25 Sep, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Well, if somebody is savvy enough to realize that a given language is more suited than another for a task, I think that counts for something. But it does mean that you need to compare the end result from the user's perspective (or based on time taken to complete etc.) rather than comparing the code literally. Even so, you can always compare the style standards: what makes good code is remarkably consistent across languages.
25 Sep, 2008, Chris Bailey wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
I agree with David, good practice is good practice. If we had a panel of judges fairly well familiar with several languages and best practices with each it shouldn't be too hard to determine how well entrants used the tools their chosen language offered.

Fizbin & Vassi -
Why wouldn't you have the intention of winning? Even when I start I task that I probably have no chance of succeeding at I still intend to win. =)
25 Sep, 2008, Fizban wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Well, not to say I wouldn't 'attempt' to win or put forth effort, heh I just know I'm not half the programmer Haley, Samson, Elanthis, or KaVir are.
25 Sep, 2008, Chris Bailey wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
Oh yeah, I can understand that, I'm not either.
06 Oct, 2008, exeter wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
Sorry about the minor thread necromancy, but I have a suggestion. How about a 32k or 24k MUD codebase contest, modelled after the 16k competition? I think just having the cachet of Mudbytes behind it, along with some promotion on Usenets and the major MUD sites should attract at least 3 or 4 entries, and that'd be interesting enough. Hell, I might even enter! :)

Thoughts?
06 Oct, 2008, Vassi wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
exeter said:
Sorry about the minor thread necromancy, but I have a suggestion. How about a 32k or 24k MUD codebase contest, modelled after the 16k competition? I think just having the cachet of Mudbytes behind it, along with some promotion on Usenets and the major MUD sites should attract at least 3 or 4 entries, and that'd be interesting enough. Hell, I might even enter! :)

Thoughts?


It just doesn't seem practical. I think the best instances of the competition were when there were snippets generated that 'mattered' to people. I think, especially if the goal is to get visibility, that tackling common problems or implementing highly sought-after features should be the order of the day.

Stuff like OLC\Parsing\Command handling etc. (Though I think the more 'modern' languages would wipe the floor with C :P)
06 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
I think I would agree. While it would be somewhat entertaining to do something 'clever' like that, I think it would be just as entertaining yet much more beneficial to do something people could actually use. Of course, defining that broadly enough that many codebases can benefit yet specifically enough that the results are comparable and usable across the board is fairly difficult…
06 Oct, 2008, Vassi wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
I think I would agree. While it would be somewhat entertaining to do something 'clever' like that, I think it would be just as entertaining yet much more beneficial to do something people could actually use. Of course, defining that broadly enough that many codebases can benefit yet specifically enough that the results are comparable and usable across the board is fairly difficult…


I really am hoping something gets picked up again, I think in general it's helpful because even if the snippet isn't directly 'copy and pasteable' the benefit comes in the form of "oh, I never thought of doing it that way" or "I didn't know x could do that." As a for instance, my entire socket handling system is based on a book written for C++ users and has been adapted from there, because I never would have thought of doing it that way initially.
07 Oct, 2008, Ubasti wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm actually hoping this starts too. I'm learning to code and this would give my brain a workout. Plus, it would be cool to see what others can do.
14 Oct, 2008, Noplex wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
How would you handle someone writing a MUD in Python, Ruby or Java? Are we talking about the size of the final executable or the code? Because those languages have a lot of nice features that are linked in from their standard libraries. I wouldn't mind joining a contest to mod an existing engine (e.g. SocketMUD) and then sizing the difference. But I always seem to miss the dates on these things. Keep me informed!
14 Oct, 2008, Caius wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
exeter said:
Sorry about the minor thread necromancy, but I have a suggestion. How about a 32k or 24k MUD codebase contest, modelled after the 16k competition? I think just having the cachet of Mudbytes behind it, along with some promotion on Usenets and the major MUD sites should attract at least 3 or 4 entries, and that'd be interesting enough. Hell, I might even enter! :)

Thoughts?

Hehe. From Erwin Andreasen's 16K page, mark the words at the end of the first section: "Thanks to everyone for the entries – and see you in the 32k MUD competition (just kidding ;) )"

Seriously, though. I think 3 or 4 entries would be the most one could expect, depending on how long the deadline is, and how well it's promoted (and in what way). I have a few game ideas myself that are suited for a small mud, so it could be fun.
14 Oct, 2008, Caius wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
Noplex said:
How would you handle someone writing a MUD in Python, Ruby or Java? Are we talking about the size of the final executable or the code? Because those languages have a lot of nice features that are linked in from their standard libraries. I wouldn't mind joining a contest to mod an existing engine (e.g. SocketMUD) and then sizing the difference. But I always seem to miss the dates on these things. Keep me informed!

Yeah, you have a good point here. Some language has more built in functionality than other. So it would be very unreasonable to place restrictions on source code size. Size on the executable would be equally futile, since different compilers yields different sizes on that.
14 Oct, 2008, KaVir wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
Noplex said:
How would you handle someone writing a MUD in Python, Ruby or Java? Are we talking about the size of the final executable or the code?


The 16K MUD competition split the entries into two categories based on programming language, and the 16K limit referred to the size of the source code (without comments, blank lines and leading white spaces). There's no reason why you couldn't do exactly the same thing again.

However I'd be surprised if many people entered a 32K MUD competition - I know I certainly wouldn't consider it a worthwhile use of my time. The 16K MUD competition was a novel idea that allowed people to prove they could design and develop a feature-full mud from scratch in a very small amount of code. This would just be a repetition of an old idea, and would require twice as much work.
14 Oct, 2008, Noplex wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
KaVir said:
Noplex said:
How would you handle someone writing a MUD in Python, Ruby or Java? Are we talking about the size of the final executable or the code?


The 16K MUD competition split the entries into two categories based on programming language, and the 16K limit referred to the size of the source code (without comments, blank lines and leading white spaces). There's no reason why you couldn't do exactly the same thing again.

However I'd be surprised if many people entered a 32K MUD competition - I know I certainly wouldn't consider it a worthwhile use of my time. The 16K MUD competition was a novel idea that allowed people to prove they could design and develop a feature-full mud from scratch in a very small amount of code. This would just be a repetition of an old idea, and would require twice as much work.


I'd be interested in a 16K contest. I missed out on the first one.
14 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
Given how many languages there are, and how relatively few people are likely to enter, we might have a case of each language having only one entrant. :wink:
14 Oct, 2008, Chris Bailey wrote in the 36th comment:
Votes: 0
So it seems that not many people would be interested in a new "Mud competition" that required entrants to design a new codebase. If that is the case, what kind of contest would people like to enter? I'm very interesting in getting this started and I would be more than willing to contribute my time to the project but I need a good way to measure the interest.

A) How many of you are interested in a programming challenge centered around mud development?
B) Of those interested in a challenge, what would some of you like the challenge to be about?
C) Would interested parties be interested in creating a new sub-community centered around mud-related programming challenges?
D) Would said parties be interested in smaller, code-base specific challenges that can be added to the mudbytes repository afterwards?

EDIT: I would like to note that my original idea was to develop a way of hosting multiple diverse challenges that might interest
several people all across the mudding community.
14 Oct, 2008, David Haley wrote in the 37th comment:
Votes: 0
A) count me in, in general. :smile:

B) unclear, to be honest. It would have to be something for which entrants are fairly easy to compare. That could mean comparing end results as far as the user is concerned, or code quality – but comparing code quality has several issues. Something that might be interesting would be a conversation system based on topics, like Morrowind/Oblivion, but that is a very open-ended challenge…

C) only if there's enough interest to warrant it. At present I'm not sure that is the case.

D) I guess so, although it depends on which codebase of course. And I'd rather the winning entry have some (more or less firm) guarantee of being accepted into the source, and not be "just another snippet". Of course, this is only relevant for codebases under this community's general umbrella (FUSS, RaM now, etc.)


In general, my interest would be in adding something that hasn't really been done, or hasn't been done often or well. This typically involves somewhat advanced features, which is a double-edged sword when it comes to competitions. The more interesting something is, the harder it is, meaning the fewer entrants you'll get. If it's just a few people competing, time could arguably be better spent doing three separate projects.

I think I need to think about this some more, I don't have very firm ideas at present…
15 Oct, 2008, Vassi wrote in the 38th comment:
Votes: 0
Chris Bailey said:
So it seems that not many people would be interested in a new "Mud competition" that required entrants to design a new codebase. If that is the case, what kind of contest would people like to enter? I'm very interesting in getting this started and I would be more than willing to contribute my time to the project but I need a good way to measure the interest.

A) How many of you are interested in a programming challenge centered around mud development?
B) Of those interested in a challenge, what would some of you like the challenge to be about?
C) Would interested parties be interested in creating a new sub-community centered around mud-related programming challenges?
D) Would said parties be interested in smaller, code-base specific challenges that can be added to the mudbytes repository afterwards?

EDIT: I would like to note that my original idea was to develop a way of hosting multiple diverse challenges that might interest
several people all across the mudding community.


A) Definitely interested.

B) I'm with David on this one, I think maybe something not 'common' perhaps. I also agree that the better question is what the judging criteria is, I.E. are you judging purely for efficiency in the design, or the robustness of the user experience? Personally I'm in favor of the latter, since that's what actually matters. (Not to say that a badly written piece of code should win just because it's feature crammed, but a sublimely 'elegant' design should lose to a slightly less elegant, but vastly more 'fun' product.

C) I agree that I don't think there's enough interest, exactly. What i'd love to see though is some kind of blogging site with multiple contributors, maybe have a monthly article written by a guest programmer or something on a specific topic. I.E. pick a codebase with a cool custom feature and ask the author to write a little about it, what the challenges were that led them to their decision and how they implemented it, etc. That kind of thing is mostly language agnostic as it's a question of design over function, when you hear the problems and the solutions most (interested) programmers will immediately see how they could tackle that kind of problem in their language of choice.

The code challenge could piggy back onto that kind of site easily.

D) My biggest fear there is that it's a heavy C\C++ skew there - but then that is where the majority of the code falls, so I guess that's ok - it just wouldn't do much for me.
15 Oct, 2008, Idealiad wrote in the 39th comment:
Votes: 0
I think it would be wise to:
  • split the judging between (a) style and ingenuity of code and (b) user experience (so the entry must be something you can either play, or it's documented well enough that you can imagine playing with it). The scoring system gives points in both categories.

  • keep the contest hosted here (you could keep contest talk in a single thread, and MudBytes does have an articles section, and a news section on the front page, right?).

  • allow for any language to be used, but if your panel of judges doesn't cover a particular language, simply say sorry, you don't get points for the judging of (a) if you enter with an obscure language.

  • keep the scope of the contest narrow, but it would be interesting to have a 'contest series' where each successive contest is related to the previous. Perhaps it's organized around a central theme, for example such as geography (coordinate systems, free roaming environments), npcs (conversation, AGI), physics, or events (sense passing).
15 Oct, 2008, The_Fury wrote in the 40th comment:
Votes: 0
A) How many of you are interested in a programming challenge centered around mud development?
Interested

B) Of those interested in a challenge, what would some of you like the challenge to be about?
The only things i can think of are specific to my own game and that would be unfair. Tho a better autoquestor would is something i can think of that would benifit a lot of generic bases. Vasago's quest system just does not cut it anymore.

C) Would interested parties be interested in creating a new sub-community centered around mud-related programming challenges?
A new thread or section here would suffice, IMO i think bringing a lot of things under one umbrella has a lot of benefits all around.

D) Would said parties be interested in smaller, code-base specific challenges that can be added to the mudbytes repository afterwards?
I think, in general, smaller projects that can be used across a number of bases with minimal porting would be a boon here.
Random Picks
20.0/57