With Jakub MIA and no word on ChristmasHack, I've decided to create SantaHack to carry on the tradition.

The site is just something I threw together in a few hours (major shout out to Mark Oates for doing the graphics/design work), so let me know if you have any issues. There is still some tweaking and work to be done on the site, but it should be more than functional enough right now for registration.

Registration will begin tomorrow. Please be sure to get all set up and get your wishlist/preferences in before the voting phase begins.

Once registration opens, you'll be able to join and withdraw (on the participants page). You will need to log in with your Allegro.cc account to use the site (just click the login button, and a.cc will handle the rest) - no registration necessary.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions on the site or rules or anything, let me know. I'm open to change.

http://www.santahack.net/

I've been wanting to do a hack event but I won't get a chance.

I did a little advertising over at gamedev.net, in case anyone over there was interested.

gamedev.net doesn't resolve for me. WTF?

Your DNS hates you.

Nice job on the website. Definitely entering .

I haven't even read the rules yet, just wanted to say the site looks pretty :')

, considering it must be cold up there.

hahahahaha

I wasn't expecting for a *Hack to happen this year since Jakub is no longer able to organize ChristmasHack. And with family coming for Christmas I don't know how much time I'll have to code. But, hey! It's an all new SantaHack! Count me in!.

Hmmmm, I chose to have my final week of holidays on the week after Christmas. Seems I just missed it. Anyway, I've been wanting to finally code up a simple clone so I'd finally be able to say that I wrote a game. Perhaps this is a good opportunity to try... I'll likely be too demotivated/tired to try, but we'll see.

Can't play, but the site looks cool!

I'm waiting for the registration to begin, thanks BAF and Mark ^^

I'm still going to attempt it Just waiting for registration

Nice work on the site. But it seems I'm gonna be busy until the 22nd to start working on something. Damn finals.

Still, that leaves me with nearly 2-3 days to work on an entry. Given that I did the Speedhack one in two, I guess I can try.

Ok, so I registered, even if I said I wouldn't. My wishlist is poor, though. Hope I have time to improve it.

Registered. First wishlist idea is easy to do, the other 2 are a bit more complex for whoever feels like it.

It's gonna suck to turn my entry from a 7 day development to 3 days, but it'll be fun. Better than sitting around and complaining about not doing anything in the forum.

I have a feeling I'll bloat my application with XMLs this time tho... I just came from a project working with pretty much everything using XMLs.

I'll give this one a shot. I haven't done any game development in years, so this will let me get some experience with Allegro 5.

I'm gonna give it a shot, dunno how much time I'll have to spare though

The problem with this Hack is that if I don't finish my entry (which is not unlikely) I'll feel quite guilty as I'm (theoretically) getting a present for not doing anything useful :X
PS I think I've made a very similar post to the previous attempt at organizing a ChristmasHack.

I just might participate...

But I really suck at developing things in a short time.
Ah well, I'll try.

Well they didn't do one for 2010 so I wonder if he didn't get tired of doing it. Not to mention the old site shows that the numbers started dropping for entrants so he may have just decided it wasn't worth the trouble anymore .

Well, since one of the purposes of these hacks is to provide motivation to finish a game... I think that's a feature, not a bug .

Okay signed up and have set my 3 wishes but not sure if I done them correctly. Off to bed now

Well, bambam's first wish was "no globals," so I'm sure yours can be no worse.

I'm registered, and my wishlist is saved. No turning back now.

Yes you can:

Not that you should anyway.

PS: I'll downvote any coding wishes.

I know I could, but I'm not going to.

If I were to start one, I'd call it NutsHack.

Hack the RQ-170 Drone!

I forgot what mine were already but after reading that I'm sure it's not too bad

My wishes are pretty stupid too, but at least they are not coding related.

For every global variable I find I shall kill you.

Maybe I should code my game in BASIC. One of the variants which has no local variables.

But then he'll kill you so bad you'll wish you were dead!

Here's the first line of code for bam's gift (whoever got that):
int UselessVariableThatDoesNothing;

I thought of starting already with some generic Christmassy framework for a game. Fonts, graphics, sfx, UI, music...

I had a similar idea, to make a bunch of random christmasy graphics for everyone to use. The idea remains is stasis...

I'm doing the same as I'll be pressed on time the last few days so I need a little headstart to increase the chances of completion. Is it okay to use assets from other compos, for example Assemblee?

If someone creates a game where you control a flying santa sleigh, complete with reindeer, I'll play it

Only 18 competitors ? What do you fear guys, Join !!

Absolutely not!

SantaHack is serious business.

serious.

But but but... then my game will be mute and consist of abstract primitive shapes and colours. How will I ever capture the Christmas spirit?

Through pain!

torturous,

laborious,

pain!

I'm in pain already. Can't get mod-files to play or even load.

Get the dumb addon. I mean libdumb.

I have it. I also installed the latest stable version of allegro 5 (5.0.5), but still no luck. I'm on Mac OS X 10.6.8.

You must stream mod files. Loading them as samples won't work.

Just so you guys know my internet connection has just gone off and I'm hoping it will be back on soon so I won't jump out but if there is no input from me by the time it starts then I won't be updated as much. However I shall be able to check via my phone and get the requirements and make the game whilst not online. I'll just lend the internet from someone to upload it just like I have to post this

Hope too see you all soon

Ack!!! Borrow...

Ackk! You can't do that! I'm using it!

EDIT: Revision fail.

That is good to know! Works now.

I've just deployed another wave of updates on the site, including finishing up the voting system.

Just to rehash for those who haven't read the rules - in just under 8 hours, voting begins. At that point, you may no longer sign up or edit your wishlist. TL;DR: register if you want to, and make sure your wishlist is complete.

Some of these rules are asking me to rehash my CH09 entry.

Good luck to all the participants. I withdrew from it. I realized that with my current experience I couldn't make a game in 7 days. Have fun!

In my opinion these kinds of events are the best way to gain experience in the first place. You have to try to be realistic and aim for something that is doable in that timeframe but while still trying to push yourself a bit so that you improve, for example trying to implement a part of the game using a technique you haven't used before but always wanted to try.

The end result really doesn't matter. It is when you focus hard to accomplish a task and to get a result that you start to understand how games are supposed to be structured and organized. I think many do the mistake to create the perfect "engine" or whatever and getting nowhere because of either perfectionism or inexperience of what actually works and how things fit together. These events help you understand this, and while your end result might look like shit from both the user perspective as well as the coding perspective, you'll have gained an understanding on what is reusable for future projects and what will work or not work the next time, thus helping you build up a foundation for said "engine". This is news to no one really, but always worth repeating.

If you simply don't have the time then that's another case of course. I'm quite sure I was overly optimistic myself, but goddamnit I must try!

I have no time right now... I couldn't justified the time spent on it right now. But I swear that I'll participate in one of this competitions some day goddammit!.

@Arvidsson

Don't waste your time... Specter Phoenix suffers Bipolar disorder (historically known as manic–depressive disorder), practically this:

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I only have 3 days for this compo, so I'm gonna call it SpeedSantaHack.

I'm not trying to change anyone's mind, merely offering some advice for people who might feel like him when it comes to being not sufficiently experienced and finishing projects in general. I've succumbed to this myself on many occasions, and what it gets down to is basically either you're motivated enough to finish it or you're not. It doesn't matter what it is, could be of any scale really, the finishing part is the really gratifying thing though.

Major reasons why people don't finish stuff (aside from a drop in motivation because motivation is a fickle thing):

• Trying to create a perfect engine or framework and thus you're not really creating anything tangible. You end up in a constant loop of improving the engine, concluding it must be shit since you don't create anything with it and then you end up starting over from scrap because this time you have a better plan/idea/whatever

• Trying to create something that's already been done before and is either way over you head (an MMORPG anyone?) or you're doomed to end up trying to create something that most certainly will be much inferior to the original idea (due to working alone and/or not having enough talent when it comes to art and sfx) which of course hurts motivation

• Trying to create something that is an awesome idea but then you get another great idea and then another one, and in a few years you have a folder of plenty of cool projects that are going nowhere

There is no easy solution to how to actually finish something, but trying doesn't hurt. Motivation is a hard thing to master, and experience itself doesn't really guarantee completion, mostly it's just hard work and sticking to it no matter what.

And even though programming is mostly just a hobby for many people, and thus you should only do it if it's fun, there are parts of anything you want to master that's not really fun. I'm pretty good at playing piano but I hate practicing it. Luckily I pick things up fairly quickly, and when I have learned a piece I love to play it over and over until someone cries out for me to stop. Mastery is what we like, but getting there is often a pain in the butt. However, if mastery isn't worth the grief and the fun is nowhere to be found anywhere then obviously you should do something else.

Life lesson ends here.

Yeah, I'm in a similar boat. Basically have to be done by the 20th because that's when I'm taking the flight home. Might have some time after that but my family will probably require me to do social things.

An immovable deadline, such as the one a competition provides, can help you not get stuck in the futile analysis paralysis loop. You just need to become more results oriented, and not stress so much about perfect code and design along the way. It doesn't hurt to strive for a well thought out design/codebase, but when you don't have time to be constantly refactoring and rewriting code, you tend to get a lot more done than you expected.

I can only confirm this. For example I took part in several ludumdare 48 hours competitions in the past and only once did I score in the top 3 in any category. It was the one time when I didn't have the full weekend and instead opted to just make a very simple game in a few hours. Knowing how little time I have I opted to simply writing a text adventure. I think in the end it had 5 different rooms with 2 or 3 dialogs in each, playing the complete game took only a few minutes. And yet somehow I managed to get high ratings in the "humor" category and won 3rd place in it.

So now while from a technology standpoint it's the worst ld48 entry I ever coded, it seems to be the one people most enjoyed playing. Even though I completely skipped on the usual core parts of any game like graphics or collision detection.

Don't give a fuck to what you're going to give as a gift. Gie it your best, and that's all.

Also, I just can only second what Arvidsson and BAF said. Don't focus too much, do it !!

You may want to look into that a little more. Every case I've ever heard about people with BPD were violent due to poor temper control due to BPD. I'm not violent. BPD got huge press when several actors and actresses came forward about their BPD. Linda Hamilton (Sarah Connor from Terminator) said all her marriages failed because of her violent mood swings due to her BPD.

I'm just stressed because I have a wife and son, went to college foolishly thinking they would give me the skills needed to become a programmer. Finished with it and now 2 years out I'm no where near being a competent programmer. I doubt myself all the time when it comes to my programming. Easier to be down and doubt than be positive and do.

I like your wishes, guys. This will be fun.

<rant>
@Specter Phoenix: I know quite a few people that suffer BPD, and they are all non violent. They quickly swing between overly excited to depressed, (or to a level of each). Neither of those states have any suggestion of violence. If they don't deal with it, it can lead to complications. If they are violent that is a sociopath disorder, which is unrelated, but sometimes people can unfortunately suffer both.

There is a big difference between a psychological problem and a psychiatric problem. BPD is a psychiatric one, where violence is a psychological one. (There are exceptions to this, where the chemical balance in their brain causes the violent behaviour.)

Sorry for the rant, I am one of the minimum required mentally unhealthy people on this forum.
</rant>

I placed my votes based on how difficult to code the games might be (for me anyway), though I may still do some changes. Some ideas sound really fun.

I'm about to vote now and just installing Code::Blocks ect onto my new Laptop since it came today (yes this is my 2nd new system in the last 5 months )

I have been given the wireless key to my neighbours house too so now I have a decent connection from home until ours is fixed. She does turn her router off at nights but at least I can now get on the forums.

My votes are in.

My wishlist isn't as popular as I thought it would be. I thought my ideas would be easy enough to make in a week, and might be fun too. My least favorite has the highest votes. (But I would still like it anyway. )

Voting now done and I voted on good ideas not ones I know that I can do. (Too many I's but couldn't think of any other way to put it) Noticed there is a lot of platform type wishes so I am going to learn some methods around that as I've never really gotten into the physics and collisions needed before.

Nice wishes guys

Quite interesting, what I thought was my most unoriginal and stupid wish, has got the highest votes of all my wishes now...

Oh damn, did I miss registration?

EDIT:

I did.

Stupid finals.

So, if Desmond's laptop breaks during the compo, how soon should we have the next hack to cause him to buy another computer?

Sorry I shouldn't have used physical violence only as an example. Medical journals and sites state that people with BPD are more a risk to themselves than to others. The do say it is possible and common for violence toward others though. Apparently people with BPD are more likely to be self destructive Suicide/Attempted Suicide, Drug/Alcohol abuse, cutting, and non-physical damage ('violence' to their own financial situation, relationships, and other elements of their lives as they act on impulse and pursue high risk behaviors).

Suicide makes since though as it comes with depression when you aren't thinking straight at the time. Though being overly happy makes you think things you really can't do at times too in some cases. Definitely not BPD as I'm down on my programming and nothing else, not violent, don't spend money on anything I don't absolutely need (clothes, food, shelter), been married to the same woman for 8 years with her 10, never attempted suicide and don't take risks. I'm about as far from BPD as you can get. Says the ups and downs last days, week, months, and even years. My downs last about 10 minutes if that then I'm over it:P.

On Topic: Hope everyone makes some awesome games. Plan to download them and play them when they are released to everyone.

Sorry you won't be joining us Specter. I think you're probably capable of more than you give yourself credit for.

Yes, normally I don't give myself enough credit, but in this case that isn't true. I'm positive that I can't make a game in seven days. It took me a month to do a pong clone and that isn't technically finished.

Only reason I didn't sign up was time. Based on the last time I entered, I'm not in a position to free up time to work on a game right now.

I'm positive that you can't either. At least not with an attitude like that.

I just made a game in 10 minutes.

Making a game is easy. Nobody will fault you for trying and failing (most of us do every time ). It's supposed to be fun! You will never gain confidence if you don't try. Hint: I have never finished a game either, let alone a game programming competition. I have, however, made progress with every [serious] attempt to do anything.

I mean a game with graphics. I've made the guess a number app numerous times in C++. It took me a month to even make the pong clone and all I did was make ball and paddles using rectangles/squares. With only one game...well two counting the number guessing game, I know for a fact I can't do a game in 7 days with graphics. If I just stuck to the console/terminal app then I could have easily come up with something in a day for the compo then.

It's okay to use placeholder graphics at first and then replace them later. If you use a config file or a custom text data file, then it is really easy to replace them. Just send a new config file along with the new resources and suddenly your game is all prettified.

• Graphics are difficult.

• Audio is difficult.

• Collision is difficult.

• Physics are difficult.

All of these things are outside of the domain of programming. Obviously, they are things that many games incorporate and therefore need to be programmed, but they aren't actually what a programmer does. In the strictest sense, a business programmer would ideally be told how to do these things (especially in the business world, the way things are done is not always the same as the conventional way things are done; it's normal to have things defined for you as required by the business), and his job would be merely converting that into code.

These things also don't have to be done well for a game to be fun. The key is to plan to do a minimalist job at the things that you aren't already good at. The player could be a circle, or a dot, or a scribble. Your collision could be imperfect and your other "physics" could be limited to simple, fixed-rate incremental movement of the player's position. Audio is especially optional in a programming competition.

It's normal for the things above to be difficult for you to do until you've done them enough times for it to be second-nature. The key is to take each thing one step at a time and keep things simple. Crawl before you walk before you run.

E.g.,

If somebody joined the competition without even so much as installing Allegro or writing a simple game loop before and managed to get these things done during the competition, but no actual game done, then they'll still have been successful because they will have progressed. EXP++;

Why did a pong clone take a month? Specifically, what were you doing for that whole month? If you discourage yourself by focusing on the mass of work to be done (as opposed to breaking it into parts), then you're sure to fail.

Pity parties aren't beneficial for anyone. It's quite simple - you will never succeed, unless of course you believe that you can, and actually do it. Of course it's easier to sit back and not do anything, but that's not how you get ahead.

I got my snow particle generator and sleigh bells loop ready to go! I think I'll just leave them on the whole game.

It's a rat race, anyway. Whomever gets ahead is still just a rat. So many people fighting and competing for status. It's like... wow you're cool, rat!

I think the voting list got sorted once you had casted your votes the first time. In ChristmasHack, that is. It was easy to review the votes and maybe change them while the voting phase was on.

Voting !

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Well first week was pretty simple. Typed up the code from the A5 Tut wiki for the ball. The also had to learn from trial and error how to draw the paddles and how to do the keys as I hadn't touched Allegro before the API changes. Second week I spent fighting the AI paddle to keep it on the screen. Third week I fought trying to figure out the collision detection. Fourth week I was still tweaking and figuring out the collision detection because the ball kept going through the AI paddle after so many hits on it.

The help I got near the beginning was "Understand the code.". SiegeLord finally helped me solve the collision detection. I understood the code but ultimately I had to add a header file and function in order to fix it and add a y coord check too.

When I'm not coding I'm normally helping wife and son. Having a wife and son with disabilities like FSHD requires me to do a lot and forces me to stay at home. This is why I thought I would turn my love of programming into a career, but looking bleak.

Don't feel bad. If you turn your love of programming into a career, you will no longer love programming.

You get to berate your coworkers though, which is great fun.

T minus 3 1/2 hours to go!

Ohm-em-gee-oh-em-gee-oh-em-geeeee~!!!1

I have my sushi, time to get cracking! Goodluck y'all!

Hey guys I like my task and will be starting in a couple of hours, have all stuff installed on my laptop so if I have to go anywhere it'll still be worked on. Bad news is now our entire streets phone lines have gone down so using my partners mobile phone to check things. This only means I won't be able to let you guys know my progress but rest assure that I'm working on the game. If need be I'll use the phone to upload my entry

Good luck guys

Gentlemen, start your engines!

Now that is depressing. Strangers have more confidence in me than I have in myself. .

You're not supposed to drop hints on what kind of game you're doing anyway.

Anyways, I won't be able to join the hacking until I'm done with these finals on the 22th. But on these days in my little breaks I'll try to get in some graphics and think a GOOD game idea for once instead of starting to code right away. Given that my time is more limitted, I'll go for a simple entry.

I got the task I liked, but the other 2 can't be merged with it.

EDIT: Deploying Santa's development workbench in 3... 2... 1. (SH2011 folder copied)

Is the 1st description what the recipient most of all would want?

That's the case for a lot of people...

It depends what order they entered the descriptions in. It's pretty much arbitrary.

Damn I wanted to fulfil as many wishes as possible, but none of the wishes are compatible with each other, unless I make a totally impossible to play game.

Ah well, I'll just fulfil one or maybe two wishes.

Is there a way to see the score of the themes I got? (Just out of curiosity.)

I got one of the ideas I wanted (it should be simple enough to code). The other two wishes sound cool but there's no easy way to mix them with the first one.

Now to start coding. Good luck to everyone.

The average score of the rules you received? There's no way right now; I suppose I could add it to the task page though.

Ok, I'm going to make a game that fulfills only one of the wishes, because they are clearly separate wishes, kind of three different game ideas. And I hope whoever got my wishes understands that they are different games and not meant to be included in one game.

same here, and here-here!

I'll try to fulfill all three, in my case they actually seem to all work together

I made sure my wishes could be combined in to one game, if you just use your imagination a little bit.

The source code pack must not exceed 2 MB and should include everything needed for running the game. The game pack must not exceed 20 MB. I'm feeling stupid here. What is the 18 MB for? Is that the general ratio between zipped code+data and zipped binary+data? 10%?

I'm also wondering if the zips are supposed to include copies of all external libraries...? For example, Boost.

I don't know the official rules, but I would prefer the package to be delivered as a complete binary.

Just put the stuff necessary in the 2MB source pack so it compiles and runs. But noone says it should look pretty. You can just downscale all the files, then place your real resources on the game pack. I had to fit my CH09 entry like that, and the game barely fit in the 10MB limit.

I've been thinking over the night my game idea, and it's already laid out. Shame I don't really have the time to code with 2 finals on the way, but I'll try to sneak in some graphics and audio work in my breaks.

Just... ya' know...

I know it's tempting to code a SantaHack game, but focus on your finals, k?

You're getting me worried over here.

Aw man, I'm trying to create this game as quick as possible with the limited time and still, I'm over-engineering.

I have the coolest opening logo ever.

...and that's all so far.

I have the coolest black screen ever.
With an enormous amount of code doing nothing at the moment .

As long as it doesn't exceed the 2 MB limit, you're fine.

But coding a game for 10 people on a small community to play it is way more important.

Don't worry, I'm going for a really simple entry. Should be able to code it after my finals. Heck, I already got 72 bitmaps done, and I think I'll just need a couple more.

Yay, stuff is now visible on the screen...

I didn't mean I'd post screen shots or what I am doing litrally. Just so you know how ready I am.

Yes, The internet is back on so I can now get the rest done but this is what's happened so far

• Day 1: Wrote the main core for creating the display and loading resources. I also got the player movement down.

• Day 2: Finished the game play and it's now fully playable. Also added working menu and credits screen.

• Day 3: Not done anything at all today as I've been busy but will be working on the graphics right now. I am useless at making sprites so the game will look terrible however, the menu and credits will look a lot better

At least I will be able to submit a game this time since the SpeedHack 2011 I dropped out.

Oh and I like the wishes I was given. Was it randomly chosen by a script or was they done one by one?

Append: I forgot to mention that I had fun with BMP's being so large and had to settle on PNG's. A bit less code and better effects though using PNG's Alpha channel

It's kinda funny how I barely coded anything and the game's core is probably done now. But most of the time will be spent doing a shitload of levels because... let's say it'll have a very long learning curve.

10 % done.

I have a great opportunity to discuss with my son. I explained what I'm struggling with and he had some ideas of how I could solve my problems. But most of all I solved the problems by myself, thanks to the discussion we had. Like doctor House.

I've the opposite problem. I coded a lot (2K lines of code over 42 files, which I think is sizeable) but barely have a game!

The only thing that I did is publish my "library" to a repository... And then I began to wrap it in a namespace... I'm currently stuck with a lack of motivation where I normally am: art. I should just do exactly as I said I would and draw a bunch of random spirals for the player animation sprites. Even that is a challenge for me...

I'm plodding along slowly. I believe I have my state management system mostly done. I've found a couple images that I plan on using.

I actually hung out at bamccaig's place and spent most of Saturday working/idling away on my entry and haven't really done too much since.

My other problem is that I seem to be too lazy this time around to split files around.

Did he let you use his space ship?

EDIT: Not being able to talk about our games is boring. And I think I already know who my recipient is.

I agree, I somewhat miss the progress on all entries from speedhack/TINS. (Well, I actually sneaked some concept art into the doodle thread )

And I also think I know who my recipient is.

I have no idea who my recipient is but today I might not be doing anything as I'm taking my kids out to see Santa and then to a nature park to see the animals. I'm not to worried about the game itself since it's kinda done :/

Well, Best get ready. Have fun guys

Last night I ended up getting the core of my IRC bot written and working! Unfortunately, that means that I didn't make any progress on my Santahack entry.

Write a quick IRC client as game and then have it communicate with the bot. The first one who manages to get the bot banned in #allegro from within the game wins.

I reused the base game loop from my SpeedHack 2011 entry but I'm struggling with gameplay; right now it's really boring, not to mention that all graphics consist of bounding boxes as of now (that is, I have no graphics at all).

I can't believe the progress some of you have made compared to me.

ChristmasHack logs were always private until after the competition. You can write your log offline and then make it public when SantaHack ends. That would be fun.

Or post what you are doing but not being specific so if you had a task of must contain Pacman you wouldn't say. Today I made a Pacman sprite XD.

You could post that you have the game play down and menu ect. Just like I said. Don't be specific.

The web site is down. I just wanted to check the dates to see when this ends.

Just as I feared, I won't be able to finish my entry, but I'm sure it'll be at least playable.

must be uploaded by 24th at 12:00 UTC I believe.

I know, I just miss that people actually read the logs on Speedhack and comment as well. After XMas hack, there's really no interesting reason to read the logs.

But that's boring. Ok here I go. I've got 20 levels done.

EDIT: BAF fix your interwebz.

I have realized my first idea was too complex to make in the time I have left. I made good progress the first two days, but now I only have this day left to create something at all, so I have to make something more basic. Time to hack!

I thought I picked the simplest one, but it's still hard to finish it in time. Once again I created something I'll develop further, after the SantaHack event. Yip, straight to my most-promising-unfinished-projects folder.

My idea was just to make a quick standard platformer adapted to the 3 wishes. But turns out I'll have a hard time finishing it. I already cut down my plans to only implement one wish and use my concept art as final art. I also won't have a level editor so the (only) level will be constructed from a string. Still far from finished though and I'll have barely any time to work on it since today as well as tomorrow I have xmas celebrations scheduled after work :/

Same here. Perhaps I took too big a byte.

Just recovered from a server failure.

I have been given ideas to make this game a little better so will be added some more stuff in a few minutes Still waiting on two sprites from other people though :X. The game might end up being submitted with a couple of blocks with text on them so you know what they are :/

It's going to take me a good couple of hours to add this new idea so in case I break anything, It'll be backed up first. That way I still have a working copy to submit

Just going to hop over to the SantaHack site then switch computers

Regarding the site, what's the date we get to know who is our recipient? Was it the 22th, or 23th?

Okay, I don't have any more time for making any changes to the code now as I am swamped with things to do with the family. However it fully works so I'll upload it when uploading is ready

I tried to postpone as long as possible, but in the end I had to introduce some global variables. It's just so much easier Sorry bambam. And I abandoned strict encapsulation pretty fast too heh.

R.I.P. encapsulation in my code too. No globals yet though (although it is somewhat of a pain).

You guys are actually worrying about clean code on a hack competition?

I guess bambam ain't playing my game then. At the moment I'm just struggling with level design... it's kinda hard to make levels when you're barely able to beat them yourself.

I think the ability to write clean code under pressure is a worthy thing to strive for >.>.

I even document my code . For my own sake however, which might tell you something about how clean the code really is.

Anyway, basic gameplay is basically done. Now for some tweaking to make it more challenging.

Umm, the 25th? Should you know before then?

Well in XMas hack '09 I learned it the 20th. But that was because it started on the 15th(2-3 days earlier).

From the user logs:
{"name":"605265","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/c\/fcbc2fcc90ce86327b962b789b2c84f6.png","w":558,"h":187,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/f\/c\/fcbc2fcc90ce86327b962b789b2c84f6"}

I think tomorrow(22nd) would be the day then. Not that it really matters anyway, but it was a nice touch. It appeared on the "Your task" tab I think. It was an optional button like, "Reveal my recipient!"

You're right, it was an option. But remember that SantaHack Is Not ChristmasHack.

S.I.N.C.H.?

I've managed to find some moderately okay graphics for placeholders, but it wasn't easy, and Google Images only helped so much. Still working on mechanics and gameplay. 2 days and 7 1/2 hours to go! Might have to pull an all nighter tomorrow...

GrINCH

I'm feeling rather proud of myself - I just made Santa's back view from his front view. Nothing like a little copy paste stretch rotate for ya.

I must confess that I have basically done nothing so far... The good (?) news is that tomorrow is my last day of j0rb for about a week. That should give me a full day to work on Santahack and if necessary I can probably drink a lot of coffee and stay up all night/morning. I currently have two plans:

I'm done. I don't have anymore time to spare and further development would only be refinement and polishing. I'm surprised how fun my little game turned out to be in the end, which was entirely accidental. It's quite challenging too!

Good luck to the rest of you!

I've had quite a few setbacks, I'm concerned I may not finish and/or my end result won't be substantial.

Speedhack is better because we get these excuses after five minutes. With this Santahack thing we have to wait days.

I lied. I had some more time and implemented three more game modes. The only thing missing is allowing for playing the game in scaled fullscreen. Then I'm done. For real.

At last I'm done with those finals. Now I finally got time to start working.

I went for a 28 level mark, but if I come up with new ideas I'll add more in the middle.

My game is beginning to come together. Now I need to make a Santa sprite to replace my ugly MS-paint filler image...

I have no graphics at all, not even Paint ones. Don't know if I'll be able to have an entry worth submitting.

No, but I must say it looks very impressive (if not a little forlorn).

forlorn as in never used?

I just realised the 23th is actually the last day of the compo, since 12:00 UTC on the 24th for me is early morning.

Gotta work on a menu and the final level. It's kind of a sloppy game but I like the concept. Good luck to everyone on the final stretch!

Pseudo 3D for the win!

My game is in my head and it is AWESOME! You should see it. If this contest had winners I would win hands down! I have to go take my medicines now, go back to my padded room, and put on my hugging coat again. * solders off*

Stupid mistakes all the time! Why can't I code? I have no routine.

Uploaded my entry

Hmm...

should I hit the abort button, or the code-in-a-panic button?

Quitters never win... Hit the code-in-a-panic button.

You can do it guys Just keep your mind on the ball

Code Mark, code!

EDIT: I'm almost ready, but I don't know if the game is building correctly. When I use the makefile from SH2011, I get these errors(MinGW 3.4.5 Win Xp SP3):

g++: `pkg-config: No such file or directory
g++: allegro-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_acodec-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_audio-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_color-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_font-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_image-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_main-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_memfile-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_physfs-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_primitives-5.0: No such file or directory
g++: allegro_ttf-5.0`: No such file or directory

Now I dunno about pkg-config, but this is another mingw install I did after doing a clean format some weeks ago. I would test if it works on my old Ubuntu VM, but it doesn't seem to boot up either. Is my compiler just screwed up?

I don't think pkg-config is meant to be used on windows? Also `backticks` don't work on windows.

I know, right? I'm just using the SH2011 makefile from the template for A5. Do you mind trying compiling it yourself? I'm in need of a Linux box to test.

Sounds like you don't have the WINDOWS or MINGDIR environment variables set. Somewhere in the system part of the Windows control panel there's a place where you can set environment variables like that.

You should be able to do it on the command line:

make WINDOWS=1

or whatever the makefile wants.

Well, I hope mine compiles okay. It does when using Code::Blocks but haven't tested the makefile as I have no idea how :/ It compiles with 5.0.5 though

Yeah that worked. And indeed, it seems I had forgotten the MINGDIR enviroment variable after I did this clean Windows install.

Now all that remains is finding someone who can try it on Linux that isn't part of the compo. Anyone?

Makes me wish I had a Linux system.

If you send me a PM with a link I'll try it out.

Sent. I'm gonna go battle with vmware meanwhile.

It worked, but only when I linked against the debug version of Allegro.

Otherwise it complained about not being able to load the ogg tracks. My release library does have ogg support, but it could just be due to something I broke while hacking on Allegro.

Edit:

There is a box (missing character in the font?) at the end of some of the text strings. e.g., After the name of the level.

Sucess is misspelled.

The makefile is the one from SH2011 with the game name modified. I compiled the release version with the binaries from the Files page on Windows just fine. I'm downloading a newer version of VMWare at the moment to test it out.

Thanks for that, I'm gonna just guess the OGG issue is just a problem in your setup.

EDIT:

That's my ignorance at work. BRB.

EDIT2: I think the box thing is related to my own ignorance of how text file reading is handled on Linux.

Windows uses CR/LF to indicate a new line. (If you aren't aware, CR = carriage return, LF = line feed)
While linux only uses a CR (or was it LF? not sure anymore). The extra box being rendered is probably the LF.

Old mac was CR (aka \r) only. Unix is LF (aka \n).

Ok, so say I'm using fgets for reading from the text file, what would be the cross-platform way to read each line and make sure there are no newline characters?

Here's how I do cross platform line reading (only works in BINARY file mode! (don't know why - I think it's something to do with the way file seeking works)) :

FileWork.hpp

FileWork.cpp

The only thing allegro is used for is an ALLEGRO_ASSERT - remove that, and you don't need A5.

There's a version for istream, and for FILE*.

Oh neat, thanks, although I did find a snippet already. And only working in binary mode is a problem.

Lesson learned, XML is probably the best solution to everything.

I just use the allegro config stuff, works pretty well for me.

Various problem including internet access have made my entry null. Sorry.

Frantically trying to finish...

I'm trying to find motivation to finish this, but somehow I feel stressed and can't get shit done at all...

3D Trig. Woe is me.

Alrightie, I made a game. Turned 'er in.

Not the original idea I started with. I ended up scrapping everything and making a new game this morning. It's not as thorough of a game as I'd like to have made, it only has two gameplay modes, but it works and it's tricky, as requested.

I fixed the cross-platform line problems and resubmitted my entry. Now it seems to compile & run just fine at my Linux VM(Had to redownload vmware, a new Windows Installer, AND install the tools over again). The wonders of Allegro.

Thanks for all the help, and good luck to the rest.

EDIT: I hope ML isn't secretly playing my game.

I'm not. I sold its rights to a publishing company and have retired off of the profits.

Was sick all week and had to work 9 hour days too, so if I got your name...sorry, but I didn't get anything accomplished. I had an awesome idea, and a lot of graphics ready...but never could get a minute where I could actually concentrate. I hate feeling like this, my head all cloudy and dizzy. Again, sorry I didn't finish your game...wishing all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Whenever I try to submit mine I get Error 500...

I'm not going to finish mine either for santahack, I might just finish it later though.
I did expect this would happen, I'm really slow at doing anything, no matter what it is that I'm doing. And programming is no exception.

I haven't even had time to start coding yet.

I better get hacking at some point.

I haven't gotten anything done for Santahack and I'm too tired to make an attempt in the 10 hours remaining (I didn't get much sleep last night, despite not making progress on Santahack). I will hopefully be sleeping for most of those hours. Sorry to whoever I ended up with. Merry Christmas or whatever your culture's season greeting is. I'm on holidays all next week and I rather like the idea of a console-based platformer, so I might try experimenting with a curses library and see if I can get something working.

In other news, this past week wasn't completely unproductive. I did manage to hack up an IRC bot, which is currently a regular in #allegro on freenode. The code, as usual, is GPL'd and tracked on GitHub:

https://github.com/bamccaig/bambot/
git://github.com/bamccaig/bambot.git/

Hacked up virtually from scratch with Perl.

I was sick for a couple days, so nothing got done then. I'm still on schedule to complete my game, but I'll have to pare it down a bit.

Had to pull an allnighter for this one... but I submitted something! Will be away for the next few days, so hopefully Linux users who want to try out my game (once it becomes public) will manage the uber-complicated install process (at least it's not Python3 though).

Incidentally... I don't see my uploaded files at the santahack website... is that normal?

Yes. It's normal for a .NET-based Web site to malfunction repeatedly.

I hope it's normal as it doesn't show me the file either. It did say that it was saved though

One more thing, Do you only included the data files and source? If not I've got 2 hours from now to shrink it.

Got my entry submitted with 8 minutes to spare biyatches!!! And it's functional. (But still basic )

Mark Oates' avatar changes are sneak peeks at concept art?

I will definitely develop my idea further into a proper game next year. I have even more ideas I'd like to implement, with different game modes, levels and a more suitable story, perhaps even some of those achievements and unlockables that seem so popular nowadays.

mmaaayyyybeeee....

But I think it looks better as a teaser than in the actual gameplay

The previous avatar was from the concept that got scrapped. Too bad, cause it had a tohtally wicked sick storyline.

I see your avatar has changed as well. *mischievous chin stroke*

I managed to submit something, but it's not finished. I'll be trying to at least add a final boss and some sound effects in the next few days though. Right now all you can do is play the first half of the single level until you enter the unfinished second half.

Yeah, I probably should have given some indication of a successful upload. If you selected the file and hit save, and got a 'saved' message, then your file is on the server.

Cool story bro. It's not .NET based though. Who the fuck uses ASP?

It's a little late now, but in the source pack, you include everything you need to compile and run the game (which means source, data, any libraries not publicly available, etc). The game pack zip is where you can include a binary if you want.

Mine has an achievement:
{"name":"605281","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/c\/ecc0cb4bccf65c196a07fac43465632d.png","w":400,"h":73,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/e\/c\/ecc0cb4bccf65c196a07fac43465632d"}

I didn't include the music in the source pack because of the file size, but it's on the Game Pack as an option. The graphics are already barely below the 2mb limit considering they're made for 1920x1080 max as native res.

Ah crap, I slept through the deadline without submitting anything!

If you want to know who you made a game for (or let down ), check the task page. I just updated the site, and that was one of the updates.

I've got a few improvements in the queue for next year (including better feedback on the submission page); time constraints took over this year, unfortunately (the site was created in a JIT fashion; with me adding the necessary functionality hours before that phase of the competition. ).

My upload contains everything needed to compile and all data

Append: , Just found out who I made a game for XD.

My recipient is exactly who I thought it was. The OS and the specs were an obvious giveaway.

Thanks to BAF for organizing this!

blah blah blah.

You did a great job. There's no excuse for that.

*applauses for baffles*

So if I understand the date right, only 3 hours left to receive our gifts?

Yup. 45 minutes left now...

<Gleeful Anticipation>

Got Desmond's game, because the one who got my wishlist didn't submit anything. Seems I'll never get my hockey table game.

Btw, merry christmas SiegeLord, hope you enjoy my entry.

EDIT: Desmond, I had to take out <array> from the header to compile, because I don't have that apparently. Otherwise it ran fine. It's a bit stuttery tho because of the apparent lack of vsync. Simple entry, won on the first try without losing any lives. I dig that music.

Thanks for the game, Edgar.

What is it? I'm curious about the pseudo-3D. Screens please.

Yo, bro.

{"name":"605282","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/3\/238210b65d24ad7519d2bf7f95e93640.jpg","w":812,"h":632,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/2\/3\/238210b65d24ad7519d2bf7f95e93640"}

It's very much a WIP, didn't have enough time to implement everything I wanted to, but I'll keep working on it over the next few weeks.

Just found out - don't let it run too long - the zombies come faster and faster and they will eat up every last bit of your memory and put you in swap hell...

Edit
Thanks to Siegelord I get to try out CortexTerror. I will try it out soon...
Sorry to my secret santa if my wishes were too hard.

I finally got a secret santa that completed my gift! I can't wait to play it (might not be for a little while though). Still...

How???? I usually put Windows as my platform of choice, but this time I put Linux in hopes I'd get someone skilled to do it for me >.>. There really should be ability to choose multiple platforms that you can test on, just like the choice for the development platform.

Yes! I had the same issue a day ago. The debug library works, but the release one doesn't. I blame the compiler... but I haven't debugged it enough yet (I encountered it at 6 am after pulling an allnighter). Putting a printf inside the DLL loading code in ogg.c fixed it for me though .

Yea I forgot to take that out The array.h was going to be used for something I didn't have time to add. Music I can do a lot better than Sprites XD.

@ Mark Oates.
I can't seem to compile your game as I don't have MSVC I did try code::blocks but get a ton of errors. Could you please compile it for me . Oh and since it's not released till tomorrow either inbox me or post it on here tomorrow

I looked at the data folder and it looks to be fun already

My Ubuntu VM with Allegro 5.0.3(from the time we did SpeedHack 2011), didn't complain at all about ogg loading using the release library.

Well I saw mid-end Linux, and I thought, it was either Elias^[1] I think, or SiegeLord. But then I saw the tasks, a GOD game with first choice of animals, elephants! Elias wouldn't be so obvious, but your last entry on SpeedHack was a game with elephants.

EDIT: I know the first 9 or so level of the game are kind of a chore, but starting from 10 it starts to get way more interesting.

PM'd

I can't get Elias' game to run. I tried it both on my shitty PC laptop (running Windows XP) where it crashed, and through Wine on my Mac where it also crashed. I tried to get it to compile on my computer but I haven't gotten around to install Allegro 5.1 yet.

In my head it's a lot of fun though!

When I received my gift I only saw the option to download the source pack. Will the game pack appear there as well? Because for my game it actually includes the music in the game pack only, so I'd rather SiegeLord to download and compile that instead(it includes the same source and makefile). I guess Desmond just uploaded the source package, so that's why I see only one option?

I didn't submit anything. Looks like I can't get past writing crappy entries with primitive graphics (literally; circles, rectangles, etc.), primitive collision detection and primitive gameplay.

I feel kinda bad when I see that some of you guys can complete some solid entries having probably less time to work on them like, for example, Dario in this SantaHack (even though at 1920x1080 I won't be able to try his entry on my machine). And by the way:

Sorry, that was my task.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to play all entries as soon as I have time.

It downscales to any resolution you want, and I made sure this time it didn't include any textures bigger than 1024x1024 so it worked on your system.

Don't worry. I did propose that one since I thought it was simple enough to make in 7 days and give it an interesting twist. But I wouldn't expect you to have much time to focus on this time of the year.

At least we have all day long today to get even more stuffed with food and drink.

Oh, sweet!.

So did I. It even was one of the wishes that I voted high as in "I hope to get this one 'cause it's easy to do".

I just checked my gift from perplex. Even though it's not finished, this line made my Christmas:

Who knows? With a little more work it may even be somewhat fun.

Who's the guy who wanted "Tetris with a twist"?

I've messaged you again Mark. Still no luck on getting it to work :/ I might have to download MSVC and compile it.

I didn't manage to send anything in time and it seems I didn't receive anything either. Fair enough. But I do have a great game coming up, late, though.

Anyway, I owe someone for this nice little idea of a game. Should I just send him the game as soon as it's playable or should I go public with it straight away?

I still use A4. I have too much stuff for A4 and nothing at all for A5. Most of all I feel very dependent on a proper customisable GUI, like the GUI of A4. One of the many things that made me miss the deadline was struggling with 32 bit rgba sprites, creating them and getting the alpha mask there. TFM is not very clear on that.

Woot 8 entries. Trying them out now.

EDIT: Edgar, the alpha channel in your entry seems borked up. It just shows garbage around the sprites.

Nope, you only get a gamepack if the person uploaded one.

Huh? Show me. It doesn't look like the screenie I posted earlier? I know my image editing skills aren't perfect, but there was only a small border left showing in my version. It's hard to see which pixels should be removed. I'll have to overlay it over a black background over something to see them better.

The garbage looks like stuff that's been rendered previously(In fact one of those looks like Elias' main player sprite). GPU is an ATI Radeon HD 6870.

{"name":"605308","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/8\/d8bec59711bd454981455b1becc024ce.png","w":802,"h":577,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/d\/8\/d8bec59711bd454981455b1becc024ce"}

Looks like uninitialized video memory to me... It's probably because I didn't set an overwrite blender before scaling the zombie images, or because I didn't clear the background first. Funny it doesn't show up on my machine, but I'll have it fixed soon.

Maybe it's all of those global variables.

Hah! I didn't use any globals. Take that!

I didn't know Bambam was black!

AAhhhahHAHAHA!

That's fantastic

(I've been trying to use fewer globals myself, btw... ... ER, I MEAN: )

I loved that series. A few years back they revealed that if it had gone on one more season they were going to make Steve and Laura get married. Wish they would have done a reunion show but now most the cast are so old they just don't look the same or have passed away (like the woman that played Grandma).

The lack of post-competition chatter in this thread is comforting.

Anyway, it was a fun week, even with limitted time, I really enjoyed making my entry. And I did play all of the others!

SpaceXmas: Quite a fun entry, even if the first time I played it I seemed to have stuck in like 3 consecutive bad levels generated where the game just killed me in the first second. The jumping and boosting mechanic is great, almost like a platformer doing resource management.

Santa's Sleigh Ride: Nice music, but the graphics' resolution differences between the assets is really jarring. Gameplay is fine, but not really replayable since it's too easy on your first try.

Christmas Connect: Could use some pointers in-game of what makes a set or not instead of trial and error or looking it up online. Apart from that, really polished visuals and sounds, and kind of fun. Without knowing the rules well tho, it doesn't attract the player much.

xmas by Elias: Moved around a bit, the zombies are very hard obstacles to go through with the slow movement speed of the character. So I just gave up.

Santa Claus: Zombie Madnes: Not a game, but the readme made my day.

Cortex Terror: I'm too stupid to understand this game. Besides, first time I played I didn't find any blue stars, just a white star next to me and nothing around. And I was flying for quite a good time.

Overrun: Unplayable to me ATM due to graphic glitches.

I feel ashamed for having used so many global variables to code faster, but at least I feel less ashamed than the ones who didn't submit anything.

And I could almost feel SiegeLord's happiness of having a Secret Santa that submitted something in time. I'm hoping for mine to appear some year.

Anyway, experience++! My favourite game so far is spacexmas. Anyone else want to share their reviews?

I've been a little busy at the moment with my kids and playing with their new toys but shall play them all and post a review when I can

I'm glad you found SpaceXmas entertaining! It's basically a rehash of one of my ScreenHack entries. I have some new concepts in mind to expand the gameplay more and will probably create something more refined next year, this time not set in space though, but up in the CLOUDS!

I finally got Elias' entry to compile and visually it was hard to see where I was supposed to go. At first I thought the game had hanged, until I figured out how to move the character which I didn't even see at first. And I agree the game is a bit hard, I got to the second platform and gave up after I died. Could be a lot of fun with more polish! I like the idea of picking up a Christmas present and using it to kill the Zombies by throwing it.

I will try to play the other entries in the near future, but it's tedious to get them to compile on my Mac.