The Nineteenth Byte

Q: How do I limit randomness in KOTH challenge?

@grc Haha that's hilarious. My favorite (from the front page at least) was throw up.

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2:34 PM

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I'm always fan of game theory game with chance. However, one of the downsides is, that when one agent plays random, it's basically become mixed strategy, and meh.... One interesting case is my penalty shooter. When I designed this game, what comes into my mind is that this will be something like...

discussion

2:48 PM

@Rainbolt Meh

MEh

Nathan Merrill

I really like the stack snippets challenge

My solution to his problem: Don't ban randomness. Give challengers a reason to not be random.

Something like "If you move randomly, you'll receive this special penalty."

Then define what it means to appear to be moving randomly.

Nathan Merrill

Has anybody done a marbelous stack snippet?

or working on?

Or just not worry about having random participants.

2:51 PM

Well, he's obviously worried about it. You can't just say "Don't worry because I said so."

And I'm actually interested in the solution as well

Because the only successful games I have created were all zero sum games.

Right, but my point is that I don't see the harm they do. Creating odd penalties for randomness or half-banning it seems like it would "kill the fun" more than having one random participant.

The easiest way to solve this would just be to either forbid or allow random (or deterministic, whatever).

What if your game requires a base of non random participants in order to throw off some kind of inherent "perfect balance"?

Like bot player? Like petryl basher?

You mean like RPS?

The normal rules of KOTH are that two entries can't be the same. If one uses perfectly balanced random, the others can't. There's your base of non-random.

Yea. I mean... this is a pretty bad example, but if your challenge was "Play RPS." it would be kind of boring if the first submission was random.

2:55 PM

Or just ban games where mixed strategy is the "best move"?

So no more me.

Well..then we will ban everything ...

I was trying to think of a solution without banning stuff. Obviously it's an option.

What makes me interested is that some game gets really random answer

and they don't win

And it doesn't really kill the spirit

Does your challenge reward random players in the presence of non random players?

Good question.

I don't see that coming.

I wrote a challenge once that appeared to reward random players at first, and then gradually it started to reward those who found a pattern.

2:58 PM

Is there a scoreboard? How well does the random program even do?

I was expecting the same too!

I kept for my private collection.

Once it got around 80 submissions, the non random players were owning everyone.

The randomness really kils

When I saw it really kills, I just give up

I was expecting the trend like from randomness to non randomness

But somehow

Personally, if a pure random strategy is the optimum, the game's not that interesting to me from the start.

(though that may be hard to see upfront)

RPSVS was best to be random

2:59 PM

I think it's time to talk about Tips.

@Realdeo I'm pretty sure I didn't play that one because it didn't seem interesting :D

Which one? RPSVS or penalty?

Both, I assume =p

@Realdeo Only in the presence of optimal solutions. As soon as there is a non-random one it's better to predict that one and beat it with certainty.

Oh! I remember what I did to eliminate he random players @Realdeo

It's so simple: You have to reward consistency

Petryl Basher?

3:01 PM

RPSVS. That one got a lot of attention because it was 1) simple 2) based on geek culture 3) simple

Oh! Consistency!

really??

Really. I decided that if you were consistently bad, you got rewarded. If you were consistently good, you got rewarded. If you flopped around a lot, you didn't do so well.

People will throw answers at simple challenges that touch on pop culture, no matter how logically uninteresting they may be.

Isn't penalty shootout pop culture?

We're crazy about it.

Who the heck is Petryl Basher? Are you talking about Petyr Baelish?

3:03 PM

Peter Baelish?

Petyr Baelish

get your Westerosi names straight

Petyr Baelish

I don't know who "we" is, but the US audience almost certainly doesn't consider soccer/football pop culture.

Ah!

Good point.

So conclusion: Mind your audience.

Do you guys know the rpscompetitionthingy.com

They have rules that you can use randomness, but you can't rely on it.

And they get away with it.

Unlike me.

Ok I have a question: In C# Visual Studio, I have a chunk of code like
else
foo();
And I decide it needs to be surrounded with braces because the else is suddenly growing larger. Why is there no hotkey for this?!!!!

3:07 PM

rpscontest.com

@Rainbolt can't you select it and type a {?

It autocompletes like else {} foo();

Q: Any way to surround code block with Curly Braces {} in VS2008?

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I always find myself needing to enclose a block of code in curly braces { }, but unfortunately that isn't included in the C# surround code snippets, which seems to be an oversight. I couldn't find anything on building your own surround snippets either (just other kinds of snippets). I am actu...

c# visual-studio-2008 refactoring resharper code-snippets

So I press the delete key, down down, end brace key.

@Rainbolt what even you actually select all of foo();?

ProgramFOX

3:10 PM

@Rainbolt There is a snippet to do what you want: stackoverflow.com/a/2769697/2619912

@ProgramFOX ninja'd hard ;)

@ProgramFOX Thank you for the super awesome link. Martin's wasn't very good. He linked to a question, not an answer!

ProgramFOX

@MartinBüttner Whoops, didn't even notice your onebox :P

@Realdeo I wasn't suggesting that "know your audience" is a cure-all. I was just saying that it leads to more entries (in general). That doesn't make the challenge (or the entries) necessarily better or worse.

Also, I don't see any rules about randomness on the site you linked at all. Am I missing it?

It does say that random isn't the optimum strategy (in the long haul, in a pool of nonrandom opponents).

If you notice the submission in graveyard

aka "you're banned"

It's pure randomness

3:19 PM

if I was able to rep cap today I'd have exactly the same rep as Howard ^^

Meh, banning random moves seem to not be covered by the rules at all, according to their help page. It just recommends against it. The banning is (to me) based on an unwritten rule, which is not regarded well here.

The only other reason I see may be because it's "submitting functionally duplicate programs", but that means that randomness isn't the issue, but that there's already a random player.

In other news, the python messiahs have been born into the world. Repent now!

Optimizer

3:55 PM

@MartinBüttner Show off!!

;)

did you just start serial upvoting me? ^^ if you overdo that, that could get reverted

exaaaaactly.... :P

Serial upvote to hit the cap, then wait for it to get reversed. Bam, loss of potential rep for the day.

I think that would work, anyway.

@Geobits at least if the revert doesn't happen until further (ignored) votes come in

Right, IIRC they run the script a bit after UTC 0 each day.

ProgramFOX

4:10 PM

They run it at 3:00 UTC.

how many votes count as serial? ^^

They've got some sort of super-secret weighting depending on time between votes I believe.

I think the normal response was "we're not telling you exactly, so don't try to game it."

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

that makes sense

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One digits or two digits king-of-the-hill Here’s the rule: They're 2 players. Each player has a pool of 99 points. The player that takes the first turn will choose to invest an amount of point taken (deducted)from your own pool. Then other player will do the same. Who invests more wins the r...

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

4:54 PM

I may have made my tetris jumble too unfeasible to crack even if I bounty it. Even with the solved code in front of me, it took me quite a while to piece it together using COTO's handy snippet. I can't see anyone having the patience to work it out.

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5:50 PM

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A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

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6:58 PM

I learned a new word: Galoogle

@Rainbolt I don't mean to offend, but if I heard anyone say that my impression of them would not be good.