May 2016 Time Trial

[M11k4]

Yep, thanks for sharing your thoughts and playing the levels! Anyone else doing that???


Well, I did and am ready to freeze my scores as soon as someone else sends in their solutions. (Freezing them before that is pointless, as I have nobody to share my times with and thus nobody that makes sure I didn't improve my score after I said I wouldn't.)

On the first level, the route was more challenging to execute than I originally thought, but at least coming up with a plan seemed to be easier than with some sokobans. For the second one, I took my own advice and worked on the halves of the level separately, though I had to backtrack quite a bit after I noticed I was doing the middle part totally wrong when I tried to combine the two. Overall I am not sure my times are the best possible, but I am happy with the route compared to the time I spent on it and can't wait to see what other people come up with. Hopefully someone will come and blow my times out of the water! I still might look at also solving the levels in Lynx, because that seems like it would be fun and even a bit different than the MS solutions.

Other than that, I have two important announcements about this competition. One is pretty exciting and the other is not really. Which would you like first? You can pick the reading order:

Mundane news:

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I'm slightly adjusting the way the rankings for this competition will be calculated. Instead of adding the seconds remaining, I will consider the relative placements of entrants for each individual level. If you care for the details, read this:

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Usually the winner of a Time Trial is determined by the combined seconds left on the levels in the competition. This time though, I will rather use the method used for the April 2013 Time Trial (or at least something very similar). It's a little bit like giving out points for each level separately and seeing who gets the most points. I want to do this because sometimes saving a second or two on one level does not always match the difficulty or work needed to save the same amount on another level. I forgot to consider this when announcing the competition, and now think that for these two levels, that just might be the case because they are so different in nature. (I also considered using a method that combined the rankings on both levels together a little bit like we did for the March 2015 Create, but that way is more prone to ties. Another way would be to look at the average rank on both levels, but I don't like that as much either.) In practice this means you can place high in the competition as long as one of your scores is very good even if the other is not, and of course your chances are even better if you have a good score on both.

Exciting news:

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Are you sure you are ready for this one? If you didn't read the other news first, you still have time to change your mind. If you've read both, go ahead an spoil yourself here:

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There is a super exciting extra prize for this competition! One of the participants will receive instructions on how to score (and hopefully confirm) the bold on the CCLP3 level Divide and Conquer
! Instead of just handing it out to the winner, I will instead give this extra prize to a randomly chosen participant so everyone will have a chance. Will you be the one to engrave your name in history by getting your name on the CCLP3 score board on row #128?

Wow, that was way more exciting than I thought it would be This is going to be fun!

-Miika