MSX platforms me beautiful
category: general [glöplog]
until recently we only had one sole MSX category on pouet, and all was cool and nice and green and fluffy.
then suddenly hitchkr asked for a new category for the MSX2+ and the Turbo-R, because they exist. and a rightous claim it seemed despite possibly not having that many number of productions compared to the original machine which could possibly complicate the search process in the future. and quite honestly i dont really know the differences between them all that well beyond what i read on wikipedia, but sources tell me these machines abound and that the MSX and MSX2(+) arent all that different (a video chip difference away says havoc) whilst the Turbo-R is supposedly a rightous independant big brother but not that supported (demo production wise).
so in lack of inner depth and haste requirement to add the platform i decided to follow hitchkr's revised advice of having 2 msx platforms on pouet: one for msx1 and the other for the rest of msx stuff. which seems to have raised some controversy, with some factions prefering to have it split into msx1/2/2+ and msx Turbo-R instead.
so my question to you, dear pouet glopwhores msx abusers of death and destruction with dark and long knowledge, what makes more sense to have for posterity?
- MSX and MSX Turbo-R
- MSX and MSX2/2+/Turbo-R
- MSX1 and MSX2(+) and MSX Turbo-R
please battle to the death to cast your rightous votes, i'll check back in a week and fix the platforms accordingly
then suddenly hitchkr asked for a new category for the MSX2+ and the Turbo-R, because they exist. and a rightous claim it seemed despite possibly not having that many number of productions compared to the original machine which could possibly complicate the search process in the future. and quite honestly i dont really know the differences between them all that well beyond what i read on wikipedia, but sources tell me these machines abound and that the MSX and MSX2(+) arent all that different (a video chip difference away says havoc) whilst the Turbo-R is supposedly a rightous independant big brother but not that supported (demo production wise).
so in lack of inner depth and haste requirement to add the platform i decided to follow hitchkr's revised advice of having 2 msx platforms on pouet: one for msx1 and the other for the rest of msx stuff. which seems to have raised some controversy, with some factions prefering to have it split into msx1/2/2+ and msx Turbo-R instead.
so my question to you, dear pouet glopwhores msx abusers of death and destruction with dark and long knowledge, what makes more sense to have for posterity?
- MSX and MSX Turbo-R
- MSX and MSX2/2+/Turbo-R
- MSX1 and MSX2(+) and MSX Turbo-R
please battle to the death to cast your rightous votes, i'll check back in a week and fix the platforms accordingly
The shorter the better, i go for #1 :D
my vote goes to 1 single category to cover all MSX prods.
the division as it exists now is strange from a hardware point of view. the differences between msx1 and msx2 are tiny (only the graphics chip changed) compared to the differences between both msx1 and 2 versus turbo-r (which has a RISC CPU that's about 10 times faster, and new sound hw, and new graphics hw). singling out msx1 is like making a separate category for CGA XT demos, and leaving all other MSDOS prods in another.
what makes the msx1/2 situation worse is the (relatively little known) fact that msx is an *open standard*. that means that several hardware manufacturers have built msx machines that adhered more or less to the standards as set by ascii corp and microsoft, but not quite. some currently "msx1" labelled demos will run on machines that are not even considered upto msx1 standard, some "msx2" demos will run on hardware that is clearly labelled "msx" without the "2"... not to mention differences in RAM, drive systems, (sometimes built-in) sound hardware, etc etc. also, it is relatively easy to upgrade msx machines after purchase.
the only split that would make sense from a hardware pov would be between msx1+2 on one side, and turbo-r on the other. this, however, is highly unpractical, since there are only very few turbo-r demos. adding pd games could boost the turbo-r prodlist somewhat, but it'll always be a marginal category.
i could go on spurting more considerations for a long time, writing many pages. bottom line is, in my humble opinion it would be wise to put all msx prods back in 1 category. categories with less than 50 prods in it should exist by necessity only.
my 2 cents.
the division as it exists now is strange from a hardware point of view. the differences between msx1 and msx2 are tiny (only the graphics chip changed) compared to the differences between both msx1 and 2 versus turbo-r (which has a RISC CPU that's about 10 times faster, and new sound hw, and new graphics hw). singling out msx1 is like making a separate category for CGA XT demos, and leaving all other MSDOS prods in another.
what makes the msx1/2 situation worse is the (relatively little known) fact that msx is an *open standard*. that means that several hardware manufacturers have built msx machines that adhered more or less to the standards as set by ascii corp and microsoft, but not quite. some currently "msx1" labelled demos will run on machines that are not even considered upto msx1 standard, some "msx2" demos will run on hardware that is clearly labelled "msx" without the "2"... not to mention differences in RAM, drive systems, (sometimes built-in) sound hardware, etc etc. also, it is relatively easy to upgrade msx machines after purchase.
the only split that would make sense from a hardware pov would be between msx1+2 on one side, and turbo-r on the other. this, however, is highly unpractical, since there are only very few turbo-r demos. adding pd games could boost the turbo-r prodlist somewhat, but it'll always be a marginal category.
i could go on spurting more considerations for a long time, writing many pages. bottom line is, in my humble opinion it would be wise to put all msx prods back in 1 category. categories with less than 50 prods in it should exist by necessity only.
my 2 cents.
I'll go for 3 but 2 is fine too.
Singling out MSX1 from the others would be like making separate categories for ATARI ST and ATARI STE and TT30, that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it ? heheh.
The PC is an open standard too, we're talking about European MSX machines anyway, that restricts the number of possibilities a bit. The only "demi" MSX2 i know is a spectra video and a yamaha models which are rather rare items, all other MSX1 i've heard about have at most different RAM capacities (varying from 8 to 64k) and that's about it, all other modifications don't concern demos anyway (like the Yamaha's machines MIDI plugs).
Also,what about that:
http://pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Wonderswan&order=&x=17&y=5&page=1&order=
is it a necessity or not ?
I still don't see how having one general category for several platforms can make it easier to find entries for a target computer, that concept escapes me.
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the division as it exists now is strange from a hardware point of view. the differences between msx1 and msx2 are tiny (only the graphics chip changed) compared to the differences between both msx1 and 2 versus turbo-r (which has a RISC CPU that's about 10 times faster, and new sound hw, and new graphics hw). singling out msx1 is like making a separate category for CGA XT demos, and leaving all other MSDOS prods in another.
Singling out MSX1 from the others would be like making separate categories for ATARI ST and ATARI STE and TT30, that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it ? heheh.
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what makes the msx1/2 situation worse is the (relatively little known) fact that msx is an *open standard*. that means that several hardware manufacturers have built msx machines that adhered more or less to the standards as set by ascii corp and microsoft, but not quite. some currently "msx1" labelled demos will run on machines that are not even considered upto msx1 standard, some "msx2" demos will run on hardware that is clearly labelled "msx" without the "2"... not to mention differences in RAM, drive systems, (sometimes built-in) sound hardware, etc etc. also, it is relatively easy to upgrade msx machines after purchase.
The PC is an open standard too, we're talking about European MSX machines anyway, that restricts the number of possibilities a bit. The only "demi" MSX2 i know is a spectra video and a yamaha models which are rather rare items, all other MSX1 i've heard about have at most different RAM capacities (varying from 8 to 64k) and that's about it, all other modifications don't concern demos anyway (like the Yamaha's machines MIDI plugs).
Also,what about that:
http://pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Wonderswan&order=&x=17&y=5&page=1&order=
is it a necessity or not ?
I still don't see how having one general category for several platforms can make it easier to find entries for a target computer, that concept escapes me.
3
I vote for one category or then different categorys for MSX1, MSX2, MSX2+ and MSX tR Other systems don't really make any sense.
MSX systems are downward compatible, so you can for example run MSX1 demo in MSX tR, but not MSX tR demo in MSX1.
If I look here:
http://www.passionmsx.org/modules/mydownloads/
I can get the amount of demos:
MSX1 about 90
MSX2 about 350
MSX2+ about 30
MSX tR about 20
Ofcourse not all of the demos are in this database, but it gives some idea how these categorys could be populated.
MSX systems are downward compatible, so you can for example run MSX1 demo in MSX tR, but not MSX tR demo in MSX1.
If I look here:
http://www.passionmsx.org/modules/mydownloads/
I can get the amount of demos:
MSX1 about 90
MSX2 about 350
MSX2+ about 30
MSX tR about 20
Ofcourse not all of the demos are in this database, but it gives some idea how these categorys could be populated.
Most of the demos on that site have nothing to do with the demoscene.
Yes, I think most of the MSX demos I linked to are made by active MSX hobbyists, hobbyist groups and cracker groups, who don't consider being a part of scene. In early days those were distributed on disk magazines and together with game disks. Now internet has become the most popular way of spreading them.
Actually I'm not a scene member either (actually I don't even know how to become one), but I just can't help visiting here as I've seen that for some reason part of the demos have popped up here as well...
Actually I'm not a scene member either (actually I don't even know how to become one), but I just can't help visiting here as I've seen that for some reason part of the demos have popped up here as well...
If you ask me i don't find it annoying to be accurate, it's even helpfull, but maybe it's makes things harder for some people when you upload and select a platform, imho it's already (kind) hard so
(3 would be nice)
I need 24h to think about it
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Singling out MSX1 from the others would be like making separate categories for ATARI ST and ATARI STE and TT30, that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it ?
if you put it like this, it's a 99.9% copy of the msx situation indeed. but you're overlooking the falcon category, which is (imho) clearly big enough to warrant a separate category. tt030 arguably does not deserve a separate category, i have no reason to deny that. but we're talking about msx now...
[quote]we're talking about European MSX machines anyway[/qupte]
unfortunately not, many japanese and even some korean machines made it to europe. in my elementary school class for example, there were kids with philips'es (ofcourse), frankie had a hitbit, martijn had a panasonic, and erik's dad had the big white sony desktop model with two floppies and some tasty videoediting stuff in it.
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The only "demi" MSX2 i know is a spectra video and a yamaha models which are rather rare items
philips and it's subcompanies made quite a few too... sony jumps to mind... panasonic... not the smallest brands, for sure.
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all other modifications don't concern demos anyway
you are forgetting soundcartridges here. in the real hardware msx world, it makes a HUGE difference which soundcartridge(s) you have. not that i suggest to split according to sound cartridge or anything, just an example to show how diversified the msx scene really is.
nyyrikki, i'm happy that a "true blue" msx scener like yourself is contributing to this discussion. it's true that many MSX sceners would not easily call themselves sceners for sure. but when comparing their activities and modus operandi with that of the demoscene on other platforms, it's quite clear to me that a major part of their productions belong here. pouet is about scene in the broadest sense possible, from cracktro to liveact, not just hardcore effect shows ;)
i agree that it's best not to split at all, or if nothing else goes, to split everything completely (so 3 or perhaps even 4 categories). hitch is probably right when he says that a lot of the prods at passionmsx don't fit so well on pouet, but imho that just emphasizes even more that there's just not enough demos to justify a split up.
buckethead: you're dead on. it happened to me far too often that i am looking for an atari st prod, but after loads of searching (and sometimes doubleposting) find out the prod already is on pouet, but some nobhead added it as ste only because it has a stereo modplayer or smth. if it already goes wrong so often on a simple platform like atari, i fear the worst for a vastly more complicated platform like msx.
We had a really similar discussion ages back about how the mac stuff should be categorised. What I learned from that was:
- having a separate category for all the different systems seems like a good idea for sorting them nicely. In theory, you can pick your system, and see only the demos for it.
- in practice, you end up with a bunch of categories with only a couple of demos in them. Plus people don't add demos into every category that the demo will run in (they probably don't even know), so you miss half of the demos thinking they won't run, when they will.
- it's actually better to have as few categories as possible, with splits only for really important differences. For PC, you really do need dos/windows categories, for mac you really need osx/classic. A comment mentioning the exact requirements (or an nfo fiile) can fill in the blanks.
- having a separate category for all the different systems seems like a good idea for sorting them nicely. In theory, you can pick your system, and see only the demos for it.
- in practice, you end up with a bunch of categories with only a couple of demos in them. Plus people don't add demos into every category that the demo will run in (they probably don't even know), so you miss half of the demos thinking they won't run, when they will.
- it's actually better to have as few categories as possible, with splits only for really important differences. For PC, you really do need dos/windows categories, for mac you really need osx/classic. A comment mentioning the exact requirements (or an nfo fiile) can fill in the blanks.
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The only "demi" MSX2 i know is a spectra video and a yamaha models which are rather rare items
MSX2 computers are not rare. These MSX2 manufacturers I know: Sony, Sanyo, Panasonic, Mitsubishi, National, Philips, Sakhr (Yamaha), Talent, Telematica, Toshiba, Yamaha, Daewoo
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you are forgetting soundcartridges here. in the real hardware msx world, it makes a HUGE difference which soundcartridge(s) you have.
Most of the demos use FM-sound and they accept MSX-Music or MSX-Audio. If both are present usually stereo sound can be used. MSX-Audio was the standard solution that came together with MSX2 standard. How ever MSX-Music was a stripped down version that became defacto standard. (Think about SB vs. GUS and you are close)
Some of the older demos use SCC chip, that was delivered with many of the Konami game cardridges. Also some of the latest demos use MoonSound cartridge that has OPL4 with 128KB up to 1MB of sample RAM + Yamaha sound ROM.
How ever most of the demos run even without sound cartridge, but they might be just silent.
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hitch is probably right when he says that a lot of the prods at passionmsx don't fit so well on pouet
I would actually like to know how the demos should be selected here... I know passionmsx has no any standard, how they select. Sometimes even some of the coding examples I've posted have ended up to their list and at the same time some real classics are missing.
Can I for example add info of Uncle from Brazil / Abyss to the database? How about FAC demos? Or even older Genic stuff?
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Can I for example add info of Uncle from Brazil / Abyss to the database?
not anymore... i just couldn't resist adding such a gem, my apologies ;)
basically anything with a clear demoscene heritage is imho worthy to be added to pouet. quality is not really a factor, really bad demos are still demos and thus a part of scene history. same applies to intros, musiccollections, etc. homebrew games should be added provided that they're either made by scene people, or simply really good, or entered in a competition. tools should be added if they're made by sceners, or extremely useful for scene activities ((chip)soundtrackers for example).
i'll be looking at FAC and Genic demos later this morning, something tells me this may become interesting... :)))
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If you ask me i don't find it annoying to be accurate, it's even helpfull, but maybe it's makes things harder for some people when you upload and select a platform, imho it's already (kind) hard so
Most people here don't upload prods they just comment them.
And the most common platform is Windows anyway.
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unfortunately not, many japanese and even some korean machines made it to europe. in my elementary school class for example, there were kids with philips'es (ofcourse), frankie had a hitbit, martijn had a panasonic, and erik's dad had the big white sony desktop model with two floppies and some tasty videoediting stuff in it.
Those are common MSX, without anything particular that deviates from the standard (or nothing relevant for demos, like the video digitizer of the Sony ones).
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philips and it's subcompanies made quite a few too... sony jumps to mind... panasonic... not the smallest brands, for sure.
By "demi" i mean bastardized MSX1, the only models i know deviating from the MSX standard are the Yamaha CX5M-II and the Spectravideo SVI-738 which both have a V9938 gfx chip while being labelled as MSX1 (with a MSX1 ROM). Otherwise all others are following the standard with more or less RAM.
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you are forgetting soundcartridges here. in the real hardware msx world, it makes a HUGE difference which soundcartridge(s) you have. not that i suggest to split according to sound cartridge or anything, just an example to show how diversified the msx scene really is.
What about the DOS and DOS/GUS categories ? They're pretty similar save the soundcard, what if we re-united them, do you think it would make searching easier or harder ? In my book, this will just result in a mess.
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buckethead: you're dead on. it happened to me far too often that i am looking for an atari st prod, but after loads of searching (and sometimes doubleposting) find out the prod already is on pouet, but some nobhead added it as ste only because it has a stereo modplayer or smth. if it already goes wrong so often on a simple platform like atari, i fear the worst for a vastly more complicated platform like msx.
Well if you don't know know:
- The year (A years filter could come in handy on pouet).
- The name of the group.
- The name of the demo.
- The platform.
You're screwed anyway :]
Just open a thread and ask for help like some people do here regularly.
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- in practice, you end up with a bunch of categories with only a couple of demos in them.
If it doesn't result in a major speed issue for the server, what the problem with that ?
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Plus people don't add demos into every category that the demo will run in (they probably don't even know), so you miss half of the demos thinking they won't run, when they will.
As i said, most people here don't add demos they just comments them.
Those who add a lot of prods know the platforms they're dealing with (or so i hope, and there haven't been any major mistake regarding this afaik), and the others just add their own demos so it's not really a problem.
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A comment mentioning the exact requirements (or an nfo fiile) can fill in the blanks.
Considering most older prods don't have any nfo, having a more precise platforms designation would save the extra work of posting a comment or creating a nfo file.
And since we're talking about the MSX it's not like there will be a surge of a hundred new demos coming up all suddenly anyway.
Also, you seem to forget that since pouet have now passed the 50000 references so we're already covering most of the 80's and 90's prods on most of the platforms. Use of this site will (and already does) tend more towards consultation of the prods list rather than adding new items for such old machines.
so what is the solution you propose, hitchikr? please tell me.
Russian roulette ?
Considering most people dealing with MSX just interact with the database in order to download the prods, i would recommend splitting it into 3 or maybe 4 categories (MSX1,MSX2,MSX2+,Turbo-R).
Considering most people dealing with MSX just interact with the database in order to download the prods, i would recommend splitting it into 3 or maybe 4 categories (MSX1,MSX2,MSX2+,Turbo-R).
A theoretical suggestion for future:
How about having actually categories (such as Windows, Amiga, Atari, MSX, MS-DOS etc) and then subcategories under those? You could for example search for all Amiga productions which would return all Amiga demos, or all Amiga productions that contain the ECS subtype and so on. That would solve the msx issues (search for all msx demos, or search for msx demos that are flagged as Turbo-R), or you could search for all OS X demos that have the Universal Binary subtype, or all MS-DOS demos that are not MS-DOS/GUS etc. (you get the idea)
How about having actually categories (such as Windows, Amiga, Atari, MSX, MS-DOS etc) and then subcategories under those? You could for example search for all Amiga productions which would return all Amiga demos, or all Amiga productions that contain the ECS subtype and so on. That would solve the msx issues (search for all msx demos, or search for msx demos that are flagged as Turbo-R), or you could search for all OS X demos that have the Universal Binary subtype, or all MS-DOS demos that are not MS-DOS/GUS etc. (you get the idea)
I was also thinking about sub categories but people uploading prods would complain about the system being too confusing again, i guess.
preacher: thats supposedly in store for pouet 2.0
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i would recommend splitting it into 3 or maybe 4 categories (MSX1,MSX2,MSX2+,Turbo-R)
and we're on 2 now at your request, if i'm not mistaken(?)
i am getting mightily confused here :(
hitch?
What ?
well, last thing you said was that you want "3 or 4" categories. my guess is that this is what you mean:
category 1: msx1
category 2: msx2 and msx2+
category 3: msx turbo-r
or
category 1: msx1
category 2: msx2
category 3: msx2+
category 4: msx turbo-r
correct?
category 1: msx1
category 2: msx2 and msx2+
category 3: msx turbo-r
or
category 1: msx1
category 2: msx2
category 3: msx2+
category 4: msx turbo-r
correct?