The Third Round of Contests -- submit ideas

i want to get a general consensus on the format before we decide on the topic(s).
feel free to submit new ideas on a format.

i think if you stick to an easy project... but give more points for innovation and adding in lots of neat features it willl be more acessible for the newbies around here... also having a 3 week windows you would be sure to have quite a bit of entries

Well, the problem with big contests is that you need participants or it feels like a waste of time, and big contests take more time to make submissions, which make them less convenient for competitiors. Unfortunately, it's kinda hard to think of interesting small programs.

I like the idea of small easy contests untill we get the hang of making this work, and maybe sometime soon have a more interesting / challenging contest.

I think you won't be enthusiastic in taking part in a small contest, and after you've taken part in a big one, you are always nail biting for the result to be out. So, big ones are fun, and hence I prefer the big ones!

Personally I think shorter is better..... some of us don't have tooo many hours to waste away on here ... :D

agree with hammer

I'm an advocate of the short and sweet program, even if I have a lot of time on my hands. Concise, to the point, mindbogglingly complex to even the well-trained eye...okay, maybe not quite to that extreme, but you get the idea. :rolleyes:

As for a suggestion, how about coming up with the most creative way possible to do something which would otherwise be routine and boring. quzah's counting recursive program comes to mind.

Code:

---

#include <stdio.h>

void print ( int i )
{
  if ( i > 0 )
    print ( i - printf ( "%d", i ) );
}

int main ( void )
{
  print ( 9 );
  return 0;
}

---

Or something along those lines, I can't quite remember.

-Prelude

from the poll it is clear that there should be two contests: one easy and one difficult.

so let's make a list of topics for each contest.

I think there should be more useful 'small' apps, like the phonebook.

If i remember correctly, the phone book was done....i could be wrong though.
for the other idea, how about a VERY small RPG game, a very small one for the easy section.
well no matter what u guys pick, i wouldn't be able to go on because i don't have my compiler:mad: i just formated my comp

how about this:
i put up two polls, one with easy topics and one with hard topics. easy topics would be beginner stuff, like writing an accounting program, or figuring out perfect numbers in the fastest time possible. hard topics would be stuff like a turing machine or a lisp interpreter. (more details to follow on poll). every topic mentioned will be included in the poll. (unless it exceeds 15, where i'll narrow it down to 15.)

then two contest threads with the decided topic will be stickeyed to the top of the general board. and the judge choosing, contest enrollment, etc... will be done like normal.

there is one point where i'm not sure on. should all contestants be permitted into the easy one? someone like prelude could easily win over someone like newbie_c0d3R_109. do you think that would be fair?

I am so in favour of an RPG contest. It's not too terribly time consuming to write one, allows for a lot of creativity, and it's a topic that we could easily reuse (the programs would, hopefully, just keep getting better).
Anyone can write an RPG, it could range from a choose-your-own-adventure type deal to a Moraff's world clone, and it is quite possible for someone with not-so-great programming eperience to win the contest through pure ingenuity.

Here are some other ideas, which probably lean on the difficult side, although perhaps could be made easy I think.

Story Generator
Map Generator (Maze Generator?)
(ASCII) graphics engine
Fractal maker
Obfuscated / shortest possible code to do X

Edit: About easy and hard problems, I think that a good solution is to allow anyone to enter an easy contest, but rank the veteran and novice submissions seperately. Basically, vets should work with the same prompt, but be expected to have some feature of their program which really overshadows the prompt, not just have a really well-written submission; like say you made a word processor prompt (please don't, BTW. Very boring), and a vet enters, and decides to add grammer checking (an extreme example I know...).

Actually, I don't see any reason why a vet shouldn't enter an easy contest with a novice submission either. It's just that programs that really just use the prompt as an excuse to make a bigger, more interesting program, should be adknowledged on their own (and hopefully thus encouraged, without scaring away submissions from people without so much free time :)).