## PREVIEW of the next contest

we thought it might be a good idea to preview the unofficial contest text to you, a couple of days before it the contest is officially announced.

so, here it is: CORRIDORS.

feel free to comment/suggest anything. and remember, this is not final, but is probably very close to it. all your comments and suggestions will be considered, but not all can be implemented..

fire away! ;)

I understand what we need to do by looking at the image, but then you say this:

Scoring
: On a single map, the goal is to have the lowest possible score, while having every single room accessible from every other room by a path of corridors.

Does this mean all rooms must connect to every owner room?

Example: Rooms A B C D

AB
AC
AD
BC
BD
CD

or

AB
AC
AD

The solution of the examplemap is already the best solution, or ?!

it probably is, but i am not sure. if you can find a better one, great.. ;)



no, it was just bad wording. i corrected it, it now says "by a path of corridors and rooms". hope that is more clear..

Just as a thought:

"Scoring
: On a single map, the goal is to have the lowest possible score, while having every single room accessible from every other room by a path of corridors and rooms."





"Judging
: 100 maps will be generated, each script will be tested with each map, and then the sum of the points earned will be tabulated for each script.

For each map, the script with the greatest score will receive 1 point, and then the script with the next greatest score will receive 2 points, until the script with the lowest score will receive $numberOfScripts points.

Scripts that either don't connect all the rooms or don't parse will receive 0 points."

Just to eliminate confusion, shouldn't that be "the script with the lowest score will recieve 1 point"....... So it creates less confusion there.... And I assume in the points given after judging, you want the lowest score there too? Thats a little unclear

... and then the scripts are given points:
failure: 0 pt
max score: 1 pt
...
min score: nb_valid_scripts pts

that's what I understand ;-)

Rooms: Can we have more information on what rooms can be ? can they be concave, or have walls inside (or even be nested) ?
000000001
011111101
010000101
010110101
010110111
010000011
011111111

Hi!

Just to avoid confusion (at least I had to read these parts 2-3 times).

About scoring (on the map-level):
it sais:



I would write:


About scoring (total score):

instead of:


put it in the other way:


And also put something about that in the individual maps the object is the get the lowest score, but in overall it's to get the highest. (it took me a while to abandon the idea of writing a script that did nothing, to take 1st prize)

/Tomas

Looks interesting, I am looking forward to starting on it. I will start as soon as you get a map generator written.

ya, I was saying pretty much what tsr was saying. From reading it over, it would seem that submitting a non-working entry would be the best option, because of the phrasing...

and in the example... I only count 7 diagonal blocks... Can you clarify how you figure diagonals?? Maybe in the image make the diagonal blocks a different color

i thought it was pretty clear, for every map, the goal is to use the minimal number of corridor blocks. every wall block that needs to be knocked down and turned into a corridor -- cost you money. let me repeat that: LOWER SCORE (on a single map) IS BETTER.

=================

if we are all clear with that, let's move to the next question.

we where wondering how to score scripts that don't connect all the rooms for example. we can't give them a score 0, because that would make them better than the best script (remember, lower is better).

so, we thought that it would be nice to "rank" all the script on every map. so, if there are 10 scripts, we compare all their scores on a single map. the script that did the best job (that has the lowest score) is on the first place, and it gets 10 points. the second place (the second-lowest score) gets 9 points, etc..

so, what i am saying, score != points. lower score is better, but more points is better..

if i still didn't explain it well enough, well, i probably can't do much better, so i hope someone else from the Contest Focus Group (who is a native english speaker) can step in..




no, nothing that complex. mostly like in the example. but maybe like the letter "L" or the plus sign "+".

00000000000000000000
00111000000000110000
00111000000000110000
00111000000111111110
00111000000111111110
00111000000000110000
00111111110000110000
00111111110000000000
00000000000000000000



yeah, exactly! thank you, we will probably use your version. can you also word that last note in the "official rule" speak?

it is not a block that is diagonal, it is a corridor between two blocks that can be diagonall.. here is a picture that circles all the diagonall coridors between two blocks (only in the lower-left part of the corridor).



hope that clears that..

Yes it does clear things up, thanks. I'll probably be less confused after seeing an example, so I'll wait for that before asking stupid questions

@pickleman78:
I did realise that I just posted the same as you, after I posted it (but since I didn't understand that you meant the same as me, I thought maybe someone else also needed it in another phrasing).

@zombie:
I don't understand what you want me to rephrase, please be more specific.

I think there is a lot of confusion because of the two levels of scoring. There needs to be two very different phrases used for each one and "score" and "points" are too close in connotation. I suggest using "cost" as the per-map, how-many-blocks-used score since most people are used to minimizing costs, and "points" or "awarded points" as the compared-to-others score since most people want to score as many points as possible.

yeah, good idea.. i'll try to word it with costs and points..




please word this for the official contest text:

"And also put something about that in the individual maps the object is the get the lowest score, but in overall it's to get the highest."



the questions are not stupid, it's probably the contest text that is stupid..

btw, what are you waiting? what is not clear now?