Sonic Hacking Contest 2017 NOW LIVE

As you may know, our intended Hacking Contest Week was set for Monday 6th to Sunday 12th November.

It has now been announced that Sonic Forces will be released during this period. As to not inconvenience some of our Media Panel who would be now no doubt be occupied with Forces stuff, we are delaying this year's Hacking Contest to a later period of time.

Although the Forces release is a reason as to the delay, we were going to have to do this anyway as development on the new website in the works that handles submissions and a bunch of other stuff including new features had stalled due to serious laptop problems which are taking longer than usual to fix. We don't want to go back to using the old website due to issues that worsen every year, so we are giving our website developer extra time to recoup from lost time due to these laptop issues.

With that being said, here are the new dates to remember for this year's Sonic Hacking Contest:

The primary submissions deadline for entries will be the end of Sunday 22nd October. You must have submitted a playable build by then to the contest site on your entry in order for it to be accepted past this point; otherwise the entry will become a Hack Expo candidate which will not be judged.

You then have a week to refine your entry, fix any issues, and upload your final build. This final deadline will be the end of Sunday 29th October.

If you are submitting to the Expo rather than the Contest you have until the end of Sunday 12th November to refine your entry and upload your final build.

The NEW Contest Week date is Monday 20th to Sunday 26th November. We will announce this year's Media Panel in due course, as the date change may affect availability of those already confirmed, not to mention there may be additional panellists as a result of the date change too.

Please remember the Quality Control Criteria explained in the first post of this thread – judges WILL be looking at your entries to ensure they meet the criteria of the Hacking Contest and Hack Expo. Judges reserve the right to move your entry to the Hack Expo or decline your entry should they feel that it is not up to the Hacking Contest standards of this year.

You have all been given extra time this year, do NOT disappoint us!

 

Please read the first post of this thread regarding our current stance on Sonic Mania mods in the contest.

Obviously we are open to discussion on the issue should people have any issues with it, but with the current interest in Mania mods no doubt there will be some who would have had some interest in submitting this year.

 

Okay, people are asking, what's going on with the website, the deadline is the 23rd and it's still not up?

Quick explanation. Cinossu, our site developer, did get his rather troublesome laptop back very recently from repair, but it had to quickly go back in for some rectification work. He's had it back for a few days now and has been getting the submissions side of things up as soon as he can.

He is hoping to get stuff up by this weekend, but as this year's site is a complete re-code and not just redecorating the old site, some features may not be available in time for the opening this year, such as the teams function. If some site features are not implemented for this year's contest (many things will be sorted in time for the Contest Week), they will return for next year's Contest, which should not have serious delays like what has happened this year.

We know just having a week to submit simply isn't going to do well for a lot of people, even if you've had since December last year to work on an entry. Therefore, the judges have decided to allow a time extension of an additional week to compensate, so our new deadline for submissions will be the end of Sunday 29th October and the deadline for updates will be the end of Sunday 5th November.

The Hack Expo deadline which is the end of Sunday 12th November and the Contest Week from Monday 20th November to Sunday 26th November remain unchanged.

 

Entries are not visible for anyone until the Contest Week.

 

As said on the first post of this thread, the Contest Week is when entries are made available to the public.

We've only had the site up a few days and already we've recieved a good number of submissions to both the Contest and Expo, so keep that up! Just remember that we now have uploading fully working, so if you have a ROM then do upload it to the site, the off-site linking is generally preferred for large files such as Generations mods for example.

Also regarding deadlines, the submissions deadline of the end of Sunday 29th October (where we must have a playable submission by this date) and updates deadline of the end of Sunday 5th November (where you get a week to finish things off and fix any bugs found) apply to Contest submissions ONLY. If you are submitting to the Hack Expo, you only get one deadline, which is the end of Sunday 12th November, as we do not judge those entries. If you can't make the submissions deadline for the Contest, your entry will be moved to the Expo, meaning you get extra time to get your entry done, and you get exposure for your entry, with the expense being your entry won't be judged. You've had since last December to make an entry though, so I would hope most people won't have to miss out on getting judged!

Please also note, as it's happened a few times, you cannot have the same entry submitted to both the Contest and Expo. It's one or the other. If you want your entry to be judged and be in the running for trophies, it's the Contest. If you don't want to be judged, go for the Expo.

Stay tuned for further updates regarding the contest and this website which is ever changing, new features are being added regularly. If you have any questions, use the forum threads or Discord which are all linked at the bottom of this page. If you aren't a full member of SSRG or Sonic Retro but want to submit, instructions for getting validated are in a previous news post. We've already had a few people ask to get verified, so don't hesitate to ask!

 

You could perhaps do an underscore? Or maybe talk to us and we MIGHT do a rename for you manually.

We've had a good amount of submissions to the Hacking Contest already as well as the seperate, unjudged Hack Expo but do remember that in order to actually be judged for the Hacking Contest, we need a fully playable ROM to be submitted by the end of Sunday 29th October. If you don't do this, your entry will be moved to the Hack Expo, which has a longer deadline of the end of Sunday 12th November, but your entry won't be judged.

Remember that if you submit for the Contest, you will get an extra week to polish your entry and fix any bugs, the deadline for that is the end of Sunday 5th November. Judging will commence after that date.

If your entry does not meet the Quality Control Criteria, it will be either moved to the Expo depending on what you do have or rejected from the entire thing. Sorry, but we've got standards to keep this year!

We want as many people to submit as possible, but remember, if you are not a full member of Sonic Retro or SSRG, you have to contact a judge for validation. This can be done in the following ways:
• Send an email to shc[@]sonicresearch[.]org with your SHC username, as well as your forum account(s).
• Send a Direct Message to the @shcontest Twitter account with your SHC username and your forum account(s). Our DMs are open.
• Private Message a Judge on SSRG or Sonic Retro with your SHC username. Obviously you need an account that can PM with this method, but if you can't, the above two options will work, especially email.

As we have the Quality Control Criteria in place this year we may decide to get rid of the full member requirement next year. But for now, if you aren't a full member of either site and want to get involved, please ask!

Anyway, let's keep up the good work here, if you have questions or any issues you can contact us using the forum threads, email account or Discord server which is linked at the bottom of the page. A good example that we've already had to deal with is someone making another account because they put the wrong email address in. If you contacted us about it, we would have been able to change the existing email address for you. No need for another account whatsoever.

 

Tonight at Midnight EST is the first deadline for the Contest. What does this mean, exactly? I've been hearing some confusion about this, so let us clarify a few points:

No new submissions will be possible for the Contest.
This one is a no-brainer; "Add New Entry" will not be possible for Contest entries anymore. Expo entries will of course still be open until Sunday 12th November.

Entries in the Contest that do not have a playable/fully runnable build will be moved to the Expo.
This is something that we will be checking on explicitly come midnight and tomorrow. You might not have your completed description or all media entries as of yet, but you must have a playable build of your entry. Remember, the last week given is to give your entry that last minute neatening up and fixing bugs, not to complete your entry altogether. If your entry is found to not meet this point then it will be automatically moved over to the Expo instead.

You do not need to have your entry Marked as Complete at this deadline.
I've seen some confusion here, so let's clarify this point explicitly. The Marked as Complete is for the final deadlines only, not this stage of them. Even if you have already marked an entry as complete, you can still make changes to it up until the final deadline dates. This applies to both the Contest and the Expo.

When you have uploaded a ROM or changed the offsite link, make sure to save.
This is very important. You must save after uploading or changing the offsite link, otherwise it will not be updated with your entry and the previous download or link will be there instead!

Please note that unlike previous years, there will be no list of submissions in the Contest posted until after the Update Deadline has expired. This is because we will be doing Quality Control Criteria checks during the week, so some submissions that do not meet that criteria may be moved to the Expo or removed altogether.

I hope this clarifies some points about the deadline tonight. When in doubt, don't be afraid to come on to the Discord and message us in the #site_issues channel, or PM us on the various forums about!