Contest Time!
Due to the great demand for the auctioned white Nexts and because not everyone is able to follow in the bidding when people with fewer budgetary constraints are involved (euphemisms galore -Ed.) we decided to retract two white Nexts from the auctions and run two contests instead.
The contests will run until the 30th of April 2025 (final submission midnight GMT) and will be in two categories: Hardware and Software. Initially we thought of doing only games for the software category but the Next is much more than that so we decided to expand it a bit.
There will also be additional giveaways for the 2nd to 5th runners up for each contest (These will be announced at a later date)
Hardware
On the hardware contest you will need to:
- Develop a new or adapt an existing core that runs on both KS1 and KS2 Nexts (that means that you can port an existing core from somewhere else if you like) -or-
- Develop hardware (ie Memory expansion for extra cores -such as BBC or QL for example, MIDI interface, Serial Interface) that can plug in the Next in some way either externally or eternally.
Rules for the Hardware contest
If you’re developing a core this will need to:
- support the Next keyboard fully, not just PS/2
- support HDMI and not just VGA
- provide access to all Next’s hardware (including the SD card(s), ESP, RTC and Joystick ports)
- communicate with the Pi0 and the expansion port
- be Nextified (ie extra colours, audio etc a-la Next) to a degree allowed by the FPGA. In other words you can have a fully nextified core for a KS2 Next but all the above functionality for KS1 with as many (but not necessarily all) functions – In other words similar to the Official QL Core
- ROMs unless you’re the official owner cannot be embedded in the core’s bitstream and will need to be provided externally
- Finally the result must be open sourced
If you’re developing hardware this needs to:
- be open sourced
- be usable in a real life scenario (in other words don’t develop hardware that COULD be used by Core x that doesn’t exist yet but something a user can connect right now to their nexts)
- have a driver that allows others to develop for it even if it’s not for Next mode (For example a memory expansion for the QL core needs to be supported by said core even if the Next core doesn’t support it now)
Software
Software can be anything (application, development tool, utility or game) and written in any language that takes advantage of the full hardware of the Next (in Next mode) or even for the specialised features another Next core could have (for example a game with the extra colours and audio for the QL core).
Rules for the Software contest
If you’re developing software this:
- should support as many features of the Next as possible if Next mode or features of any core that runs on the Next
- (For applications/utilities) should cover a need not covered by other programs and/or improve significantly upon an already existing utility (For example a text editor without document length restrictions)
- (For games) should use as much of the extra hardware as possible, be easily playable and as good looking as possible
- (For dev tools) should run on the next natively
- should be open source
General Rules
- No member of the Next team can enter
- Use of open source tools is encouraged and adaptation of existing open source software is allowed
- Generated hardware and/or software must be a priori licensed to SpecNext Ltd for distribution (ie benefit the maximum amount of users). Commercial release however is not prohibited as long as the aforementioned license and open source rule is upheld
Contest judging
The contest will be judged by a panel of independent experts (which will be announced at a later date) (75%) together with Public Voting via SpecNext.com (25%)
Watch this page for more updates in the upcoming days
