David O’Toole has launched a project, almost a challenge you might say, to take his game, XONG, and do something creative or clever with it. I found this via Slashdot but the project page is well worth a visit.
REMIX THIS GAME is inspired by a university experiment I read about, in which a classroom full of mixed programmer and non-programmer students were given a short Breakout clone written in the Processing language, and spent a few hours making various code changes interactively to the game while it ran. A few helpers went around to troubleshoot issues, but almost everyone came up with something cool, with some entries seeming radically unrelated to the original program.
The source code is GPL and all the media assets are CC BY-SA so you are free to do what you will, even sell your efforts, so long as you share your changes under the same respective licenses. Your efforts can be as simple as just replacing or altering the graphics and sound of the game, to achieve some novel look and feel on the existing game mechanics or to hack the actual Lisp code. The project is part of the 2010 International List Games Expo. If you are looking for an excuse to noodle around with Lisp, this is a good excuse. He’s even embedded a Lisp compiler so any code changes you make simpler require restarting the game.
David has some excellent suggestions for what you might consider doing with your remix as well as some guidance on how to get started. The core game runs on everything–Linux, Mac and Windows–so anyone should be able to give it a go. If you decide to join the fray, there is a registration page and David is making himself available by email and IRC for any questions. The deadline for your entry is August 1, 2010.