Crash and Compile Registration Now Open!

[krux]

"A programming contest crossed with a drinking game. What can possibly go wrong?"

You've been waiting, and now it's time. Registration is open for the pre-qualification round.

Crash And Compile is a ACM-style programming contest crossed with a drinking game, where teams of two people try to solve as many programming problems as they can. As teams compile and run their programs, each time their code fails to compile, produces the incorrect output or segfaults, the team must drink. Meanwhile, our lovely Team Distraction will be doing what they can to make the job of programming while intoxicated all the more difficult and/or enjoyable.

This will be our second year running the contest since we took it over from Smitty last year. Who are we you ask? You might know us as the team who turned a PDP-11/23 into a robot in previous year's competitions, and as the team who thought it would be a good idea to chose to program in random languages (many of which we didn't know) by marking them on the faces of basketball sized metal D20. Yes, this year Crash and Compile is being brought to you (again) by The Psychoholics.

Do you think you can code? Do think you can code while drinking, and while distracted by the loveliest of lovelies? Do you have what it takes to Crash and Compile?

A quick run down of the contest:

The Teams:
- 9 Competing teams of one or two contestants each.
- 1 Sober team, Team Control Group
- 1 Team Distraction

The Rules:
- The 10 Programming teams get an ACM Programming Contest style programming challenge and have 45 minutes to get the correct output.
- If it doesn't compile, take a drink.
- If it compiles but doesn't run, take a drink.
- If it runs but doesn't produce the right output, take a drink.
Lather, rinse, repeat until you can't see the terminal anymore or until they kick us out at the end of the night. Typically, we get about 4 or 5 programs in.

Scoring and game play is as follows:
- Last year we introduced different difficulty levels for problems being available to the teams. As such that made the problem of scoring much more complex. The quick and dirty explanation is that scoring is calculated based on the number of problems completed, difficulty of the problems completed, and the time to complete said problems.
- Each time a team gets the correct output, everyone else still programming takes a drink.
- If any competing team finishes before Team Control Group, they get 1 extra point, and everyone still working gets an extra drink. (Unfortunately, by their vary nature, TCG doesn't get scored.)
- Any unclaimed points at the end of the 45 minute round go to Team Distraction.
- Between each round, teams get a 15 minute break, while Team Distraction ensures they all take a moment to down some Gatorade or water, and do not die at the end of 4 to 5 hours of failing at programming.
- The control group, and Team Distraction are not here to help you win, they are here to make it more entertaining. They don't get to win the awesome prize that goes to the team who proves their programming prowess. And as such, they may be a little bitter about it, and are doing everything in their power to ensure that you do not succeed. Team distraction has also been known to mock the "winning team" when they've in fact scored more points and not even written any code.

Do you want to play? Great!

In order to compete you will need to pass the pre-qualification round. Like last year, teams will get three problems of varying difficulty level, and four hours to complete them. You get more points for completing the set of problems quicker than the other teams.


===

Registration goes like this:

Head over to http://dc22.crashandcompile.org and create an account.

What information we are going to need from you:

Team name:

Participant 1:
Name/handle
Email (1)

Participant 2 (optional):
Name/handle
Email

Explicit acknowledgement that both participants are over the legal drinking age in Las Vegas, Nevada (21 years old). IDs WILL BE CHECKED AND ENFORCED

----- snip! -----

I don't need real names, but I DO need functional email addresses. I won't share email addresses with anyone, or use them for anything other than communicating with you about Crash and Compile: DC21. Team and participant names/handles will be published, so make sure you're ok with that.

Once you've registered, we'll contact you with details about the qualification round.

In addition to the 9 competing teams, we're also looking for volunteers for Team Distraction, and the non-drinking Team Control Group (see the rules for details). Unfortunately, by its very nature, TCG doesn't earn points. However TCG still gets to participate in the fun.

Registration will remain open until July 3rd, 23:00 UTC.

That's it for now. Feel free to ask questions here, in DM, or email.

[Fletch F Fletch]

Re: Crash and Compile Registration Now Open!

Returning champion team Frink Rules! has registered. No need to even bother signing up if you're using a language other than Frink, (unless your point is just to enjoy Team Distraction. Sweet, sweet Team Distraction. Except for the ones that just screamed in my ear last year.)

I created Frink myself out of mud and yarn and fire and knotted sinew and dread ancient incantations to half-mad Old Gods, so if you're using some sort of sad conformist "ninja rockstar" language, then prepare to witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station! (If I may mix metaphors. Yeah, I'll mix them like a fox!)

"
Scoring and game play is as follows:
- Last year we introduced different difficulty levels for problems being available to the teams. As such that made the problem of scoring much more complex. The quick and dirty explanation is that scoring is calculated based on the number of problems completed, difficulty of the problems completed, and the time to complete said problems.

So does that mean that we will or will not be having the mixed difficulty levels again? Since team Frink Rules! was the only group to solve a "hard" (huh huh) problem last year, we like it hard. It'll just be useful to know the scoring rules concretely. Last year we weren't sure if we should attempt to solve an "easy" problem after solving "medium" and then "hard" (we didn't want to get the score for just the easy one.)

In conclusion, resistance is futile.

Sincerely,
Fletch F. Fletch

P.S. Have a nice day.

[krux]

Re: Crash and Compile Registration Now Open!

Returning champion team Frink Rules! has registered. No need to even bother signing up if you're using a language other than Frink, (unless your point is just to enjoy Team Distraction. Sweet, sweet Team Distraction. Except for the ones that just screamed in my ear last year.)

Yea, In my opinion, the second year's team distraction, or at least the team distraction I remembered, was the best... but then she was topless for a portion of that event, and seemed to really like our team.. can't blame her... the Psychoholics were the best. We had our own competition... against ourselves. That year, we really kicked our asses, and drank an equal amount of beer as the Hacker Jeopardy team they felt a need to mention at closing ceremonies had drank a record amount.

I created Frink myself out of mud and yarn and fire and knotted sinew and dread ancient incantations to half-mad Old Gods, so if you're using some sort of sad conformist "ninja rockstar" language, then prepare to witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station! (If I may mix metaphors. Yeah, I'll mix them like a fox!)

Frink is a pretty nifty language.

So does that mean that we will or will not be having the mixed difficulty levels again? Since team Frink Rules! was the only group to solve a "hard" (huh huh) problem last year, we like it hard. It'll just be useful to know the scoring rules concretely. Last year we weren't sure if we should attempt to solve an "easy" problem after solving "medium" and then "hard" (we didn't want to get the score for just the easy one.)

First some history:

At previous year's Crash and Compiles, there were different difficulty levels of problems, but the judges would give them to people depending on how they were doing subjectively... so if you were really drunk because you were failing at getting your PDP to compile a BASIC program because the only "compiler" you could find for it was an obfuscated K&R C programming contest entry that took BASIC input, converted it to more obfuscated C, and then compiled and ran that... then you got the easy problems, but they were worth the same points as the team that was doing well and getting the hard problems. There were only 3 spots, 3 for first, 2 for second, and 1 for third... everyone else got nothing.

Since the introduction of the auto grader, you couldn't have different difficulty levels.. everyone got the same problem... but as a team that severely handicapped ourselves by choosing random languages we didn't know on ancient 30 year old computer hardware, we appreciated that there were easy versions of the problems, so I wanted to keep that.

Anyway...

So last year there were two scoring methods.. one that was used during pre-qualifications, and one that was used during the contest.

1. Time based. Used in Pre-qualifications.

Teams are sorted by time in the following groups
for Hard Medium and Easy problems solved:

HME
HM
HE
H
ME
M
E
None

So first we group teams by the the problems they have completed, then we sort each group by the time it took them to successfully complete the problems in that group. I liked this method, as it was easy, and clearly made sense. However when you are talking multiple rounds, we were thinking we had to go with something else..

2. Slot based. Used in the competition.

Each difficulty level has a first second and third place.
Scoring each slot has it's own point value, with a modifier
based on when team control group finishes.

Team distraction scoring is based on what points have not
been awarded.

Hard, 1st - 11 points, 2nd - 10 points, 3rd - 9 points
Medium, 1st - 7 points, 2nd - 6 points, 3rd - 5 points
Easy, 1st - 3 points, 2nd - 2 points, 3rd - 1 point

+1 point for finishing before Team Control Group

This means there were more points to give out other than 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Each difficulty level had a set of points associated with it. The reasoning for this, is points are cumulative during competition. So it gives you more opportunity to get on the board. But of course finishing the hard problems first are truly the way to win the game. Also since each difficulty level was scored independently, if you busted ass and solved the hard problem, while others were working on the easy problem, you had a better chance of getting that 1st place spot. I think we tried to explain this by the PA system was shit last year, and no one could hear us.

When we came up with this we also thought that people were going to solve a lot more of the problems, so we would be handing out more points. The SQL query to actually figure all that out is kind of frightening as well.

This year, I'm leaning toward using a hybrid of the pre-qualification scoring and the original scoring, since both systems worked well. So there are just points given to the 1st, 2nd and 3rd team each round, but since the sorting is done by grouping how many problems you've solved of the three, if you though you were sitting pretty by just solving the hard problem, another team could solve the hard problem, and then solve an easy problem to get in a higher grouping and beat you. I think this will be way easier for teams (and the audience) to understand. And still gives you some interesting competition while keeping the varying difficulty levels available.

[krux]

Re: Crash and Compile Registration Now Open!

In other news I think I know what I'm creating for this year's prize. Of course that's going to be a surprise.

[krux]

Re: Crash and Compile Registration Now Open!

Two days to get registered for the pre-qualification round!

https://dc22.crashandcompile.org

Remember I need your team name, and for you to indicated that you are over 21 years of age (legal drinking age in Nevada), in order to register. About half of you have not made it past creating the account.

Also if you are a team of one, and are looking for a team member, post here. Since two people typing is clearly superior to one. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZJQCxIQlR4