Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
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Regarding my entry and the contest in general:
It also should be known that Someone Else, though he had some good ideas for compiling the entries, regrettably removed the ending text from each and every entry. Mine in particular I was rather pleased with, and will be putting it into the final compilation if we get a chance to fix things up. That text follows:You see, in addition to the unwanted company of the oremites, the ending is a parody of a Lonely Island song, "Jack Sparrow"* which induces roughly the same "what" feeling as this ending text.

I also named the actual hold of my entry "Clarodi" for unrelated reasons - a rank point to the first person to figure out why.

Mouse wrote: 2. I got the wrong end of the stick regarding the aim of the room. I thought it was more to use as much space as possible without leaving empty floor tiles.
3. I didn't use any of the new stuff.

#2 Would certainly do it, yeah. As for #3, you know there are free fully-functional demos of each DROD version, right? Surely you aren't still playing only Architect's Edition?

reyll3 wrote: I wish I knew why I was voted 2 twice on, so I know what was you found wrong about the entry, because i thought it lived up the name of cramped very well.

Personally I found your entry unintuitive and didn't appreciate the scripting, so that might be why it got a 2. But then, I didn't quite complete it myself; in the end I just watched TFMurphy's demo, because I'm really busy lately.

* You kids who need parental permission to log on shouldn't look that up; it has "profanity".

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[Last edited by Jatopian at 05-09-2012 01:59 AM : happy asterisk time]

Trickster
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Before returning to reticence, I feel compelled to mention that everyone here did a very good job, and I enjoyed every entry. I'm going to keep playing them, and I hope they end up in a compilation (with fixes in cases where needed).

In particular, to Seth: your entry may have gotten some low scores, but I want you to know I think it shows a great deal of promise for a budding architect. Your ability to see how to fit unusual puzzle elements together says (to me) that you have the cogency to make difficult puzzles if you can hold all that stuff in mind at once without admitting too many loose ends. You just need to work on simplifying the spaghetti into something cohesive, and this is something that comes with time. I for one enjoyed all of them, and probably spent more time playing your puzzle than any other.

That's all.

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The spitemaster
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To trickster

I am surprised that you found the one with clones more difficult, it was the only one of the two that I was able to beat. Also I realize that the room with the clones was cluttered with unnecessary things. It was only after that I realized that I could have just left a orb to hit.

____________________________
Last night upon a stair
I met a man that wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would stay away

west.logan
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I recognized who did "snake spiral" immediately. Congratulations all! I was throughly impressed and left feeling utterly whipped. Beaten. A mere shell of a man.



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-Logan

Keiya
Level: Delver
Rank Points: 73
Registered: 03-25-2012
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I didn't get a good feel for everyone's before the contest ended, sorry. That said, woah, I did better than I expected... I honestly kinda expected to not get any votes over 5

(Doors, Door, Spam and Doors is mine)

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636th Trapdoor Replacer

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Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
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Yours was a solid entry, just not a challenging one. I mean, it probably wouldn't have even measured up to Holds Al Dente standards of difficulty.

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Seth
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 264
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Awww I uploaded wrong version this is bad I forgot export after finishing so what you see is bad!

Thank you trickster for your kind words. They made me happy to know people liked my old version.

____________________________
997 error exceptions in the code,
997 error exceptions,
you take one down, patch it around
1278 error exceptions in the code...

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[Last edited by Seth at 05-09-2012 05:59 PM]

Someone Else
Level: Smitemaster

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Congratulations to our winners!

In 1st place we have Jatopian, with his entry 'I Wish This Island Were Lonely'!
In a very close second, 'The Well Used Level' by Chaco!
And taking third place 'Snake Spiral', by da rogu3!

Great work by all our contestants. Claim your prizes... uh... wherever that stuff happens. I don't remember.

Anyway, my comments on the contest in general:

I found it incredibly interesting how when given no real restraints (fuse over everything was a possibility) but simply a theme to build around people came up with the most devilishly difficult rooms possible. I tried to beat each room as they came in, but they were far too hard for me to tackle in an hour. So to all of you who managed to beat all of them, congratulations!

mrimer
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Congratulations!

I've awarded rank point prizes to the winners. Jatopian, please claim a prize from the Prize Pile.

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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
And I come back to you now at the turn of the tide.

Mouse
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 246
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According to my calculations (based on this thread) - this contest has two first time participants: Keiya and Seth.

Trickster
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I have had time to beat all of the levels except Infested Swamp. I now have some comments on potential unintended solutions which may be useful for the impending compilation.

For Infested Swamp, I'm pretty close to the solution but it could really use a checkpoint at (20,17), or anywhere you're not stepping on a horn.

Anyway, here are a list of known and potential unintended solutions I've found so far.


I Wish...

Apparently several solutions exist. Mine involved the use of a few different tricks, so I may have had a US, but the architect seems to already be aware of them. I'll just list the tricks themselves in case any are unintended:



Cluttered Confines

Solution details are secreted. I'm not sure if my solution was intentional.



Small Room

It's been said before, but you never have to leave the NW region of the room. The architect mentioned that the wrong version was submitted by mistake, so I don't know that it matters. This room would be much harder to plod through without the unintended trick and I haven't had the time to try yet. I think the approach here is obvious enough though, so I won't describe it in detail.


Tight Quarters

I'm certain my solution was unintentional. Secreted for your protection.



Stepping Stones

The reason the "Stepping Stones With Friends" version was so much harder for me is that I beat this one in a different way from what was intended (I think), and it is almost possible to beat the other one the same way. However, I finally resorted to some graph paper and a toposort and decided it could not be done that way, which made life much easier because the actual solution is straightforward. I don't know whether this is an unintended solution for the mimic version, though.


Anyway, that's it. Great fun. I'll be stuck on that oremite mess for a while longer I'd guess.

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TFMurphy
Level: Smitemaster
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Trickster wrote:
Cluttered Confines

Click here to view the secret text

×I quickly realized that it was impossible to beat the last section of rock giants without an extra decoy or mimic, so it must be possible to beat the tar section with only two mimics. After a long afternoon of trying, and almost surviving with only two mimics, I saw the blindingly-easy way to do it with a single mimic. But since I came very close to beating it with two mimics, I'm not certain whether the easy way is the intended solution or not. The easy way could be prevented by adding a couple of arrows to the NE bomb-and-orb chamber. (I loved it either way.)

Your initial realization is false.

Trickster wrote:
Small Room

It's been said before, but you never have to leave the NW region of the room. The architect mentioned that the wrong version was submitted by mistake, so I don't know that it matters. This room would be much harder to plod through without the unintended trick and I haven't had the time to try yet. I think the approach here is obvious enough though, so I won't describe it in detail.

Bit worse than that, I'm afraid. With the version that was submitted to the competition, it is *impossible* to leave the NW region without trapping yourself.

The spitemaster
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I love that solution.

____________________________
Last night upon a stair
I met a man that wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would stay away

Trickster
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TFMurphy wrote:
There are 8 Decoys and 16 Hot Tiles, which is just enough to fully kill all 6 Rock Giants. The demo I uploaded for this room demonstrates this.

Ah, I wasn't thinking about this properly. For some reason I had convinced myself one needed an extra decoy to break one of the walls first, but now that I reconsider you're absolutely right. I must have done something foolish to have run out of hot tiles on my two initial attempts.

TFMurphy wrote: There is, however, an additional US that is almost as nasty as...

I wouldn't have even thought of that one, despite having played that portion of AC. It comes up so infrequently I always forget it. You are correct that these all have the same simple solution to fix, so hopefully that will be added. I don't know who is setting up the compilation, however.

I have to admit, I rather prefer it to be impossible without some horribly tricky thing in it, though. Finding that US was half the charm of the room for me.

TFMurphy wrote:
Bit worse than that, I'm afraid. With the version that was submitted to the competition, it is *impossible* to leave the NW region without trapping yourself.

Very true. I was replying to this from memory, but I just rechecked the room now: I had forgotten all about the inclusion of the three E force arrows adjacent to the bridge.

Thanks for the clarifications.

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Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
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Trickster wrote: I Wish...

Apparently several solutions exist. Mine involved the use of a few different tricks, so I may have had a US, but the architect seems to already be aware of them. I'll just list the tricks themselves in case any are unintended:

Click here to view the secret text

×At 29, blocking one of the eggs from forming, so I can take the NE path first, then the E path. At 123, killing the eggs from the arrow. Most other portions of the solution are straightforward (e.g., moving the queen to produce fewer eggs, timing a release to limit roach population).

I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, much less which portions of the solution should be considered unintended. Could you provide a demo?

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Trickster
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The spitemaster wrote:
I love that solution.

For the "Friends" one: if you place ortho-squares from (21,6) to (21,12), and a water trap door holding a West force arrow at (19,10), you have a hard challenge version of that room.

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Trickster
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Jatopian wrote:
I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about, much less which portions of the solution should be considered unintended. Could you provide a demo?

Sure, but my opinion on "there are unintended solutions to Jatopian's entry" comes from this guy, who may be fibbing:

More Different Jatopian wrote:
Not to mention my room had not one but two unintended solutions - I'm just lucky both of them were pretty clever in their own right!

I really have no idea if what I did was intended or unintended, but I knew unintended solutions existed (at least, if More Different Jatopian is not in error). So I wanted to describe my solutions, in case that helped anything. I didn't do anything really unusual, though (like chase the queen out of the nook and find a way to kill her afterwards).

I'll send you my demo tonight by PM.

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Jatopian
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Heehee. What I meant is that I didn't follow your description of your solution, hence the request for a demo.

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Trickster
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Rank Points: 662
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File: CCCH I Wish This Island Were Lonely The Entrance Victory.demo (1.6 KB)
Downloaded 43 times.
License: Public Domain

Apparently, I cannot attach files by PM, herp derp.

So attached here is my demo for Jatopian's room.

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Trickster

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Jatopian
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Oh, that's not a problem. You still had to hit the main points of the puzzle. Thanks for sharing though.

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Syntax
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Slight step back and I'm sure it's been discussed before, but can't we make it so that people who take part in a contest are simply not allowed to vote?

A naive implementation would check if a a person had an existing post with attachment in a given thread before allowing votes. This would cover most contest requirements I believe.

The spitemaster
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Or an average vote selection. It would just be the average vote of every selection applied to your hold.

____________________________
Last night upon a stair
I met a man that wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would stay away

Syntax
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Do you mean median? as I'm pretty sure the current system averages the votes.

In any case it does seem strange to me to allow participants to vote (though I admire the level of trust required and how seldomly it's been abused)

Trickster
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Syntax wrote:
Slight step back and I'm sure it's been discussed before, but can't we make it so that people who take part in a contest are simply not allowed to vote?

A naive implementation would check if a a person had an existing post with attachment in a given thread before allowing votes. This would cover most contest requirements I believe.

The problem with this is paucity of contributors. How many votes would there even have been in this contest if the architects weren't allowed to cast?

There is another solution, but it's not an easy implementation. Force a rank-based system which forbids self-ranking.

For example, let's say eight architects, including me, submit a room for a contest. Other users would have to rank them from 1 (best) to 8 (worst). But I'd rank them from 1 to 7, since I wouldn't be allowed to rank my own. Average the ranking and you get a final score.

That would eliminate most of the problems, but it would probably be a pain to implement so I haven't bothered suggesting it that I recall.

EDIT: Even though self-voters rank 1 to n-1, it needs to add 0.5 to each rank and record those votes as 1.5 through n-0.5. Otherwise, not-voting gives you the teensiest boost to score over your competitors.

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[Last edited by Trickster at 05-29-2012 02:55 AM]

Schik
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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I've considered a ranking type of poll, though I'd probably just let the contest participant rate their own in there, or perhaps even force it to #1. I haven't added this for a few reasons:

- Problems come up so infrequently that this never gets a high priority.
- It's still exploitable, though not as much. Assume most people will be honest and rate them backwards. Give you a relative boost.
- I am super lazy.


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Jatopian
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Ranking type polls are bad because if entry C is abysmal but I only slightly prefer entry A over entry B, I don't want my vote to reflect that I prefer A over B just as much as I prefer B over C. Lots and lots of polls would have come out differently with a ranking system, and in a negative way.

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Trickster
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Jatopian wrote:
Ranking type polls are bad because if entry C is abysmal but I only slightly prefer entry A over entry B, I don't want my vote to reflect that I prefer A over B just as much as I prefer B over C. Lots and lots of polls would have come out differently with a ranking system, and in a negative way.

Yes and no. If A actually is much better than C, then statistically speaking everyone should agree with you hands-down and C will end up with a much lower rating. You're exchanging separability for a probabilistic framework that models the same thing in a different way, and the latter is probably more accurate because it is not susceptible to one user vote-killing room everyone else loved but she hated. If you were the only one who thought C was awful, then C shouldn't be penalized as much as you wanted to penalize it. Number of opinions trumps opinion strength.

I just realized there is a simpler solution, however. Have users vote as they normally do. Prevent or ignore self-votes (this becomes more important with the scaling below). Treat all non-votes as a raw vote of 5.5. Finally, scale the values of each entry by the range of that vote: for each entry, the score will be:


10*(voteValue-low)/(high-low+1)

This is a fair way to ensure each vote has the same potential effect on the outcome, which short-circuits rewarding for strictness (which may happen subconsciously).

As Schik says, however, it's still a gameable system if you put the most weight on the crappiest entries. Since our participants don't play for the purpose of winning, I doubt anyone would care much if someone were working the system to their advantage. It might feel wrong from an ethical standpoint, but in the end we don't participate for whatever the prize happens to be.

I might feel different if it were a crowdsourcing contest where Caravel is selecting things that will affect the game itself, but in a case like that I'd hope Caravel would hand-pick winners rather than rely on voting irregularities.

It's not true that the irregularities are uncommon, however. matt.logan gave 13 entries a "10" rating by mistake this time, so the two entries he actually intended to vote on took a substantial (if ironic) penalty. In one of the contests I was in someone accidentally used 1's for good and 10's for bad. The way the system works currently rewards people who are harsher graders and penalizes those who are generous, so it's far from ideal... but again, it doesn't really matter to most of us.

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[Last edited by Trickster at 05-29-2012 08:05 AM]

Jatopian
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Uh... I'm not comfortable with "it doesn't really matter how well your vote reflects your intentions because statistics" for quite a few reasons, not least of which is that we don't get enough participants to start talking about statistics.

As for your second suggestion, the point of everyone voting 10 is that so long as every entrant also takes the time to vote, things balance out. For each poll someone would have to link up a poll question to a forum member, and that is a fair bit of work for Schik.

No, I think the only thing we really need to address is the accidental voting 10 for holds a person doesn't rate. Simplest solution is a "--" being the default value for the dropdown, which either represents a null vote or stops the person's votes from going through entirely and throws them an error message. Probably the former, since it's easier and allows people to simply not vote on entries they didn't get to.

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Dischorran
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I like systems in which it's clear how the votes get tallied. Especially if I have to explain where the numbers came from. A straight-up average is nice that way.

I have mixed feelings on allowing line-item non-votes, because the same (hardest) entries are going to get all the non-votes, putting them in much more random territory.

As for the "voting yourself 10" bit, call it a tax on people who enter but can't be bothered to vote!

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Znirk
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Dischorran wrote:
I have mixed feelings on allowing line-item non-votes, because the same (hardest) entries are going to get all the non-votes, putting them in much more random territory.

Only if you're comparing to the other entries rather than to the result of not allowing non-votes. It might leave these hard entries at the exact same level of randomness they would otherwise have, while other entries gain some extra votes from people who can't with a good conscience vote on everything.

I abandoned playing Cramped Confines after hitting a few rooms I couldn't solve. Since there was no way to not express an opinion on these rooms, and I didn't want to just rate them 1 and move on, I couldn't fairly enter a vote at all.