POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Programming Competition (US only) Server Time
28 Jul 2024 18:19:38 EDT (-0400)
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From: verm
Subject: Programming Competition (US only)
Date: 20 Aug 2013 19:50:01
Message: <web.5213feb3e8ec9220e8df63cd0@news.povray.org>
Hope this post isn't too off topic (it might include reflective spheres but at
least this is not a chequered plane)...

My work's running a programming competition and I've been playing around using
POV to visualise my AI's debug information. The game is to write some java code
to play a racing game. (Think simpler non-violent robocode.) I took the track
image from the game and added the bubbles to show where the checkpoints are and
the red and yellow balls show my first pass at a racing line. Not the most
efficient visualisation but pretty :-)

If you're based in the US the competition is currently running to win some Nexus
10s and an Alienware laptop. http://www.infoq.com/coderally/index.html

Sadly as an employee (and non US resident) I'm not eligible to enter the public
competition, just an internal one, but as a lurker on these fora, I thought
someone here might be interested or know someone in the US who wants a new toy.
The current best times don't look that hard to beat, for anyone half technical
with a bit of patience and some time on their hands. The laptop would probably
run POV quite nicely, and if you were truly perverse you could put Linux on the

to those in the US and only runs on windows :-(

Now if anyone knows of a similar competition in the UK please let me know :-)

-------------
Disclaimer / Declaration of interest. Although this message is sent in an
entirely private capacity, I do work for the sponsor. I've nothing to do with
writing the game or the competition, but I know someone who is (which is how I
heard of the game). I do work on Liberty profile which is the application server
used by the game.


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Programming Competition (US only)
Date: 21 Aug 2013 02:40:14
Message: <521460ce@news.povray.org>
> My work's running a programming competition and I've been playing around using
> POV to visualise my AI's debug information. The game is to write some java code
> to play a racing game. (Think simpler non-violent robocode.) I took the track
> image from the game and added the bubbles to show where the checkpoints are and
> the red and yellow balls show my first pass at a racing line. Not the most
> efficient visualisation but pretty :-)

Ooh very interesting - that's right up my street :-) Shame that it's 
only for US residents, and also that it's only running for another month 
and I'm on holiday for 2 weeks of that :-( After the competition ends, 
will there still be a leaderboard, just without prizes? In which case I 
might be interested just for the sake of it.

Given the spread in fastest times so far it doesn't look like there's 
many optimised solutions.


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From: verm
Subject: Re: Programming Competition (US only)
Date: 21 Aug 2013 03:30:01
Message: <web.52146ad2cf326bf8e8df63cd0@news.povray.org>
scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Ooh very interesting - that's right up my street :-) Shame that it's
> only for US residents, and also that it's only running for another month
> and I'm on holiday for 2 weeks of that :-( After the competition ends,
> will there still be a leaderboard, just without prizes? In which case I
> might be interested just for the sake of it.

Each track exists twice so there's "challenge figure 8" and just "figure 8" so
you could enter the normal "figure 8" now without polluting the competition
results. There are no guarantees how long the times on the leader boards will
stay - they might get reset from time to time if the game was updated. (I don't
know if this will happen but the downloads section does say Beta).

> Given the spread in fastest times so far it doesn't look like there's
> many optimised solutions.

That was how I judged it should be relatively possible to beat by someone here.


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Programming Competition (US only)
Date: 21 Aug 2013 11:43:52
Message: <5214e038@news.povray.org>
> Each track exists twice so there's "challenge figure 8" and just "figure 8" so
> you could enter the normal "figure 8" now without polluting the competition
> results. There are no guarantees how long the times on the leader boards will
> stay - they might get reset from time to time if the game was updated. (I don't
> know if this will happen but the downloads section does say Beta).

OK, hopefully I'll get some spare time at home to have a closer look ;-)

>> Given the spread in fastest times so far it doesn't look like there's
>> many optimised solutions.
>
> That was how I judged it should be relatively possible to beat by someone here.

Yes, it's a bit different than the Gran Turismo 6 challenge I played 
recently, after I thought I had done quite well I was ranked something 
like 60000th with 100 people either side of me having exactly the same 
time to 0.001 of a second! Then my PS3 decided to die :-(

Also reminds me of a web-based competition a long time ago which was 
some sports game (the type where you had to press left/right arrow as 
fast as possible), with prizes of TVs and music systems. I was very 
surprised nobody else had thought of writing a small bit of code to win...


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From: scott
Subject: Re: Programming Competition (US only)
Date: 22 Aug 2013 03:10:00
Message: <5215b948$1@news.povray.org>
> If you're based in the US the competition is currently running to win some Nexus
> 10s and an Alienware laptop. http://www.infoq.com/coderally/index.html

I've just got the installation package downloading (very slowly...) - it 
wasn't working at all last night ("Waiting for public.dhe.ibm.com...").

A couple of points. The license agreement text was blank, I agreed 
anyway :-) Also last night I "registered" with my google account and 
chose a username "scott" which luckily was available. However as the 
download didn't work I had to try again this morning, it asked me to 
sign in with my google account, but then asked again to choose a 
username. Obviously "scott" was already in use now, and I saw no option 
to log-in rather than re-regsiter to get at the download... So I'm 
"scott2" now :-)


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