[Spades] 5 spades entries, 3 judge entries

Surprisingly, there were only 5 entries for the main contest, and three judging scripts. I'll start running the contest this afternoon (CET).

Hey, that means I win a price either way, right?

Me too!

Alright!!
Actually, I don't find it too surprising, because the contest appears to be quite difficult at first glance. In addition, the judging script and examples weren't released for some time.

Nonetheless, I find it surprising that no one submitted some puny scripts just to get a chance to win a prize... hm, I guess there aren't too many students at codewalkers now that school's started!

It does???

I wanted to make an easy contest after Risk

For the record, I found that coding Spades was much easier than coding Risk.

Well, I guess one reason ties in with the fact that Risk was provided with lots and lots of code. I mean, there were 4 examples already. I played around and realized that the aggressiveness (eg. script 3) was quite easy to do and seemed to give pretty good results.

Also, the provided code did LOTS of the busywork. The Game class in Risk was also pretty nicely organized. People could get coding on their main AI right away.

Also, the get params didn't pass all needed info in Spades, causing more work. I think an AI needs to keep track of how many bids each team has won, adding some work.

However, one idea in the future might be to continue card games. We should follow the same format for cards, of course. We should also have the first and second-place winners document their code, and perhaps provide an easy interface (assuming these winners used OOP). This would make it much easier for others in the future, if we do more card games.

This was also a real-life game, and perhaps lots of ppl assumed there would be a few super-AI submissions, from ppl who had already done something like this.

As a note, my script SUCKS!
I didn't think I would have enough time, but I decided to do a very basic script... no nil-handling whatsoever. If anyone else here is bidding nil, they'll get an ez time w/ my script

Hi!
1) I beliefe many more scripts would have entered the contest if a fully funtional judging script would have been available sooner.

2) I agree to XS0s posting where he says spades should be easier than risk to implement.

3) Building judging scripts is a cool contest idea but the real coding contest should just start after there is an official judging script available.

CU
maxhb

1) Why "many"? There were still 3 weeks left when it was posted. In the beginning, there was ususally only 2 weeks time given...

3) Well, technically, you should be able to test your scripts yourself. That a testing environment is provided in such contests is just the organizers' good will (and I don't mean just this particular contest).

Anyway, I'm just trying to figure out what was wrong...

Hi!

Didn't want to offend anyone - I was trying to figure out what happend...

CU
maxhb

I wrote my entire script before the judge was released, using only my browser for input.

I personally would not have had time to participate if the judge script was not available...

Such programs are much harder to debug. A program that you can actually debug in an IDE is much easier to code usually. For something like this, you would need a fancy judging script to be able to pause the state and then examine your AI, etc...

I have my own method to see how my AI's thinking.

Where can I find the code samples I would love to see it in action..

I had my script almost complete, but then I got REALLY busy and couldn't get back to it before the deadline.

I'll definitely try and enter the next contest though, I had a lot of fun with the risk one.