Re: [Botzilla-discuss] What is the status of Tuesday's Tournament ?

[steve <sjb...@ai...>]

meo...@ju... wrote:
> We had a discussion about this in the CF-18 lab.
> 
> The golf ball machine was just too complex.  There were basically no rules surrounding the machine.

Yep - we came to the same conclusion.  The rules allowed a human to just
toss the ball - and that's by far the most likely way to win.

Also, we felt that the hardest part was that the ball would very likely
just bounce back out of the cup - and there was ZERO information about
the material at the bottom of the cup, how deep it is, etc, etc.

 > This made the scope and complexity very, very interesting.  Who has
 > the time to build such a machine?

Well, I could build one out of Lego Technics/Mindstorms in an evening,
but the idea of trying to do that only to be beaten out by some guy
who just tosses the ball...Nah.

> Your contest was very, very interesting, however, it takes time to
 > code and develop a bot.

Yep.  Last year, we did quite well - but this year the guy who'd
promised to build the Windows version dropped the ball, so we
were a little late starting.

But somehow, this year the general interest in eWeek is very low -
in my group, I think it's a matter of very poor morale, hassles
at work that just leave you too drained to go home and do more
programming.

> To have a successful contest it must be:
> 1) Simple (everyone can enter it)
> 2) Done in a few weekends or hours (though some will always spend more)
> 3) Interesting
> 
> A balance of all these can be very hard to achieve.

Yeah.  Last year, I felt we met the 'simplicity' goal - my
15 yr old son (then only 14) wrote a working 'bot - and he'd
only been programming for a few weeks.   However, we needed
to complexify it a bit to fix up some of the obvious problems
from last year.

As for the time to complete - that's harder.  You can write
a botzilla bot in a few hours - but writing a GOOD one and
testing it carefully takes longer.

This wasn't an obstacle last year - this year...I dunno.

> I liked the idea of getting teams together.

Yes - we'll do that next year.

> If we could organize the contests in the late fall (i.e. USN
 > F/18 versus CF-18 versus HACTS versus F/16 versus F-22, etc.)
 > There could be time to develop and organize the effort.

Management are VERY much against setting one product team against
another - they see it as promoting an "us and them" situation that
would be detrimental to company spirit.   Personally, I think that's
just bogus and the benefits of building team spirit is worth it.

> Also if you sucker them in early, you can make them pony up something
 > significant (like lunch for the winning teams).

   :-)

Last year we had nice plaques and T-shirts...but we could do better
if the contest had some real interest around the company.

Last year we really didn't know whether the whole thing would work
or not and I don't think the eWeek folks knew what to expect.  This
year they left it too late to advertise it.

> I would love to be involved in the next year effort (planning, etc).

We need to start before Christmas.  People have a lot of time on their
hands over the long Xmas break and I think that would give people time
to get it together.