[vox] ACM programming contest

[Bill Broadley]

On 11/11/2010 12:01 AM, Alex Mandel wrote:
> How about, highest number of bugfix patches to an open source project of
> your choosing within the contest timeframe? Or toss in things like a
> combined score of efficient code, code readability, documentation and
> user interface design so that solving the question really only gets you
> 20% of the possible points.

Kind of like a competitive charity drive for open source, interesting
idea.  Cool.... but not particularly fun sounding to me.

> To be honest a contest sounds fun but really only for those in school
> without bigger aspirations. My laundry list of apps I'd like to write,
> plugins to work on or bugfixes/enchancements for projects I use is
> gigantic and grows everyday

Indeed, same here.  But the flip side is there was a contest with a
finite amount of time there's a reasonable chance I'd take a shot.  I
don't want to lose sleep over the contest, so I'm not looking for a
caffeine powered heroic effort of sleep deprivation.  But maybe
something small enough to put in a reasonable solution say within a week.

So some kinda of relatively simple game that rewards strategy and
teamwork.  Things to avoid:
* Anything where you spend a ton of time doing complex math with
  polar coordinates to create a statistical model of where a projectile
  will land.  See robocode wave surfing for an example of this.
* Anything that ends up with a simple depth or breadth first
  search
* Anything that involves writing a ton of code, ideally the system/game
  is simple enough that someone can express their (hopefully) winning
  strategy in relatively few lines of code.
* Anything that's a simple search, finding your way through a maze
  for instance.

Does anyone have a simple real time (that rewards strategy over twitch
reflexes) or turn based strategy game?

Know of a single user or network game that depends on hordes of stupid
enemies that would be more interesting with smarter enemies?

XBattle is pretty simple, grid or hex, the important commands are to
open/close/toggle the edges to allow armies to pass.  The result is
supply lines/armies that move like water.  It's somewhat like a real
time version of the old RISK board game.  A reasonable example is:
http://piotao.inf.univ.gda.pl/xbattle/img/xbattle3.png

Or maybe a simple map of crimson fields with a single unit type.

Ideally we could set it up so that a stupid/greedy/obvious bot would
take a few 10s of lines.  Things like move randomly and keep shooting at
anything you see.  Or keep exploring till you find the flag/take over
city.  Then a dramatically smarter client that actually would give a
human opponent some competition would take 100s of lines.  Said client
would say use the high ground to it's advantage, flee when damaged or
outnumbered, etc.