The Computer Science Student Association Programming Contest has begun! Votey Checkers ============== Teams will be responsible for constructing a software agent to play the game of Votey Checkers. The rules of the game are described at the URL below. After all submissions are in, the CSSA will host a tournament and declare a winner. The student team with the best agent will be awarded $200. Non-student teams are welcome to participate as well, but are not eligible to win the cash prize. Please visit the following URL for the complete problem description: http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~cssa/programming-contest/contest.pdf You'll have up to and including 11:59 pm Monday, February 16 to complete and submit an entry. The rules of the contest are appended below. Please send any questions to [log in to unmask] Don't forget, you need to register before the contest ends in order to be entered into the tournament. Registration and submissions should be sent to [log in to unmask] Please sumbit a README file with all entries. The README should specify the name of your program (as invoked on the command line). Optionally, submissions may include a Makefile. We will build all entries via "make all". Programs will be built and run as the cssa EM user on tyr. Any updates to these guidelines will be announced on the CSSA mailing list and the contest web page only. http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~cssa/programming-contest/ Professor Snapp has done an excellent job in designing the problem. His support in making this contest a reality is deeply appreciated by the officers of the CSSA. We hope you enjoy this event. Thank you, David Van Horn -- Computer Science Student Association Programming Contest Feb 14 - 16, 2004 http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~cssa/programming-contest/ The CSSA is glad to announce our first programming contest in a hopefully annual series. The contest is open to all UVM affiliates and a cash prize is available for student teams. RULES Problem: The problem will be announced at the following URL, the CSSA mailing list, and the EM mailing list at Noon on Saturday, February 14th. <http://www.cs.uvm.edu/~cssa/programming-contest/> Solutions to the problem will be to create a game playing agent for a novel two-player game with perfect information (i.e., a game without dice or concealed information). The programs will play each other in a tournament. A referee program will conduct the tournament selecting two teams to play each other. The referee will toss a coin to select the agent which must decide to receive the initial state or pass to the other agent. The number of states will be finite, and will be representable by an integer vector of fixed dimension. The referee will maintain the state and will pass it to each agent before each move. Submissions: Send files to <[log in to unmask]>. Submissions can be made any number of times up to and including 11:59 pm on Monday, February 16. If multiple submissions are made, only the last will be considered. Registration: Any time before the end of the submission period a team MUST register in order to participate in the contest. If a team submits multiple registration emails, only the latest will be considered. Send an email to [log in to unmask] with the following information: Team Name Competing for Prize? -- See requirements below. For each member: Name Primary affiliation Email address Requisites of participation Teams may be composed of any number of members. Any UVM affiliate can be a member of a team. Registration must be completed. Requisites of winning In order to be eligible to win the contest prize, all members of the team must have a primary affiliation of student and no officer of the CSSA may win. The team must meet the requirements of participation above. The eligible teams will play in a tournament and the winner will be awarded the prize. Evaluation of programs Your program must run on the EM host tyr. There is no restriction on the language used to solve the problem, but programs must adhere to a naming convention and command line interface that will be specified in the problem description. Prize $200 Check The prize will be distributed evenly among all members listed on the winning team's submission form. Send questions to [log in to unmask]