2011/Canada/Winnipeg/Skullspace
The monthly hack-a-thon at Winnipeg Skullspace will recognize Software Freedom Day (Saturday 17th) by incorporating some free and open source software related events. So far we have 3 FLOSS game tributes and one productivity demo. Other tie-ins are welcome.
Spacewar! tournament
Spacewar! was one of the earliest computer action games. Developed by hackers for the PDP-1 initially in 1961 and 1962, and released with freely shared source code; it is the first notable free and open source action game.
As a tribute in this 50th year since development started, Skullspace member Mark Jenkins will host a tournament using a version running on on a PDP-1 emulator written in Java.
( Does anyone want to point out any of the cool things going on in the source? )
Concurrent with the tournament (which will be played in front on everyone on the projector), Adrian will demonstrate what the loading experience was like on the PDP-1 in 1961 with the punched tape reader for his PDP-11 -- with a game with a confusingly similar name, Spacewars.
And Mark will invite folks waiting around to read out chapter 3 on Spacewar! from Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy.
Tournament Format
- Position in tournament to be determined by tournament administrator
- Number of rounds required to win a match to be determined by tournament administrator in order to target at most a 1 hour total tournament time for players.
- Left/right position on keyboard determined by tournament administrator
OpenArena Deathmatch
We'll run a server to provide OpenArena deathmatch all day.
CAD Demonstration
CAD is one of those speciality areas where free and open source software lags behind. But, FLOSS CAD programs are usable, and Skullspace member Micheal will demonstrate one free and open source CAD program he uses professionally.
Battle for Wesnoth -- Hack first! Play it later.
In days leading up to September 17, Skullspace member Dave will open up a revision control repository with a copy of the Battle For Wesnoth data. Folks will be welcome to hack away at the easy to edit game data. Last surge of edits will take place at the hack-a-thon on the 17th.
Attendees are expected to avoid edit wars and actually talk to each other to come up with a new Wesnoth variant that is still playable.
At 17:00 Dave will call a code freeze and figure out what the last runnable revision in the repository was. Everyone will be invited to play the modified game together.