Hey Everybody!

I just opened registration for KrampusHack 2021

In case you don't know: KrampusHack is our community tradition for the holidays. It's a secret-santa style game jam: all participants make a game for another randomly selected participant. So the requirements of your entry are determined by another participant!

The whole thing is pretty relaxed and slow paced. There is no voting and no prizes - it's just hanging out, making something cool and sharing what you've made. You don't have to use allegro, and it's fine to re-use lots of code.

Who wants to join?

I don't have a logo yet for this year - is somebody interested in making one?

Hm, I'm traveling from 20th to 31st - so only 7 instead of 19 days and only a single weekend. Probably not fair to sign up but then likely not be able to make something for my secret santa... I do want to krampushack though - I think I'll just do one for myself this year, on the two weekends from 11th to 19th

Cool. I've signed up. Not sure what my commitment will be, but at least I'm an official registrant. 👍

I'll do some traveling myself as well. But it doesn't matter if you can't devote every day to it. A single weekend is enough to make something cool, Speedhack has proven that often enough

Anyway, it's totally up to you but it would be cool if you could join again!

Joined!

Mark Oates - any chance you could design a logo / tshirt for this year's KrampusHack? Your logo last year was great!

Gull's joined too, that makes four already!

edit: Edgar pointed out to me that it will start on a Monday this year. So... lot's of Monday projects this holiday season.

https://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/613071

Just found that on an old drive. That wasn't the final version, I think.

<edit />
Ok, objects don't work on a.cc anymore. But you can download the attached mp3 and listen to a masterpiece.

now not voted. It's also not comment?

I'm join again.

In the end I will probably do it without a Christmas theme. That idea is very burned, that because it's Christmas I have to put something about Christmas. I would like to do something more creative.

You could do... a halloween theme?

Nightmare Before Christmas. Sandy Claws.

Grinch's revenge....

WTF there are only 6 entrants, we can do better. I am gonna advertise it a little bit !

8 so far! Not so bad I think. Niek Zandt, one of the winners from Tins 2021 is joining again too.

I'll do another round of advertising in the coming days...

Yeah, just do it!

Let me get you a graphic of some kind? 🤞 by end of day, hopefully? I have some ideas.

Absolutely, that would be awesome!

OK, here's a colorized version:

EDIT: Image removed. See updated images in later post. (Original is still attached to this post if you want to see).

There are a few high-res and alt versions (black-and-white) in the attachments.

Let me know what you think, if you need changes or something

This is great, very eye catching! I'll use the colored version primarily. The black-and white versions are nice too, but I don't have a lot of printed materials to put them on.

Is there interest in a T-shirt too? In that case I'd like this design with a transparent background too.

Do you think that some of the icons might attract unwanted attention from the copyright inquisition if printed on a T-shirt? I worry mainly about Pacman and the space invader - the rest is probably fine.

edit:
Please retweet

Is C, C++ and Lua the only languages we can use?

Well, if you start treating the icons as requirements, then I guess we should also target only consoles and handhelds?

The icons are the law, what can I say? 🤷‍♂️

Truth be told, I did the icons part very quickly. I'm not 100% convinced they'll be OK because of copyright like you mentioned, but also because the terms of the "free use icons" sources where I got them not very clear.

So if we wanted to use them to make money (sell t-shirts, mugs and merch), I think a safer plan would be to use a different set of icons, or possibly use the icons from the TINS website's background (that would be more consistent branding, too, which I actually think would be better).

Alternatively, we could use the isolated graphic in the middle in isolation (on a mug might be cool).

I'll look for a safer alternative of icons see what I can find. I also tend to be way over-concerned about things like this, too.

EDIT:

OK! I have replaced the icons with stylized versions from off the TINS website. I also added some more languages for Elias

They are here:

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{"name":"613085","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/8\/68cef6c29355fd875bb40f9e357b964b.png","w":3168,"h":2448,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/6\/8\/68cef6c29355fd875bb40f9e357b964b"}

I actually think this looks better, is more "on brand", so thank you for the suggestions.

Black works best for me. Good image. 👍

Although I don't know what that diabolical face means, maybe I can no longer distinguish between Halloween and Christmas, ignore me.

The face is Krampus

Thanks. You can always invert the black-and-white version if you like.

That Krampus is one ugly fellow. (No offense to your artwork)

Yay, thank you! Now I can use Python!!!

Do you use Python? To game code?

I might, I've done so in the past and Allegro ships Python bindings. But probably I'll use my old Python-to-C transpiler which I used for the past several TINS/Krampushacks - the code still looks like Python so I'll ignore that you removed the C icon.

amarillion, it might be a good idea to post this in a the depot forums or something. For non-logged in users, they won't see this thread.

Well, what would really help in this regard if we could post news messages on the a.cc front page again, but that didn't happen the last three times I submitted Speedhack announcements.

---

I have a different question for you guys. How would you feel if I started a little Discord channel for TINS/KrampusHack?

I've been on the fence about this. On the one hand, it will compete with the existing communication channels (IRC and the TINS logs). On the other hand, IRC is really for old geezers and we need some fresh blood. From the Amsterdam Meetup Group I noticed that there is a lot of organic traffic coming into Discord, so it might be an nice way to passively get more members into the community over the course of the year.

It would be optional and a side channel (just like IRC). It would not replace TINS logs.

So Discord Yay or Nay?

Yea discord would be cool. If there were some way to integrate the two (some kind of dischord/irc integration or bot) that would be ideal. I might have both open.

I honestly don't know much about Dischord. I installed it once when I was looki g for insider info on scheduling a vaccine, and I found it very noisy and tbh I couldn't figure out what the appeal was. I used slack at work, I liked that.

As far as it being noisy, that depends on the server you connect to.

The TINS/KrampusHack might not be much noisier than these forums to begin with.

@amarillion :
Is it a bad idea. IRC is not for old people, fashion here is of no interest at all.
I would understand better if you used the other social networks to bring people to IRC, your TINS site, and in the forum, like i do in reddit (I'm posting things there, including TINS).

But Discord is dead, I don't see people there, just like the matrix and telegram, all dead. I think aggressive advertising collapses any mind, making it believe that they are popular, crowded and very fashionable.

I think you saying it's dead is related to the servers you're apart of.

From my POV (And I guess Mark), this site is dead compared to Discord. I often see way too much talking going on that I can't keep up and just skip a lot of conversions. I hate when I go on and see that somehow between visits, there's more than 100 messages that were posted (even more annoying when it was only a couple of hours between visits, but understandable when sleep and going to work is the reason between long gaps between visits)

I posted my wish list rules on the KrampusHack website ✅. These were my rules:

• Invincibility or Death - You must choose between a game design where either 1) the player can only die once and then must restart the game from the beginning, or 2) the player will remain alive throughout the whole game and no action can result in death or restarting the game, until the very end. No lives, restore states, or save points. (For clarity, you may only choose one of these designs for your game, and not allow the player to choose between the two within the game, for example).

• Thingadex - Your game should include a gameplay mechanic where you collect multiple things and record them in an encyclopedia or index where you can view and read about the items you collected. You might even include an achievement if your player catches them all!

• Always Be Learning - Explore some new game design or programming technique that you are not familiar with. A 3D game, turn-based battle style gameplay, etc. Try something you haven’t done before.

Before choosing these, my GF and I brainstormed a list of ideas. In addition to the ones we chose above, we also came up the ones listed below. If you're having trouble coming up with some wish rules, maybe you can use these as inspiration (or you can choose them outright, if you want, no matter to me ). Here are the rules we ended up not using:

Krampus Hack 2021 Wishlist Ideas

Technical

• Always Ready to Ship - The game you're making should always be a working game. It may suck, it may be lame during development, but it’s always playable and ready for production. You might start with only a simple gameplay mechanism, then build on it iteratively until the end of the hackathon.

• Component Based Design - Your game’s objects should be encapsulated into a lot of small classes that have few responsibilities. Avoid packing a lot of features into a single class, and prefer splitting a monolith into several smaller classes. For inspiration, you might watch Sandi Metz talk All the Little Things. If you’re not using object-oriented programming, you can omit this rule.

Creative / Artistic

• Rule of Thirds - Timing is everything. Things in the game should happen in threes. Three levels in a world, three evolutions in the final boss, three upgrades to the master sword, anything goes. The rule does not have to apply to everything, only a few key elements of your core game’s mechanic.

• Costume Change - Allow the player to customize character(s), either throughout the game or in the beginning. The customizations should not affect the gameplay in any significant way (though other characters or game elements might comment on it).

• Music Changes - Music should change according to the environment, or different things that are happening in the game. Even slight changes, a fighting game comes down to the last punch and the music pumps up, the last lap in the racing game jumps up the tempo are some good examples.

Genre

• Multiple Choice - The gameplay should involve choosing from multiple options. Choose your own adventure options, dialog response options, outfits, are a few examples.

• Mythical Fantasy - Your game should be based in a mythical fantasy world. Uninhabited by humans, your setting is in magic and nature, and is a part of the living forests, waters, beasts, and fairies.

• Multiple Endings - The game should have different endings depending on choices that were made throughout the game. Some examples: a good happy ending (everyone is happy), a bad ending (everyone dies, your friend betrays you), a true ending (realistic conclusion, your friends go their separate ways). Depending on the ending, it may even result in additional gameplay.

Miscellaneous

• Act of Cat - You can remove any other rule if you include a pink cat as an easter egg somewhere in your game, either as an item, or element in a room, etc.

Nice! It seems like you put a lot of thought in your wishlist. A lot of these rules could easily double as TINS rules. My own approach to wishlist writing was more spur of the moment, like... what would I like to have / play myself?

How does your GF feel about the whole KrampusHack thing? Is she invested now?

Firstly, the decline of IRC in general is beyond dispute:

By comparison, Discord publishes figures like 50M concurrent users and 150M monthly users. I also note that with the recent freenode/libera split, the popularity of the #allegro channel has declined significantly. A lot of people never made the transition.

But look at the big picture. We all have to prioritize different goals in life. Here are some relevant goals to think about:

1. Do we want to attract newcomers to the Allegro community and further the cause of Allegro?
2. Do we want to attract newcomers to the TINS / KrampusHack / Speedhack and make these events more lively?
3. Do we want to bring more uses to the #allegro IRC channel and make it more vibrant?

Note that these goals do not overlap necessarily. You can achieve one of these goals and completely fail to achieve the others. Personally, goals 1 and 2 have my attention, but I don't care much for goal 3. So if opening a Discord channel would make KrampusHack more successful but would hurt the IRC channel, then I see that as an acceptable loss.

So I probably will open a Discord channel, as an optional side channel, and I'll just let it fly low for a while and see what kind of traction it gets.

Discord is all right, but let's make sure it stays on topic and only has a few channels. I tried Discord with the Zelda remake team, and it was a massive cluster fsck. I couldn't navigate the thing and it turned me off to discord in general.

Sure, I don't think we need more than 1 channel.

Well, sign me up. Where's it at?

Allright, I just set it up. Use this invitation link to our Discord server: https://discord.gg/7uK6jNtNX9

You'll almost always want at least 2 channels if you want an active server, one on topic, and one off topic.

Once I'm home, I'll join the server.

Perhaps

I got my secret santa. I joined the dischord. Did some warmup coding over the past couple days. Got some ideas and going to get started.

What do you call an active server?

It's pretty good right now with 11 members, but that's probably the level where it will stay for the time being.

I would say how active a server is would be dependent on how much people talk.

For example, an active server might have 5 people, but the purpose of the server results in more than 100 messages a day, but an inactive might have hundreds of people, but the subject of the server only sees activity every other month, and even then, it's rarely more than 10 messages a day during the active times.

NO NO NO AND NO!!!!!!! WHAT FAULT DO WE HAVE THAT THEY DON'T ADAPT TO US?????????? FORGET ABOUT DISCORD, NEVER TO TOUCH THEM, LET THEM KNOW THAT THAT SERVER IS THE WORST!!!!!!!

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