Sonic Hacking Contest 2016 - THE RESULTS

I'm starting to regret hacking s2 sms. Everyone's like "oh, this is a pallette hack, move on" and I'm butthurt. I hate that.


Still haven't got my explanation.

 

It was here on the SSRG, yeah. I made an entire post for it although I'm not sure if it's still visible. I'm trying to remember what I said last year, but I definitely recall being much more positive with the entry than I was this year. Although, to be fair, even being positive about the hack would've been unfair for me to really say. No friends and a buggy netplay on my end have made it difficult to fully enjoy the entry. =(

 

In my honest opinion the evaluations were fine, except the music aspect. The opinions of the music were very vague like "It was Ok" or "Meh" which doesn't really help people know what was wrong with their SMPS. Also the fact Amphobius and Shannon did not judge most of the hacks that had some really nice SMPS (when they are musicians), even good SMPS could use some critiquing.(and yes I understand you couldnt judge the music for KEH Amphobius) Even if you totally hated the music you could still give some pointers on how to improve it too. I understand the irl thing but the music parts of the evaluations were lazy imo.(Ayla did pretty well evaluating that aspect though). I agree with RHS too having another judge who knows how to critique music would be really beneficial. They don't even have to be full blown musicians, but people who have been porting midis for a while could evaluate the music pretty well imo because they still learn aspects of music by doing that. Not as much as composing from the ground up, but it is still something. Other than that the evaluations were pretty professional really appreciate your efforts, good job! Also I wouldnt want judges to quit but it seems like it just stresses some of you out and makes you unhappy (Donnie didnt seem like he had fun being a judge at all which can really hurt the quality of an evaluation. You should have just focused on the media panel like you did last year i think with what you had to deal with irl at the time of the contest you put too much on your plate) because of how busy you are irl.

 

If I "didn't have fun", maybe it's because I feel like I put all that work into judging only for people to go on about how much of a poor judge I am? I feel like I wasted my time.

If I "didn't have fun", maybe it's because the entries I played just weren't fun to me?

For the record, I was a judge last year, too. I didn't focus on the media panel. And despite a few issues, I still had a fantastic time.

 

Honestly most of what I could genuinely, honestly say about music is. "Take what you know about SMPS. Throw it out. Learn from scratch and learn proper FM synthesis for literally every hack." Because here's the thing. Ineptitude is often the hardest thing to critique and during the streams, I think I said what sums up even the good hacks' music. Every single fucking person needs to venture outside of the Generic Sonic 1, 2, and 3K FM Patches. And we either got just flat, boring, yet competent stuff whose instruments were not adjusted to the tracks at all or vice versa. Or tracks that just sound grating whether you play them on hardware or not. I literally could not post such a thing into the evals SO MANY TIMES, but it kind of makes me sad when two tracks I had posted in the SHC Discord... one from 2012, the other I had done when drunk that was clearly broken in multiple places held up better than literally the entirety of musical entries this year. Everything was kind of horrible when held up to the opinion of two people who have been at the whole musical shindig ( yes, I am using corny words ) for over half a decade and have even gone into the chiptune community with good results. Everything blended in after long enough, and it got to the point where I was literally going through asprin to get through all of these MD hacks with music that just blends together after so long to the point of me being tempted to hit the mute button. So yes, to sum up this massive wall of text, I literally cannot give any pointers because I genuinely think people should try things completely and radically different.

Oh, and I don't know where RHS said anything about the music, so I don't know what there is to "agree" with.

 

One thing that keeps getting brought up every single year, which I still can't get my head round, is when all the judges moan about a lack of time. As far as I can see, there's no excuse for a lack of time when you set your own deadlines. If the amount of submissions is overwhelming, or if something comes up for somebody that means their time during the original designated week is limited, them simply extend the results date to a more suitable date. Obviously everybody here realises that you're judging these hacks of your own choosing, without payment, and there is respect for that. The problem is, by forcing a tight deadline on yourselves, you're putting yourselves under increased pressure which in turn can harm the quality overall, just like how rushing a hack harms the quality. Having read the evaluations, I do feel that some of them are rushed, or just come across as though the judge wasn't interested. I also feel for MrCat, because in his case a fundamental part of his hack was overlooked by one or more judges, which in turn could harm that persons chances of gaining a trophy or the correct recognition for a hack. I get the feeling this oversight could have been the result of rushing through the entries due to the tight deadline, which again is something that needs addressing, as this has been an issue and complaint for years now by judges past and present.

Regarding who should make a good judge, for me personally I think having someone only dedicated to the "fun" factor is pretty retarded. All judges should be able to view the entries from both a technical viewpoint, and from a fun viewpoint.This contest goes a lot deeper than whether a hack is fun, and I think all judges should be basing their views on the same areas so that they can form a collective opinion. We all grew up with Sonic, we know what makes the games fun, so why do we need somebody dedicated to tell us something we should all be experts at already? Ayla has the right idea in her evaluations, breaking the game down into areas and scoring each accordingly before forming an overall score and overview. If a judge comes in with no view on the technical aspects, art or music and just wants the gameplay, then we might as well not even have trophies for any of those categories. Judging should be treated like a game review, and the evaluations should reflect that. Scores should be given toward Art, Music, Gameplay, Replay Value and Technical Achievement. I think this would cover all areas and people would get a clear indication as to where their hacks are succeeding and failing, should you decide to reveal the evaluations in subsequent years. Hacks from previous years should be blocked from re-entering if unchanged, but if there are changes then the hacker or team should specify what is different this time around from the last time, so that the judges know where they should be looking to save time. Nobody wants to play over the same zones repeatedly and I understand that for the judges it may get boring, but if zones towards the end of the game are significantly different then a "nothing's changed, move on" approach is going to miss those changes. Obviously this won't apply to hacks like Unlimited Trees, but I trust the judges can work out which hacks aren't worth the time it takes to judge and evaluate, from the ones that have had genuine effort.

Anyway, that's my view on it all for what it's worth, and I'm not just basing this on this years contest, but on the last few years of contests where the same issues seem to crop up. Short version below for anyone who doesn't want to read a wall of text.

tl;dr Stop setting yourself restrictive deadlines, use judges that are capable of judging all aspects and look at ways of creating meaningful evaluations (where applicable) for community feedback should you decide to do that again.

 

Seems you missed the point of my comment, I am trying to help you from keeping something like this from happening next year (I read your response to everyone talking about your judging and how stressed you were), you not seeing that really hurts. Like StephenUK and Xeal have technically been saying is that this is a hobby and it shouldnt be putting this much stress on someone.

 

I'm going to get a lot of flak about this from my fellow judges and especially from Shannon (who is a chiptune composer, btw, and quite skilled at it). That being said, I do feel the quality of the ratings were subpar. That being said, out of everyone there, I was the only one that had done them before because there (used to be) one of those ratings, written out, for every contest from the first until the tenth (save one of them in between that others had to finish up for me).

I can't speak for other people, but I can speak from knowledge (of which I have plenty on Shannon as she is my friend -- less so on amphobious and, as such, I will not speak about him) of the situation. Shannon is an elitist when it comes to music. I have said this multiple times during judging and even voiced my concern about the fact that we were null voting the DA Garden trophy. This is a Sonic hacking contest. Not the chiptune scene. Not everyone here is a fucking ninja when it comes to music. We hack Sonic games. Sometimes, those games even need Sonic tunes in them because, you know, it's Sonic the fucking Hedgehog.

Donnie's ratings actually came from straight up ignorance about the difficulties and nuances of Sonic hacking. He didn't realise that Eggmanland being a level port was a whole different beast on Generations than it is on Megadrive. He didn't realise that adding characters to Sonic Pocket Adventure wasn't "ho hum, you added characters." This is a game with NO utilities and NO disassembly. What he did deserved the binary trophy. What Natsumi did deserved it as well and a lot of people didn't understand that, either. It isn't just shoving a bunch of games in a ROM. She had to change an asston of pointers as well most likely.

I'm sticking up for Joenick. The missing evals weren't fair. I have no proof, but I suspect some judges did not even play every entry, which might also explain people missing the hidden gems. Truthfully, I have no way to enforce that people play every hack aside from requiring that every judge turn in an eval for every hack -- and that has been decided by Spanner and I as a requirement for next year's judges. I've only recently returned to this contest and things were being done slightly differently than I had been doing them. After discussion, some things have changed back and other things were kept as it was better.

Joenick, I appreciate your kind words, btw. Thank you. I care a lot about this contest as it's the only thing that I've created that has grown and developed into something successful (aside from some of the less legal activities in my past). As such, I've always written out these ratings for every hack. I can't keep every entry in mind when deciding a trophy. the only way I can do it is to make each rating as I play the hack with the rating scale you saw. I then use that to determine the winner of my vote (or the trophy in past contests).

I would love it if everyone used the system I use, but I don't think it's really fair to force people to use my system. Not everyone works the same way I do and they have their own way of deciding things. That is the purpose of judges. To have a collection of different opinions. Spanner and I have even hand selected the judges for particular traits. Shannon for being a gamer, but not into Sonic games, and having music knowledge. Donnie, honestly, for his opinion on a hack at face value (which, when you look at his ratings, are just that. Yeah, Knuckles & Tails in Sonic Pocket Adventure may have been technically impressive, but to someone that doesn't know much about hacking? It looks like you added a character. Who cares?). I wanted a "normal person's" perspective. We got that from his ratings.

TL;DR - Shannon, chill out, give more details next time and try not to be so elitist. Donnie, you're fine. You're just being you, so please shut up. Joenick, good post, sorry people are being an ass to you. Thanks for the compliment. I try and I've been doing this for a decade longer than all the other judges, so that helps. We have judges for their opinions, so deal with it, bitches.

I'm out.

EDIT: I just read the rest of the post that was made. Yes, the contest is put on so that the community can have fun, but that doesn't excuse the judges being grumpy and assholes.

 

Lazlo, please stop taking it so personally when people are actually suggesting ways to help relieve the pressure on yourselves. People appreciate that you put effort in, but the problem keeps coming back to time and that is something you guys have made for yourselves. You say you don't have time for fun, but you should have. The whole point of this community is for fun, so if you aren't finding it fun then something is clearly amiss. Simply doubling the length of time between the end of submissions and the results day would give you all plenty of time to go through the hacks and actually enjoy what you're doing. Sounding all butthurt like you did in that post just makes you sound childish.

 

Judges were given more time than previously to get through stuff. If they didn't use all of that time wisely on judging (when they have the time to) then that's their own fault. You can't judge stuff in a few days, it doesn't work like that, especially in recent years where there are shitloads of entries submitted to the contest.

We will be making sure that judges spend all time possible on the entries next year, including getting evaluation in on time, which will be compulsory. If you can't commit to the evaluation, you can't judge the contest, simple as.

We will be making changes to the submission process to ensure that the person who submits their hack specifies honestly what has been changed and where specifically.

Next year's contest will have some rather radical changes to make the contest better than it was this year. As well as the quality control criteria to weed the shit entries out, one significant change will also be made to the contest as a whole, and anyone who looked at our evaluation form should be aware of what it is (and it's not the homebrew question by the way).

 

I dont like that you are putting words into my mouth Laz I even put in my post that I appreciated the judges effort. I didnt say you failed, stop playing the sympathy card, you dont need to apologize. Also thank you Ayla at least someone appreciates my help.

 

Okay Donnie, I'm gonna try to be as straight as I possibly can here.

We don't know you. We don't know your story. We don't know your current situation. We don't know your past, we don't know your struggles, and we certainly don't know about the personal issues you're facing. You know what we do see though? You seemingly not giving any sort of a shit towards most of the entries submitted this year. And I use that phrase as respectfully as I possibly can use it, because I don't know of any better way to say it without having the same impact. When all we see is you dismissing Scorched Quest because it's "Burned Edition for the third year in a row", we don't know that there was also a lengthy period of time where you contemplated how you felt about the hack, and how you should judge it. We don't know that your schedule is chalked full of things that are vastly more important to you right now. All we see is minimal feedback, and a complete lack of a damn. So I apologize for us not being more understanding of your situation. I'm sorry that we made you feel outed and unwelcome. I'm sorry that we're making you feel insignificant and hated. None of that was intentional on our parts. But you need to also understand, that we don't know what the fuck is going on. Everything you judges do is behind a closed door, and we can't peer in. There is no transparency in that regard. We don't get your full thoughts. We don't get the hours upon hours of pondering that goes along with it. We don't get every little detail that you guys get. You know what we get? An hour a day where you can vent some of your frustrations, and your final few minutes of pondering in the form of an evaluation sheet. We see a fraction of the time you guys put into the contest, and as a result, we're left in the dark in regards to most of what's going on, until you lot decide shed some light on individual affairs. So please, next time something like this happens, take a step back, and ask yourself "why are they doing this?" We've detailed our greivences quite clearly here. So please, take the time next time to set the record straight instead of instantly assuming we're trying to knock you down. And please, put yourself in our shoes. Go back to your feedback, read it over, and think to yourself "if this was the only piece of feedback I got from this person, what would I think about them as a judge"?

This goes for the rest of the judges too. I hear a lot of complaints about how "we're just human". Well so are we, and humans, unfortunately, jump to conclusions when we don't have the facts laid out before us. We don't know what goes into the contest. We don't know the amount of effort that goes into making the journey as smooth as possible. All we see are multiple site failures, tech glitches up the ass, and personal failings of the judges. Keep in mind, not many of us run our own servers. Not many of us maintain forums. In fact, I'm willing to wager that many of the perusers in the contest couldn't make a console output "Hello World". So please, try to see it from both sides. I understand, it's difficult to maintain a site that's getting so many requests per minute and needs regular maintenance, but many others don't, and I sure as hell couldn't tell you how that maintenance is preformed. So please, instead of jumping down our throats about how we're acting like ungrateful gits and claiming that we love to see you miserable (we don't, for the record. It's about as much fun for us to get scolded as it is for you guys to hear our whining) understand what kind've audience you're garnering. You want the contest to be as big as it can be? Well here's the second side to that sword. You also have an influx of people coming in who don't understand the effort that goes into hacking, and the contest in general. I'm a part of this mess too, considering how much of a dick I was in Discord, but a little perspective changes a lot of things.

What I would love to see next year, though, is the judges being more open and transparent with the contest go-ers. We need more light shed on what goes on behind the curtains so this shit doesn't happen again. The same thing happened last year with Markey's hacks too. We didn't know the process of deciding, so a lot of people assumed that the influx of trophies towards one person was the result of bias towards that one person. And just like this year, setting the record straight cleared up every issue. I've talked to Ayla about this at length, and hopefully changes are made next year that will circumvent this entire issue.

 

I think we all need to remind ourselves of a line from the 2016 Contest thread:

 

Spanner was considering locking the thread and, after some thoughts, I've decided that's a good idea. Topic is on a three hour lock. I'll unlock before I go to bed.

 

If you guys don't mind, I'd like to respond to the evaluation of my hack (SADX Mirror Mode) to clarify how the implementation works, maybe clear up some misconceptions, and explain some design choices. Before that though, as MainMemory mentioned, I really appreciate Clownacy's effort to look at the source code. It doesn't give the whole picture due to the reverse engineering involved, but it's certainly a start.

A couple of the judges seemed to be under the impression that the levels and item layouts were flipped. While that's not entirely wrong from a high level perspective, the implementation is actually entirely different. In fact, if I were to have done that, it could have ended up a hell of a lot more difficult to implement, lol. All it does is flip the rendered output and flip your controls (which is why TGC's ancient mod loader caused his input to be incorrect. I won't let you live that one down!).

That being said, my description is an oversimplification. That's not because the implementation was at all difficult or even noteworthy; it's because of the reverse engineering required to get to this level of simplicity (granted, there's still some x86 assembly in there :V). I had to reverse engineer 3D sprite drawing and understand the model format so I could flip some UV maps here and there (jump panels, in case nobody noticed, still have readable numbers!). The former wasn't easy and took quite a long time to figure out. I'll detail that below for those interested.

In any case, the reason I just flipped the screen horizontally was because I was going for the Twilight Princess approach. I had to flip all the readable textures viewable in 3D space (where practical), but it was the simplest way to play the game fresh without say, playing the stages in reverse, which would require a lot more time for level design reasons (although I definitely want to do that at some point). But yeah, that's exactly what I was going for. =P

Also re: Adventure Field maps: I removed them because it would have taken too long to understand their inner workings. I'd like to fix it for a future version though.

I didn't take offense to the evaluation or anything, I just wanted to have the implementation in a general non-programmer-readable form.

Technical mumbo-jumbo:

I had actually started working on this back in April, I think it was. Somewhere around there. I was stalled for the longest time because I couldn't figure out how 3D sprites (like particles, the tikal hint ball thing, etc) were being rendered. That stalled the project for quite a while simply due to the time required to reverse engineer SEGA's code. Long story short, 3D sprites are projected into screen space, and I had to figure that out in order for Tikal to appear on the correct (flipped) side of the screen, as well as fire (like from the boaboa), etc etc.

Also I don't know if anyone went to any of the Chao Gardens, but I definitely didn't for a long time while I was developing this. I was not prepared for what I would find (correct version). It turns out that chunk models (SA2 model format) are basically the only thing in SADX that have any culling to speak of (meaning if your camera was inside a model, you would be able to see through it), so I had to go find where it sets the culling modes and swap them if the output has only been flipped in one direction. I also don't know if anyone played story mode, but this is the same reason Cream is totally invisible. I'd like to say good riddance, but for completion's sake, I'll probably fix it eventually :V

(that ended up way longer than I had anticipated)
edit: oh man, what a post to follow up

 

Ok guys, I've been reading your evaluations, and I love them all. The universal replies on a good majority of things honestly make me, personally, chuckle. There were a few of you who made joke ones, which I couldn't help but bring a smile to. Two though, have been hysterically antagonistic of the judging panel.

I had mentioned I read one calling us the judges a bunch of racists and bigots, now I've found a second one saying the same thing, and I couldn't help but laugh. Also apparently we, or possibly me didn't specify, made a joke against the mentally retarded. My God, two people utterly butthurt.

So, I decided to share with y'all a little secret......we're secretly a diverse can of characters.

We have trans, we have lesbians, we have a half-Filipino, we have a Jew. The person running the Shovelware stream? A redneck full blooded Arab man. The guy who made my "racist" stereotypical badnik sprites for Border Patrol? A half Mexican. Also, almost forgot we invited SomeCallMeJohnny, who is Latino, and last year had Cobanermani456. So please, chill your nips. We fuck around, and none of us our politically correct. If you had to go to your Safe Zone that badly, go and do so. And please, don't come back if your poor butthole feels like it's all stretched and hurt. I will wait here wearing my sombrero.....

*Insert image of me in Sombrero.*

*Image of me in said Sombrero. Art made by SonicBoom*

Now, as far as what Lazzie said, I'm gonna contradict him a bit.

"We know we've done terribly this year"

I disagree with that sentiment hardheartedly. We did the best we could, wasn't the best, wasn't the worse. All this drama about us judges not evaluating enough, us not getting the plebs, the plebs not getting us. Fuck it.

No seriously, fuck it.

Given the shit we had to play with, you lot our lucky Ayla hadn't pulled the plug on it, and only because she loves the contest, and so do I. So does Spanner. So does Lazzie. So does Donnie. So does Shannon. So does Marc. So does Asy....As....fuck it, Sam. So does Clownacy. You know who else loves the contest?

You do you filthy plebian cunts!!!!!

We get it, shit didn't go as planned. Donnie isn't on the same page as us. We let Royameadow enter. The website kept shitting itself. We made a controversial hack that made all the people who were crying about the Trump victory cry some more. We played with U.S. politics. We made a stream purely to shit on hacks and on ourselves while not holding back. The evaluations weren't good enough. We didn't get Cobanermani456. We didn't get Aaron Webber. Not enough mini-contests. Not enough steaks. Not enough Mexicans. Not enough Sombreros. Not enough good hacks. Too much negativity in the air. We alluded to Hitler. We didn't allude to Stalin enough. Russians ironically vote rigged the contest. JFK was assassinated. Not enough memes. Too many memes. No Crazy Bus 3 and Nipples. Scorched Edition not cool enough. SuperEgg being too SuperEggy. Not enough MostCallhimJuan. Too much Donnie. Not enough Donnie. Shut up Donnie!!! We gave the real trophy to MarkeyJester. The Illuminati is controlling the contest in the end. No special appearance of Tweaker. Buzzbee guns are better than Nerf guns, apparently. SuperEgg is a racist cunt. SuperEgg isn't being racist enough imo. InTheZone showed up a lot. Time constraints. Secretly no time constraints. TailsChannel not being around for the contest. Drama. More Drama. Not enough drama. Not enough yaoi fanfics. Too many yaoi fanfics. Super Drama. People upsetti because they lack spaghetti. Music isn't cool enough. Music is too cool because #lolportzrcoolm8!!!

See!!! Look, I got all that shit all cleared out of the way. Now let's move on people. I've been meaning to post in here, but shit keeps hitting the fan well before I can stick my dick into this wet vagina. So, lemme get to the point. Play nice. We've had shit to do, you've had shit to do. I personally didn't put as much effort in my evaluations for the simplistic reason that a lot of the hacks were forgettable. Ironically, Razor became my best friend, as he had a good lot of the Contest entries on video, that way I could rejog my memory.(And no, that doesn't mean he's going to be part off the media panel. That thieving cunt is still a cunt. Stop asking for him, he will never be on the media panel.) Point is, evaluations were nice and all, but to get our true, unadulterated feelings, I suggest watching the streams, there you will get it.

Carry on people, it's late, and I have a test in the morning.

 

SonicFreak, don't worry. Lazlo doesn't speak for all of us. In fact, he mostly speaks for himself. Just like SuperEgg I'm not sorry for the contest. There's nothing to be sorry for. I didn't submit the hacks and they weren't all bad. In fact, there were many good ones. There were also ones that showed promise. The "bad" of the contest was (no offense) Team Overload.

That's not the purpose of this post, however. We're not here to play the martyr. We've asked for your opinion and you've all given us fantastic evaluations of your own for the contest. We've taken these and we're going to adapt them to next year's contest. Who cares about what's over and done with? Let's move on. Next year is going to be "off the chain" or "hip" or "tubular" or whatever it is you kids say these days.

The lack of confidence seems to be in certain practices and not people. I've honestly received a great deal of encouraging words from people today. I don't see what happened as a bad thing. I see it as the truth being laid bare because it was. So yeah, let's please, for the love of whatever deity you worship, move on.

And, in case there is any confusion, I mean EVERYONE!! Seriously... goddamn kids...

 

What I think about the evaluations: I actually liked most of them, but even I have a few complains:

*Donnie seems to have been tired of not just Sonic hacking, but Sonic in general, and that definitely gets reflected on his evaluations. Maybe that's just once in a lifetime, though, so I let it slide

*While most of Spanner's evaluations are good, I get the feeling that some hacks might have gotten better evaluations if they were not submitted as a Team Overload project, though.

*SuperEgg did the worst evaluations. While all the other judges actually say what's wrong and some even say what could be better, SuperEgg does nothing of the two and instead literally discourages people from continueing on their project (something along the lines of "This is shit and he should not continue on this").

Those are just my 2 cents, though, so feel free to disagree with me...

 

Contest Week is always a highlight of every year for me, and honestly I think this year was my favorite yet. I will admit that that is largely because of the SADX Character Select Mod, but there were other fun moments, and seeing some of the other stuff people were doing was cool too (I didn't get a chance to play any hacks myself because I was too busy watching all the livestreams).

Personally I could do without the actual contest part entirely, I've never cared if I win any trophies, I just want to show people how I can take a Sonic game and add a new twist to it to make you play it in a different way. Sure, MegaGWolf has a Sonic Hack Showcase, but Johnny and some others don't do any hacks outside of the contest, and pretty much nobody (not even MegaGWolf) takes any notice of SADX mods until I shove them in their faces in the contest.

If we are doing an expo/showcase/whatever alongside the contest next year, maybe that's where people like me should go.