April 2016 Treasure Hunt

[M11k4]

Is there a Treasure Hunter lurking inside you, yearning for a chance to see some action?
Can you steal the

Cross of Coronado

and get away with it?



Your task sounds simple: download this, solve the Cross of Coronado
, and score the most points.

However, in the dark caves there are many twists and surprises. One of them is a curse which
causes the fall of the first person to touch this renowned artifact, leaving the second as the
ultimate winner. Can you outsmart the rest and still have enough luck to end up the best?

Points are awarded in this fashion for gathering items:


chip - 1 point


blue key - 5 points


red key - 8 points


yellow key - 9 points


green key - 15 points


socket - 0 points



You must exit the level. Your solution time does not matter this time.
Opening doors does not reduce your points.
You may enter up to three times, which is why the set contains the same
level three times.

More technical rules follow, but do ask for anything that's on your mind:
1) The submissions will be scored according to the above legend. The winner of the competition will be the person who submits the highest unique score. Further ranking of players will follow a similar method after removal of the winning score. In case of a tie in all (remaining) scores, some scores may be disregarded in a way that feels appropriate to the general method. Include your own calculations of your own score with your submission if possible, but this is not required.
2) Please send your solutions (either the tws file or avis) to my own email valeosote at hotmail dot com. Do not post your solutions or scores or share them with others before the competition results are announced. All scores will be published at the same time, and possibly some routes too. I will strive to respond to your message by a confirmation that your score has been recorded.
3) The set contains the level Cross of Coronado
three times, meaning you can enter multiple times and only need to send one tws.
4) This is part of the 2016 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 Treasure Hunt earlier receive the "Chip the Pirate" award. If your name is Madhav or you don't care for these awards, I will think of something special just for you.
5) Submission deadline is May 8th, 2016 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. Get your solutions in early rather than later! You can send in an update while the competition is running, but only your three most recent scores will count in the competition.
6) The designer of the levels may enter the competition, as long as there is no advantage to his position. (Basically this means I can submit my current solutions into the mix.)
7) The levels or scoring may receive an update within the first week of release. This is unlikely, but just saying it just in case.
8) The level is easy to solve, so you have no excuse to not participate! Even with a quick solution and a bit of luck, you might end up on top! Encourage your friends and family and enemies to participate, to make this the largest Treasure Hunt in history!

Watch out that you don't fall into a snake pit! Enjoy!


-Miika


http://cczone.invisionzone.com/index.php?/files/file/561-%7B?%7D/

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Some thoughts on the competition and level coming soon, somewhere later in the thread!

[chipster1059]

It's nice to finally have a treasure hunter competition after all these years!

In what ruleset must I enter?

[Flareon350]

5) Submission deadline is March 8th, 2016 where you live.

Where's a time machine when I need one?

[chipster1059]

Where's a time machine when I need one?

Josh, you're awesome. Best post evah.

[M11k4]

You would think I slip these little mistakes in for fun Thanks for pointing them out (including the name of the award for participation). The real deadline is also now revealed as May 8th! I think you can enter using either rule set without it making a difference. Sorry if there is other confusion stuff, like the way I presented the scoring. (more on this later...)


I agree that three years is a long gap between Treasure Hunts! Let's hope someone makes a new one again sooner than that

[ajmiam]

I should be submitting some solutions within the next few days, Miika. Thanks for making a TH competition with an interesting premise, and one that doesn't just turn out to be a Time Trial in disguise as many of the past ones have been!

[chipster1059]

The submission deadline was supposed to be two weeks ago but there wasn't any official announcement. Is this competition still happening?

[Flareon350]

Here is a skype message Miika posted about a week ago in response to your question:

[5/17/2016 11:41:00 AM] Miika: Hi guys. Quick Treasure Hunt update. (using this chat and not the other because of many unread messages) Sorry to keep you waiting for the results, but after we moved two weeks ago, we have been experiencing some internet troubles. In addition, work has kept me busy. I'll get to it though as soon as I can While you wait, attack those Time Trial levels!! (really, there is a confirm of a pieguy route in the prize pool!!)

So essentially, yes it is over it just couldn't be announced at the time.

[M11k4]

Hi guys and gals!

Apologies for the delay in these results. I try to get them out as soon as possible, but this time it really took longer than it should have. I also wanted to talk more about the design of the level and scoring, but decided to do that after these results. This did lead to not explaining the scoring quite as well as I could have done, but it was harder to express clearly than what I first thought.

Ok let's get to the good stuff! We had ten participants, giving us a record 30 submissions on a single level! To win, you had to score the highest unique score. So what scores were possible and which ones did you submit?

The highest possible score was apparently 141 treasure points. This could be scored by finding 10 chips (10 treasure points), four blue keys (20 treasure points), three red keys (24 points), three yellow keys (27 points), and four green keys (60 points). There was more than one way to do this by using the different arms of the cross. Who figured this out?

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Unluckily there was more than one person who submitted a score of 141 points. I suspect this was a denial strategy for some (so that nobody else would win with this score), but was it worth half of the players to do so? There were five submissions with this score, sent in by chipster1059, BabyPowder, reubenspaans, Flareon350, Eric119.

Moving on, the next possible score was with one fewer chip at 140 treasure points. Could this produce the winner?

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No it couldn't. Again, there were five people who scored this, but at least it wasn't the exact same five: Ihavenoname248, BabyPowder, rubenspaans, Ajmiam, random 8.

Next we realize that 139 treasure points was not a possible score, but not picking up the last blue key did score 136.

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Now I honestly thought this might be the one to win it, but so did two other people apparently. Sorry Ihavenoname248 and Ajmiam, no luck for you just yet. You both are left with just one score to come, just like rubenspaans and BabyPowder.

And then not picking up a chip gets you 135 treasure points...

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This was also scored by just a pair of players, Ihavenoname248 and random 8. Ooh, that was close. If either of you didn't send in this score, the other would have won. And with this score, IHNN becomes the first participant to show their full hand and not quite be rewarded for it.

And with that, I move completely into hidden territory...

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This next one was tricky, and only one person scored it! Congratulations to Ajmiam for being the only one to find a way to score 127! This required picking up an eleventh chip instead of the fourth green key. In fact, it was the only submission to find a way to pick up so many chips!

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With that, we move on fighting for second place. A total of 126 treasure points was scored by chipster1059, BabyPowder, rubenspaans, Flareon350, so no prize there. Then 125 treasure points were found by Flareon350 and Eric119, sorry for coming so close to the second place. Finally, at 124 treasure points comes a lucky member called M11k4. Wait what, I won something myself in my own competition? As the submissions poured in, I was honestly afraid I would win this thing, which I really tried to avoid by picking really low numbers, but it turns out that wasn't quite as terrible as I thought.

Next we have some more unique numbers. At 121 treasure points I think we have the highest possible score that nobody submitted. The next one someone did submit, was 111 treasure points by Minus3K2, congrats on third place! I scored 110 treasure points myself, but it doesn't matter as I already am ranked. Fourth place goes to chipster1059 with a score of 105 treasure points! In a very unlucky turn, my third submission of 102 treasure points denies the next place from Eric119's last submission. The next two scores, 95 and 94 treasure points, were again from Minus3K2, before we find the lowest submitted score of 88 treasure points by random 8. Yes, this nets you fifth place! Your careful strategy was worth it, even though you didn't go for the minimum possible score, which I think is 57.

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Now we have revealed all the scores and move onto breaking the ties. At this points, there are a couple of ways to proceed, but I had chosen a way which will become clear as I explain the ranking. You might have noticed that rubenspaans and BabyPowder both submitted scores of 141, 140, and 126, so no matter how this turns out, they will share the unlucky last place as the point was to score something nobody else did, which you clearly didn't. But that's cool in its own way too, right?

The first tying place to rank with just two submissions is the score of 136 by Ihavenoname248 and Ajmiam, but since Ajmiam is already ranked, so Ihavenoname248 you can have sixth place all to yourself. Next we have Flareon350 and Eric119 sharing seventh place with their score of 125. Going further, there were no three-way ties, but the four-way tie at 126 awards BabyPowder and rubenspaans last place (as spoiled above). If we needed to go any further, we'd finally arrive at the five-way ties at 141 and 140, but all those players are obviously already ranked.

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So with that we have arrived at the final ranking:
1st Ajmiam________ 15
pts (127)
2nd M11k4_________ 12
pts (124)
3rd Minus3K2______ 10
pts (111)
4th chipster1059___ 8
pts (105)
5th random 8_______ 7
pts (88)
6th Ihavenoname248_ 6
pts (tied at 136)
7th Flareon350_____ 5
pts (tied at 125)
--- Eric119________ 5
pts (tied at 125)
9th BabyPowder_____ 3
pts (tied at 126)
--- rubenspaans____ 3
pts (tied at 126)

I had some trepidation about how this scoring would work, and granted there was some luck involved, but I do think the right person won. I am handing out all the appropriate awards to the participants and posting a video with your solutions soon. I really do hope you enjoyed this little level and come back next time for more! (Like for the Time Trial!! You still have today to send in your solutions!)

Thanks to all of you.

-Miika

Here's a run down of all the scores and calculations, hopefully it's all correct:

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[M11k4]

Hi guys!

So I've had some feedback about the competition and it's been mixed. Some said it was nice that it didn't feel quite like a Time Trial in disguise. Others didn't enjoy the luck factor or mind gaming involved with the ranking. I kind of agree with both. I wanted to try a version of a Treasure Hunt where you couldn't be sure which score would win, even if you understood the level completely. Then again, maybe the level could be a bit more complex, so that the maximum would be a bit more shielded. And even after the winner was decided, the later rankings were a bit chaotic and didn't reflect which players actually did the math and tried to understand what's going on. Hopefully everyone still had at least an ounce of fun participating, and I will take to heart some lessons for next time.

Here's the video of some of the solutions, I think one from each participant:




I should really go and mark which solution was from whom, and how much they scored, so expect that in the annotations eventually. I think they are in the order of the rankings, but will have to check. Thanks again for everyone's time!

Also, apologies to Bacorn and Jupey95 for somehow not getting your submissions. Bacorn says he had scores of 141, 126, 125, but I'm afraid they might have been lost in my junk mail folder. I do always reply to people once I get a submission, so if in the future you don't hear from me, try again maybe, but let's hope that those times are few and far between. I don't know Jupey95's scores, but I think it's not unfair to still award both of you something for your efforts, so I'll add some extra Chip Cup points for you from the end of the rankings. Yay?

-Miika