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