Graphic output? Why?

Pardon my single-mindedness, but why are you rewarding those who use Java et al for output? This is, after all, a PHP contest. Java, Flash, etc, should be entirely out of the question, even for the "best output" prize. You could spend half an hour on your PHP and 3 hours on your output and walk away with DWMX. Seems silly.

Yes, it seems silly that PHP has extensions for Java, Flash, and GD. Remember, they won't be using those technologies all by themselves. PHP must supply the data. I feel that part of PHP programming is interfacing with these technologies.

Yup, I have to agree on this one with the original thread starter.

Well, I just can't seem to please. When I made the scripts completely command line based and the only output was to a file, people complained. When I ran contests where there was a browser display element and said "only html and css", people complained. Now, I give people the flexibility to use what they like, and still people complain.

I guess I just can't win ;)

The reason I made the browser output a seperate prize was to avoid people complaining that to win you must make something very pretty. There are plenty of great prizes available to those that just want to code the php side of things and not mess with the browser output. If that is you, just output text only for the move by move output and worry about winning the main contest.

We can skip the graphic output part, am I right? And it is allowed to take part only in the main contest?

Your script it required to display a move by move report as one of its displays. But, no, you are not required to make it graphical or pretty.

Ok Thanks

Matt--
Just a question about the tie-breaker. In your instructions, you say that a tie in the number of moves it takes to complete the tests will be broken by script execution time.

The only problem that I see is that you are also using the design of output as a subjective factor in judging. I would assume that there is an inverse relationship between these two components. Where the higher ranking the display, the more time it will take to execute.

I also understand that the display contest is separate from the actual coding contest. Is this true? Can you elaborate a little? And if so, is it possible to enter both contests separately?

Thanks for your time and hard work.

Nik

You will need to enter both components. How much time you spend on each component is up to you.

As for the tiebreaker. The tiebreaker will only be used against the quick display, which is mentioned as the "second method of output". In this method of output, all scripts are outputting the same thing (except for number of moves).

Hi Matt,
in case that you wanna see the graphical output - am I allowed to compute the moves within the script discs.php and forward the data via sessions to another script (let's call it output.php) where the moves are represented by graphics?

In contrast the quick display method will be implemented in discs.php itself just in case you do perform some sort of output parsing...

Florian