MottZilla wrote:
Encouraging development through prizes is not as good as encouraging development through easy to use but powerful development tools.
I personally would be more encouraged with prizes rather than tools.
MottZilla wrote:
The #1 thing I could think of that would help with SNES development would be a complete sound & music driver and tracker allowing anyone to easily add sound effects and music to their creations. The uncertainty of being able to add sound and music makes you less likely to bother developing a complex game as few people would want to play a game that lacks any sound.
I honeslty doubt that it would help.
We have a recent example - two complete sound libraries were made for NES. Not something 'ask that guy privately', but released for public, with docs etc. Very few people use them, because they either don't like the feature set, or want to learn sound programming by themselves (the most common reason), or simply don't want to use someone else's code, even PD one.
There are 2-3 working sound solutions for SNES as well, plus it is generally easier to make your own sound library for SNES than for NES (samples, hardware envelopes).
Main part of the problem with SNES developement (and other comparable systems), as I see it, is in quality content making. A 2600 programmer could draw something that would look nice compared with commercial 2600 games. A NES programmer could draw something that will look not too bad (but inferior anyway) compared with commercial NES games. A SNES programmer that would be able to draw something that matches to general expectations from the platform is a rare beast, and pixel artists not very interested in participating in such things, because they can do the same for a mobile phone game and get paid well. Another part of the content problem is not only quality, but quantity - you normaly would need more graphics for a NES game than for a 2600 game, and even more for a SNES game.