Future Contest Suggestions

How about a Debug and Optimize contest? Everyone could submit code that has a few bugs purposely added (and documented). Along with a detailed description of the program requirements.

People would pick a random program, and be graded on not only fixing the bugs, but also improving it by solving the problem in a unique way or just optimizing the procedure.

It may be hard to judge, but maybe that could be a group effort as well?

Give it a time limit also. 24 hours after you download the project would be good.

Time limit won't work, who would watch after it? Yup. Impossible.

I can submit Goldpanda and tell you what is the problem, I can then give the contest prize I haven't used to the person who figures out a good and working solution to the bug ;)


And yes, I'd eventually fix the bug by myself, but I'm busy with several other things so I don't have time for Goldpanda atleast for one month, probably two...

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Originally Posted by alkatran

Anything involving the submitted programs interacting (competing) in real time.

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hey i like that idea, the last contest i (tried to enter) embarrising i didnt notice the date was a year ago *doh!* was an AI chatting bot for DALnet to be as realistic as possible, theyd all be put in a room together, the ones which seemed most human were the winners.

The other thing along these lines i tried was a game i called 'program fighter' which i never finished, lol.. but it interpreted C-like code for telling your stickfighter what to do.. if the enemy is doing this... you do this (you had to move by joints.. not by prebuilt functions), in other words, street fighter for nerds.

anyway, perhaps you could do something like, put an asp page up which is a maze, (and gives a unique game number upon first entry), you must write a program to logon and complete the maze as quickly as possible, the page should return a simple text format for the programs to easily read, and only return the wall parts cloest to the player position, that means it's up to the program to remember where it's been, and where it currently is (a move would be a left, right, up, down.. not sending coords).

Could release a sample maze of the asp pages to be put on the contestants own pc for testing with, when the real one is put up, the contestant runs their program on the maze (and hopefully it finishes it) and they then post their unique game number in the forum, along with their program, to prove the number of turns used by their program.

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Guys, stop asking for fast stuff, guess who will win ? (Merri... )

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Come on CVMichael :D I'm up to it :P
What does anyone think about the Connect4 AI or the HashTable suggestions?

what ever happend to that elevator one, that's interesting, it almost sounds like a game, like simcity meets lemmings.

but perhaps not console based, i think an elevator either side of the building, in a normal form with a panel or something representing the elevators, and perhaps two progress bars per floor to show how many people are at each end of the building waiting, i think perhaps the elevator should be stupid, and just do what the simulated people tell it to, like a normal elevator just goto the cloest floor each time (which would be the best algorithm for a single elevator anyway) since by the time the elevator knows where people are going (and it doesnt even know where everyone is going) they are already on board. perhaps an elevator operator on each floor will direct each person where to go upon entering the floor, you code the way these operators think, perhaps they are allowed to radio to each other every 1min for updates? so obviously is elevator 1 has just left to the bottom floor and you're on the top floor wanting to go one down, the operator would direct the sim person to elevator #2

The Sudoku contest gave me an idea. How about an app that will generate a paint by numbers logic puzzle from an icon?

http://www.blindchicken.com/~ali/games/puzzles.html

After having finished the sudoku contest, i'm trying to think of a new challenge.
Would the Rubik cube be interesting enough to attract vb programmers?
I like the cube, i think my average solving time was about 45 secs 20 yrs ago.
Any suggestions about this topic?

The Sudoku contest was fun...but I think it's time someone comes up with a challenge that turns out something useful (like a control or a plug-in engine) or the implementation of a really difficult but useful algorithm (like DES or SHA for PDAs) or really anything else for which you can't readily find 1000s of hits in a search engine.

how about something very different and interesting..

a data miner!

for html pages, how about a program that must read in a html webpage and attempt to then create objects and variables from it such as...

"fred has red hair"
object "Fred" property "Hair" = "Red"

it doesnt need to be html i guess, that just adds to extra bit of filtering out useless crap, it could just be a normal .txt document

after it reads it in, you should be able to view a list of objects and click one to see its properties and values of the properties.

harder still, added functionality of changing these values and having it change the appropriate word in the document, or perhaps some built in data types, identity numbers and Red as a color etc..

How bout a word wrapping function that wraps to a certain number of characters. Actually I just want to challenge Merri. I have a vb6 one that I think is unbeatable. primarily because I do some really weird stuff with APIs.

I'll take the challenge too :)
Hmmmm....I think to get a contest going it'll take time...Make a private one - I'll ask Merri too.

To make a contest I need to see that more than 2 or 3 people are interested... Since I don't see any people responding with positive comments on the ideas posted here I won't be starting anything...

I didnt look through all these pages but was a screen saver program contest ever mentioned?
Not only would it be fun but useful too. It could be voted on in a poll.

And mark that how? :) Poll? Most votes wins?

Yes, the Contest Mods could choose what they feel are the top 10 and then members can vote from those. Yes, its subjective but by opening up the final choice to a poll you will level the field as much as possible.

Im intereted in the word wrapping function ...anyone else ? :)

I'd be in on that.

But perhaps make it a little harder - it has to do it in a device context and not a text box

Looks like it makes it four then. I don't know how much time I'd have for the contest, probably not as much I'd like to have. Month is a long time though.

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Originally Posted by yrwyddfa

But perhaps make it a little harder - it has to do it in a device context and not a text box

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Device context???....well why on earth would we want to do that...It has to be practical - the functions works on a string. After that we can display it as we want - in a text box or DrawText on a hdc...I don't see why that has to be part of the wordwrapping function.
Unless you a referring to wordwrapping based on a pixel width? - thats a lot of work though ...you need to calculate width of each line etc. In the end we would almost be benchmarking drawtext......though :)

How about a file synching program for multiple computers (i.e, your laptop to your pc to your office pc). Could judge on alot of different things that way (such as automatability, overhead on the OS, conflict resolution, etc) Have options to sync entire folders, or specific files, etc.

Bill

Doing the Sudoku contest was great fun.
Why isn't there a next contest?
Just start it da**it.

Start what? Where is the idea/suggestion for the contest? Will you join the contest no matter what it is? Cause even if you do, there aren't many others that will (join no matter what). So unless a good idea is suggested (my imagination is limited) and people express some interest, there isn't much point starting a contest and having 2 or 3 people join... Correct me if you think I'm wrong or if I'm missing the point :)

Well, four persons have shown interest to a wordwrapper, which is the most interest in a long time in this thread for a certain idea. Though I'm still not sure if I'd have the time to do it. But I guess that leaves more room for others to participate and win ;)

The rules that probably would be the most reasonable:

• make a function that returns a string that is formatted to max. given amount of characters from the given string
• the default input value is 80
• if a word is too long to fit into the character limit, it should be cut off and a - should be placed into the end of line
• lines must be separated by a CRLF

And I guess the results would be purely based on benchmark time.

How about a chat program contest? Everyone is always asking in classic vb how to make one. Then when its all done everyone can chat with everyone. Make it a P2P type app?

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Originally Posted by Raedwulf

Come on CVMichael :D I'm up to it :P
What does anyone think about the Connect4 AI or the HashTable suggestions?

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How about a speed challenge for stretching a rectangular image into a non-rectangular polygon? :D :lol:

You up for that keda :)

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Originally Posted by RobDog888

How about a chat program contest? Everyone is always asking in classic vb how to make one. Then when its all done everyone can chat with everyone. Make it a P2P type app?

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Hey, that's a good idea... I'm up to that !
Though, I don't know if I'll have time to actually to it, if this contest starts...

It is a good thing that Mods can not be in the contest as if we did the Chat contest Badger Boy would probably win. :lol:

How about a font detector? You have to take a letter from any picture and identify its font and its size?

Any takers? I think thats interesting..

When will the next contest be? Do any mods have the time to host one?

They already have a few sites that can do that. They ask you questions and then at the end they tell you which font it is that your looking for.

But i dont want to do it with questions or anything..just a picture of a letter or something..Doesnt anyone else think thats a good idea?

私 <- go ahead and code a detect! Yup, doing it for 65535 characters and all the fonts on the system... it takes time :)

Also, if you install Far East Language support, your Windows can do character detection all by itself. Just draw a letter and Windows tells you which character it is. Of course it doesn't tell which font is the closest, but that doesn't really matter. Which I guess is the point.

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Originally Posted by Merri

私 <- go ahead and code a detect! Yup, doing it for 65535 characters and all the fonts on the system... it takes time :)

Also, if you install Far East Language support, your Windows can do character detection all by itself. Just draw a letter and Windows tells you which character it is. Of course it doesn't tell which font is the closest, but that doesn't really matter. Which I guess is the point.

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Well not how i was thinking of doing it..maybe i dont know what im saying (probably)..but i was thinking of usign a picture box to print out a letter into it, and then compare the two..

What about fastest home grown vb string function?
Mid,Len,Right,Left etc?

Time to liven up the contests again? It's seems rather dead here =/

I'm DIEING to have another contest. I don't care if I fail miserably, I just really like them. Do any mods have time? It would be an awesome thing to do over winter break. Maybe its just me that has free time then though. I guess a lot of people are busy.

I like the idea of solving this:

http://vbforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=43019

Sounds like hacking to me. It would definitly be cool though. A good chance for me to learn GDI too. We couldn't make it too complex (gradients) though.