Loki Hack 1999: 48 hours with no sleep and no end of fun
The Loki Hack was a tremendous success for all the participants,
which came from as far away as Germany. Setup as a contest,
the hackers took a look at the hundreds of thousands of lines of
code involved and figured out that helping each out was the only
way that anything was going to be accomplished.
And a lot was achieved! Free binaries with the changes and
modifications will be made available within a week or so. First,
let us introduce you to some of the hacks that were successfully
completed. Other hacks were worked on, but not necessarily done
by the end of the 48 hour period. Let us introduce you to
some of the hacks that were completed:
Christoper Yeoh, the winner
Three hacks: 1) Added the ability to Penetrate a city with a spy.
Once penetration is achieved, the spy goes away, but you can get a
detailed picture of the city when you click on it. 2) Added strategic
elements, such as, when you lose your capitol, you lose all your
cities. Also added count of combat units within a city. 3) Added land-based units, like APCs, wagons, cows ...
Andrew Henderson, first runner-up
Added stealth value to terrain and units based on type of
unit, terrain and combat experience. This allows guerilla
units, lookouts, etc.
Ryan Gordon, second runner-up
At the beginning of every turn, the state is dumped to
a file and runs a command. That allows starting up
games run when you're idle, updating a website with
live update.
Chris Swiedler, third runner-up
Added civilization modifiers, so you can customize each civilization,
make them more than just a name.
Joshua Shagam, fourth runner-up
Added a Fractal map generator. Also added a cool new splash screen.
Added a new porcupine civilization.
Ian Nelson
Added the ability to allow the AI to take over your movement and production
temporarily.
Rick Bischoff
"Ah! I'm not going to touch that" ... and worked on a text-based
adventure game instead.
Nick Leipp
Added the "Don't Panic" button, which does a random action
whenever you click it.
Daniel Vogel
Ported to the Clanlib gaming library.
John Hall
Added auto-explorer, so units can search the map by themselves.
Roberto Peon
Reduced the footprint of the installed game by 15MB.
Unfinished hack: making things in space orbit ... they
do, but then they disappear ...
Thomas Hudson
Created a wonder that when it
is activated, then the lawyers become nukes.
Dennis Paine
Added a flat-world that doesn't wrap. The units don't
heal, but when they stand-still, they reproduce. Added Aztec
Civilization.
Brendan Tuck
Added a geometry argument so that you can specify a window size.
San Mehat
Added Networking fixes, so you can run multiple copies on a single machine.
Mark Coletti
Speeded up the compile, but it wasn't done until the very end.
Reduced it from 1hr 9 min down to 33 minutes. "Thanks a lot!"
commented the hackers who had to deal with the slow compile
times during the hack.
Jon Taylor
Did the port to the GGI library, then ran it on a 3Dcube.
Roger Ward
Unfinished hacks.
Everyone had a great time. The code was so convoluted that
the idea of competing with each other for the contest was
quickly put aside in favor of
working together. They helped each other out, learned from each
other and got ideas from each other. "The hack was why we came."
The energy was tremendously high. We also got a great picture
of many of the team, which will be made available next week
(due to technical difficulties). Many thanks to Jon Taylor for
the loan of his camera.
An on-going result? A mailing list will be created to keep the
participants in touch. Loki Hack 2000 is already being planned.
Thanks go back to Loki Games and Activision for putting on this
event.