HackFest is a programming competition held over the course of KansasFest every year and open to all in-person attendees. Please see the archive of past entries. For additional details, or to discuss your project with other attendees, be sure to visit the #HackFest Discord channel (see your registration email for instructions on connecting to Discord).
Here are the rules for the HackFest competition:
- Contest begins at 8:00 AM Central Time on Wednesday and ends at 5:00 PM CT on Saturday, so that judging can begin. Late entries won’t be considered.
- Entries may be done by individuals or teams.
- Judges will be selected by the KansasFest committee to judge the competition; at least one of them should try to be available to provide assistance and judgment calls.
- Entries must be written entirely during the allotted time; no source code — printed or on any form of computer-readable media — may be used (although sample source code printed inside standard and acceptable reference materials is allowed). General background research ahead of time is allowed, but no actual code should be written (not even handwritten).
- The hack can be either a program written for the Apple 1, II, or III computer, or a program that is somehow related to the Apple 1/II/III community. It may run on real hardware, an emulator, or a modern computer.
- Your project cannot rely on any unusual or custom hardware, libraries, or software that isn’t widely available. Hard disks, sound cards, accelerator cards, and RAM cards are all acceptable. It’s up to the judges to decide what is “unusual” – if you are in doubt, ask for approval first.
- Accepted reference material:
- All official Apple reference materials (including manuals, technical notes, and file type notes).
- Reference manuals included with development tools and software.
- Publicly or commercially available reference manuals.
- Use of AI or other coding helpers (including search engines) is fine as long as such help is fully disclosed when you submit your project. In general, using AI to jumpstart a project, get help with specific subroutines, etc, is fine. Using it to code your entire game will probably count against you, unless of course your point is to demonstrate what AI can and cannot do. Again, when in doubt, ask the judges beforehand.
- Entries will be judged on cleverness, coolness, completeness, and how much you learned in the process. Entries don’t have to be useful if they’re otherwise impressive, and they don’t have to be finished. Even if you’re not done, feel free to submit your entry along with an explanation of what you were hoping to accomplish.
- All entry programs remain the property of the creator(s), and do not have to be released to the general public at any time; however, we hope that entries will be distributed by some means (whether for free or otherwise) when ready. However, entries may be described or discussed, including screen shots (where applicable), by the KansasFest committee for promotional purposes, or by the Apple II community press.
- Decisions by the judges are final! If you don’t like a decision, feel free to give suggestions for next year’s KansasFest, or sign up to be a judge yourself.
- Most importantly, have fun!