Logo by Cinossu The 2010 contest may have had its results posted recently, but that doesn't stop the next contest from starting early. The 2011 Contest has had various changes as opposed to last year, be it trophies, judges, submission guidelines and involvement. In fact, you'll be glad to know that for the first time the rest of the Sonic Retro community will be able to participate in this contest, be it submitting your hack or taking part in our planned “Contest Week” which we'll talk about in this thread. First of all perhaps you'd like to know why I made this thread. Well, the thing is that Ayla is no longer running the majority of the contest and as such passed things on to myself. I believe that this decision is going to be controversial to a few people but I am capable of doing the job. I was responsible for the contest results podcast in 2009 and I also ended up becoming a judge in the recent contest, judging them as soon as possible. Ayla is still going to be around, overseeing the contest, so don't worry. In other words, Ayla is still heading up the contest, I'm just the co-organiser. This should clear up any problems over the issue. JUDGES Ayla might not be judging and neither are a few others, but it doesn't matter. Thanks for their time; it's time to move on. Our solid, new and improved judging team will consist of myself, Cinossu, Shadow Fire and new additions MarkeyJester, Dude and Mercury. This team will be reliable and will be able to deal with contest judging as soon as possible in order for us to progress through the contest and get the results out as soon as possible. Judges will be able to submit their own hacks, but will not be able to judge it themselves. Please note that the final decisions are subjected to the Judging Team, and may not reflect your own opinion. Judges may change at any time. TROPHIES This time we are trying to cut down on the amount of trophies we have. In addition to the normal trophies there will be a small number of “Community Trophies” that will be voted for by the public during the Contest Week. Trophies can be added or removed at any time and there is a chance that not every trophy will be allocated. Hidden Palace Trophy Grand prize / 1st place. This is given to the overall best hack in the contest. Wood Zone Trophy 2nd place. Dust Hill Trophy 3rd place. Big Trophy Worst hack submitted. Why was this even submitted?! Green Hill Trophy Hack (or specific level of a hack if non-applicable) that plays most like a Sonic game. Windy Valley Trophy Best art in a hack submitted. D.A. Garden Trophy Best music in a hack submitted. Palmtree Panic Trophy Best level layout in a hack submitted. Genocide City Trophy Hardest level in a hack submitted. 11000101 Trophy Best technical hack submitted. Knuckles Trophy Best new playable character in a hack submitted. Fang Trophy Best new enemy/badnik in a hack submitted. Eggman Trophy Best new boss or miniboss in a hack submitted. Spin Dash Trophy Best new ability in a hack submitted. Carnival Night Trophy Most innovative game play feature in a hack submitted. Emerald Trophy Best Special Stage in a hack submitted. Crystal Meth Trophy Most replayable hack submitted. Robotnik's Revenge Trophy Best new concept based on existing concepts in a hack submitted. Casinopolis Trophy Most entertaining / fun hack submitted. Vector Trophy Most humorous hack submitted. WTF?! Trophy Most unique hack submitted. Twinkle Park Trophy Best 3D Sonic game hack submitted. Crystal Egg Trophy Best 8-bit Sonic game hack submitted. Christmas Present Trophy The best hack submitted that no one saw coming. Tails Trophy Most improved hack from last year's contest. COMMUNITY TROPHIES This year, to make things fairer to the community, we're introducing the new Community Trophies. These will be voted by the public during our Contest Week, which will be explained later on in this post (as will information about how private hacks fit into things). There are only a small amount of trophies to vote for, which are: Hidden Palace Community Trophy Best hack submitted overall. Big Community Trophy Worst hack submitted overall. Windy Valley Community Trophy Best art hack submitted. D.A. Garden Community Trophy Best music hack submitted. Palmtree Panic Community Trophy Best level layout hack submitted. 11000101 Community Trophy Best technical hack submitted. HOW TO SUBMIT This year submissions are a little bit different. First of all we have a new email address which can be accessed by the Contest Team: hackingcontest[@]candiraver[.]com. This allows the judges to download your submissions as quickly as possible and reply to any issues you have. To make things easy for us, we ask that you use the following submission form when entering your hacks: Code (Text): ========================================================================= Sonic the Hedgehog Hacking Contest 2011 Submission ========================================================================= NAME OF HACK: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUBMITTED BY: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ORIGINAL GAME: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONSOLE: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- EMULATORS SUPPORTED: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- FILE: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DESCRIPTION OF HACK: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- TOOLS USED: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- DISASSEMBLY USED: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- CATEGORIES: (Add an X to the categories that apply to your hack) [ ] Level Edits [ ] Art Edits [ ] Sprite Edits [ ] Other Programming [ ] Music [ ] 8-Bit [ ] 3D ------------------------------------------------------------------------- EMAIL ADDRESS: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- MEDIA: (Example: Screen shots, videos, music) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- PRIVATE SUBMISSION: [ ] Full Private [ ] Partial Private [ ] Public ========================================================================= CONTEST GUIDELINES Hacks must be emailed as ROMs, compressed in a format such as ZIP, RAR or 7z. You may enter as many hacks into the contest as you want. There are no limits on the editors or tools that you use in your hack. Simple palette hacks are not allowed, this isn't the Stone Age! No late hacks will be accepted, so get it in on time or we won't include it in the judging. Should you enter a hack with stolen content, not only will the hack be investigated, but we will hunt you down, molest you, your account and your pet cat. Things are subject to change at any time. We will inform you if they do and this post will be updated. DEADLINE This year's deadline for hacks to be submitted is Saturday 23rd July 2011. No late hacks will be accepted, so be sure to get your hack in on time or face disappointment. There will be a period of time where submissions that have been entered successfully into the contest can be updated with new builds for judging, which will be until Saturday 30th July. CONTEST WEEK The intention of this contest is to be more interactive than before. To make things a little bit fairer for the community a Contest Week will take place when we are finished and ready to go. At this time, a website will open where submissions will be able to be downloaded and there will be an area on each submission to rate the hack in terms of the available categories. These ratings will be taken into consideration for the bonus “Community Trophies”, where additional trophies will be given to hacks should they deserve one according to the results. Voting will be open to Sonic Retro members only. For those hacks which have been chosen to remain private, please consider throwing out a few screenshots or videos to show what you have. You can also decide not to show anything at all, but any completely private hacks will not be able to be voted on for Community Trophies. In addition, we might have more events to show, but this is to be discussed. At the end of the week we will have the Live Podcast where our Contest Team, along with selected members of the community, will announce the results of the Contest and offer their views on the submissions. It is an event not to be missed, but it will be recorded for those that do. AND FINALLY We hope that this year's contest is going to run smoothly (and on time!) and we welcome your submission, ideas, comments and such. Your help may be wanted, so if you can offer any of your services to us let us know in this topic. In addition, we have an IRC channel. #hackingcontest on irc.badnik.net. Ready, Set, Go!
For some reason, it never occured to me that there'll be another hacking contest. Maybe I'll be finished by then...who knows. Maybe I should stop smoking :specialed:
Almost every trophy I won this year is gone, but this is good, because it gives me a reason to try harder next year. What does "Partial Private" mean? Like anything can be made public except the ROM itself?
I must say, I like the new line up of judges. While I won't be submitting anything next year, I can't wait to see the results and then maybe some releases :v:
This! I'm not sure whether I'll be submitting anything, but maybe just maybe SCC will be getting somewhere in six months' time
I'll definitely be participating again in this one. Maybe now I'll win something, but even if I don't it'll still be fun. Also I like the new line up of judges too.
If I can get past the mountains of problems that keep getting thrown at me, I should be able to enter this year. If not, 2012.
I'll enter :| Nah, I'm just fucking around =) This year, imo, is the first year the contest has really had its shit together. I'm pretty excited to see how things turn out with the new way we've organised things. Community participation outside of hackers will make this far more interesting to those that don't normally participate in any way in the contest =)
Posting to confirm Lunacy's intent to enter into this year's contest. May god have mercy on the souls of the judges. You think you saw bad things last year... ...phantasm awaits~
But I want to play it D: + - either way its probably hard as tough shit I'm not promising anything this year just to not cause disappointment to anyone (if any) or to myself. By the way, will it be ok if I host small contests sometimes, like a "make a creative idea into a hack in a week" while this contest is still running? OR if anybody hosts something like this, please tell me. I haven't hacked in a while.
While in a state suitable to be entered and judged in the Hacking Contest, it is, sadly, far from any form of public release. When it's released, it'll be done right.
Episode II should be finished by then, maybe even episode III. Any other contenders for the 8-bit crown?
Not that I know, but that doesn't stop someone else from entering. By the way, we're discouraging giving trophies to hacks just because they're the only entry for a certain category. Although it was decided to get rid of a lot of the trophies which resulted in hacks simply entering just to easily grab a trophy (example: Shadow Trophy), a few still exist.
I'll be entering my S1 SMS hack. xP But I know I probably won't win with it, but that won't stop me from entering it. I'll most likely enter a Genesis hack too of course.