Hi,

TI-Planet and Planète-Casio are organizing a free contest with about 1400€/$1600+ of prizes to win, including many latest calculators, among which the NumWorks, TI-Nspire CX CAS, TI-83 Premium CE, Casio fx-CP400+E, Graph 90+E, HP Prime and several HP Prime mobile apps, the TI-Innovator... !



Prizes also have goodies like pens, bags, stickers, TI-Planet premium accounts...

You can participate in the category of the prize you want to win - the goal is, in the provided program, to get the best score according to the best "stellar configuration" (optimal coordinates). Then submit your configuration with score by email.

You can take a look at the live scores here: https://tiplanet.org/galactik.php



Have fun and good luck, it's open until November 5th

Just crossposting that here, but you can find more info there: https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=20502

My chance of winning is exactly zero now that this has been posted here.

Hey....... Don't think like that. For all you know, you could get #1. At least give it a shot- don't just lay down and die.

Yeah.

I had a free study hall (I left my calc at home, so I did this by hand...) so I worked it out: if you try each possible combination, and if each test takes 5 seconds on your normal calculator, and you run it on CEmu on max speed, it would take about 49 YEARS.

That isn’t actually my approach to the problem, I was just curious, as I think the amount of programming and thought I am putting into this was a bit crazy, so I wanted to know if any simpler options were available.

(Doing it by hand with the program provided for the contest would be one very, very good option.)

Are you shore? Juju said there where like 2.4834595e+68 combinations. Even if you did one combination every nanosecond that would still take literal eons.

Well, I did 164*264*(10! + 9! + 8! + 7! + 6! + 5! + 4! + 3! + 2! + 1!)

I think that’s correct, I have a terrible headache (unrelated to anything in this topic) so I’ll figure it out eventually.

Is there a way to get the program in English?
Also, I still don't understand what the competition is about...

I was confused at first too.
This is what I have figured out, without spoiling anything:
First, you download the program and image.
You run it on your calc, and you adjust the positions of various stars with the arrow keys, 2nd, and Alpha.
As you move the stars to different positions, a score will be calculated.
It's not obvious as to how the scores are calculated, so you should pop open the program and see how it works in order to get the best score.
Once you have your score, you can send in your coordinates, stored in TICAS, to get a place on the leaderboard.
The prompt at the end basically asks if you want to reset your graph screen to ZStandard, and gives the email for TICAS submissions.

Okay, thank you so much.
Edit: Err, is the cursor supposed to move so slowly??
(I am using the TI-84 Plus CE version)

It's written in TI-BASIC to make reverse-engineering easier.
TI-BASIC is not known for its speed.

It recalculates the score, which involves reading matrix values and distance calculation, changes the coordinates of the star, and draws it to the screen every time the cursor is moved over a single pixel. This takes a lot of processor cycles, which causes a long delay between movements.

Pro tip: Run in CEmu and change the emulation speed

Good idea!

Even more pro tip: Rewrite the program in a decent language and run the algorithm on a suitable machine to test a bunch of possible solutions.

Even better: Have multiple devices running the same algorithm in a better language over different sections to maximize speed.

Even better than that, create a botnet with the entire Internet that runs the same algorithm in raw Assembly using evolutive guessing to find the best value!

(Disclaimer: I am not actually suggesting that you create a botnet. That would be ridiculous and illegal. As for the rest, if you feel like it's the best use of your time, knock yourself out.)

(Actually, no, don't do that, I want a chance of winning.)

So I am using google translate and the translation for the submission format is kind of weird, here is what I think the format is:

Your subject should be Galactik.
Put your last name, first name, and address in the email.
Attach the file you are told to attach in your category (so TICAS file for TI 84 plus ce).

Can someone confirm if this is what we need to send?

Yup, that's correct.
It's unusual for TI-Planet news items about contests not to be translated into English... I suppose I'll translate part of that post.

Bumping this topic - there's only a week left to participate, don't be late
"Live" participation status and countdown available here: https://tiplanet.org/galactik.php

Also, we've added some more goodies on each categories

Good luck!