[KR155E]

PVB CODING COMPETITION 2010 Rules (as of 08/24/2010 – updated main prize)

General Rules:

– Deadline for entries is 11/01/2010 0:00 GMT+1 (runtime 6 months).

– Any type of program running on the Virtual Boy or a Virtual Boy emulator is allowed, be it a game, demo, application, emulator, port or anything else.

– Also allowed are supplemental tools for VB development. (NEW in 2010)

– Every project has to have the PVB IPD/Focus adjustment screen. Here is the images and a code example for including it. You can also write your own code if you want.

– Entries have to be open source, so make sure to include source code in your release. (NEW in 2010)

– If needed, you are free to release your project under any license you want. Don’t know which license to use? See here. If no license is needed, ignore this point.

– Multiple entries are allowed, but will be rated individually (means you can’t collect votes through multiple projects). This means on one hand, that your project will compete with each other, on the other hand that, if they’re all good, you’ll maximize your chance of winning with one of the projects.

– In case of multiple submission, each individual can still only get one prize (i.e. if someone’s projects place 1st and 2nd, he will get the 1st prize, while the 2nd prize will be awarded to the 3rd placed entry and so on).

– Any project, which already saw a public release before 01/05/2010, is not allowed to participate. In special cases, exceptions can be made, though, if for example a project has been significantly changed/improved since its initial release.

– After the deadline, a community vote will find the winner. The vote will be secret, every user registered before 01/05/2010 can vote. Sorry to everybody who is excluded by this, but it is a precautionary measure so that nobody can vote using fake accounts.

– Of course also users registered after 05/01/2010 can take part in the competition and send in a project. In that case, this user will also be able to vote.

– Prizes are (might get updated):
1st: FlashBoy FlashBoy Plus + PVB Shirt
2nd: PVB Shirt
3rd: PVB Shirt

– Furthermore, the first 10 every participant will receive a high quality printed A3 (297mm x 420mm) copy of the competition poster.

Project Submission:

– Open a thread in the Coding Competition forum for your project and attach it to the post.

– As the topic title, please use the name of your project plus the prefix “[ENTRY]”, so entries can better be seen (for example “[ENTRY] Pacman”).

– You can post as many versions as you want and gather feedback from the community.

• This topic was modified 14 years, 6 months ago by KR155E.
• This topic was modified 14 years, 6 months ago by KR155E.
• This topic was modified 14 years, 6 months ago by KR155E.
• This topic was modified 14 years, 6 months ago by KR155E.
• This topic was modified 14 years, 6 months ago by KR155E.
• This topic was modified 14 years, 5 months ago by KR155E.
• This topic was modified 14 years, 2 months ago by KR155E.
• This topic was modified 14 years, 2 months ago by KR155E.

Attachments:

1. cc10_splash.zip

The PVB IPD/Focus adjustment screen link is broken. Other than that, now I have an excuse to keep working on Castle of Doom, or maybe I can start something else…

Cool… I hope I have some time to work on something for this… I’ll have to think of a cool project.

DogP

I’m already at work on something! 🙂 What does “open source” mean?

VirtualChris wrote:
I’m already at work on something! 🙂 What does “open source” mean?

Means that you have to include the full source code in your entry.

Does that mean the first ten people to submit an entry get a poster, or the ten highest-ranking participants in the community vote?

The first 10 entries, maybe more, if I can afford it, just wanted to be on the safe side. 😉

Hmm… I’ll have to try my hardest to restrain myself from turning in something incomplete just to get a poster. 😀

I’d love to enter, but…

Entries have to be open source, so make sure to include source code in your release.

Why? I really don’t feel like working on something for half a year, and then having to release my code as if I didn’t put any effort into it. I feel like I should have some control over my code, because, after all, I wrote it. Is this because you don’t want us stealing code or what? Making it open source is just going to encourage stealing.

Oh well. If I don’t participate I’ll at least have some more time.

I sort of agree on the open source thing, since it’s mine, I’d like to have control of my source… though I’m not opposed to releasing the code. I actually like releasing my source code, so others can learn from it, or borrow parts of it for something else, but I usually prefer to release it when I’m done, not after some time limit. What this means to me is that whatever project I pick, I’m gonna try to make it one that I _can_ finish by the end of the time limit.

But I think what KR155E is trying to do is to jumpstart VB development a little more. If you look at the last competition, there were quite a few entries, none of which were “complete”, and most of them were closed source and have since gone unfinished. So, in the end, the competition didn’t really do much good for the community except releasing a few demos. If the source was out there, others could improve on them, borrow ideas from them, or even suggest ideas on how to make it better.

BTW, KR155E: You say it needs to be open source… do we have the option of which license to pick, or does it have to be GPL, MIT, etc?

DogP

DogP got it right. It was great to see all those projects released for the last competition, but in the end it was many projects which never got finished. And since we did only see source code for one third of the submitted projects, there was no big didactic effect. IMHO, it’s for the best of all of us, when new programmers have a lot of code to learn from, can help improve existing code or even finish unfinished projects. This competition is mainly about helping the VB homebrew scene grow and get new people on board, rather than seeing who can code best. 😉

You’re free to pick any license you want. So if people really want to stop others from “stealing”/copy&pasting their code, they can just do it through the included license I guess.

Hey there,

I just discovered your side and want to participate to your competition. I think that the VB is a real interesting device.
It´s a shame that its so dificult to get here in germany.
But that didnt stoped me from downloading the sdk and starting my first vb project. However i´ve got a problem… the splashscreen link in the first post is dead and so i cannot integrate it in my entry. It would be cool if you could reupload it so i can finish my project and submit it to you.

thx in advance and happy coding

usch

Hey Usch, welcome to our community! It’s always great to see a new face interested in development for the VB.

About your question: I did not yet have time to upload the splash screen, but I will do it asap, promised!

Alright =)
Take your time i´ve still got some bugs to flesh out 😉

OK, I created and uploaded the splash screen. I did not yet have time to test it, though, so it’d be great to hear some feedback whether it’s working for you guys. 🙂

The code does compile but only shows a black screen.
It waits for button presses and then enters my mainloop but it dosnt showthe splash images.
tested with realityboy.

edit: ok it does work…
I forgot to call vbDisplayOn(); before your function. X_x”

Really? I copied the bgmap/charset into one of my own demos, and there were a couple of wonky things. (There was one character filling the black spaces, and one of the eyes was cutoff halfway down the screen.) I re-exported the headers and fixed a bug. This is what I got. If the original doesn’t work try this:

Attachments:

1. cc10_splash.zip

HorvatM wrote:
I’d love to enter, but…

Entries have to be open source, so make sure to include source code in your release.

Why? I really don’t feel like working on something for half a year, and then having to release my code as if I didn’t put any effort into it.

Are you saying no-one puts any effort into open-source projects? Ever heard of a little thing called Linux? 😛

Or maybe take a look at SourceForge or FreshMeat some time…

I feel like I should have some control over my code, because, after all, I wrote it.

You seem a little confused… licenses are specifically designed to increase the control you have over your code. Besides that (with the GPL, at least) you retain the full copyright of your code!

But the real point is: what’s really so special about some Virtual Boy game code? Were you planning to sell it, or something? 😛

But, it’s your life, so whatever…

6 months? That should be more than enough to learn the VB API and give making a little VB game a shot… 😛

Yup, if you have nothing else to do.

One question about multiple entries… is the winner of the competition the “one who wrote the entry with the most votes”, or the “person with the most votes”? i.e. if someone enters 3 projects, and they each get 30 points, but someone else enters one project and gets 31 points, who wins?

It seems like the “person with the most votes” should win the competition, though the winning project should be the one with the most votes (it’d be dumb to promote the best project as a lame demo because someone entered a bunch of projects, but their best one only got 5 points).

I was just thinking that it might be a deterrent to submitting multiple entries, since you’re creating competition for yourself (you really only want to promote your project that has the best chance of winning, like a party choosing a candidate for a political election). Or, I guess maybe it’ll cause everyone to create a “CC10 Multi-Game” with all their entries in a single entry. Of course, I was kinda thinking of a multi-game entry anyway, but not for this reason.

So… could you clarify the rule?

DogP