If you see one line below that, it says "5 tracks per file". It's saying a person may submit two files, not two songs. Basically, they want you to combine all your original entries into one NSF, and all your covers into another.
On the website, if you click "cover" you can submit one NSF full of covers. If you click "original" you can submit one full of originals. Click the "help" bat if you need clarification (there is a good diagram of how to fill it out, but also try google translate which does an okay job on it).
But anyhow, given the number of submissions in previous years, I'm amazed they actually allow multiple tracks. There is going to be a lot of listening to do!
So a person can submit anything as long as it's 5 or less covers or originals, but they must be in a single NSF. Ok, I guess that makes sense. Damn, I thought this whole time that it had to be at least one of each. Too bad I didn't know that sooner. If I start now, I may be able to at least submit a single cover. I have alot of ideas for original stuff, but I still want to get alot better at originals before I go throwing those around.
That new 'one NSF with 5 subtunes' rule sort of upsets me, though apparently I'm the only one who feels that way. I quite liked the previous ruleset that allowed submitting a total of 5 entries, since it made it possible to use one expansion for each, for instance. But under the new ruleset, your only option if you want to do that is to use ppMCK. Not that I'm unfamiliar with it, it's just needlessly prohibitive to those who wanted to do that (e.g. me). It's not such a big deal, but I didn't think that change was necessary - why change a successful recipe?
Unless you're using a lot of DPCM and different expansion chips well then yeah this is pretty unfair
Yes, this is my point exactly! With Famitracker (mostly a westerner's tool) you're forced to use the same single expansion for all five of your tracks, whereas ppMCK (which most Japanese people use) allows any and all expansions to be used at once in a multi-track NSF. So essentially this rule is unfair and favours the Japanese, in a way.
Don't worry guys, I'll vote down multi-expansion NSFs by principle this time around.
(They do annoy me, and they tend to be overly saturated with sound, not to mention I can't even open some of them sometimes, so yeah, I do have a legitimate reason to vote them down, LOL)
Well you know what this means? Requesting to have something like more than one expansion used per FTM in Famitracker.
Multiple simultaneous expansions are already supported internally, but they're disabled until the Sunsoft 5B is implemented.
In response to the whole multi-expansion debate, I really don't see what the fuss is about. I know it's a matter of taste and all, but taste shouldn't really be part of the judging process of anything anyway (I'm referring to "downvoting NSFs with multiple expansions on principle"), at least in my opinion.
Besides, there are excellent NSFs which used all five expansions (Robokabuto's work springs to mind), just like there are appalling VRC7-only tracks. Using more channels does make mixing more of an iffy proposition, and it's not hardware-supported, but it doesn't make an NSF instantly bad (or heretic, as some so-called NES purists like to claim).
Using more channels does make mixing more of an iffy proposition
This is pretty much what I mean. Most of the multi-expansion NSFs I've come across are really badly mixed, not to mention they feel too cluttered, too many things happening at once just because it's possible.
Well, multiple expansions is already requested. What I'm talking about is to not be limited to only one expansion per FTM (e.g. having one song in the FTM as VRC7, but not being able to switch to something else if you want to for another song).
