Sonic the Hedgehog Hacking Contest 2011

Logo by Cinossu

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The 2010 contest may have had its results posted recently, but that doesn't stop the next contest from starting early. The 2011 Contest has had various changes as opposed to last year, be it trophies, judges, submission guidelines and involvement. In fact, you'll be glad to know that for the first time the rest of the community will be able to participate in this contest, be it submitting your hack or taking part in our planned “Contest Week” which we'll talk about in this thread.


First of all perhaps you'd like to know why I made this thread. Well, the thing is that Ayla is no longer running the majority of the contest and as such passed things on to myself. I believe that this decision is going to be controversial to a few people but I am capable of doing the job. I was responsible for the contest results podcast in 2009 and I also ended up becoming a judge in the recent contest, judging them as soon as possible. Ayla is still going to be around, overseeing the contest, so don't worry. In other words, Ayla is still heading up the contest, I'm just the co-organiser. This should clear up any problems over the issue.


JUDGES


Ayla might not be judging and neither are a few others, but it doesn't matter. Thanks for their time; it's time to move on. Our solid, new and improved judging team will consist of myself, Cinossu, Shadow Fire and new additions MarkeyJester, Dude and Mercury. This team will be reliable and will be able to deal with contest judging as soon as possible in order for us to progress through the contest and get the results out as soon as possible. Judges will be able to submit their own hacks, but will not be able to judge it themselves. Please note that the final decisions are subjected to the Judging Team, and may not reflect your own opinion. Judges may change at any time.


TROPHIES


This time we are trying to cut down on the amount of trophies we have. In addition to the normal trophies there will be a small number of “Community Trophies” that will be voted for by the public during the Contest Week. Trophies can be added or removed at any time and there is a chance that not every trophy will be allocated.


Hidden Palace Trophy


Grand prize / 1st place. This is given to the overall best hack in the contest.


Wood Zone Trophy


2nd place.


Dust Hill Trophy


3rd place.


Big Trophy


Worst hack submitted. Why was this even submitted?!


Green Hill Trophy


Hack (or specific level of a hack if non-applicable) that plays most like a Sonic game.


Windy Valley Trophy


Best art in a hack submitted.


D.A. Garden Trophy


Best music in a hack submitted.


Palmtree Panic Trophy


Best level layout in a hack submitted.


Genocide City Trophy


Hardest level in a hack submitted.


11000101 Trophy


Best technical hack submitted.


Knuckles Trophy


Best new playable character in a hack submitted.


Fang Trophy


Best new enemy/badnik in a hack submitted.


Eggman Trophy


Best new boss or miniboss in a hack submitted.


Spin Dash Trophy


Best new ability in a hack submitted.


Carnival Night Trophy


Most innovative game play feature in a hack submitted.


Emerald Trophy


Best Special Stage in a hack submitted.


Crystal Meth Trophy


Most replayable hack submitted.


Robotnik's Revenge Trophy


Best new concept based on existing concepts in a hack submitted.


Casinopolis Trophy


Most entertaining / fun hack submitted.


Vector Trophy


Most humorous hack submitted.


WTF?! Trophy


Most unique hack submitted.


Twinkle Park Trophy


Best 3D Sonic game hack submitted.


Crystal Egg Trophy


Best 8-bit Sonic game hack submitted.


Christmas Present Trophy


The best hack submitted that no one saw coming.


Tails Trophy


Most improved hack from last year's contest.


COMMUNITY TROPHIES


This year, to make things fairer to the community, we're introducing the new Community Trophies. These will be voted by the public during our Contest Week, which will be explained later on in this post (as will information about how private hacks fit into things). There are only a small amount of trophies to vote for, which are:


Hidden Palace Community Trophy


Best hack submitted overall.


Big Community Trophy


Worst hack submitted overall.


Windy Valley Community Trophy


Best art hack submitted.


D.A. Garden Community Trophy


Best music hack submitted.


Palmtree Panic Community Trophy


Best level layout hack submitted.


11000101 Community Trophy


Best technical hack submitted.


HOW TO SUBMIT


This year submissions are a little bit different. First of all we have a new email address which can be accessed by the Contest Team: hackingcontest[@]candiraver[.]com. This allows the judges to download your submissions as quickly as possible and reply to any issues you have.


To make things easy for us, we ask that you use the following submission form when entering your hacks:

Code:

=========================================================================

Sonic the Hedgehog Hacking Contest 2011 Submission

=========================================================================

NAME OF HACK:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

SUBMITTED BY:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

ORIGINAL GAME:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONSOLE:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

EMULATORS SUPPORTED:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

FILE:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

DESCRIPTION OF HACK:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

TOOLS USED:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

DISASSEMBLY USED:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

CATEGORIES: (Add an X to the categories that apply to your hack)

[ ] Level Edits

[ ] Art Edits

[ ] Sprite Edits

[ ] Other Programming

[ ] Music

[ ] 8-Bit

[ ] 3D

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

EMAIL ADDRESS:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

MEDIA: (Example: Screen shots, videos, music)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

PRIVATE SUBMISSION:

[ ] Full Private

[ ] Partial Private

[ ] Public

=========================================================================

CONTEST GUIDELINES

• Hacks must be emailed as ROMs, compressed in a format such as ZIP, RAR or 7z.
  
• You may enter as many hacks into the contest as you want.
  
• There are no limits on the editors or tools that you use in your hack.
  
• Simple palette hacks are not allowed, this isn't the Stone Age!
  
• No late hacks will be accepted, so get it in on time or we won't include it in the judging.
  
• Should you enter a hack with stolen content, not only will the hack be investigated, but we will hunt you down, molest you, your account and your pet cat.
  
• Things are subject to change at any time. We will inform you if they do and this post will be updated.
  

DEADLINE


This year's deadline for hacks to be submitted is Saturday 23rd July 2011. No late hacks will be accepted, so be sure to get your hack in on time or face disappointment. There will be a period of time where submissions that have been entered successfully into the contest can be updated with new builds for judging, which will be until Saturday 30th July.


CONTEST WEEK


The intention of this contest is to be more interactive than before. To make things a little bit fairer for the community a Contest Week will take place when we are finished and ready to go. At this time, a website will open where submissions will be able to be downloaded and there will be an area on each submission to rate the hack in terms of the available categories. These ratings will be taken into consideration for the bonus “Community Trophies”, where additional trophies will be given to hacks should they deserve one according to the results.


For those hacks which have been chosen to remain private, please consider throwing out a few screenshots or videos to show what you have. You can also decide not to show anything at all, but any completely private hacks will not be able to be voted on for Community Trophies. In addition, we might have more events to show, but this is to be discussed.


At the end of the week we will have the Live Podcast where our Contest Team, along with selected members of the community, will announce the results of the Contest and offer their views on the submissions. It is an event not to be missed, but it will be recorded for those that do.


AND FINALLY


We hope that this year's contest is going to run smoothly (and on time!) and we welcome your submission, ideas, comments and such. Your help may be wanted, so if you can offer any of your services to us let us know in this topic. In addition, we have an IRC channel. #hackingcontest on irc.badnik.net.


Ready, Set, Go!

 

OMFG my dream has finally been arrive, My Entry starts in May 2nd(mah Bday), I guess.


I'm fully prepared for this moment!

 

I've never ever had anything worth submitted, so I really hope something will be completed that I can enter this year. Though i'm gonna be very busy this year =(

 

what happened to

 

The Rick Roll trophy was just something to laugh about. This year's contest will be taken a lot more serious, which is why they removed it. I mean, I only got it because I already had a hack done, Sonic 1: Project 255, which was made back in 2008. Nobody would've been stupid enough to submit a hack with stolen content without noticing it.

 

Don't know if I will be joining this year's contest. Press B for Shittles was something done in the extended time as a joke. I didn't plan on it winning anything. Who knows, I have reobtained the source off my dead hard drive so I might do something to it late game. Yay, more judge suffering <_<

 

Good news! We have a new email address for you to submit your entries. If you did submit to the Gmail address, you will have to send us it again with the new address.


hackingcontest[@]candiraver[.]com

 

Well, I'll just upload my hack in 15th July

 

Just a reminder that there is nearly one month left before the contest deadline on July 16th at 00:00 MST. If you plan on submitting, you should get to it as soon as possible in order to avoid disappointment. Remember that you can submit an incomplete piece to us and provide further updated builds after it until the updates deadline which will be one week after the submissions deadline.


After that, our team of judges will review all the submissions and allocate our trophies to the winning hacks. This should take a few weeks, but due to the nature of this contest and the judges, no deadline can be set for this. Once we are ready, we'll have our Contest Week where you, the community, will be able to download the public submissions and cast votes for the Community Trophies. There will probably be a few activities planned out that you can get involved in (including mini-contests) and at the end, there will be the Live Results Show presented by the judging team where we, along with a few others, will discuss the winning entries and more. You could say that it is like SAGE for hacking in a way. More information on this will be available once the Contest Week is completely finalised.


So, if you plan on submitting, time is running out. Submit as soon as possible and remember, there is time to update your entries.

 

Thanks for all the submissions so far. Because the contest deadline this year can be "too early" for some people, we have decided to increase the deadline by this week. Again, current submissions still can update builds until the updates deadline.


The Submissions Deadline is now July 23rd and the Updates Deadline is now July 30th.


Enjoy the extra time.

 

Ahhh..... another contest deadline missed. Oh well next time if its still going? I'll keep an eye on the hacks instead =).

 

You have until 9PM ET.

 

9PM tomorrow? Hm.... ok well you never know.

 

No, in a few hours tonight.

 

Ah oh heh different timeline. Theres no hope for me then, its 1:17am for me and i'm going to sleep =P.

 

The deadline for submissions has expired, but for those who have successfully submitted, there is a further week to submit any updated builds. Here are this year's contest entries:

 

It's 11:09 for me here. Can I still submit?


Edit: NVM, It's past 9:00PM in ET. Whoops. =/

 

The trophy for the worst hack in the list is the Big Trophy, and there always can be a runner-up.

 

Of the 25 entries submitted this year, I don't think we have as much as talent as in recent years but you never know; I could be suprised.


That being said, I do look forward to the judging and to how this year's contest pans out so...


Good Luck, everyone!