Not to mention that I wouldn't trust a semi-random person with my login data for A.cc. That's not really a solution, and BAF mentioned that a better one exist (AWiki uses it), so...

[EDIT] It seems that "/account/login/" passes a "token" to the URL provided. Whatever that token means... I think I will just PM Matthew and see if he is willing to help me out.

Token looks like a session ID of some sort to me... not sure, but it looks fairly easy to handle to me, run the login then store your data.

My guess is that AWiki takes the token and gives it to another a.cc script which returns user info. The process may seem redundent but it isn't. By having the server contact a.cc personally with an arbitrary hash it can be sure the data it gets is from A.cc, and not the user.
You are mistaken in assuming that when you get a token it means the person is an a.cc member. I could just as easily enter in www.yoursite.com/yourscript.php?token=blah in my browser. That is why the assumed second step of having the server take the token back to a.cc is important.

William: the returning of a token doesnt automatically mean you're logged in correctly, but the point was you won't recieve a real token unless you logged in correctly.

I'm curious as to what he said...

WH: Matthew asked me not to spread the information, but basically you had the right idea.

Everything is already set up and working. I'll queue a news item for the front page, and give you all the details here.

Right now you can:

• register

• set your game descriptions and preferences

• vote on others' descriptions

If you are logged in on A.cc, registration should be really simple. There is no e-mail verification, so be sure you get it right the first time .

The link: http://xmashack.bafsoft.com

Enjoy! It's 3:17 here, and I'm going to have nice three hours of sleep . Please excuse any bugs that slipped in because of weariness.

You have to hit 'register' first. It worked fine for me, pretty cool! Great job!

I think the contest should require everyone to use a language they haven't previously used to code their entry. Like ruby or scheme using kazzmirs bindings. That would really show us who is king of christmas hackery mountain.

edit; nice site, I registered! (maybe I'll feel like coding around christmas time...)

It works now, yay! I'm all registered and I've voted.

Thanks for all the hard work Jakub! This is going to be fun

The binary requirement is unnecessary and impractical. Just change it so that only the (cross platform) source & datafiles are required.

I liked to make an alternative for users of external libraries. For example, getting 3 libs installed just to compile a game is boring/tiring, while the binary version can ship with DLLs/whatever shared libs the system uses.

On the other hand, preparing a cross-platform makefile (or even just a makefile) takes some work, and even then MSVC only users won't be satisfied. And I wouldn't like to split the "develop for" tick-boxes to cover compilers .

I'm going to reword the rules a little, possibly making binary for the two systems an "encouraged option", and the source - required. I will also add information about the screening process (I overlooked it the first time).

Anyway, I have a small upgrade for you - looking at your participation page, you will be able to see how your descriptions are rated. Red is below the screening threshold, green is good. [Corrected this: now gives the right figures ]. Also, you can now click the "registered user(s)" text to get a list of participants.

[edit]

[RULESET UPDATED!] Source is now a requirement, binary is an encouraged option.

We won't have as many participants as SpeedHack/TINS, so that shouldn't be a problem. And even if it would be a problem, it would be BAF's call to make the limit smaller (he provides the bandwidth).

The Allegro DLL when properly prepared is only like 250kb, and you don't have to distribute it with your game (take note of the fact that the rules were updated). We can probably safely assume that everyone has or knows where to get 4.2.0 shared libs.

The 1mb requirement is already extremely lenient in comparison to other hacks. I don't think we should push it further.

I could allow adding an "extended version" link to a ZIP hosted externally, in addition to the "hack version" hosted on BAFSoft. I'll think about it and let you know, OK?