The All New 25-Line ActionScript Contest!
Saturday 30 August 2008 - Filed under ActionScript + Flash
Well, here I go again, starting a new project when I already have way too much to do, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. An idea gets into my head and until I let it have its way, it haunts me. This one has been jangling around in there for a few weeks now, and obviously wasn’t going to stop, so here it is.
Back in the early 2000’s, in the good old days of FlashKit and Were-Here, I used to host this “25 Line ActionScript†contest. This was Flash MX (6), ActionScript 1.0. The idea was simple: Create whatever you want in 25 lines of code. Just code. No library assets, nothing loaded in. Just code. But, wow! The things people made were just unbelievable.
And with that somewhat canned speech, I give you the all new, improved and revised, 2008 version of …
The 25 Line ActionScript Contest!
(To my great joy, the domain, 25lines.com was available.)
Now before you rip open your copies of Flash and start coding, this is a somewhat premature announcement. The first contest is going to start when the next version of Flash is released, which I am predicting will be some time around October. The reasons are all on the site, so… just go and read it. But I did want to announce it and get some buzz going about it beforehand.
In the mean time, if anyone wants to volunteer to help out, I do believe I’m at least going to need some admins to help qualify entries (count lines, verify the code works and isn’t harmful, etc.). Also, I think I’ll go with a poll-based voting system to determine winners, so if anyone knows a good WordPress based polling system, as hack-proof as possible, let me know.
Otherwise, you can get a head start by playing with the Flash 10 player improvements now in Flex Builder or your own setup with the directions here.
And if you work for Adobe, or a book or software publisher and want to donate some valuable prizes, let me know. The contest will probably run monthly so it would be nice to get some decent schwag to give away for the winners.
More news as it becomes available
2008-08-30 » keith
30 August 2008 @ 4:39 pm
[...] Peters just announced a new competition he is planning. Rad. Should be [...]
31 August 2008 @ 5:29 am
[...] Keith peters has announced that he’s organising a new coding contest, “The 25 Line ActionScript Contest!”. [...]
31 August 2008 @ 1:25 pm
I remember those days… lots of Fractal type entries… growing trees/plants/etc. Will be interesting with kinetics and 3d from flash 10 and of course all the Filters from flash 8.
Thanks for putting it together.
31 August 2008 @ 6:48 pm
Great idea!
Do you still have some swfs from the previous contest? I guess it would be nice to see them!
31 August 2008 @ 6:54 pm
What is allowed to be on one line and what not? I can put a whole application on one line, if needed. There must be some rules, like everything (~ statement) ending in a semicolon must not have other things on its line.
Just curious.
31 August 2008 @ 7:08 pm
Matthias, yes, there will be rules. I’ll be working those up over the next few weeks. We dealt with a lot of the common issues in the previous incarnation of the contest, so hopefully most of that will come back to me. I’m sure we’ll have to adjust them as people start doing crazy stuff. It’s a fine line – you don’t want to squash people’s creativity with cramming lots of logic into a small space, but like you said, you don’t want people writing a whole program on one line either.
1 September 2008 @ 5:56 am
Instead of 25 lines, why not just X characters or X kilobytes of code? Doesn’t limiting lines just promote coding in a silly way?
1 September 2008 @ 7:19 am
25 lines is cool, but like Iain states, having an < X kb contest for example would also be pretty sweet!
1 September 2008 @ 7:20 am
yeah yeah yeah, everyone wants a kilobyte contest. so go make one!
this is s 25 line contest.
1 September 2008 @ 12:32 pm
What Can You Do In 25 Lines Of Code?…
……
2 September 2008 @ 10:55 am
Yeah, and Keith just got the domain!
2 September 2008 @ 11:43 am
Oh man, you just had to go making those memories resurface eh?! Good stuff, will be awesome to see what can be crafted now – Flash has certainly come a long way.
One question would be : If I write something on a frame in the IDE, I don’t have to worry about class / package declarations. However if I want to use something like FlashDevelop that would be two lines from the count off the bat. Thoughts?
2 September 2008 @ 11:48 am
Yeah Mike, it’s timeline code for now. You can always do an #include to your flashdevelop based .as file.
3 September 2008 @ 7:56 am
[...] Peters has recently announced on his blog a new contest that’s being held, the 25-Line ActionScript Contest! It is being held as soon as the next version of Flash, CS4, is [...]
20 September 2008 @ 2:28 pm
Wow.. I was just digging through my old flash stuff last week and came across all my old Were-Here contest stuff.. Funny.
Looking at it, we also did some that were 25 lines, plus the only asset you could use was a 1px by 1px black vector square. And tennis.. hah. Those were the days…
20 September 2008 @ 3:16 pm
Yes! I remember the pixel square version.
I’m thinking of doing something along those lines some months – not a single pixel square, but provide some asset to work with.
14 November 2008 @ 5:59 am
Hi guys,
Anyone happen to know if any of these 25 line projects are still hanging around as swfs on the net?
Just thinking it would be interesting to see what kind of stuff is possible…
Cheers,
Stephen