noticed that you can download Hitachi's HEW (for Windows) from KPIT and that the latest GNUSH release automatically plugs into it. It might be worth trying for us Windows users.

wonder_k

Mar 6, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by TakaIsSilly@Mar 6, 2003 @ 06:51 PM



 Kpit offers a "ready-to-use" Hitachi compiler on a RedHat package:



http://www.kpit.com/products/support.htm...



Look for GNUSH v0301 Tool Chain and download the one for COFF format.



It is fully compatible with the SGL and remaining libraries, as long as paths are correctly set.

this seems to me just like the word propriety would describe it best... also the registration does not work. what a dissapointment! *trying to copy a VMU*. thx anyway.

antime

Mar 6, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by wonder_k@Mar 6, 2003 @ 09:22 PM



this seems to me just like the word propriety would describe it best...

Huh? It's just GCC, binutils and newlib in a cross-compiling configuration. As per the GPL you can get all the sources from the same place.

	
	
		
		
			also the registration does not work.

You could try contacting them. I haven't had any real troubles, but their website seems to have some problems with Netscape.

		wonder_k		Mar 6, 2003
			uhmm... yeah.... sorry bout that! i just get mad too soon when i read anything about leaving an emailadress and stuff. i just tried using IE using WINE and that worked. Opera wouldn't do, maybe that submit button made Opera think it points to nowhere... anyhow, i just got an email by them about they are going to contact me sometime soon. what does that mean?

		antime		Mar 6, 2003
			IIRC you'll get a confirmation email, but it's been a while since I registered and the process was a little different then. I wouldn't be too worried about giving them my mail address, so far I've only received a couple of release announcements. IMO, KPIT is definitely a complany with a Clue (except the website problems).

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