Rules of the Vintage Computing Christmas Challenge

 

The Main Challenge (Compo)

   

  1. Software:
    1. Create a program that outputs the object as announced. 
    2. Exactly the same shape
      1. The final screen may not include any additional characters(, which are not from the operating system itself).
        Your program must not draw anything else on screen than the object itself.
      2. Prompt like READY may appear.
    3. No need to clear the screen.  But you can. And you may write spaces.
    4. The object can be anywhere on the screen. e.g. left top, centred, a.s.o. 
    5. Any colour is allowed (but please not the same as background one)
    6. Program termination:
      1. The program can finish normally afterwards (return to prompt)
      2. The program may loop
      3. It may wait for key
      4. It must not obviously crash (e.g. with error message) 
  2. Hardware:
    1. Use any machine you like, preferable vintage computers ;-)
    2. Make the size of the program file (e.g. PRG on C64) as small as possible
    3. Don't manipulate the file (e.g. truncating the last bytes, changing the start address, etc. Mainly valid for "standard files" in BASIC and other languages.)
  3. About languages:
    1. Use any language you like, preferable on vintage computers ;-)
    2. If you use BASIC:
      1. Do not include own assembler code
        1. PEEK and POKE are allowed
        2. Even SYS is allowed (though not preferred)
      2. If possible, provide the basic code as text format
    3. If you use assembler:
      1. Measure the size of the executable (including BASIC starter stub)
      2. If possible, measure the size of the code only
      3. Please provide the source code and tell us which assembler was used
  4. Release
    1. You should not publish the code, or it's exact size, before the deadline. Please respect the personal challenge of others.
    2. Your submitted code will be released to the public (for example on sites like scene.org or demozoo.org)
  5. Target:
    1. Use your old computer / programming language (or new one, if you want)
    2. Try to optimize the program (for minimum size or maximum beauty ;-)
    3. Have fun!

Wild (Compo)

If you got motivated to something different as above, this might be for you...

  • Be wild/creative and do something similar or totally different ;-)
  • It just should be about Christmas, obviously. 
  • No count restrictions in this case.
  • No strict rules.

Notes

  • This is rather a challenge than a competition. So, try to have fun.
  • If you want, you can be totally relaxed about the rules and adapt them to your needs. Add some flashing, some animation, some candles, whatever you like. 
  • If you want, you can try another approach. Try to optimize the program size as far as you can go. 
  • It's all up to you.

 

Measurement

The shortest size of the following provided sizes is taken for the  final "ordering/ranking":

  • Source code
  • File size
  • Executed Code (net[to] code size; "real" code)

I am aware that you can't compare language A on system B with language X on system Y. That's why the ranking has a rather informative character. 

Correctness

The correctness of your entries lies in your hands.

Of course, I can't check each entry for its correctness as on one hand it would take much time and on the other hand I am not familiar with each machine and language.