In honor of a new beta, how about another shortest code contest?

DISCLAIMER: I'm an idea guy, not a follow-through guy.  I really didn't make
a proper winners' display page last time 'cuz I got serious HTML performance
anxiety.   And I've got a lot of Real Life(TM)  piling up right now.   So
I'm just offering up this idear for someone else to run.

BACKGROUND:  I originally got the idea a few years ago when we were all
debating (actually, second-guessing from the peanut gallery) some changes to
www.povray.org.   For like a week there was a picture of a Poser babe as a
splash page.   IMHO at the time, I though that this wasn't the ultimate
"evangelistic tract" for povray-- the idea that you too could make
exhaustively photorealistic images using data from other programs.  I
thought the coolest thing was how much you could accomplish with just a
little bit of typing-- in my telling folks about povray, this is the
turn-on, but I'm talking to non-programmers rather than  professional Maya
users.    So I thought,  who could make the coolest entry with the least bit
of typing?


HOW IT WORKS:
1) Each entrant would create an artistic image using less than 250 bytes
[sic] of povray 3.5 SDL.  Minimum number of characters allowed however is 8
(as in  box{1,0}).  Reason: we don't want a bunch of smart asses to submit
black scenes.
2) The entrant would also create another version of your scene file, a
commented listing,  with maximum use of spaces, tabs, and comments to help a
new user understand what it is you're doing.
3) The entrant submits your *.POV and *.TXT files (1 and 2 above)  to the
coordinator.
4) The coordinator renders the entries at 800 x 600 and makes a display
page, keeping the scene files hidden during the voting period.
5) Passersby (hopefully restricted somehow to prevent vote dumping) vote on
their favorites.  Note that they rate it purely on coolness/artistry, not on
anything they'd be able to determine based on looking at the code.   My
suggestion is to have folks list their favorite n entries,  and you would
then give n points to their favorite, n-1 to the 2nd favorite, and 1 point
to their nth favorite.
6) Then you (the coordinator) divide the total number of points by the
number of bytes used.   The highest winner here gets a gold medal for
EFFICIENCY-- the best use of code.
7) Then you simply look at who got the most points.  The highest score gets
a silver medal for ARTISTRY-- the best image with limited bytes.
8) Then you divide total number of points by number of bytes squared.  This
is bronze medal for PAUCITY-- which image was at least interesting to some
while using extremely little code.
9) Then you prepare a display page where folks can see the images AND the
scene files AND commented listings.
10) The crowd goes wild: YAY!

 Just an idea, offered up for the willing.

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"Greg M. Johnson" wrote:
> 
> In honor of a new beta, how about another shortest code contest?

Interesting idea.

> HOW IT WORKS:
> 1) Each entrant would create an artistic image using less than 250 bytes
> [sic] of povray 3.5 SDL.  Minimum number of characters allowed however is 8
> (as in  box{1,0}).  Reason: we don't want a bunch of smart asses to submit
> black scenes.

Would you allow inclusion of standard povray includes (eg. colors.inc,
woods.inc, math.inc, functions.inc etc.), or would a standard set of
includes be a default (ie. excluded from the byte count)?

Why not a nice round 256 bytes rather than 250 :-)

Bernard

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gregj;-)565### [at] aolcom news:40230198$1@news.povray.org

An idea - how about set limit of used *words* not characters?

Why? Because I find it quite unjustice that i.e. one word is spelled longer 
then other i.e. "emission" "superellipsoid" not to mention i.e. 
"global_settings" or "max_trace_level".

With limit of i.e. 32 (or 64) keywords contesters can concentrate on 
buliding efficent code, rather then using tricks like  rgb x etc.

Also rules must include some limitations for number of constans - i.e. 
constants should be counted in bytes, to prevent i.e.:

#local compressed_scene = "&(#ND(S(UJAS_LCN(AN(..................."
  // milion lines here 
  ")*#$*@#)$*" ;

// code to decompress



-- 
#macro g(U,V)(.4*abs(sin(9*sqrt(pow(x-U,2)+pow(y-V,2))))*pow(1-min(1,(sqrt(
pow(x-U,2)+pow(y-V,2))*.3)),2)+.9)#end#macro p(c)#if(c>1)#local l=mod(c,100
);g(2*div(l,10)-8,2*mod(l,10)-8)*p(div(c,100))#else 1#end#end light_source{
y 2}sphere{z*20 9pigment{function{p(26252423)*p(36455644)*p(66656463)}}}//M

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On 6 Feb 2004 03:49:38 -0500, "Rafal 'Raf256' Maj" <spa### [at] raf256com> wrote:
>An idea - how about set limit of used *words* not characters?
>Also rules must include some limitations for number of constans - i.e. 
>constants should be counted in bytes, to prevent i.e.:

Do not blow rules our of proportion. This is small contest for small scene
with small rules. I think number of chars is enough. Personally I think 250 is
bad choose. Even sigs usually allow four lines of about 80 chars each.

ABX

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On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 08:23:17 +0000, Bernard Hatt <bmh### [at] arkadydemoncouk>
wrote:
> Would you allow inclusion of standard povray includes (eg. colors.inc,
> woods.inc, math.inc, functions.inc etc.), or would a standard set of
> includes be a default (ie. excluded from the byte count)?

You can probably do this though I would put 0 points for such usage. You don't
need includes for produce nice scenes with short code. It would be worth to
mention previous locations of our contest:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020808185910/http://10best.raytrace.com/short/shortvote.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20020808190147/http://10best.raytrace.com/short2/shortvote2.html

ABX

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Rafal 'Raf256' Maj <spa### [at] raf256com> wrote:
> An idea - how about set limit of used *words* not characters?

  Too complicated.

  If words are too long, then don't use them. :)

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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Greg M. Johnson <gregj;-)565### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> For like a week there was a picture of a Poser babe as a
> splash page.

  I still think www.povray.org could use a poser babe or two... ;)

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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On 6 Feb 2004 08:25:03 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

> I still think www.povray.org could use a poser babe or two... ;)

Then why don't you provide one?

Regards
        Stephen

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"Stephen McAvoy" <mcavoys[at]aolDOTcom> wrote in message
news:026720lb7mu6n0s5roj24si536mu52h5tq@4ax.com...
> On 6 Feb 2004 08:25:03 -0500, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
> > I still think www.povray.org could use a poser babe or two... ;)
>
> Then why don't you provide one?

Ah, forget Poser -- let's get a /real/ babe for www.povray.org!!!
Since it is a 3D site, we're going to want busty as well.

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Dan P wrote:

> Ah, forget Poser -- let's get a /real/ babe for www.povray.org!!!
> Since it is a 3D site, we're going to want busty as well.

How's this for busty - http://tinyurl.com/344lk ?

-- 
Ken Tyler

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