I haven't had time to make update that I've needed to lately and I apologise for that. There have been some updates to the main topic to be made note of. There was a mistake made and the Big Community trophy should not have been on there. We have removed that from the list of trophies as Big's cross-species relations will NOT be tolerated in this contest. It should also be noted that we've failed to mention our newest judge that I chose to add on this year, SuperEgg. I added him because he's a good friend of mine (aka favouritism), a more than capable hacker at this point, and also because he's a complete asshole which I think that would be entertaining to have present in the judging process. Here is a copy of his introductory post made on SSRG that he can't make here as he was banned for the excessive use of various racial slurs: On that note, I do play favourites and I also accept bribes. Bribes, however, are only accepted in pills of the rave drug, Ecstasy (must be good pills -- not piperazines or speed, molly is also acceptable), or in grammes of mephedrone (MeowMeow). Please PM for shipping details. ~Julia / Ayla
I was wondering: Am I allowed to submit my hack again, although it is 100% identical to the one from last year?
Ayla will of course pay you in the best thing possible - look at all of this money! Anyway, the contest isn't being neglected in any way as Cinossu is working hard on the contest website. Maybe he'll show some screenshots at some point...
Yes. But of course!! What else would they be bribing me for?? >_O That would be amazing. The hacking contest's website has never looked so good. Cinossu has done a spectacular job!!
Does that mean we can bribe Shadow Fire with "special favors"? Not that I'm submitting a hack or whatever, but hey. "Special favors".
Eh, why not.. a small one, because it's still not finished and bits might change.. (I used S1EE as an example here, it isn't being entered into the contest. No getting your hopes up this year, guys. :P)
Just a quick question: Are hacks of modern-ish games (Sonic Advance, Sonic Adventure, Sonic 4) allowed? That's my best field at the moment, just higher up than my MD hacking...
Just so everyone knows, things are on the way for the SHC website; work has been stupid-busy and free time to work on it has been at a minimum, however progress is being made and, after a few more things to add and some testing, it will be ready to go. In order to whet the appetite, have some screenshots of the website as it is right now.. The "About" page, giving an overview of how the whole thing works, as well as details on how to enter, the rules for this year, how to set up your entry, each of the trophies for this year, etc. Make sure to read through this section in its entirety, as there are some things that have been changed around this year that you will want to be made aware of. A quick peek at the lovely trophies on offer this year. Each one has a dedicated image that'll be customised for you displaying your entry's name and your own should you win, giving you something nice to shove into your signatures and such to show off to everyone else. :U The entries page, minus filtering right now as that's what I'm adding to it right now. It's empty, because there's no publicly-viewable entries yet, and I'm not logged in to see my own test ones.. .. so let me log in, and there are my two WIP entries used for testing. Don't worry, you don't need yet another account to sign up to with this thing, you can log in directly with your Retro or SSRG forum account for this. Please ignore the (X) images, as I didn't upload images yet for these entries and that's just the placeholder for images that don't yet exist. Now we get to the entry pages themselves. Set up like a mini-wiki entry, you can write in here what you like. It's all in-line editable, and the text already in there describes just what you can do and how you do it, so I'll save that for you to read once it's available to you. You set a title screen/main image on the left, and you can choose your "Quickstats" to let people know a little bit about your hack at a quick glance; audio changes, visual changes, layout changes, etc. etc. You can look in more detail about these later, too. The various other sections of the entry pages. There's a gallery for additional images and any youtube videos you upload; you upload images directly on to my server with this, but link to youtube videos as it's going to eat away at my bandwidth enough just to have ROMs being uploaded(!) Each can have a caption customised the same way as all text. There's a section for Downloads, to actually upload your entry or link to an offsite place for it. I am only allowing those whose entries are Mega Drive/Genesis ROM files to be uploaded directly on to the server; when you upload please upload your ROM file unzipped as it will take care of everything else for you. If you don't have anywhere to host your file and your entry is not a Mega Drive/Genesis ROM file, contact me via PM and we'll see what we can do about getting your entry up somewhere, possibly snuck in on the server as well. The options will only be available to you, the author of the entry, as those viewing an entry will only see a section with a download button should your entry be Public or a message about it not being so should it be Partial-Private. Then there's a section for Voting; this will go unused as of initial launch, but it is fully coded and working already. When it is time to vote on the Community Trophies, this section will show all the trophies available to vote on and allow you to directly on the entry's page itself. It's as simple as a single click, with a warning if you've already voted on an entry for that trophy. You can't, obviously, vote on your own entry. While you can get around this by having multiple accounts, we can see every single vote that goes in. Voting on your own entries in this way (or any way) will result in a disqualification and all of your entries removed from eligibility. The penultimate section is visible only to you, the author of the entry, and this is where you set what type of entry yours is. It is set as Incomplete as default, letting you edit to your heart's content until it is ready. Once it is, you can choose Public or Partial-Private and it will become visible to the public once public viewing of entries is enabled. Entries that are still set to Incomplete once public viewing is enabled will no longer be eligible for the contest, so make sure to set the finalised status before then! There are a number of requirements to meet before you can finalise your entry, and they are shown in the About section, so you can get familiar with them when it's all live. And, finally, there's a Comments section, letting you all talk about the entries on their page. Please don't start flamewars or be stupid on these, as they will be looked at and moderated. Authors can moderate their own entries too, but Admins/Judges have the final say and can remove Author-moderation powers should they be abused. So.. yeah. There's a quick overview. A few things still to go, and then it'll be all up and ready for you all to get cracking with submitting stuff.
The site looks great so far! Just out of curiosity, will there be a link to this on Retro via top of the page?
A relay, but related. From one of the judges: [quote author="SuperEgg"]While on the topic about the contest, I have some exciting news. Every year, MegaGWolf does a review of all or most of the games in the contest. This year will be no different, but the judges and I came up with a brilliant idea that we hope ya'll will like. After a few pm's and discussion with the other judges, we've all came to the conclusion that the contest could use the publicity and could potentially show the rest of the internet that the Sonic community isn't a community filled with a bunch of whiny bitches who complain and argue over everything. Though, the said description is pretty accurate, we can help get rid of that notion. Another reason for this move is that it would be good to let the general public know of the contest. Though MegaGWolf's Sonic Hack Showcase vids garner thousands of views, it would be nice to have added expose, especially to our American audiences. So this year's contest will also be featured and have hacks reviewed by rising Youtube star, Juan Ortiz, also known as SomeCallMeJohnny. Though this idea seems unorthodox, it's actually something that's been tossed around for years. The realization that the contest needs more media exposure was enough for me to take the initiative to look for a potential person to help in my endeavor, and with the 100k+ views that Johnny gets, it's no surprise why we selected him. We hope that this partnership will be a prosperous friendship, and will not just help out the community, but to also help advance his channel as well. After all, we have to also offer something on our end as well. For those who don't know Johnny, he is a pretty cool guy. His main channel, SomeCallMeJohnny, is where he reviews a variety of games. He has another channel, BrainScratchCommentaries, where he and a few of his friends do "Let's Plays." He is well known to be a Sonic fan, and on plenty of occasion referenced Sonic Retro and the community, which in itself was a reason I asked for his support. When the contest is up and running, he will make a mini series of videos of the hacks at the contest. So, it's just an extra incentive to make your hacks in the best, tip top shape for contest. I will have a link at the end of this post, that way you guys can see his channel and see who will be reviewing your hacks and giving his two cents to the general public. Anyways, I hope this move is well recieved by you guys, and as Cinossu would say, "Ready, Set, Procrastinate!" - SuperEgg Link to Johnny's channel: http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg83RGdRpwfvoFEuE2zWKZA[/quote] And, to answer: As in, the main bar at the top? Probably not, but there's this topic, and it'll probably be frontpage'd too.
A front page entry when the site is launched would be appreciated. But yeah, the contest is still going on, hopefully people have been working hard on submissions that they will submit when the site is up and running. It was said that this contest was going to be different than the previous ones, the contest site is one of the big changes. There will also be a contest week (not part of SAGE this time) with various things going on and hopefully people will be able to participate in the week.
That's... that's awesome. Johnny's convinced me to get interested in games before, so he's definitely capable of doing that to the Hacking Contest. + - It's also kinda funny, seeing as Johnny's apparently applied for membership here before, but was denied.
Iiiiit's time, guys! http://shc.hapisan.com/ Everybody get on board the new SHC website; read, submit, enjoy~
Well I must say, your work on the site graphically speaking is pure delicious, it's so clean and organised as well as pleasing to the eyes, nice work! I'm also excited with seeing what judges we have working this year, good luck guys!
It seems my title screen image for my entry isn't allowed (I tried to upload a .png file and it said the file type wasn't allowed), so I tried to upload another but I now get stuck with a message saying "An Upload is already in process. If you believe this is in error, please try again. If the problem persists, please contact an SHC Judge for further assistance." This won't stop happening either. ...well, I'm a judge and I can't help myself with this matter either. :v:
Hm, a PNG should be allowed just fine.. are you sure it saved as a PNG properly? Also, do a hard refresh on the page with that error; it happens when a variable doesn't clear itself out when it should.
