Code Mafia: Interest Gauge.

[Thestatusquo]

Hey, I'm thinking about running a set up that is based around a theme that includes coding challenges as a major component of the game. Not talking about anything super difficult, but there are algorithmic challenges that the players have to solve at certain points throughout the day. I've noticed a lot of coders on the site and I think it would be a really sweet idea (I've already written out a skeleton for it)

I just wonder if there would be enough interest in this game (a large enough pool of players who would find this sort of thing doable and fun) in order to make it worth my while to put in the work to finish designing it.

So, simple question: Do you think this would work, or do you think the pool of potential players is too small? Especially interested in knowing if this is something you personally would like.

[itlepip]

I would play this even if I had to learn whatever language.

[Thestatusquo]

All challenges would be language agnostic!

[Frozen Angel]

I will play this surely!

[Psyche]

setup would need to integrate challenges in an interesting way

[DiamondSentinel]

Yet it shouldn't make or break the victor of the game.

I'd be interested if I was actually able to join, which I might not be able to.

[Thestatusquo]

Why wouldn't you be able to join?

[Accountant]

Interested. Would pre-in if I could.

[Thestatusquo]

Here's an example of a challenge on the very easiest bound of what will be in the game. (though this specific challenge will not be in the game.)

You are attempting to get to the correct floor of a large apartment building, trying to prevent the terrorists from blowing it up. Unfortunately, your instructions for which floor they are on comes from an encoded communication and its all garbled. Luckily, your support team has given you a key for figuring out what it means.

An opening parenthesis, (, means you should go up one floor, and a closing parenthesis, ), means you should go down one floor.

The apartment building is very tall, and the basement is very deep; you will never find the top or bottom floors.

For example:

(()) and ()() both result in floor 0.
((( and (()(()( both result in floor 3.
))((((( also results in floor 3.
()) and ))( both result in floor -1 (the first basement level).
))) and )())()) both result in floor -3.

given the instructions, what floor do you have to reach to stop the plot?

Code: Select all

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[DiamondSentinel]

I might not be able to because July-August I have mandatory leave of absence for Basic Training at the Air Force Academy. After that, I might not even have time to play much mafia anyways.

[Accountant]

NO CODES IN MAFIA GAMES

But honestly this shouldn't be too difficult to write a simple program to calculate. Do we send in like a pastebin of our algo or...?

[Psyche]

Is there a mishmash for coding challenges? I feel like that might work better. But once again, a neat game design is everything.

[Thestatusquo]

I have a game design. I'm not worried about it. I am pretty happy with it as a mafia game, I just don't want to try to run it if there aren't enough people that want to play it.

In the example accountant, you would send me the correct answer. Like I said, this is an example of something pretty easy. How you get it is up to you. In this particular challenge it is possible, although really time consuming, to get the solution using no code at all.

I just want people to get a feel for what the difficulty might be like.

[Accountant]

What's stopping someone from manually counting the brackets?

[itlepip]

74?

[Thestatusquo]

What's stopping someone from manually counting the brackets?

In this example, nothing.

But that's a feature, not a bug.

[Psyche]

oh, so you're not asking for people's code

[Thestatusquo]

In this particular challenge no I am not.

[Kagami]

oh, so you're not asking for people's code

Asking for code is absurd if the challenge is intended to be code-agnostic.

I think I'd be more interested as a mish mash. It seems like you'd have to be very meticulous about how challenges are assigned (i.e. determine

everything

pregame) to avoid problems with mod intervention, and the game is going to suffer if some players will easily complete all the challenges, while others will complete relatively few.

[Plotinus]

Code: Select all

>>> elevator.count('(')-elevator.count(')')
74

[Psyche]

PYTHON

[Plotinus]

YES

[Plotinus]

my first thought was to write something that recursively substitutes '()' for '' until there's nothing left to be found and then checks the length of the string but then i though "....no" and did the smart and lazy thing.

[Psyche]

i used a for loop with a nested if/else
unless count runs in less than linear time i think it might have taken half as much time to run as yours
but it didnt fit in one line

[Plotinus]

The answer to my appeared as soon as I hit enter so it was fast enough for me.