United TI Basic Contest Winner!

[AlienCC]

The time has finally arrived to announce the winner of the first United-TI Basic Contest. We had 12 Final entries to judge from the 113 Participants who initially signed up, all entries fell into the proper category "Strategy Type Game". The prize that we announced from the beginning is still the same Brand New, unopened 256MB USB 2.0 Flash Drive. In addition we will be adding to the prize with the first ever United-TI T-shirt, even though it wasn't part of the original prize package, as featured here:



The Final entries were submitted by our following members in alphabetical order: Alexrudd, Axcho, Bananaman, Bukwirm, Elfprince13, Eljojo, Jacobbus, Jpro,
KTG841991, Nitacku, Ti-Ho, and Threefingeredguy. The entries were all very well written, and very worthy competition. So after 10 weeks of testing, the contestants are allowed to view the scores given them by the judges, (Myself, and JBirk). Also the detailed reasons of why we gave the scores we did are available in a pdf document located in the My Files section of the Basic Contest Tracker. If your name is in the list above, you will have access to only your documents.

This contest has thus far been a success, and has yielded such great games as
AI Checkers, Antagony, Battle Field 83, Battleship Barrage, Go, Magic, Pathways, Pyramid Chess, Strateg, Tactics System 8x, War of the World, and XORO.

The winner of the prizes listed above is Alexrudd, with the game Pathways! Congratulations for a job well done, please contact me in your spare time to confirm the contact information so we can get this prize shipping towards you for your enjoyment.

Now I wish to thank all of the contestants for entries well done, and encourage they release their entires to our download section for everyone else to enjoy. From this point forward you are free to divulge any information regarding the contest that was deemed secret before, including the information you find in the score reports from both JBirk and myself.

--AlienCC

[Weregoose]

Great job, everyone! Thanks for helping to make this a success. :)

Alexrudd: awesome, and congratulations. Enjoy your new gear. :biggrin:

[axcho]

Congratulations, Alexrudd!

Er, I didn't really submit a game, though. I just had an unfinished demo, which didn't even have icons! But it would be great if someone could give me some suggestions on how to finish it. Maybe I'll make a thread about it.

[leofox]

congrats! I should've entered... but i'll release my entry one day

[Rezek]

Haha, congratulations everybody! I can't wait to play them ;)

Especially congrats to Alexrudd, he had tough competition!

[elfprince13]

congratulations to everyone who finished.

I scored 89.5

I will now upload my file to both here and TiCalc.org

congrats again everyone. beasty t-shirt

[Brazucs]

Awesome!! Congrats everyone, esp. Alexrudd!

[0oruneo0]

I look forward to trying out all the games. Congrats to all.

[CDI]

I had one, but I didn't submit it... it was like Lords... except for some reason the AI would like to kill itself more than you, except when you set it to the easiest setting, then it would try and kill trees... hmm... ^^ well, maybe I'll enter the next one

[Radical Pi]

Congrats!

[DarkerLine]

Congratulations alexrudd! I encourage you, as well as everyone else who participated, to submit your programs to our downloads archives.

[alexrudd]

Wow, I must say this caught me totally by surprise. I had no idea until I noticed at the bottom of an unrelated PM:
"By the way, congrats on the contest!"


I'm flattered by my scores, but am confused by the error you both reported. Can you explain how it occured? I didn't see any error when creating it: I must have missed something though.

As to AlienCC playing himself, I thought that might happen but left it in for comic effect. Anyone who isn't mentioned either wasn't around at the time or had a name that didn't fit too well.

Here are the links to my entry and its judging:
My entry
Judging 1 (pdf)
Judging 2 (pdf)

EDIT: I'll submit it as soon as I iron out this error they reported.

[threefingeredguy]

I got an 85.5. I wish I read the rules BEFORE I submitted it. I never had loading and saving . Also, they encountered a bug I did not, but that may have been because I never tied. I liked the comments and I think I will submit when I fix the two things.

[nitacku]

I ended up with final score of 92. I only got marked down because I was too anxoius and uploaded my program to TI-Calc before the judging was complete. Otherwise, I might have won.

Here is my entry and the scores:

AI Checkers
Results judged by AlienCC
Results judged by Jbirk

[elfprince13]

I got points off for not having AI or link play.

other than that I could have done really well.


What JBirk said

What AlienCC said

[bukwirm]

Good job, Alexrudd!

I wish I had had the time to add better move checking and an AI. I think I'll try to add them before I upload my entry anywhere.

My entry
AlienCC
Jbirk

[axcho]

It's kind of depressing to read the horribly bad reviews of my unfinished program. I didn't mean to submit it! I just saved a version of the prototype for backup, without any documentation. They couldn't even figure out the controls. :blush:

Based on the comments for the other entries, I could have probably won if I had finished mine. Of course, the same could be said for many people who didn't finish.

Well, I might as well explain my program. Antagony is basically Lemmings crossed with capture the flag, because you control little ants that you can assign different actions. The top five buttons tell an ant to fly, explode, halt, build, or dig, in that order. The different actions may be combined to make new actions (fly + build = build a wall). I have drawn textsprite icons for each, though they are not in the version I accidentally submitted.

The game sequence is like Worms, in that it is real-time but the ants move one at a time. There are five ants on the screen at a time (eight in the old version), which take turns being active. The active ant may be assigned actions by both of the two competing players, on linked calculators. Once its time is out, it stops (and falls) and the next ant is activated.

Like in Lemmings, each player has a limited number of times they may assign each action; these points are the resources for the game. Every time a new ant is activated, each player gets one of their resources incremented. The choice of resource is probabilistic, where the more of one resource you have, the more likely it is to get another of that same resource.

The object of the game is to score points by getting ants past the opponent's side of the screen (each player has either the right or left side as a goal). Whenever an ant is killed (by explosion, digging, or falling off the screen) it respawns on its next turn. Right now dead ants respawn at a random location at the top of the screen, but I'm not sure if that is the best way to do it.

There are a number of individual settings for each game. One is the number of points that are required for a win, to set the game length. Another are the starting resources. There can be preset amounts to choose from as well as custom amounts.

I haven't implemented most of this stuff. So far there is just the basic engine with random map generation, and a single player controlling the ants with infinite resources.

I could use help in finishing this up, both in the design and implementation. Some specific issues are how to do linking, and suggestions on the resource gathering method and respawning locations. I would also appreciate ideas on making sure the random maps are fair.

Please post your comments here, and I'll get back to you with the current version of the engine.

[Brazucs]

[kermmartian]

Good job all, esp. alexrudd. I smell some sour grapes...

[aforsy]

well, congratulations to all the contestants, especially to nitacku and alexrudd!
i look forward to playing these!