Dragon Meetup 2020!

A place to discuss everything Dragon related that doesn't fall into the other categories.
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tjewell
Posts: 346
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2009 4:58 pm
Location: Cambridge, England

Dragon Meetup 2020!

Post by tjewell »

Okay, I know it's just finished, but while it's fresh in our minds, let's have a think about Meetup 2020!

A few ideas that spun out of beer based conversations on Saturday night:

* Let's make the theme from 2020 'All the Software' - redress the balance after a lot of hardware related stuff.

* Let's make next year's challenge to get all the software from one publisher in one place - Microdeal seems like a good idea. Chris Poacher - you'll have to come next year now!

* Let's see if we can get someone from Microdeal (or who wrote software for them) to come. If people have contacts, I can contact from my museum email to look more official.

* Let's have a tournament! Pick a fast paced game with a time limit and compete for the high score. We can plug a CocoVGA based machine into the big TV that John had his Coco3 plugged into. I'll think of a prize.

* Let's have a software competition - best game in 10 lines of basic (and maybe best game in 256/512 bytes of machine code). Roy, what was the competition you took part in? We can debate rules etc in another thread. Again, prizes.

* Let's book the back room of the Devonshire Arms so we know we've got the space - and do a Pub Quiz perhaps!

* Let's make it 2 days - it was a pain having to pack up on Saturday before the pub. The Museum is very happy for us to run over two days - and it means we can have a more leisurely pack-up on Sunday.

And I think that's it - let's debate in the follow up posts!

Cheers,
Tony
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unumlapis
Posts: 103
Joined: Sat May 04, 2019 11:29 pm
Location: Malmo, Sweden

Re: Dragon Meetup 2020!

Post by unumlapis »

Great suggestions above and what could be added as well to get a bigger involvement would to have:
  • Graphic competition - While there might not be any good graphical software available for the Dragon one can still produce something on any other platform and the convert and adapt it for the Dragon. This itself will be a challenge to get something to look great
  • Music competition - It on this years Meetup that the Dragon really can produce some great audio if done using assembler and there could also be several categories where you're using the native 6-bit DAC including using mods such as the Game Master Cartridge which utilize the TI SN76489 Digital Complex Sound Generator which sounds really awesome which was also demoed at the meetup.
  • Demo competition - As seen already on the Dragon Archive there are a few who have done some really nice demos with inspiration from the C64 and the Amiga scene. This category I think could really push the advanced programmers to show case what can be done with the Dragon.
While the last two category suggestions would be of the more advanced one, I think it would benefit the community to support the development of new tools and as well simple hardware kits to support for example the TI SN76489 which can be bought for a tiny amount as project boards for the Arduino and the Rpi and most likely would be quite easy to adapt for internal hardware modification to avoid the cartridge. For the music it would be an awesome project to create some nice supporting tools similar to the SoundTracker/NoiseTracker on the C64.

Also, suggestion that people from abroad and who can't be on-site would be able to submit the contributions as well.

Oh, of course can we ensure that this could be streamed as well?

Any local retro podcast people who could attend as well?
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