MRC Snowfall Challenge

It's almost December which means winter, Christmas and short dark days in which it's tempting to use your computer(s) even more than usual. As we all know, the MSX is a lovely computer system to develop for, so the MSX Resource Center challenges you to do exactly that.

What's the challenge? We would like you to create a demo for the MSX computer which contains an effect in which you can see snow falling. You can do this in any programming language you like: BASIC, Pascal, C, Assembly, DM-System2, NestorBASIC, Kun-BASIC,... it doesn't matter as long as it works on real MSX computers. Same goes for system requirements: you can do it on an MSX1 with 16kB RAM, but you can use any configuration up to a MSX turboR with 4096kB RAM, GFX9000 and MoonSound. If you want to add other demo-elements like a scroll or an animation: feel free to do so!

If you need other people to help you with graphics or music, if you want to know how to create such an effect or if you want to talk about what you're working on, head over to our development forum and start a forum thread about it. On our forums many experienced MSX developers can probably help you out.

The rewards? Well, first and foremost we will pay a lot of attention to every entry that is submitted by putting it on our frontpage and in our downloads database. The entire MSX Community will have a look at your submissions! Second, some entries will win interesting prices. We will not (only) look at the quality of the code, also originality and circumstances (e.g. programming languages and system requirements) will be taken into account. To make things even more interesting: We will even pick one or two winners randomly, so every entry could be a winner. So, by sending in a submission you can win one of the following prizes:

• ASCII MSX Magazine 2
• Toshiba MSX-Audio
• One of the two PSX controller to MSX joystick connector convertors

So experts, beginners and people who never even coded in BASIC before: grab this oppurtunity and join the MSX Resource Center Snowfall Challenge!

You can send in your submissions until January 5th, 2004 by mailing them to snowfall@msx.org