Hackfest
From MelbLCAWiki
Contents |
Introduction
The hackfest in prior years has been largely invisible. For 2008 it would be nice to have something that could be decided in an arena spectacular with "Iron Chef" like commentary.
Programming contenst options include real time (tetris in 2004), turn based (spellcaster 2005), or something else?
Originally prizes were only awarded for the backed AI code. Recently this was expanded to include another section for GUI (to spelcaster).
Previous Hackfests
2004
Tetrinet bot, prepared ahead of time, soley daemon code.
2005
Wesnoth bot or gui, prepared ahead of time
2006
Set of questions to attempt, single 4 hour period.
Some people liked this, some didn't
2007
Much the same as 2006. Stephen Thorne (Who won in 2005) won again.
2007 Additional Contest
Take input from a single-axis controller and 'do something' with it. (The winner was a 'Space Invaders' clone).
The single-axis controller turned out to be a camera trained on the audience, who were given red and green glow sticks that the camera could then summarise (e.g. more red than green? go right, else go left). This was similar to a previous experiment: http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/ch2-b.html. Unfortunately, the controller software crashed and didn't respond to the audience input.
PaulWay notes: I found this disappointing, because I really wanted to see it work. I'd heard of it (I wrote the preceding paragraph and read the example in 1996 or so) and wanted to participate. When it didn't work I really would've liked to have some idea of when we _were_ going to get a chance to do it. And for this kind of thing to screw up at the last minute looked very bad. It was a great hackfest idea, but suffered in the execution.
Hackfest Ideas
- Another bot contest
- The competition between the bots might then be held arena-style; but we'd have to pick the problem with a great deal of skill and/or luck. And have good display code ready.
- Another GUI contest
