ACM Queue ICPC challenge

미국의 ACM Queue Magazine 에서 주최하는 온라인 프로그래밍 경진대회를 소개합니다.

기간은 1/10~2/6입니다.

방학 동안 프로그래밍 공부하면서 참여해 봐도 좋을 것 같습니다.

ACM Queue Magazine is offering an online programming competition based

on the 2010 International Collegiate Programming Competition (ICPC)

Challenge problem. Participants will get to code a player and compete

with others in the game of Icy Projectile Challenge. Preliminary

matches during the one-month coding phase will let you know how well

your player is doing. A final double-elimination competition among all

the submitted players will decide whose player is best.

Coding and preliminary matches will run from January 10, 2011 to the

end of the day on February 6 (all times GMT).

Icy Projectile Challenge

The ICPC Challenge game, Icy Projectile Challenge, is played in an

environment that looks something like the following figure. A red

player and a blue player compete on a snow-covered 31 × 31 field. Each

player controls a group of children, who can pick up the snow, move it

around, make snowballs, hurl them at each other, and stack snowballs

to form snowmen. Players earn points by placing snowmen strategically,

and by hitting their opponents with snowballs. The game rules describe

how to control your team, how to score points and how to win.

Writing your Player

Your player will be implemented as a separate program, in C++, C#,

Java or Python. You will interact with the game by reading information

about the game world from standard input and writing your next move to

standard output. The sample players can be a quick way for you to get

started writing your player and interacting with the game. A more

detailed description of the execution environment explains the input

and output format for your player as well as other rules for what your

player can do.

Running a Match

Once you have a player written, you can run it by starting up the game

and pointing it to your player's executable. If you have written a

player in C++, you can run it against one of the sample players using

a command like:

java -jar capture.jar -player cpp myPlayer -player java -cp java_example Hunter

If your player is implemented in Java, you can run it against one of

the example players using a command like:

java -jar capture.jar -player java -cp java_example Planter -player

java MyPlayer

The more detailed usage instructions describe more options for

starting up the game, including how to run the 3D visualization, how

to generate trace files and how to debug your player during execution.

Submitting your Player

During the coding phase, players can access the competition through

the Queue site at: http://queue.acm.org/icpc/ From this page,

participants will be able to register for the competition, login to

the submission system, submit player code and see how they are doing

in preliminary matches. The latest working submission is considered

the participant's current player. The final tournament and the nightly

preliminary matches will use the most recently submitted player code

that successfully builds.

All source code and supporting files for a player must be submitted at

once. From the submission interface, select each source file that's

part of your player, and then press the "Upload Files" button to

upload the whole thing. If you forget to submit an important file, you

will need to re-submit everything to have a working player.

Additional Information

The Queue ICPC Challenge website, http://queue.acm.org/icpc/, will

provide regularly updated information during the coding phase of the

competition. If corrections or clarifications are needed, they will be

linked from here.