[Spanner]

Here are the results from this year's Hacking Contest.

Judged Trophies

Hidden Palace Trophy - 1st Place
Sonic: South Island Warped - GHZ Demo by Shockwave

Wood Zone Trophy - 2nd Place
Metal Sonic Hyperdrive by LoneDevil

Dust Hill Trophy - 3rd Place
Sonic 1 Color Contrast by TheInvisibleSun

Green Hill Trophy - Level that plays most like a Sonic Hack
Sonic: South Island Warped - GHZ Demo by Shockwave

Windy Valley Trophy - Hack with the best level art
Metal Sonic Hyperdrive by LoneDevil

D.A Garden Trophy - Hack with the best music
Sonic Tetris by Crash

Lava Reef Trophy - Best level layouts in a hack
Metal Sonic Hyperdrive by LoneDevil

Genocide City Trophy - Most difficult Sonic hack
Sonic UMZ by TheInvisibleSun

Generations Trophy - Best Sonic Generations (or 3D) Entry
Mystic Cave Classic - Sonic Generations Mod (Release 1)

11000101 Trophy - Best technical / proof of contest hack submitted
Sonic 1 FM by Team Valley Bell

Fang Trophy - Best new enemy submitted in a hack
Sonic the Very Useful Engine by VAdaPEGA

Eggman Trophy - Best new boss or mini boss submitted in a hack
Sonic: South Island Warped - GHZ Demo by Shockwave

Spin Dash Trophy - Best new ability in a hack submitted
Sonic and Tails: Double Trouble by FFuser

Carnival Night Trophy - Most innovative game play in a hack submitted
Sonic 1 Color Contrast by TheInvisibleSun

Emerald Trophy - Best special stage in a hack submitted
Sonic Tetris by Crash

Robotnik's Revenge Trophy - Best new concept in a hack using existing concepts as a backbone for a hack
Big's Fishing Derby by flamewing

Casinopolis Trophy - Most entertaining / fun hack submitted
Sonic the Very Useful Engine by VAdaPEGA

Polygon Jim Trophy - Most unique hack submitted
Big's Fishing Derby by flamewing

Tails Trophy - Most improved hack from last year's contest
Sonic 1 Color Contrast by TheInvisibleSun

Froggy Trophy - Best implementation of Big the Cat in a hack submitted.
Big's Fishing Derby by Flamewing

Newtrogic High Trophy - Best entry as voted by the Media Panel
NOT YET DECIDED

Community Trophies

Hidden Palace Community Trophy
Metal Sonic Hyperdrive by LoneDevil

Windy Valley Community Trophy
Mystic Cave Classic - Sonic Generations Mod (Release 1) by JansenM

D.A. Garden Community Trophy
Sonic Tetris by Crash

Lava Reef Community Trophy
Metal Sonic Hyperdrive by LoneDevil

11000101 Community Trophy
Sonic Tetris by Crash

Polygon Jim Community Trophy
Big's Fishing Derby by Flamewing

Big Community Trophy
sonic hard mode by sonic hacker

----

Once again the Hacking Contest has got bigger and better thanks to the Contest Week's interactive participation not to mention the streaming and video reviews done by people such as SomecallmeJohnny, MegaGWolf, Bartman3010, Donnie, Geek Critique, Cobanermani456 and TailsChannel along with anyone else that I forgot to mention. However, it's also thanks to the people who have taken part by submitting to the contest, playing the entries, voting themselves and watching what's been going on that the Hacking Contest is a good ongoing success that gets better by the year.

Hopefully the next contest will be announced in the upcoming months, with some changes being made having seen what worked, what didn't work and how things could be improved this week - all those involved in running the contest will be discussing what is needed for the 2015 Hacking Contest.

This post has been edited by Spanner: 24 August 2014 - 03:43 PM

[D.A. Garden]

A big congratulations to the winners of this year's contest. I found this year incredibly tough to judge but I'm personally happy with the results. My commiserations to those of you who didn't win but remember, there's always next year and I have no doubt that in the next 12 months, some amazing things will be created within this community. I look forward to it.

[Oerg866]

Congratulations to the winrars!

For all of those who were watching my comedic videos about the hacking contest, I hope you had fun!

In any case, I tried to hint at a few points that are actual criticism, most of which I have been trying to communicate for at least 5 or 6 years now.

• Hacks that don't run on real hardware or at least the majority of emulators nowadays STILL are not penalized in the slightest.

And no, "Gens" and "Fusion" don't count. Gens is so inaccurate, I don't even consider it a program that emulates a Mega Drive anymore. It emulates a hardware platform that vaguely resembles a Mega Drive, and is compatible to some degree.

Fusion is meant for playing official, licensed games (this has been stated by Steve Snake multiple times). It lacks a lot of traps that lure in the hell of bad programming that is common in the Sonic community. For example: It doesn't trigger an exception on an address error. Never. Not once will it do that. Snake tries to justify this with some shitty excuse ("Official games never trigger it, so it's not needed"), but there is no excuse for an emulator that calls itself "accurate" to do that. So yeah, good for playing licensed games, not so good for homebrew and hacks.

I have lost track of how many times people have asked what that assembler warning ("Instruction has been word-aligned") actually means... And many people just ignore it.

Unfortunately, there have been a rather large amount of broken hacks like these recently, as far as I can remember the problem was not as severe a few years ago ...

I mean, how hard is it to play through your own game ONCE in another emulator like Regen, Exodus or Genesis Plus GX?

• The quality of this year's entries is appaling.

Okay, while, among the vast amount of joke hacks, hacks with no purpose, hacks with a useless gimmick (like the contest winner... more on that later), pallette hacks or just plain terrible hacks that seem to be actual serious projects, there are SOME good ideas here and there. But my god, the contests 4-6 years ago had productions in it that were on an entirely different quality level.

I mean, it says something when a hack with one level and a pretty much useless time travel gimmick wins the entire contest, albeit not having won a single other trophy. Barely changed graphics, pre-existing music and basically unchanged gameplay except for that feature..... Why did this win, exactly? On the other hand I can easily believe that there simply ISN'T anything better, and this time I've actually tried most of the hacks.

And then people get really upset when someone criticizes their godawful untweaked XM3SMPS music ports.... I mean, seriously?

Are there no full fledged projects anymore? With kick-ass music, grpahics and an all-around pleasant experience? All the megamixes, booms, remastereds, nekos, extendeds, what happened to them?

I'm going to hazard a guess and say, risking a punch in the face, that it has partly to do with whomever took over the contest after 2009/10ish (is that correct? not sure) not nearly being as respectable as Ayla is / was. Ever since Ayla stopped hosting the contest, the interest of the really good guys seems to have faded. Hacking has shifted to the point where we get a large influx of really crappy stuff from our "friendly neighbor sites"...


Let me link you to this thread from jman2050, created way back in 2008. It seems to ring true again.

I mean, you know I'm not pulling this out of my ass, the binaries from back then are there, ready for you to download and enjoy. I know, and so should you, this community can produce much better things than what has been shown this year, and it was able to for at least the last 6 years.


And that's just really sad.

In that sense, get better

Cheers!
Oerg866

[You-Are-Pwned]

Oerg866, on 28 August 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

I mean, it says something when a hack with one level and a pretty much useless time travel gimmick wins the entire contest, albeit not having won a single other trophy. Barely changed graphics, pre-existing music and basically unchanged gameplay except for that feature..... Why did this win, exactly? On the other hand I can easily believe that there simply ISN'T anything better, and this time I've actually tried most of the hacks.

Time travel wasn't the only new feature, it looks like you completely missed the boss at the end of the zone.
In my opinion, although this hack may not have everything in it, it's generally well-made, looks good and eye-catchy (for a design person like me). I voted for Metal Sonic Hyperdrive by Darkon360 for the same reason though, because it feels finished and complete, hands down it could also be declared as a winner. More over, South Island Demo is completely playable and features original content. Only a few hacks were in that state this year.

EDIT: Removed useless inspoilers.

This post has been edited by You-Are-Pwned: 28 August 2014 - 01:47 PM

[JojHeywood]

Spoiler

Shouldn't these be in spoilers? They're unsightly because they're whole paragraphs and it looks like you're just making blank posts.

As for the contest results, I'm glad each one won what they did, they all look well deserving of what trophy they got. Looking forward to next year!

[Dario FF]

Oerg866, on 28 August 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

Let me link you to this thread from jman2050, created way back in 2008. It seems to ring true again.

What a terrible topic. The whole point of making stuff easier for people to have access to is to expand the people interested in the hacking/modding community and make them not reinvent the wheel in the first place.

The more people that aren't programmers/highly skilled in reverse engineering I get interested in modding, the more my job is justified.

EDIT: On-topic, the results are fine and the hacks were pretty entertaining this year. We had a pretty fun streaming session with some friends the weekend of the results checking them all out.

This post has been edited by Dario FF: 28 August 2014 - 01:58 PM

[Paraxade]

Dario FF, on 28 August 2014 - 01:46 PM, said:

Oerg866, on 28 August 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

Let me link you to this thread from jman2050, created way back in 2008. It seems to ring true again.

What a terrible topic. The whole point of making stuff easier for people to have access to is to expand the people interested in the hacking/modding community and make them not reinvent the wheel in the first place.

The more people that aren't programmers/highly skilled in reverse engineering I get interested in modding, the more my job is justified.

I started modding Sonic Generations having basically no programming/reverse-engineering skills whatsoever and not having much of a good understanding of how games work on the most technical end. Now I'm actually developing my own modding tools for completely different games and seeing decent results from it. If the community's attitude had been "if you can't program then we don't want you here", I'm not sure I would've ever gotten to this point.

[Spanner]

I feel like actually replying to this post.

Quote

• Hacks that don't run on real hardware or at least the majority of emulators nowadays STILL are not penalized in the slightest.

And no, "Gens" and "Fusion" don't count. Gens is so inaccurate, I don't even consider it a program that emulates a Mega Drive anymore. It emulates a hardware platform that vaguely resembles a Mega Drive, and is compatible to some degree.
Fusion is meant for playing official, licensed games (this has been stated by Steve Snake multiple times). It lacks a lot of traps that lure in the hell of bad programming that is common in the Sonic community. For example: It doesn't trigger an exception on an address error. Never. Not once will it do that. Snake tries to justify this with some shitty excuse ("Official games never trigger it, so it's not needed"), but there is no excuse for an emulator that calls itself "accurate" to do that. So yeah, good for playing licensed games, not so good for homebrew and hacks.
I have lost track of how many times people have asked what that assembler warning ("Instruction has been word-aligned") actually means... And many people just ignore it.
Unfortunately, there have been a rather large amount of broken hacks like these recently, as far as I can remember the problem was not as severe a few years ago ...
I mean, how hard is it to play through your own game ONCE in another emulator like Regen, Exodus or Genesis Plus GX?

I bet you'd want to force all judges to get Mega Drives, flashcarts and play all the entries on real hardware too right? If you have such a concern over this, why don't you make a guide that could address this? A good entry could surface, with brand new music, level art, bosses etc and you'd just shoot it down because it didn't work on actual hardware. Accuracy does not affect most players who simply just use Gens or Kega Fusion anyway, if an entrant specifies that it won't work in an emulator due to a bug somewhere and specifies that, then that's what we have to work with.

Quote

• The quality of this year's entries is appaling.

Okay, while, among the vast amount of joke hacks, hacks with no purpose, hacks with a useless gimmick (like the contest winner... more on that later), pallette hacks or just plain terrible hacks that seem to be actual serious projects, there are SOME good ideas here and there. But my god, the contests 4-6 years ago had productions in it that were on an entirely different quality level.
I mean, it says something when a hack with one level and a pretty much useless time travel gimmick wins the entire contest, albeit not having won a single other trophy. Barely changed graphics, pre-existing music and basically unchanged gameplay except for that feature..... Why did this win, exactly? On the other hand I can easily believe that there simply ISN'T anything better, and this time I've actually tried most of the hacks.
And then people get really upset when someone criticizes their godawful untweaked XM3SMPS music ports.... I mean, seriously?
Are there no full fledged projects anymore? With kick-ass music, grpahics and an all-around pleasant experience? All the megamixes, booms, remastereds, nekos, extendeds, what happened to them?
I'm going to hazard a guess and say, risking a punch in the face, that it has partly to do with whomever took over the contest after 2009/10ish (is that correct? not sure) not nearly being as respectable as Ayla is / was. Ever since Ayla stopped hosting the contest, the interest of the really good guys seems to have faded. Hacking has shifted to the point where we get a large influx of really crappy stuff from our "friendly neighbor sites"...

You seem to think that people have an obligation to release certain entries every year when circumstances can change and stuff cannot be delivered. You could have mentioned stuff like Sonic 2 Retro Remix and The S Factor that were submitted in previous years, the latter winning the contest twice in a row. Let's not forget the many surprise entries from ColinC10 in the past too. Also in the last two years there have been a rise in non-MegaDrive entries, particularly Sonic Generations mods, because this is what we can do nowadays. We can no longer be restricted to using certain platforms, as long as they are based on an existing Sonic game they will be accepted in the contest. The contest is also a lot more accessible now with interactive participation through Sonic Retro and SSRG (which you mentioned in a recent thread as a dumping ground for failed members and people who couldn't get approved, as well as making statements in the past which resulted in the site staff there banning you making you pretty much a disgruntled, failed user yourself) accounts, as well as more media exposure which helps the contest in the long run.

Why don't you make an entry for next year that meets all that criteria you want to specify?

This really just seems to be a response simply because for many years you tried to get on the judging panel, only for people to threaten to withdraw their entries if that happens, you refusing to judge them if they do not work on a certain emulator, and repeatedly trying to get back in for so many years when you just got ignored or told straight that it wasn't happen.

You can go on about ayla all you want but unfortunately her personal circumstances have meant that she has been unable to judge anything, let alone participate in the contest. Now that the contest is run by people who are around all the time, things have meant that you get the results on a guaranteed date instead of them being heavily delayed. This year, she resurfaced around a week before the contest week happened, and I had offered her the opportunity to return to judging to fill in for Shadow Fire who became unable to take part. She had been given the judging pack, but we didn't get anything back, and despite being connected to an IRC server nobody has really seen her talk in any of the channels. She tries her very best to be able to participate, but her personal life comes first and if stuff comes up there and she disappears for so long, there's not much we can do. The show must go on, but ayla is always welcome to still be involved, nobody would force her out.

Your videos, from what I looked at them, were pretty much a troll attempt to try and attention seek as you have done many times, which in the past has made many people, including site staff, turn on you. It doesn't matter what you're capable of, if you're a Tech Member or not, if you're still arrogant and a twat towards people, it doesn't mean you can use your status to deflect your behaviour concerning the attitude you have towards this contest.

There will be some stuff different with the 2015 Hacking Contest, as we look at what worked and what didn't, if there are stuff that could be done to improve things then it can be sorted out. MegaGWolf has stated that he doesn't have the time to judge any more but will remain on the media panel, so we'll probably be getting two new judges in, whoever they will be will be up to us to look at and ask for their availability.

This post has been edited by Spanner: 28 August 2014 - 02:23 PM

[Dude]

Oerg, your expectations on programming are far too high, because you are a programmer. Here's the thing: when you have one person attempting to fill all the roles of an entire development team, they're going to have to be generalists. This means that eventually something is going to give. Whether it's the level design, the artwork, the programming, or the sound/music, eventually something isn't going to be up to snuff. Furthermore, there *no* contest-qualified Sonic games that are:

A) Open source
B) Written in a beginner-friendly language. Say what you want, but assembly languages are not pleasant to program in.

These two things work with eachother to virtually ensure that only the most tenacious of people will even be able to write code for these games. This disadvantage is going to stick with them and bring down the quality of code across the entire spectrum. This is also why you see so many more fangames than hacks and mods. The toolkits are more user-friendly because they're not reverse-engineering anything.

When you bemoan the lack of ambitious projects, it shows a lack of perspective. Most large and ambitious projects never get finished. Even when they have the most dedicated staff in the world. Why is this? Because we vastly overestimate our productive capacities. I am actually kind of glad we're seeing more small projects. It shows that people are starting to value a finished project over one that languishes in development hell. I know it isn't as exciting to play a bite-sized game.

And for the few of us that *are* building large, expansive projects we have our own entirely separate set of problems to handle. Coordinating a team, getting contributors and ensuring that their styles all mesh in a cohesive way, as well as playtesting these epic monstrosities are all non-trivial challenges. The other important thing to remember is that large projects are built slowly. I've shown off at every single Hacking Contest since SA:Gens started, and I even entered RDX in the ones before that. Each new build was only as different as it was because I spent an absurd amount of crunch time in the 2 weeks before the contest deadline. Most people can't take the time off of work to do that. I'm considering only showing at every other hacking contest just to make sure there's enough new content to make it worthwhile.

This post has been edited by Dude: 28 August 2014 - 02:14 PM

[GerbilSoft]

Oerg866, on 28 August 2014 - 12:08 PM, said:

• Hacks that don't run on real hardware or at least the majority of emulators nowadays STILL are not penalized in the slightest.

And no, "Gens" and "Fusion" don't count. Gens is so inaccurate, I don't even consider it a program that emulates a Mega Drive anymore. It emulates a hardware platform that vaguely resembles a Mega Drive, and is compatible to some degree.

To this day, you *still* have not told me why you think Gens is inaccurate, aside from address exception and the zero-length DMA bug that I fixed in Gens/GS some time ago. Are you willing to actually make a list of all the emulated hardware problems that actually break games, or are you just going to keep complaining? (And no, inaccurate YM2612 doesn't break games, it just means the music quality isn't as good as it could be.)

[Clownacy]

Surely the full-fledged projects are still around, they just weren't presentable enough to be shown at this year's contest? Compare that to some entries being, let's say, 'crapped out in time for the contest'. Of those two situations, I can understand the former, not that I'm trying to speak for you. Off the top of my head, the only full-fledged hack was Hyperdrive, but I'm disappointed that I don't know where the differences lie. I need some drive to play the hack again .

I do agree about the lack of hardware compatibility. I don't care if you can work around it with funny emulators, being incompatible is a show of poor skill and possible laziness (if they've actually noticed it and won't do anything about it). It's like leaving an obvious bug in-game: the player could ignore it, the whole 'if you don't like it don't play it' logic, but it's still there, still there to be fixed. And they didn't.

Spanner, on 28 August 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

I bet you'd want to force all judges to get Mega Drives, flashcarts and play all the entries on real hardware too right?

What the hell, man? Why put words in his mouth? Or am I just missing something?

Spanner, on 28 August 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

A good entry could surface, with brand new music, level art, bosses etc and you'd just shoot it down because it didn't work on actual hardware.

Where does his post say that? Anyway, I've already had my say on this, but I'll try again to make it more direct: Lack of compatibility is as bad as excessive lag, either produced by the lack of optimisation of pre-existing components, or new additions to the hack being terribly programmed. That's my view on it. You could overclock, but the hack's still less because of it.

EDIT: Doesn't AS scream bloody murder when odd addresses are used wrongly? Maybe we should encourage the use of the assembler that actually does something about this.

This post has been edited by Clownacy: 28 August 2014 - 03:01 PM

[Black Squirrel]

I'm annoyed now - I was excited at the thought of "Sonic vs. Gamera" until I realised I'd read it wrong.

I want Gamera!

[flamewing]

Clownacy, on 28 August 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

Surely the full-fledged projects are still around, they just weren't presentable enough to be shown at this year's contest? Compare that to some entries being, let's say, 'crapped out in time for the contest'.

Gulty on both counts

Clownacy, on 28 August 2014 - 02:31 PM, said:

EDIT: Doesn't AS scream bloody murder when odd addresses are used wrongly? Maybe we should encourage the use of the assembler that actually does something about this.

On direct cases, yes. But like all assemblers, it fails to this:

        lea     (1).w,a0
        move.w  (a0),d0

and other similar scenarios. Also, you need to consider the "wahhh asm68k" syndrome.

[Josh]

Three suggestions for next year's contest:

• The trophy descriptions need to be on the voting pages so we don't get people voting incorrectly again.
  
• I had a comment on one of my promotional Reddit posts: "I wish they didn't try to make the website so fancy. I try to middle click to view entries so I can open them in new tabs but instead of just being static links they're rubbish that dynamically changes the content of the page which is entirely unnecessary. It's flash over function."
  
• Media promotion REALLY needs some work. I know there were a TON of people officially doing media, way more than ever before, so it's kind of understandable. But I think I can make the claim without being big-headed that nobody on media worked as hard as I did or produced as much content. Quality is more subjective of course, but regardless, I was barely promoted in an official capacity until I asked to be. And if I'd known that was the case, I'd have asked a lot sooner. I worked hard to get my first exposé up at the same time the contest went live, but not having anything featured until so late in the contest, by which time most of the traffic had come and gone, really hurt.
  
  I'm not saying I was treated unjustly, because I should have raised the point on day 1. I know you guys were dealing with a LOT just keeping the site up. And I'm certainly not saying I wish I hadn't done all the work I did. I still really appreciate the opportunity to be on the panel, and I'll gladly do it again next year.

As for the drama going on here... I'm not a programmer by any means. The only hack I ever made removed Carnival Night's barrel and did nothing else. So I judge this stuff from a sort of outside perspective when it comes to that stuff.

I agree that the overall quality of the hacks is probably down from last year, but part of that is because there were so many more entries. I do agree that as impressive as South Island Warped is, there's no way I'd have voted a one-zone demo as the best in the contest over Hyperdrive. But again, it's all subjective.

This post has been edited by Josh: 28 August 2014 - 04:58 PM

[Oerg866]

I wanted to have this stay as a statement, but I'll just reply to a few things Spanner has said:

Spanner, on 28 August 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

I bet you'd want to force all judges to get Mega Drives, flashcarts and play all the entries on real hardware too right? If you have such a concern over this, why don't you make a guide that could address this? A good entry could surface, with brand new music, level art, bosses etc and you'd just shoot it down because it didn't work on actual hardware. Accuracy does not affect most players who simply just use Gens or Kega Fusion anyway, if an entrant specifies that it won't work in an emulator due to a bug somewhere and specifies that, then that's what we have to work with.[/I]

I didn't say this. Read my post again. (that, and it's just wrong. The hacks (or rather their creators) *didn't* specify that (and never have?).)

Spanner, on 28 August 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

You seem to think that people have an obligation to release certain entries every year when circumstances can change and stuff cannot be delivered. You could have mentioned stuff like Sonic 2 Retro Remix and The S Factor that were submitted in previous years, the latter winning the contest twice in a row.

I didn't say this. Read my post again. I said this year, not the two years before that which had some good entries apparently (yes S Factor is good stuff, but it's been around for a long time now, so I should have put it in the list)

Spanner, on 28 August 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

Also in the last two years there have been a rise in non-MegaDrive entries, particularly Sonic Generations mods, because this is what we can do nowadays. We can no longer be restricted to using certain platforms, as long as they are based on an existing Sonic game they will be accepted in the contest.

Irrelevant. The vast majority is still Mega Drive based.

Spanner, on 28 August 2014 - 02:12 PM, said:

This really just seems to be a response simply because for many years you tried to get on the judging panel, only for people to threaten to withdraw their entries if that happens, you refusing to judge them if they do not work on a certain emulator, and repeatedly trying to get back in for so many years when you just got ignored or told straight that it wasn't happen.

Not only is this irrelevant, but it is also a blatant bold-faced lie. I was on the judging panel once in 2008 (six years ago, and I fucked it up by being an idiot. I never made an effort to come back again.

Read this and try again: http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Ad_hominem

You should settle down a bit after people in your own IRC channel start telling you that you're wrong. Just saying.

Quote

Your videos, from what I looked at them, were pretty much a troll attempt to try and attention seek as you have done many times, which in the past has made many people, including site staff, turn on you. It doesn't matter what you're capable of, if you're a Tech Member or not, if you're still arrogant and a twat towards people, it doesn't mean you can use your status to deflect your behaviour concerning the attitude you have towards this contest.

First of all, this is an unwarranted personal attack. The series was started upon request, and the last video was even made because the hack author himself asked for it (MainMemory). In addition to that, they were well received and people had a good laugh.

Okay, at this point I still fail how this is a response to anything I just said...

Thanks for being so open to criticism. I'll have someone else submit any further posts I make directed to you in the future.

This post has been edited by Oerg866: 29 August 2014 - 09:19 AM