25 lines that would impress Einstein

Yes I am implying that if Einstein were still alive he would be a Flash user. The winner for the first, and hopefully not the last, 25-Line ActionScript Contest has been announced and all I can say is that my jaw is jacked up from dropping so hard. Marius Heil will receive a copy of CS4 Master Collection for his amazing text-based game. Marius is from Germany (big surprise) and I’m starting to wonder if they teach ActionScript in kindergarten there. Also for those that don’t know, CS4 Master Collection contains every product Adobe makes besides Flex Builder. Just take a class somewhere and you can get that for free anyway. I also want to say that the other finalists were amazing as well. Click on the images below to see the amazing work.

25 Line FInalists

Winner

I also want to take a moment to give a big thanks to Keith Peters for organizing and running this incredible contest. Keith did this with what little free time he has and is another shining example of what’s great about our community. I also want to thank the judges for lending their precious time as well. Enjoy your software Marius!

Lee

PS – For web standards folks, I used both an image map and a table to make this post :-) .


Commentary

  1. pixelmixer says:

    Wow, Tables AND Image Maps, stick it to the man!

    Awesome competition, I wish I had more time to work on one of these.

  2. Glad the ASCII one won. Was by far the most impressive given the 25 line limit.

  3. Rom says:

    Lee what do you mean by “Just take a class somewhere and you can get that for free anyway?” Where can I take classes? I am ready!!!

  4. lee says:

    @Rom you can Flex Builder for free if you are a student – https://freeriatools.adobe.com/flex/

  5. Scott says:

    The winner’s entry was apparently so amazing that my browser can’t even comprehend it! Firefox crashes every time I try to go the that page… Maybe it’s just my computer, but everything else seems to work fine.

  6. lee says:

    @Scott Hmmm maybe try a different browser. It works for me in both Firefox and Safari on Mac (FP10).

  7. Lee says:

    Grats Marius! Can’t wait to see what coolness was crafted with 25 lines of code. How was a line of code defined? How many chars per line?

  8. dVyper says:

    Surely Einstein would prefer C++…

  9. Iain says:

    I did the geomtry wars style shoot ‘em up – thanks for featuring it in your top 8!

  10. Matthias Dittgen says:

    Sad, that I (79) did not win!!!
    Even more sad, that there are no prizes for second best.
    But well, this way I am able to participate in the contest again.

    My favourites were entries 59 and 55. I think, their ideas and concepts were fantastic!

    Btw. CS4 Master Collection is worth US$2,499, but for us in germany it costs 3.568,81€, while the current currency conversion ratio is 1$ = 0.7107€. So why? Perhaps this motivates the germans. :)

    And another: Why does Adobe do websites that look like HTML but are Flash, so I can’t copy&paste prizes from there: https://store2.adobe.com/cfusion/store/index.cfm?store=OLS-DE&view=ols_prod&category=/Applications/CSMasterCollection&distributionMethod=FULL&nr=0#
    There might be reasons to take flash over html, but why on this store? And why didn’t they make the textfields selectable?

  11. devlim.com says:

    Congratulation to Marius Heil, but i like the second one

  12. devlim.com says:

    and wanna know that as long as i a student so i can get Flex Builder for free or i must be a it student, and student outside US can get? like malaysia?

  13. Stu says:

    Although I am extremely envious of the winner’s AS skills, I have to say that the game itself is as annoying as Jet Set Willy was 20 years ago. However this can’t be seen as a bad thing as I do recall losing half of my childhood to that game :)

    Congrats to Marius!

  14. stevo says:

    “CS4 Master Collection contains every product Adobe makes besides Flex Builder. ”

    You probably should have said, “every design product” because there are several Adobe server solutions and don’t forget Director 11.

    There’s always one curmudgeon in the group. ;)

    Happy Holidays, Lee!!!

  15. haungo says:

    @Scott + @lee : For me, MOST of them link to a solid white or black page. (Firefox, Mac)

  16. mikey says:

    um, i just don’t get that “game” at all. maybe one of the lines of code could have been used to explain the damn thing.

  17. Christian says:

    Heres the source code: http://www.25lines.com/finalists/0812/043.txt
    This is actually really amazing.
    Lee, would be nice, if you could explain a little of it. Or somebody…

    To be honest: i dont get it… :(

  18. Rich Morey says:

    Hi -

    It would be nice to have some kind of description with these so we know what they are supposed to do and if there is any interaction, etc. Also, is there any chance the 25 lines will be available to check out how these projects were accomplished?

    Rich

  19. lee says:

    @everyone Please bear in mind that these were written in only 25 lines of code so they may be slightly buggy or not have the best usability. As for the winner, I actually played that thing for a half an hour and thought it was actually quite entertaining.

  20. Christian says:

    @dVyper: hahaha … Don’t say that …
    (not in this blog) … :)

  21. Lee says:

    How did the space-invaders game not win? Much cooler IMO than the others.

  22. Curran says:

    @ huango

    Keith compiled the AS himself as Flash Player 10 swfs so you probably don’t have 10 installed

  23. soyek says:

    What don’t You people understand in these projects?
    For me, everything is as clear as it could ever be:
    - 17 and 34 are both non-interactive,
    - 11 reacts to rollover only,
    - 37 reacts to click only,
    - 46 and 64 react to mouse movement only,
    - 73 slowly follows the mouse movement and move faster to clicks,
    - 59 reacts to mouse movement, ESC and keyboard inputs (everything explained on this lcd display),
    - 25, 43 and 79 have all interaction explained,
    - leaves me with 55 which I think is not working as it was intended to work, shooting rather randomly than as a result of clicks, Controls, Spaces, Enters or whatever :/

    My favourite concept is 59, with those RGB emitters and optical illusion of color when You’re not focused on exact emitter group. It would impress me even with hundreds of lines, so with 25 only it’s stunning for me.

    However I have to agree, that the winner’s game is the most incredible code with 25 lines I’ve seen. So much in so short code. Masterpiece :)

    It is also pretty hard game. Is there anyone, who made it with all notes gathered? If there is one… You’re mad!

  24. Juan Do says:

    The ASCII game must be be calling the server for everything or else embedding another SWF file. Doesn’t deserve to win.

  25. lee says:

    @Juan Don’t be a douche bag. Keith compiled all these himself.

  26. David R says:

    The winner’s entry also breaks in Linux…because the fonts aren’t 100% identical to windows, and the font is not embedded, and the game depends on the formatting being 100% the same. Didn’t crash for me though.

  27. Alvaro says:

    Hi, I did a JavaScript port of the winner game. You can download it from the google project page. http://smiliebounce25forjs.googlecode.com/files/SmilieBounce.zip

    I explain a little bit in this blog entry: http://obvioushints.blogspot.com/2008/12/extending-webkit-web-inspector-with-fun.html

    And congratulations to Marius.

  28. Thobias says:

    Hi,

    Congratulations to a very nice competition with awesome contributions!

    However, I cannot view many of the entries because I keep on getting errors when I open the in FF3 or IE7. Errors like: “VerifyError: Error #1011: Method 079_fla::MainTimeline/frame1() contained illegal opcode 83 at offset 84. at 079_fla::MainTimeline/frame1()”

    Could this be because I have Flash Debug Player installed?

    Last, but by no means least, congratulations to Marius!

  29. Paul says:

    Amazing contest,
    Pretty nice job Marius,
    All of the contestants did great.
    Thank You, Lee, for publishing this kind of stuff.
    Paul(from Arequipa, Peru)

  1. [... Yes I am implying that if Einstein were still alive he would be a Flash user. The winner for the first, and hopefully not the last, 25-Line ActionScript Contest has ...]

  2. [... Yes I am implying that if Einstein were still alive he would be a Flash user. The winner for the first, and hopefully not the last, 25-Line ActionScript Contest has ...]

  3. [... Yes I am implying that if Einstein were still alive he would be a Flash user. The winner for the first, and hopefully not the last, 25-Line ActionScript Contest has ...]

  4. [... Yes I am implying that if Einstein were still alive he would be a Flash user. The winner for the first, and hopefully not the last, 25-Line ActionScript Contest has ...]

  5. [... Yes I am implying that if Einstein were still alive he would be a Flash user. The winner for the first, and hopefully not the last, 25-Line ActionScript Contest has ...]

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