« first day (1275 days earlier)      last day (3563 days later) » 

12:14 AM
"cheating" with an initial poke in caveman duels wins against a few specific bots, but otherwise is a losing proposition
falling behind by an entire turn on the race for sword, or to real pokes, costs the game, generally
 
I haven't taken a look at that challenge yet.
 
12:41 AM
@Doorknob do tag synonym suggestions actually show up anywhere in a review queue for the people allowed to vote or something? because how on earth is one otherwise gonna get 5 upvotes for them? as if anyone ever checks the tags if synonyms have been suggested...
 
@MartinBüttner Exactly my thoughts, but drawing isn't really synonymous with graphical output, is it? For example, ASCII art is still drawing, but not graphical output.
 
@Doorknob that is the only difference between the two tags as their descriptions stand
 
Ha, I love how @xfix suggested to synonymize code-golf with popularity-contest :D
 
I think there is much more overlap than that difference
in particular, anything that's not related to ASCII art could pick either and it's impossible to determine which one is appropriate
hence, I'd say, take graphical output and either remove that line about ascii-art, or just use both tags if ascii-art is also appropriate
 
Hm, fair point. You should probably look through the questions first and retag as necessary. (I would, but I have to go soon.)
 
12:44 AM
but I think that could be rephrased to "If the output is solely in ASCII art, use instead."
@Doorknob By retag appropriately you mean? Change the ASCII art ones to ?
Because there's no point in retagging them as right?
 
Yes.
 
(if the synonym gets approved some day)
 
I'll approve it once all ASCII-art questions are tagged as such.
 
awesome! (do I still get a badge if you do that? :P)
 
Yep :P I have to go now.
 
12:51 AM
see you
 
 
1 hour later…
2:05 AM
Remember my comment a long time ago? That I'd host a in C++? Well, I have finished writing a controller. I would've posted on Code Review, but I think there are too many files / too much code (judging from other Q's there tagged as [c++]).
So I posted it on github. github.com/Quincunx271/DotsNBoxesKotH
I feel like the code is extremely ugly. But this was my first "real" project in C++ so...
phew, managed to fix the grammar error in the <5 seconds remaining to edit the chat post
 
2:27 AM
0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

PhiNotPiRearrange one picture to look like another This puzzle is in the early rough draft stages. I'm writing this late at night. It is somewhat based on the other pixel-rearranging challenge here, but I hope this version leads to more creativity. Write a program that rearranges the pixels in one ...

 
3:04 AM
@overactor my plane at 0,0,8 is 8 units above the north-west-bottom corner, facing southeast, right? and your plane at 19,19,8 is 8 units above the south-east-bottom corner, facing northwest, right?
 
 
1 hour later…
4:11 AM
0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

PhiNotPiMorra, the Noble Game of Kings In the quest for originality, I decided to "turn up the creativity" and try a different proposal. The game of Morra is a simple game. In the "original" version, several players simultaneously throw out a number 0-5 with their hands while guessing the total sum ...

 
I actually think my proposal for the (slightly modified) game of Morra would make a decent challenge, but I don't know if I am experienced enough to host it unaided.
I would appreciate help in writing a controller program.
 
 
2 hours later…
6:29 AM
@Sparr Wow, now I see. I had the way the starting positions work so set in my mind that I didn't see the coordinates were wrong, I fixed it now. Thanks for pointing that out.
 
 
4 hours later…
10:28 AM
sure is quite in here
 
10:41 AM
@overactor weekends...
also Rainbolt and Peter Taylor are on holiday apparently (and they are arguably two of the most active people in here)
 
So I've noticed.
You'd think people would be more active during weekends though.
 
Yeah, that's what I thought when I first got here (because it's definitely the case for myself), but it seems most people are actually using SE at work and not at home.
(even PPCG)
 
I'm guilty of browsing SE at work.
Mostly lurking though.
What are you working on?
 
I'm studying, but I'm currently doing a summer project on simulating shallow water flow.
 
3D?
 
10:52 AM
(during term time, I've got two part time jobs... another scientific one in our cosmology department where I'm working on spherical harmonic and wavelet transforms on the sphere, and one for a software company in the e-commerce business)
@overactor no, it's not graphics related
(except for generating a few simple plots to see what's going on)
 
But are the physics 3d?
 
no, 2D actually
we assume that there's no vertical variation in the dynamics
(well the height does vary, but the height and velocity fields are then just functions of x and y)
I am considering doing a PhD on fluid animation though (the ETH does some amazing research in that field, for instance)
 
I guess that's implied by shallow.
And how's that going?
 
I started two weeks ago... first week was mostly reading... second week was porting some old F77 code to F90 and Python (and the new version of the framework I'm using), but on Friday I got the first results, and they looked pretty decent. it's definitely really interesting
how about you?
 
Just trying to work on some code for a my suggested challenge in the sandbox.
 
10:58 AM
ah right
 
I should have picked something easier for my first challenge.
 
@PhiNotPi that sounds like a really decent challenge, but I'd wait a bit before posting it. I think the pattern recognition branch of KotHs is a bit saturated at the moment. Although I guess it's gonna take a bit before the controller is done anyway.
@PhiNotPi You might want to ask Rainbolt or Eoin Campbell if you can base your controller on one of theirs
@overactor ah yes, I've had this KotH in the sandbox for ages
I never meant to post it as my first KotH because it's well complicated
 
Is it in the current one?
 
I've had another idea for the about the same amount of time, but never sandboxed it (I actually plan to do that on Monday)... which would probably be a lot easier to implement
no it's in XIII
wait
 
That would be a big project
Have you written any code for it yet?
It also seems rather difficult to write code for it
 
11:17 AM
no I haven't... I really want to do the other one first, which is simpler, so I already have a code base
also, yes I'm afraid it will have a really high entry barrier
I need to make sure that there are simple ways to write some greedy strategies
 
I'm seeing the same problem arise with my challenge already
yeah, provide a ton of boilerplate code.
 
12:00 PM
0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

VisualMelonKakuro Combinations I'd have thought something like this would have already been asked, but I can't find anything that looks like a duplicate, I'm not the best person at searching for things though. For those of you who know Kakuro, this isn't as interesting as it might sound - is there a bette...

 
@Doorknob a) Sandbox XIII lost the featured tag again. b) Can you migrate answers between questions? That might be an option for retiring the sandbox then. Everyone who still wants to keep their challenge visible and post it someday could have it migrated... and those people who don't let you know probably don't care about their sandboxed challenge any more anyway.
But I believe there are at least 3 KotHs in there, where the OPs are probably still planning to post them some day.
For instance, I posted mine from the outset with the intention to leave it there for a few months to develop the concept and spec properly before starting to work on a controller.
 
12:51 PM
@MartinBüttner Can I ask you something?
To your knowledge, has there ever been a code that generates poetry challenge on here?
or anyone really
I tried looking for it but couldn't find anything
 
1:32 PM
I think I'll sandbox a challenge to write code that generates poetry.
 
0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

overactorYour love you want to show 'em, generate them a poem. Poetry is not easy; Rhyming is too hard. So generate me a poem that's not too cheesy. If it's good enough we'll call it art. In all honesty, poetry really is tough beans. So for this challenge I ask you to write some code in the language of...

0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

FrxstremThis is my idea for a king-of-the-hill type game, please leave feedback if you have any comments on it. Hackers Corp. Hackers Corp. is a worldwide organization that specializes in black hat hacking. Their board of directors have decided that they are in need of new recruits, and they have the...

 
 
2 hours later…
3:55 PM
@overactor np, that's what the sandbox is for :)
 
@Sparr exactly, glad you caught it
 
I flew out to the bay area for three job interviews at tech companies for devops/sre positions this month, and didn't get any of them. Some of the feedback was regarding my weak python skills. I'm gonna get more active in codegolf and spoj and try to get some intense practice before my next round of interviews.
 
seems weird that they'd turn you down based on one language
what's your best language?
Also, sorry to hear that.
 
4:52 PM
it wasn't JUST that, but it was a big part
one of them only wanted to interview in python, because that's what they use internally
the other two told me to use whatever I want, but they still had a preference for python, and I'm trying to get up to speed on pythonic ways to do things
 
That blows, is python that big these days?
 
yeah
 
#TheMoreYouKnow
 
0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

hslNumber to numeral in French There was a challenge to convert a number to its numeral in English, but that was too straightforward. Given a number 0–100, your task is to output the corresponding numeral in French. The French numeral system has a similar, but less logical, logic behind it compared...

 
5:23 PM
I wish there were a way to make an auto-updating KOTH challenge.
A few years ago, I competed in a Google-hosted KOTH tournament, and the rankings were updated every few minutes.
 
why isn't there?
you'd need a tiny bit more standardization in the answer format, for code and command line format
there's an API for stackexchange
you could definitely make a program that got new/edited answers, analyzed/ran/scored them, and updated a scoreboard in the question or elsewhere
not much more complex than doing automated stuff in a play-by-email game
 
Then I suppose it is possible.
 
Bit dangerous if people decide to code something malicious though.
 
5:39 PM
make a good sandbox. there are plenty of online programming contests that don't suffer from problems with malicious entries. spoj, topcoder, codegolf, etc
uva, c++robots, [alltheotherlanguages]robots
 
Rainbolt and Geobits were discussing this before
to a certain extent it would definitely be possible
Jul 23 at 15:09, by Rainbolt
@MartinBüttner I want to bring this to fruition in Java, C#, C++, or another "fast" language. http://meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/1593/18487
 
6:11 PM
I wish codegolf.com hadn't died
 
@Sparr They say it will be back soon:
> Back soon
 
I think they've been saying that for about three years now
 
I replied to the thread above about automating contests, and included codegolf as an example
 
 
3 hours later…
9:35 PM
ok, I feel like I'm probably doing something wrong... anyone here have a local test environment for caveman duels and willing to run my script for me?
 
never downloaded it, sorry
 
9:49 PM
Whoa, MarkovBot still on top!
 
I can only run about half of the entrants on my machine
of the ones I can run, the top of the leaderboard looks like this:
53 CaveDoctor
51 FancyTechnoAlgorithm
50 ChargerMan
46 Watcher
44 MaybeMarkov
43 MinimaxMan
 
(I was talking about RPSLV btw)
 
oh, sure, sorry, didn't mean to respond to you, still continuing what I was asking before
so, I've written a markov-ish bot for caveman duels. I wanted to make it learn based on every match it's ever played, as well as the current match.
I only got the current match part written before I ran my first real test...
and it ties for first place on my local leaderboard
which seems like an extraordinarily implausible result for my first try
 
0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

xnorDisplay a Magic Square code-golfkolmogorov-complexity Your challenge is simply to print or display a 5x5 magic square -- a 5x5 grid of the numbers in which each number 1 through 25 appears exactly once, and in which every row, column, and diagonal has the same sum (which you can show must be 6...

0
A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

xnorPlay Wythoff's Nim Perfectly Your goal is to write a perfect player for the game of Wythoff's Nim in as few bytes as possible. This player will take as input a position in the game and output the position resulting from its move. It must play perfectly, meaning that it must win every game theore...

 
huh, interesting
sorry I can't help there, I can never be bothered to download the controllers for KotHs ^^
 
9:55 PM
np
I'll just submit it and see what happens
worst case, ridicule and education :)
here goes nothing
 
10:43 PM
if this actually works, I might try to beat your RPSLV markov bot
I think my analysis of the neighborhood is a useful addition in cases of lacking information
along the way I hope to make my control structures a lot more visually palatable. I love how elegant your ruby solution looks.
thanks for the inspiration!
 
11:22 PM
@MartinBüttner a) Fixed. b) Sorry, can't do that.
 

« first day (1275 days earlier)      last day (3563 days later) »