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+--- Thread: September 2015 Time Trial (/thread-1458.html)
September 2015 Time Trial - Ihavenoname248 - 05-Sep-2015
With the release of CC2, the competitions went on hold for a while. But why should they remain stopped? In the interest of feeling out how future CC2 competitions may go, you may submit times for this Time Trial in MS, Lynx, or CC2. To help ease back into things, I've crafted 3 relatively short levels that should all carry a fair amount of optimization depth. The levels can be downloaded here, in a zip file containing 2 .dacs and .c2g.
Enjoy the levels and the return of the competitions!
Technicalities copied from Miika:
1) The person with the highest combined remaining time on the three levels wins! There may be a tie in overall score.
2) You may enter in MS, Lynx or the CC2 engine, with the former being the primary rules. This means that any Lynx or CC2 solution times that exceed the best MS solution time will be considered equal to that MS time, but otherwise all the times will be compared together in one category.
3) Please send your solutions (either the tws file or avis) to my own email jbardonjr at charter dot net. Do not post your solutions or solution times or share them with others before the competition results are announced. All times will be published at the same time, and the quickest solutions will eventually be released. I will strive to respond to your message by a confirmation that your score has been recorded.
4) The levels aren't too hard to solve. Don't be afraid to send in your solutions even if you sense they aren't perfect, and simple casual solutions are also appreciated. You may enter if you solve at least one of the levels, but solving more will obviously place higher.
5) This is part of the 2015 season of the Chip Cup. Winner will be awarded 15 points, second place 12, third 10 points, and so on. If you win a competition here for the first time, you receive the "You're Winner!" award. All participants who haven't participated in a Time Trial earlier receive the "Run, Chip, Run" award.
6) Submission deadline is October 7th where you live. I will judge the submissions without warning the during the following days but will accept submissions until I do. If you need a more specific time, you can always ask. To avoid losing on time (it is a time trial after all), get your solutions in early rather than later! You can send in improvements while the competition is running, so there is no downside to sending in something you know might not be your best effort if you had forever to work on it.
7) The designers of the levels, may enter the competition, as long as they feel to not have gained any significant advantage as a result of having some advanced knowledge of the levels.
8) The levels may receive an update within the first week of the competition. This will only be done if there is some significant problem with the first versions of the levels.
9) A participant may 'freeze' their scores at some point after submitting their own solutions. They will not be able to send in any more updates after this, but they may talk about the levels and their times with other people who have frozen their entry. I will update a public list of people who have frozen their score.
To close the post, have some quotes from Miika about why this is set up the way it is.
[6/6/2015 5:35:20 PM] Miika: Would you mind making a couple levels for one Time Trial and maybe running it too?
[6/6/2015 5:41:17 PM] Miika: I think we should stick with CC1 levels for now, at least for the Chip Cup this year. If someone makes a CC2 comp, that is ok (and cool!) but I think it won't be fair at this point for all the participants to include it in the Chip Cup.
[6/6/2015 5:45:58 PM] Miika: It would probably be best for Sempteber...
I figured that still allowing people to enter in CC2 under the same proviso as the Lynx ruleset has been would be a good idea.
List of frozen scores:
IHNN
J.B. Lewis
September 2015 Time Trial - Ihavenoname248 - 06-Oct-2015
Glad to see that there have been some submissions for this so far! I was a little worried that the interest wouldn't be here after CC2. Anyway, this is the last day to get your submissions in! I will be closing the submissions and announcing the results in a little over 24 hours, and hopefully have the solutions available for viewing within another 24. if I can't get them on the official channel I'll upload onto my own ASAP
September 2015 Time Trial - Ihavenoname248 - 08-Oct-2015
And now... the results!
0th:INF Melinda: 184/189/186 | 559 -1 (MS)
1st:15 J.B.: 183/189/186 | 558 -0 (MS)
2nd:12 Miika: 183/189/185 | 557 +1 (MS)
3rd: 9 IHNN: 182/185/185 | 552 +6 (MS)
3rd: 9 Kevin: 183/185/184 | 552 +6 (MS)
5th: 7 Chipster: 182/184/184 | 550 +8 (MS)
Chipster: 181/182/183 | 546 (CC2)
Chipster: 180/182/183 | 545 (Lynx)
6th: 6 Cyberdog: 180/189/178 | 547 +11 (MS)
7th: 5 Syzygy: 181/184/181 | 546 +12 (MS)
Syzygy: 179/182/180 | 541 (Lynx)
8th: 4 Michael: 176/182/177 | 535 +23 (CC2)
9th: 3 Minus3K2: 155/155/165 | 475 +83 (MS)
Congratulations to J.B. for winning yet another Time Trial! It was quite interesting being on the administrative side of things: most entries were in the last 3 days! Here's a chronology of when each person submitted: http://i.imgur.com/vv7kgz7.png
Now for some thoughts on the level designs themselves. Overall, I'd say this was a fairly successful TT, with none of the best routes being too obvious and none of the executions being too difficult.
The first level was designed with many different potential approaches in mind, and I'd say it worked since all three 183 scores used a different route!
With the second level, I tried to design in a fastest route of 185 -.9 by testing every route that I thought might be the fastest, and adjusting the length of the ending to force the decimal. However, I knew that faster could easily be possible with the design of the level, and even though I tried to test everything...Kevin found a slightly faster 185 route. This was a moot point, though, as J.B, Miika and Cyberdog all found a 189!
The third level originally required all the chips, but then I realized that would probably make a theoretical extra second impossible. So I added an extra chip...and only J.B. caught this! It's worth noting that J.B.'s route would have been a 186 even if all the chips were required, so kudos to him for that!
With the results of this competition, J.B. passes Syzygy in the overall Chip Cup standings, Miika passes chipster, and we have a newcomer in Kevin!
Miika said he'd upload a video of solutions to the CCZone channel if I sent a file, so keep an eye out for the routes there soon!
edit:
September 2015 Time Trial - Syzygy - 29-Oct-2015
I sent in my scores for this comp on Sept. 8 and updated on the 23rd. The email I am using is cczonenextlevel@gmail.com. Should I use another? My scores weren't that great....
(My latest is slightly better
MS - 181, 184, 182 Total - 547
Lynx - 179, 182, 181 Total - 542)
... but I'd really like to have the Chip Cup points!
September 2015 Time Trial - Ihavenoname248 - 29-Oct-2015
I don't have access to that e-mail address so I wasn't aware of your entry at all. If you forward the message you sent (so the initial date sent can be seen) to my e-mail mentioned above then I'll update the results & standings since it was a bit of an oversight that I didn't try to check the CCZone account (I've always used the personal e-mail given in the rules).
September 2015 Time Trial - Ihavenoname248 - 30-Oct-2015
Alright, Miika forwarded the messages sent to the CCZone e-mail and I've checked the solutions. The TWS that was sent had 181/184/181 as the improvements, so that's the 'official' standings there (due to average points being truncated for ties, the additional claimed second on Speak no Evil would only remove a point from cyberdog).
I've updated the standings in the post above as well as the chip cup post and again, apologize for the oversight. I tried to avoid anything like that by responding to every message I received with a confirmation that I not only received the sent files, but also was able to view them (and will continue to do so for any future comps I end up running).
September 2015 Time Trial - Syzygy - 31-Oct-2015
Okay. I have forwarded the original email with attachments. I guess I improved my score since sending that email, which has me at one second better on the third level. Thanks.