The 2013 Sonic the Hedgehog Hacking Contest

=O, She lives!

 

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.  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 and I'm playing favourites and also because he's a complete asshole and I think that would be entertaining to have present in the judging process.

 

Hi, I'm SuperEgg. Some of you may know me around here as the resident asshole who is judgmental, smartassed, Texan, and has tendencies to orgasm to anything related to Sonic 2 Beta. If you don't know me, pretend you didn't see the description above. Anywho, thanks to my oddball sense of humor and friendship with Ayla, I'm going to be a judge in this year's contest. As far as how I judge, here is a rundown list.

- I will be clear cut and straight to the point. If it sucks, it sucks. I will point out any good points, but I will speak the truth.

- Amaze me. I've had to judge Orchestra Contests to Middle School One Act Plays. The thing that gets me excited is seeing you people do something creative. "Oh, you added in the Homing attack?....Great...." I want to see something new. Hell, I like layout hacks, as long as it is playable, and keeps me wanting more.

- I do not like people ass kissing to me in a pathetic attempt for favoritism. I do not play favorites. If I like your hack, then I do. If anything, ass kissing to get it to win a trophy will do the opposite. Same goes for bribes.

- I do have a sense of humor. Contrary to popular belief, Sonic hacking is NOT serious business. Even though the hacks are supposed to be not "joke" hacks, if it can give me a good smile, or even chuckle, it will definitely be a-ok.

- I love music. Music that sounds audibly pleasing will win some points from me.

- Also contrary to popular belief, I'm a pretty chill guy. I will apologize in advance if my sense of humor offends you, I forget, not everybody knows me.

- I expect 110% of effort from all the participants. Anything less is quite depressing. Even if your hack isn't the best around, I do give points to those who actually show effort. I grew up with a military Dad and Filipino Mother, which means they expected that I put my best effort into anything I do. That is part of my philosophy and part of my judging. I will give credit where credit is due.
 

Well, that is a rundown list of what I expect and what you can expect from me when it comes to judging. For those wondering what qualifications I have, here's another rundown list.

- I've been hacking asm since 2010. 

- I've released two different disassembles since 2010. Sonic 2 Nick Arcade, and Sonic 2 Beta.

- I've worked on a few hacking projects, one of which is currently on SSRG.

- At some point last year, I released a Sonic 2 Beta 3 hoax that successfully tricked about 5 people.

- Musically speaking, I've been in Orchestra since I was in Fifth Grade (10 years old) and I've played guitar since I was about 8. As far as Orchestra goes, I'm classically trained. AKA, I know good music and what's not ear rape.

- I'm an honest person. I won't beat around the bush. It's better to hurt somebody's feelings now, than to hurt somebody's pride later down the road.

- As I said, I've judged four orchestra performances, two or three High School "Battle of The Bands" and two Middle School "One Act" plays.

And with all that said, I bid you ladies and gents a Good Evening.

-SuperEgg

 

A screenshot of things to come.. 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. )

 

That looks pretty good. I can't wait for the submission form thing to come up.

Anywho, I guess I'll enter my hack in this year's contest (I didn't start hacking in time for last year's contest ). Hopefully I'll have something I can consider releasable by then, because I've been fairly busy recently. Regardless, I hope to see lots of other great hacks in the contest. It's always nice to have a little competition every so often

I know for a fact that I won't be getting the D.A. Garden trophy or the Windy Valley trophy, but I AM going for the Lava Reef and Casinopolis trophies.

Oh, and good luck to everyone else entering the contest!

 

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..

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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..

 

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.. 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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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

 

It's awesome that SomeCallMeJohnny is going to review rom hacks!    But I just have one question about the Sonic Hacking Contest in general. Do you have to be a specific user group to submit your hack?

 

Well, he is a Sonic fan, and not to mention is a well known reviewer, it seems like a great idea for him to be our partner in the media part of the contest.


And as far as I know, as long as you have an account on here or Retro, you can submit a hack, regardless of title.

 

Actually, we do have some limits on things. Trial Members on Retro and Trialists here can't automatically enter (or even log in); there will be an option for us to allow you access, but by default right now that's off. When it's open and available, PM me and we'll see what we can do.

 

I love Johnny's videos and I'm really excited for these videos!

 

You have no idea how excited I am, either. If this partnership works well, maybe he can do this in the future. Only time will tell.

 

i have a question can it be a pallet swap and have new content

 

Why would you want to swap a wooden pallet for a plastic one?

Also, read the rules. If it's just a shitty palette hack, it's not allowed.

 

Iiiiit's time, guys!

http://shc.hapisan.com/

Everybody get on board the new SHC website; read, submit, enjoy~

 

Right, I've spoken with the judges this year, and because I'm not submitting anything, I thought I'd do something interesting.

If I recall correctly from a previous contest, there was a cash prize offered, but from what I've been reading, it was never actually issued out, or it wasn't real, or whatever (I don't know, I wasn't there). So, this year, I'm offering 250 US dollars to the Hidden Palace Zone trophy winner. Now I'm serious about this, and I'm also aware that some of you may not trust me to cough up, so I'll try to ease into your confidence by mentioning that, I have in fact done a mini contest on here before offering a cash prize, and the winner did actually recieve it. Now unless I end up being hit by a car between now and the end of the contest, the winner will definately recieve it.

A few details to note are;

• If your currency is different to U.S. Dollar, then the prize will be converted (I.e. if you want to recieve in Euros, it'll be converted to about 192 Euros before being sent to you), of course, the value conversion will change between now and the end of the contest, so be aware of that.
• I will note that you must have a paypal account of some kind, I'm not posting via envelope.
• This prize is only issued to the judged trophy, not the community trophy.
• If the winner is a team with multiple people, then the cash prize is divided up between the members of that team, each member, must have a paypal account to recieve their portion of the prize seperately.

I'm not part of the judging team, so I won't be able to nudge the prize to anyone specifically, this will give you a fair chance. I offer you all good luck!

 

That's mighty generous of you, of course if I some how did win( Highly unlikely and I'd need to actually submit something),I'd of course like to not take the money as my reasons last time on your other contest. However its great for someone else who would win, money does motivate most people.

 

Just a reminder that you have two weeks to submit your entries to the Hacking Contest. After that you'll have one week to update these entries.

 

If you have a problem where you are having issues with submitting your entry, let us know and it will be fixed. If you are not a full member of Sonic Retro or SSRG and would like to submit, contact a judge and we'll sort it out for you.

 

If I submit my hack like the end of this week, to guarantee my submission for the contest, will you NOT play it until the end of the "update" week? Meaning, would you not play my hack until the 7th August? I rather be that way, otherwise, I probably won't submit until 31st July.

 

Judges review the hacks on the final update you submit.