get a new contest going?

[psychotomus]

how about best text based game? single player, multi-player allowed.

[sevenhalo]

I don't even read the documentation from design, why text-based?

[psychotomus]

more people would be able to enter. =)

[Paul M]

Maybe some Big Integer thing! Something that would be useful i guess :D

[psychotomus]

usefull is no fun. games are fun =)

[sevenhalo]

usefull is no fun. games are fun =)
:scold:

Hang your head in shame young Padawan.

[psychotomus]

never. programming must be about fun.

[Paul M]

Programming can be both rewarding and challenging. But fun basically means you have no seriousness or desire really. Something challenging would be nice that will stimulate our minds!!!!!

[laconix]

I second the notion for a new contest. :D

[Raedwulf]

I got a nice idea for a new competition:

A substitution code 'breaker' competition. E.g. the fastest code breaker/and most accurate code breaking program.

Basically the idea is for a program to automatically decipher 2-3 lines or more text which is simply coded by substituting the letters with other letters of the alphabet.

Any takers?

[demon.KILER]

Hey I am In --- can U explain more :D

[dclamp]

This is my first real post in this forum, so i have a question. Does the contest have to be in only VB6/.net? or can there be contests for other languages. Because i dont really program in vb anymore, i have moved to webbased PHP, and would like a PHP contest :D

[Pino]

There wouldnt be enough people to do a php contest. Also it would be very difficult to mark etc.

I'm happy to get a contest going. Once we can get a decent Idea.

[Pino]

Raedwulf

PM me your ideas, I'll see what we can do!

[psychotomus]

I got a nice idea for a new competition:

A substitution code 'breaker' competition. E.g. the fastest code breaker/and most accurate code breaking program.

Basically the idea is for a program to automatically decipher 2-3 lines or more text which is simply coded by substituting the letters with other letters of the alphabet.

Any takers?


I don't quet follow.

[manavo11]

I don't quet follow.
How would you know if you have the right text? Wouldn't that be something too random to try and mark it? Unless I'm missing something? :)

[psychotomus]

have to check for words in a dictionary. there goes how to do it =)

[Lord Orwell]

how about word descrambler? 5 6 7 or 8 letter words and we descramble them.

[laconix]

By 'descramble' do you mean just provide all possible combinations? Because that's fairly easy.
If not, I assume you mean it's a specific word. Which means it's impossible to know what word it was originally because there could be multiple.

[Lord Orwell]

if there are multiple real words, you would list them all. But in most cases there wouldn't be. And there would be plenty of ways to optimize your program's guesses such as not letting 4 vowels in a row or 3 of the same letter, etc.
plenty of rules could be used.

[Merri]

I could do PHP as well.

So how many PHP-able persons do we have here? What I've heard, a lot of VB6 programmers switched to PHP...

[dclamp]

well from what i know there is:

dclamp
penagate
visualad
Merri
LordOrwell (i think)

[Lord Orwell]

depends entirely on what is decided on. I am very weak in some areas but willing to try anyway if it is something i am interested in. Text manipulation is no big deal at all. The first program i ever wrote was a text-based adventure.

[psychotomus]

im a phper

[dclamp]

i was looking at a thread about all the languages people know, and majority of the members knew php. I think we should get a php contest going.

I wouldn't mind being a judge :)

AFTER READING FAQ:
If i get enough people willing to do a contest in PHP, can i start a contest?

[Lord Orwell]

what is php?

[techgnome]

from PHP online manual (http://us2.php.net/manual/en/preface.php)
PHP, which stands for "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor" is a widely-used Open Source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. Its syntax draws upon C, Java, and Perl, and is easy to learn. The main goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated web pages quickly, but you can do much more with PHP.


-tg

edit - are you SERIOUS? VBF won't take my message because it's "too short". Gimmie a break. I think I need to file a grievance in the ForumFeedback.

[dclamp]

-tg

edit - are you SERIOUS? VBF won't take my message because it's "too short". Gimmie a break. I think I need to file a grievance in the ForumFeedback.
it doesnt parse quotes when checking the length ;)

[Lord Orwell]

if it's php then i am out. I am only now trying to pick up a little css.

[dclamp]

i should take a chit chat poll of people who know php, to get a good feel as to if we should start one :)

[Lord Orwell]

even if someone DID know it, wouldn't you have to have a server to test it on?

[Merri]

You can install Apache, PHP and MySQL on your own computer, there are some good and easy to use installations available.

Also, Microsoft's IIS is available in XP Professional and it comes with every Vista installation disk (afaik), so you'd only need to put the disk in and voilá! you have a webserver on your machine. Of course you still need PHP (installing it manually by hand can sometimes be on the harder side, or atleast this was the case a few years back; I've used those easy Apache installations when I've had the need).

So it isn't really a big problem, you can access web server running on your own machine by using localhost or 127.0.0.1 as the address.

[dclamp]

ok i started a poll in the chit chat section, but i think it needs to be moved to the general developer section...

[Lord Orwell]

hmm i am using corporate professional 64. I think i already have it installed. but i have disabled so many services for performance, that i may not be able to get it to run again :( I had issues in the past when i installed it in the first place.

[Pino]

Just to let you guys know the contest would really have to be Vb or Vb.net (or both) while many of us (including myself) code PHP. This forum isnt a php forum.

Thanks

[dclamp]

It is not required that it be VB or VB.net


What Language Can We Use?

Each contest will state the allowed languages but being a VB site they will more than likely be VB6 or VB.NET (some maybe open to both of these as well).

[Lord Orwell]

i vote for qbasic

[si_the_geek]

It is not required that it be VB or VB.netTrue, but having it in anything else would stop the vast majority of our members from competing.

[Merri]

Err... I don't see how we couldn't have a contest with another language. I don't see how it could do any harm. If someone doesn't know a language, he just doesn't take part; however, PHP is so widely adapted that there are lots of potential contestants.

Anyways, I don't see why having a contest in another language would stop people from taking part in the next VB contest that could come after a PHP one.

[Logophobic]

True, but having it in anything else would stop the vast majority of our members from competing.

To state the obvious: Not having a contest has stopped all members from competing. A contest of any kind would at the very least raise interest in future contests.

[si_the_geek]

I didn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to have a contest that involves PHP, but that having a contest focussed on PHP at the expense of our main languages doesn't make sense - as it would be intentionally stopping the majority of our members from entering.

As far as I see it, things have only got to the point of "we could use PHP". As the largest part of organising a coding contest is generally "what are we actually going to code, and how are we going to test it?", I don't see why that isn't the focus. The last mention of a potential "what to do" was about 20 posts (and 2 weeks) ago, and did not seem to be anywhere near ready.


I know that the contests here aren't as frequent as people would like, but a large part of that is because it takes time to get any contest organised in the first place, and time for it to run (with various questions during that period), and time for it to be marked/judged.

For all of that to happen, somebody needs to give up a fair amount of their time for an extended period. I for one am not in a position to do that, and I'm afraid don't really have the inclination either. For somebody to do it purely for what is a relatively minor language on this site doesn't seem right.


Depending on what the contest is about, it is possible that as well as our primary languages, others could be used (including those from our "Other Languages" sub forums, like PHP), assuming of course that there is somebody to do the marking/judging.

Completely eliminating all of our main languages (thus most of our members) does not make sense to me.

[Pino]

Ok I'm going to work on some ideas and set a contest up....

[dclamp]

Well, i would be more then happy to test the php projects, as well as help with judging grading.

Also, i have a dedicated server where i can create private ftp accounts for people to build their application on, if they dont have the resources.

I think a great contest would be a content management system, or forum. Depending on how good the coder is, they can choose between Easy, Moderate, or Hard.

[Merri]

Creating a simple CMS is somewhat easy, but building it with features that are actually required takes some time: I've been building a CMS core for my own use alongside with my work and it isn't a very fast project. And the project isn't very feature rich (though admittedly I didn't make it by purpose at first and I have often been limited of time, I've only lately started organizing things together as a complete CMS).

[dclamp]

Pino, please keep us updated.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Oi! Clamp!

I do PHP aswell, add me to your list! #rage#

[penagate]

A thought: It might be possible to come up with a contest that is doable in both VB and PHP.

[Merri]

No, such thing is next to the impossible!

[penagate]

I disagree.

[dclamp]

i agree with penagate. There are lots of things that you can do in both PHP as well as VB

[manavo11]

i agree with penagate. There are lots of things that you can do in both PHP as well as VB
And judge them one against the other? Or basically have 2 contest running with the same topic? Like we had the prime numbers running for VB6 and VB.Net but marked them separately?

[dclamp]

run them separately

[Merri]

My humour is broken. I'll see if I can patch it for the upcoming week.


(read: I actually agree with that too)

[dclamp]

ah! i get the joke. you were using Sarcasm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm)

[penagate]

My humour is broken. I'll see if I can patch it for the upcoming week.


(read: I actually agree with that too)
It's the Finnish accent. :D

[penagate]

And judge them one against the other? Or basically have 2 contest running with the same topic? Like we had the prime numbers running for VB6 and VB.Net but marked them separately?
Depends on the marking criteria. If it's something where the end result varies, then they could be judged together; if the end result must be constant but marks awarded for elegance/speed/etc., then they would have to be judged separately.

[psychotomus]

some DB type application would be a good choice.

[metalmidget]

This idea is either the worst idea I ever head, or possibly a really good one...
Why not have a competition to see who can create the most convoluted and obfuscated version of 'hello world'? Rather than creating an efficient and brilliant solution to a complicated problem, see who can make a complicated and unnecessarily long solution to a simple one! Would be good for a laugh. Only rule would be that you can't have lines of code that don't do anything at all. Everything must have a demonstrable purpose, no matter how obscure or superfluous.
Thoughts?
metal

[Lord Orwell]

sounds good. and you couldn't change a data type more than once.

[Merri]

Well... it would go rather easily simply by not having "Hello world" as a regular string, but as a 3D accelerated graphic instead that would be calculated... and if the end result must be a string, then add in an image-to-character reader (can't remember what it was called again).

Oh, did I just spoil that idea? :P

[Lord Orwell]

ocr? and who said the output has to be a string? A speech plugin would work too!

[metalmidget]

The possibilites are endless! You're limited only by your imagination!!!
Also, once the contest is finished, we could create a new tutorial.
"Welcome to this Visual Basic tutorial. Visual Basic is a simple yet powerful language, and is easy to learn for basic programs. For example, if we wish to display the phrase 'hello world' on the screen, all we need to do is type in the following 486,723 lines, and run the program! ---insert program here--- See! It's that simple!!"
And the person who was hoping to learn VB sits there and says: ":eek:"
metal

[manavo11]

And how would the marking be? Longest code wins? Most features? Exe size?

[Lord Orwell]

no the required processor. it must eat up all processor cycles available.

[metalmidget]

Why not mark each criteria out of 10 and the highest score wins. Possible criteria could be:
Length of code
Exe size
Resource consumption
Time taken for program to execute and produce required ouput
Difficulty of understanding (by an experienced coder)
Features (eg fancy output etc)

Feel free to suggest others!

[Merri]

That would sound like a project one would do in Java, not in VB or .NET.


(I don't understand jEdit... it is a text editor that can load for a minute at worst days. Also, each time a java applet opens in browser, everything halts for a moment. Java just doesn't work.)

[Lord Orwell]

please tell me you don't use microsoft's java console? Go to sun.com and get the real one.

[Merri]

I use exactly that. It works the same slow way no matter which computer I use.

[metalmidget]

So do people think this could actually be a good idea for a contest? If so we should start getting some actual rules, criteria, markers, timeframes etc going. I know I wouldn't be able to mark it, I just don't know enough. Judging by reps, maybe Orwell and Merri could do it? That's if you have the time and the inclination...

[Lord Orwell]

sure why not

[dclamp]

well since this is going to be in multiple languages, you will need people who specialize in that language to help

and i would like to help btw :)

[metalmidget]

OK, here is my proposal:
Task: To create the most complicated version of 'hello world' possible.
Criteria: Size of program (both .exe size and no. of lines); difficulty of understanding the code; impressive output; resource consumption; general complicated-ness.
Rules: 1- No code that does absolutely nothing (ie you can't just bump up your code length with pointless lines). 2- Output does not necessarily have to be a string, nor is it restricted to the monitor. It must, however, communicate in some way, the phrase "hello world". 3- No just repeating pointless things over and over again like 500 lines that continually double a number then halve it again. Everything must serve SOME purpose, no matter how obscure. 4- The winner will be the one with the highest score out of 50 (each criteria out of 10)
Duration: Open to suggestions. Maybe 2-4 weeks???
Languages: VB6 and VB.Net definitely. I don't know enough about the forum population to say, but if the mods reckon theres enough population for other languages and we have someone to mark them then I see no reason why not? I know we have sections on C/C++ and ASP etc. Also we need to decide whether to allow 'add-on' type languages (I don't know the correct term). Things like directx, openGL, winsock, database languages... I would suggest we pick a couple and only allow them. Maybe just directX and openGL for the sake of producing awesome outputs?

Oh and the other thing is that we should decide exactly how we mark the 'size of program' criteria. We could give the biggest one 10 and the smallest one 0, then do everything else in between? Or we could give the biggest one 10 and all the others a score based on their percentage of the size of the biggest one?

Any suggestions for a prize? This would probably be up to the mods as to what we can and can't offer, and if it's forum related, how permanent it is.

Obviously everything above is open to suggestion and debate, so let the creative juices flow :)
metal

[Lord Orwell]

this actually has the makings of a codebank entry lol

[Merri]

I have to add in: no language syntax compression/obfuscation tools should be used. The syntax must be purely human made.

[sevenhalo]

To be brash, this sounds like a horrible idea. And what does the winner get, "worst coder on VBF" tag? Past contests have appealed to people because in the end - everyone is a better programmer for having competed. This is the exact opposite of what they should be, and because contests here are so few and far between; I really think you should take some more time and opt for a better objective.

[dclamp]

i have another proposal. because i agree with sh...

what about an Alarm Clock?

[Lord Orwell]

i have an idea too. A simple video game that everyone is familiar with, such as PONG. We could either say "most accurate" and judge on that, or judge on most advanced physics and graphics or some such.

[psychotomus]

keke advance pong. everyone here should be able to make pong ;\

[Lord Orwell]

either that or a tetris clone or some such.

[Merri]

Or a themed contest: for example, create a game that somehow combines tetris and pong. Atleast this would show how creative people can get when they get a limited theme, everyone seeing very concrete results, as creativity in the code side may often go unnoticed (for some reason I've felt this way quite often).


But someone really really should just get started on anything. Everyone has ideas and suggestions, but nobody has been really willing to finally do something about it. I've tried, a few times, but I end up either being too busy (with work) or losing interest in other ways.

[Pino]

How about we offer a couple of weeks for people to design a 2d game based around arcade. Points given for creativity (so everyone doesn't just create pong) along with points for programming techniques and 'clever' methods. I'd like 50% of the points to be given by you guys in a public poll the other 50 from the mods this way we can all try each others projects out.

Any thoughts?

[Pino]

Or a themed contest: for example, create a game that somehow combines tetris and pong. Atleast this would show how creative people can get when they get a limited theme, everyone seeing very concrete results, as creativity in the code side may often go unnoticed (for some reason I've felt this way quite often).


But someone really really should just get started on anything. Everyone has ideas and suggestions, but nobody has been really willing to finally do something about it. I've tried, a few times, but I end up either being too busy (with work) or losing interest in other ways.

Merri,

I may not be replying but I am monitoring this thread as soon as I know I can get a few people involved I will set it up no problem!

[Lord Orwell]

what do you mean based around arcade?

[psychotomus]

Simple arcade games i think.

[Lord Orwell]

sounds like a great idea. And it would not matter if it was .net or vb6 i would say. Although truthfully we could bias the points towards vb6 due to the higher difficulty of playing sound, etc. in vb6.

[Pino]

Well it will be opened up to Vb.Net and Vb6!

ok i'll get something whipped up and get this going

[Lord Orwell]

(makes mr.burns finger movement)
Excellent.