A quantum physics effect to teach, a puzzle to build, a problem to solve, a tool to learn!
Polarizing filters are plastic films that let light shine through only in a particular direction (angle). Combining two at 90 degrees completely blocks light.

Very counterintuitively, inserting a third filter between two filters at 90 degrees allows some light shine through!
This interesting effect can only be explained with quantum physics, as brilliantly explained in this 3Blue1Brown video.
Polarizing filter films are cheap... So I wanted to create a carboard toy to demo this effect in a suprising way to my kids!
A puzzle to build
Idea is to build a puzzle around this weird effect.
I want to build a cardboard octagon with many "windows" (holes), each window covered with one polarizing filter at a certain angle, like this:

Stacking multiple such octagons on top of one another will block light in some combination of filters and not others, depending on the individual filter angles. Moreover, rotating octagons in the stack will make the "displayed pattern" change!

A problem to solve
One a set of "patterns" to display is decided, is it possible to write a program to determine the assignment of filter angles, for each "window" in each octagon, that is able to produce them all?
In principle, yes! In practice, there's an explosion in the number of possible combinations! Eg. 8 angles × 10 windows × 8 slices × 5 octagons × 8⁴ rotation combinations × 5! orderings × 5 upside-down flips is about 8 billion.
...a bit too much for simple for loops! I need a smarter approach.
A tool to learn

Google OR-Tools CP-SAT is a powerful constraint programming solver. It can be used to quickly find solutions to huge combinatorial problems - where one has to find one valid assignment to thousands of variables under thousands of constraints within billions of possible combinations (not all of which valid or optimal)!
Solvers are applicable to many problems and are not new in SUSE's tradition - eg. the zypper package manager uses libsolv to compute valid package dependency combinations, and Uyuni uses Optaplanner to compute valid subscription assignments.
CP-SAT is open source, very efficient (actually close to the state of the art in the field) and easily scriptable from Python... a very interesting target to experiment with!
Now I have an excuse to play with this!
Scope of HackWeek
Find a combination that works for a decent example, and actually cut it in cardboard and filters to try it out!
https://github.com/moio/octaopticon
This project is part of:
Hack Week 23
Activity
Comments
-
about 2 years ago by moio | Reply
Day 1 diary - the physical prototyping day
Spent a bit of time into producing good SVGs with Python, then printed them and tried to find dimensions that worked (one big and one small for testing).
After few iterations decided to go with octagonal stars rather than plain octagons:

Then literally hammered out holes with a 10mm punch! Worked beautifully.

Then, cut and tested positioning of filter film:

All seems good from the physical realm so far.
Next up: coding to determine per-hole filter positioning!
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about 2 years ago by moio | Reply
Day 2 diary: mostly coding
CP-SAT
Learnt a lot about CP-SAT, evolved some code I had around to handle:
- a variable number of "pizzas" ("stars with filter windows")
- a variable number of "slices" ("sectors" of stars)
- a variable number of "windows" per "slice"
- a variable number of "angles" filters can be glued on
- a variable number of "images"
Difficult part today is the reordering of "pizzas" in the "pizza stack". Giving that ability makes more combinations possible, but indirection has to be dealt with in code.
Testing
The good part about this problem is that tests can trivially be randomized, so it's easy to see if produced solutions work or not.
The bad part is not all randomized problem instances have a solutions. For those who do not, CP-SAT will happily burn CPUs for hours. I added a pretty arbitrary time limit.
ChatGPT
I used ChatGPT for the scaffolding work - and was quite happy with it:
> Set up a new Python 3.9 based project according to current best practices. > > The project must use the ortools library from Google (note that is a wrapper around a C++ library) > > Include support for: linting, dependency management, github codespace, tests, a Dockerfile, github actions on push and PR including and tests and lint, github actions for release of source archive and docker container on ghcr.io > > Also include a scaffolded README and LICENSE (AGPL) > > The project must compile and work cross platform, including Linux x86 and Mac arm. > > Explain every file created step by step and why
Not a perfect result, but a good result to learn from - faster than stitching together 10 blog posts (for someone not daily into an ecosystem).
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about 2 years ago by moio | Reply
Day 3 diary: 3 failures, 1 success
Failure 1: adding the possibility of re-ordering the stack
I thought that allowing to re-ordering pizzas in the stack could help with storing more "images" - found out that as not the case. On a large set of pseudorandom tests, only an extra 4 out of 186 could be solved by changing the order. Not worth it, commit reverted.
Failure 2: going from a SAT problem to an optimization problem
CP-SAT has the cool ability of allowing to specify an objective function to minimize or maximise - making it simple to reformulate a satisfiability problem in an optimization one. I tried this approach to make the assignments more flexible but failed: I could not find a good way to mix it with the Automaton constraints which I am using to simulate light traveling through a series of filters. Path abandoned for now.
Failure 3: allowing brighter-than-specified pixels
This seemed an easy way to enlarge the solution space - interestingly, almost no effect was visible in tests. Sticking for the simpler approach (to match pixel values exactly) for now.
Success! First small four-pizza prototype works!
I am happy to report that after some serious hammering and cutting...
...and serious gluing of filter films...

...I've got a nice filter set! Notice how filtering of monitor light (which is polarized) changes with rotation!

Now I made four pizzas...

And, in the right order, they will display a programmed X pattern!

I was able to "store" 7 patterns in the four pizzas (a "Y", a "q", the "X" above, an "o", an "I", a "c" and a "K").
Next step: the bigger brother pizza with bigger patterns!
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about 2 years ago by moio | Reply
Day 4 diary: scale up!
Today I dealt with the bigger version of the puzzle. Software scaled just fine!
About hardware I was lucky enough to get help from my son across all phases!

I am really happy with the result, here they are in all their whiteness:

What message did we hid in there? Stay tuned tomorrow for the last demo!
PS. Thanks to colleague AR about having kids do some of the job - that worked great!
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about 2 years ago by moio | Reply
Day 5 diary: it's a wrap!
Today I created a video to explain progress and results, enjoy!
Tricky part was to get light right - so that it was clearly visible on video. Ended up with an inverted laptop screen covered with an opaque film - otherwise light comes polarized and all behavior is totally different!
Similar Projects
Update M2Crypto by mcepl
There are couple of projects I work on, which need my attention and putting them to shape:
Goal for this Hackweek
- Put M2Crypto into better shape (most issues closed, all pull requests processed)
- More fun to learn jujutsu
- Play more with Gemini, how much it help (or not).
- Perhaps, also (just slightly related), help to fix vis to work with LuaJIT, particularly to make vis-lspc working.
Improvements to osc (especially with regards to the Git workflow) by mcepl
Description
There is plenty of hacking on osc, where we could spent some fun time. I would like to see a solution for https://github.com/openSUSE/osc/issues/2006 (which is sufficiently non-serious, that it could be part of HackWeek project).
Enhance git-sha-verify: A tool to checkout validated git hashes by gpathak
Description
git-sha-verify is a simple shell utility to verify and checkout trusted git commits signed using GPG key. This tool helps ensure that only authorized or validated commit hashes are checked out from a git repository, supporting better code integrity and security within the workflow.
Supports:
- Verifying commit authenticity signed using gpg key
- Checking out trusted commits
Ideal for teams and projects where the integrity of git history is crucial.
Goals
A minimal python code of the shell script exists as a pull request.
The goal of this hackweek is to:
- DONE: Add more unit tests
- New and more tests can be added later
- New and more tests can be added later
- Partially DONE: Make the python code modular
- DONE: Add code coverage if possible
Resources
- Link to GitHub Repository: https://github.com/openSUSE/git-sha-verify
Collection and organisation of information about Bulgarian schools by iivanov
Description
To achieve this it will be necessary:
- Collect/download raw data from various government and non-governmental organizations
- Clean up raw data and organise it in some kind database.
- Create tool to make queries easy.
- Or perhaps dump all data into AI and ask questions in natural language.
Goals
By selecting particular school information like this will be provided:
- School scores on national exams.
- School scores from the external evaluations exams.
- School town, municipality and region.
- Employment rate in a town or municipality.
- Average health of the population in the region.
Resources
Some of these are available only in bulgarian.
- https://danybon.com/klasazia
- https://nvoresults.com/index.html
- https://ri.mon.bg/active-institutions
- https://www.nsi.bg/nrnm/ekatte/archive
Results
- Information about all Bulgarian schools with their scores during recent years cleaned and organised into SQL tables
- Information about all Bulgarian villages, cities, municipalities and districts cleaned and organised into SQL tables
- Information about all Bulgarian villages and cities census since beginning of this century cleaned and organised into SQL tables.
- Information about all Bulgarian municipalities about religion, ethnicity cleaned and organised into SQL tables.
- Data successfully loaded to locally running Ollama with help to Vanna.AI
- Seems to be usable.
TODO
- Add more statistical information about municipalities and ....
Code and data
Improve chore and screen time doc generator script `wochenplaner` by gniebler
Description
I wrote a little Python script to generate PDF docs, which can be used to track daily chore completion and screen time usage for several people, with one page per person/week.
I named this script wochenplaner and have been using it for a few months now.
It needs some improvements and adjustments in how the screen time should be tracked and how chores are displayed.
Goals
- Fix chore field separation lines
- Change screen time tracking logic from "global" (week-long) to daily subtraction and weekly addition of remainders (more intuitive than current "weekly time budget method)
- Add logic to fill in chore fields/lines, ideally with pictures, falling back to text.
Resources
tbd (Gitlab repo)
Improve/rework household chore tracker `chorazon` by gniebler
Description
I wrote a household chore tracker named chorazon, which is meant to be deployed as a web application in the household's local network.
It features the ability to set up different (so far only weekly) schedules per task and per person, where tasks may span several days.
There are "tokens", which can be collected by users. Tasks can (and usually will) have rewards configured where they yield a certain amount of tokens. The idea is that they can later be redeemed for (surprise) gifts, but this is not implemented yet. (So right now one needs to edit the DB manually to subtract tokens when they're redeemed.)
Days are not rolled over automatically, to allow for task completion control.
We used it in my household for several months, with mixed success. There are many limitations in the system that would warrant a revisit.
It's written using the Pyramid Python framework with URL traversal, ZODB as the data store and Web Components for the frontend.
Goals
- Add admin screens for users, tasks and schedules
- Add models, pages etc. to allow redeeming tokens for gifts/surprises
- …?
Resources
tbd (Gitlab repo)
Improve chore and screen time doc generator script `wochenplaner` by gniebler
Description
I wrote a little Python script to generate PDF docs, which can be used to track daily chore completion and screen time usage for several people, with one page per person/week.
I named this script wochenplaner and have been using it for a few months now.
It needs some improvements and adjustments in how the screen time should be tracked and how chores are displayed.
Goals
- Fix chore field separation lines
- Change screen time tracking logic from "global" (week-long) to daily subtraction and weekly addition of remainders (more intuitive than current "weekly time budget method)
- Add logic to fill in chore fields/lines, ideally with pictures, falling back to text.
Resources
tbd (Gitlab repo)
mgr-ansible-ssh - Intelligent, Lightweight CLI for Distributed Remote Execution by deve5h
Description
By the end of Hack Week, the target will be to deliver a minimal functional version 1 (MVP) of a custom command-line tool named mgr-ansible-ssh (a unified wrapper for BOTH ad-hoc shell & playbooks) that allows operators to:
- Execute arbitrary shell commands on thousand of remote machines simultaneously using Ansible Runner with artifacts saved locally.
- Pass runtime options such as inventory file, remote command string/ playbook execution, parallel forks, limits, dry-run mode, or no-std-ansible-output.
- Leverage existing SSH trust relationships without additional setup.
- Provide a clean, intuitive CLI interface with --help for ease of use. It should provide consistent UX & CI-friendly interface.
- Establish a foundation that can later be extended with advanced features such as logging, grouping, interactive shell mode, safe-command checks, and parallel execution tuning.
The MVP should enable day-to-day operations to efficiently target thousands of machines with a single, consistent interface.
Goals
Primary Goals (MVP):
Build a functional CLI tool (mgr-ansible-ssh) capable of executing shell commands on multiple remote hosts using Ansible Runner. Test the tool across a large distributed environment (1000+ machines) to validate its performance and reliability.
Looking forward to significantly reducing the zypper deployment time across all 351 RMT VM servers in our MLM cluster by eliminating the dependency on the taskomatic service, bringing execution down to a fraction of the current duration. The tool should also support multiple runtime flags, such as:
mgr-ansible-ssh: Remote command execution wrapper using Ansible Runner
Usage: mgr-ansible-ssh [--help] [--version] [--inventory INVENTORY]
[--run RUN] [--playbook PLAYBOOK] [--limit LIMIT]
[--forks FORKS] [--dry-run] [--no-ansible-output]
Required Arguments
--inventory, -i Path to Ansible inventory file to use
Any One of the Arguments Is Required
--run, -r Execute the specified shell command on target hosts
--playbook, -p Execute the specified Ansible playbook on target hosts
Optional Arguments
--help, -h Show the help message and exit
--version, -v Show the version and exit
--limit, -l Limit execution to specific hosts or groups
--forks, -f Number of parallel Ansible forks
--dry-run Run in Ansible check mode (requires -p or --playbook)
--no-ansible-output Suppress Ansible stdout output
Secondary/Stretched Goals (if time permits):
- Add pretty output formatting (success/failure summary per host).
- Implement basic logging of executed commands and results.
- Introduce safety checks for risky commands (shutdown, rm -rf, etc.).
- Package the tool so it can be installed with pip or stored internally.
Resources
Collaboration is welcome from anyone interested in CLI tooling, automation, or distributed systems. Skills that would be particularly valuable include:
- Python especially around CLI dev (argparse, click, rich)
openQA log viewer by mpagot
Description
*** Warning: Are You at Risk for VOMIT? ***
Do you find yourself staring at a screen, your eyes glossing over as thousands of lines of text scroll by? Do you feel a wave of text-based nausea when someone asks you to "just check the logs"?
You may be suffering from VOMIT (Verbose Output Mental Irritation Toxicity).
This dangerous, work-induced ailment is triggered by exposure to an overwhelming quantity of log data, especially from parallel systems. The human brain, not designed to mentally process 12 simultaneous autoinst-log.txt files, enters a state of toxic shock. It rejects the "Verbose Output," making it impossible to find the one critical error line buried in a 50,000-line sea of "INFO: doing a thing."
Before you're forced to rm -rf /var/log in a fit of desperation, we present the digital antacid.
No panic: we have The openQA Log Visualizer
This is the UI antidote for handling toxic log environments. It bravely dives into the chaotic, multi-machine mess of your openQA test runs, finds all the related, verbose logs, and force-feeds them into a parser.
Goals
Work on the existing POC openqa-log-visualizer about few specific tasks:
- add support for more type of logs
- extend the configuration file syntax beyond the actual one
- work on log parsing performance
Find some beta-tester and collect feedback and ideas about features
If time allow for it evaluate other UI frameworks and solutions (something more simple to distribute and run, maybe more low level to gain in performance).
Resources
Try AI training with ROCm and LoRA by bmwiedemann
Description
I want to setup a Radeon RX 9600 XT 16 GB at home with ROCm on Slowroll.
Goals
I want to test how fast AI inference can get with the GPU and if I can use LoRA to re-train an existing free model for some task.
Resources
- https://rocm.docs.amd.com/en/latest/compatibility/compatibility-matrix.html
- https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/science:GPU:ROCm
- https://src.opensuse.org/ROCm/
- https://www.suse.com/c/lora-fine-tuning-llms-for-text-classification/
Results
got inference working with llama.cpp:
export LLAMACPP_ROCM_ARCH=gfx1200
HIPCXX="$(hipconfig -l)/clang" HIP_PATH="$(hipconfig -R)" \
cmake -S . -B build -DGGML_HIP=ON -DAMDGPU_TARGETS=$LLAMACPP_ROCM_ARCH \
-DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DLLAMA_CURL=ON \
-Dhipblas_DIR=/usr/lib64/cmake/hipblaslt/ \
&& cmake --build build --config Release -j8
m=models/gpt-oss-20b-mxfp4.gguf
cd $P/llama.cpp && build/bin/llama-server --model $m --threads 8 --port 8005 --host 0.0.0.0 --device ROCm0 --n-gpu-layers 999
Without the --device option it faulted. Maybe because my APU also appears there?
I updated/fixed various related packages: https://src.opensuse.org/ROCm/rocm-examples/pulls/1 https://src.opensuse.org/ROCm/hipblaslt/pulls/1 SR 1320959
benchmark
I benchmarked inference with llama.cpp + gpt-oss-20b-mxfp4.gguf and ROCm offloading to a Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB. I varied the number of layers that went to the GPU:
- 0 layers 14.49 tokens/s (8 CPU cores)
- 9 layers 17.79 tokens/s 34% VRAM
- 15 layers 22.39 tokens/s 51% VRAM
- 20 layers 27.49 tokens/s 64% VRAM
- 24 layers 41.18 tokens/s 74% VRAM
- 25+ layers 86.63 tokens/s 75% VRAM (only 200% CPU load)
So there is a significant performance-boost if the whole model fits into the GPU's VRAM.
Flaky Tests AI Finder for Uyuni and MLM Test Suites by oscar-barrios
Description
Our current Grafana dashboards provide a great overview of test suite health, including a panel for "Top failed tests." However, identifying which of these failures are due to legitimate bugs versus intermittent "flaky tests" is a manual, time-consuming process. These flaky tests erode trust in our test suites and slow down development.
This project aims to build a simple but powerful Python script that automates flaky test detection. The script will directly query our Prometheus instance for the historical data of each failed test, using the jenkins_build_test_case_failure_age metric. It will then format this data and send it to the Gemini API with a carefully crafted prompt, asking it to identify which tests show a flaky pattern.
The final output will be a clean JSON list of the most probable flaky tests, which can then be used to populate a new "Top Flaky Tests" panel in our existing Grafana test suite dashboard.
Goals
By the end of Hack Week, we aim to have a single, working Python script that:
- Connects to Prometheus and executes a query to fetch detailed test failure history.
- Processes the raw data into a format suitable for the Gemini API.
- Successfully calls the Gemini API with the data and a clear prompt.
- Parses the AI's response to extract a simple list of flaky tests.
- Saves the list to a JSON file that can be displayed in Grafana.
- New panel in our Dashboard listing the Flaky tests
Resources
- Jenkins Prometheus Exporter: https://github.com/uyuni-project/jenkins-exporter/
- Data Source: Our internal Prometheus server.
- Key Metric:
jenkins_build_test_case_failure_age{jobname, buildid, suite, case, status, failedsince}. - Existing Query for Reference:
count by (suite) (max_over_time(jenkins_build_test_case_failure_age{status=~"FAILED|REGRESSION", jobname="$jobname"}[$__range])). - AI Model: The Google Gemini API.
- Example about how to interact with Gemini API: https://github.com/srbarrios/FailTale/
- Visualization: Our internal Grafana Dashboard.
- Internal IaC: https://gitlab.suse.de/galaxy/infrastructure/-/tree/master/srv/salt/monitoring
Outcome
- Jenkins Flaky Test Detector: https://github.com/srbarrios/jenkins-flaky-tests-detector and its container
- IaC on MLM Team: https://gitlab.suse.de/galaxy/infrastructure/-/tree/master/srv/salt/monitoring/jenkinsflakytestsdetector?reftype=heads, https://gitlab.suse.de/galaxy/infrastructure/-/blob/master/srv/salt/monitoring/grafana/dashboards/flaky-tests.json?ref_type=heads, and others.
- Grafana Dashboard: https://grafana.mgr.suse.de/d/flaky-tests/flaky-tests-detection @ @ text
Kubernetes-Based ML Lifecycle Automation by lmiranda
Description
This project aims to build a complete end-to-end Machine Learning pipeline running entirely on Kubernetes, using Go, and containerized ML components.
The pipeline will automate the lifecycle of a machine learning model, including:
- Data ingestion/collection
- Model training as a Kubernetes Job
- Model artifact storage in an S3-compatible registry (e.g. Minio)
- A Go-based deployment controller that automatically deploys new model versions to Kubernetes using Rancher
- A lightweight inference service that loads and serves the latest model
- Monitoring of model performance and service health through Prometheus/Grafana
The outcome is a working prototype of an MLOps workflow that demonstrates how AI workloads can be trained, versioned, deployed, and monitored using the Kubernetes ecosystem.
Goals
By the end of Hack Week, the project should:
Produce a fully functional ML pipeline running on Kubernetes with:
- Data collection job
- Training job container
- Storage and versioning of trained models
- Automated deployment of new model versions
- Model inference API service
- Basic monitoring dashboards
Showcase a Go-based deployment automation component, which scans the model registry and automatically generates & applies Kubernetes manifests for new model versions.
Enable continuous improvement by making the system modular and extensible (e.g., additional models, metrics, autoscaling, or drift detection can be added later).
Prepare a short demo explaining the end-to-end process and how new models flow through the system.
Resources
Updates
- Training pipeline and datasets
- Inference Service py
"what is it" file and directory analysis via MCP and local LLM, for console and KDE by rsimai
Description
Users sometimes wonder what files or directories they find on their local PC are good for. If they can't determine from the filename or metadata, there should an easy way to quickly analyze the content and at least guess the meaning. An LLM could help with that, through the use of a filesystem MCP and to-text-converters for typical file types. Ideally this is integrated into the desktop environment but works as well from a console. All data is processed locally or "on premise", no artifacts remain or leave the system.
Goals
- The user can run a command from the console, to check on a file or directory
- The filemanager contains the "analyze" feature within the context menu
- The local LLM could serve for other use cases where privacy matters
TBD
- Find or write capable one-shot and interactive MCP client
- Find or write simple+secure file access MCP server
- Create local LLM service with appropriate footprint, containerized
- Shell command with options
- KDE integration (Dolphin)
- Package
- Document
Resources
Backporting patches using LLM by jankara
Description
Backporting Linux kernel fixes (either for CVE issues or as part of general git-fixes workflow) is boring and mostly mechanical work (dealing with changes in context, renamed variables, new helper functions etc.). The idea of this project is to explore usage of LLM for backporting Linux kernel commits to SUSE kernels using LLM.
Goals
- Create safe environment allowing LLM to run and backport patches without exposing the whole filesystem to it (for privacy and security reasons).
- Write prompt that will guide LLM through the backporting process. Fine tune it based on experimental results.
- Explore success rate of LLMs when backporting various patches.
Resources
- Docker
- Gemini CLI
Repository
Current version of the container with some instructions for use are at: https://gitlab.suse.de/jankara/gemini-cli-backporter
Sim racing track database by avicenzi
Description
Do you wonder which tracks are available in each sim racing game? Wonder no more.
Goals
Create a simple website that includes details about sim racing games.
The website should be static and built with Alpine.JS and TailwindCSS. Data should be consumed from JSON, easily done with Alpine.JS.
The main goal is to gather track information, because tracks vary by game. Older games might have older layouts, and newer games might have up-to-date layouts. Some games include historical layouts, some are laser scanned. Many tracks are available as DLCs.
Initially include official tracks from:
- ACC
- iRacing
- PC2
- LMU
- Raceroom
- Rennsport
These games have a short list of tracks and DLCs.
Resources
The hardest part is collecting information about tracks in each game. Active games usually have information on their website or even on Steam. Older games might be on Fandom or a Wiki. Real track information can be extracted from Wikipedia or the track website.
Port some classic game to Linux by MDoucha
Let's pick some old classic game, reverse engineer the data formats and game rules and write an open source engine for it from scratch. Some games from 1990s are simple enough that we could have a playable prototype by the end of the week.
Write which games you'd like to hack on in the comments. Don't forget to check e.g. on Open Source Game Clones, Github and SourceForge whether the game is ported already.
Hack Week 25 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
Work on Master of Orion II continued with Tech Review and Colony list screens.
Hack Week 24 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares & Chaos Overlords
Work on Master of Orion II continues but we can hack more than one game. Chaos Overlords is a dystopian, lighthearted, cyberpunk turn-based strategy game originally released in 1996 for Windows 95 and Mac OS. The player takes on the role of a Chaos Overlord, attempting to control a city. Gameplay involves hiring mercenary gangs and deploying them on an 8-by-8 grid of city sectors to generate income, occupy sectors and take over the city.
How to ~~install & play~~ observe the decompilation progress:
- Clone the Git repository
- A playable reimplementation does not exist yet, but when it does, it will be linked in the repository mentioned above.
Further work needed:
- Analyze the remaining unknown data structures, most of which are related to the AI.
- Decompile the AI completely. The strong AI is part of the appeal of the game. It cannot be left out.
- Reimplement the game.
Hack Week 20, 21, 22 & 23 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares
Master of Orion II is one of the greatest turn-based 4X games of the 1990s. Explore the galaxy, colonize planets, research new technologies, fight space monsters and alien empires and in the end, become the ruler of the galaxy one way or another.
How to install & play:
- Clone the Git repository
- Run
./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make install - Copy all *.LBX files from the original Master of Orion II to the installation data directory (
/usr/local/share/openorion2by default) - Run
openorion2
Further work needed:
- Analyze the rest of the original savegame format and a few remaining data files.
- Implement most of the game. The open source engine currently supports only loading saved games from the original version and viewing the galaxy map, fleet management and list of known planets.
Hack Week 19 - Signus: The Artifact Wars
Signus is a Czech turn-based strategy game similar to Panzer General or Battle Isle series. Originally published in 1998 and open-sourced by the original developers in 2003.
How to install & play:
- Clone the Git repository
- Run
./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make installin bothsignusandsignus-datadirectories. - Run
signus
Further work needed:
Advent of Code: The Diaries by amanzini
Description
It was the Night Before Compile Time ...
Hackweek 25 (December 1-5) perfectly coincides with the first five days of Advent of Code 2025. This project will leverage this overlap to participate in the event in real-time.
To add a layer of challenge and exploration (in the true spirit of Hackweek), the puzzles will be solved using a non-mainstream, modern language like Ruby, D, Crystal, Gleam or Zig.
The primary project intent is not just simply to solve the puzzles, but to exercise result sharing and documentation. I'd create a public-facing repository documenting the process. This involves treating each day's puzzle as a mini-project: solving it, then documenting the solution with detailed write-ups, analysis of the language's performance and ergonomics, and visualizations.
|
\ ' /
-- (*) --
>*<
>0<@<
>>>@<<*
>@>*<0<<<
>*>>@<<<@<<
>@>>0<<<*<<@<
>*>>0<<@<<<@<<<
>@>>*<<@<>*<<0<*<
\*/ >0>>*<<@<>0><<*<@<<
___\\U//___ >*>>@><0<<*>>@><*<0<<
|\\ | | \\| >@>>0<*<0>>@<<0<<<*<@<<
| \\| | _(UU)_ >((*))_>0><*<0><@<<<0<*<
|\ \| || / //||.*.*.*.|>>@<<*<<@>><0<<<
|\\_|_|&&_// ||*.*.*.*|_\\db//_
""""|'.'.'.|~~|.*.*.*| ____|_
|'.'.'.| ^^^^^^|____|>>>>>>|
~~~~~~~~ '""""`------'
------------------------------------------------
This ASCII pic can be found at
https://asciiart.website/art/1831
Goals
Code, Docs, and Memes: An AoC Story
Have fun!
Involve more people, play together
Solve Days 1-5: Successfully solve both parts of the Advent of Code 2025 puzzles for Days 1-5 using the chosen non-mainstream language.
Daily Documentation & Language Review: Publish a detailed write-up for each day. This documentation will include the solution analysis, the chosen algorithm, and specific commentary on the language's ergonomics, performance, and standard library for the given task.
