Hello everyone!
We, the RGBTeam (qwerty787788, Romka and tourist), are huge fans of heuristic programming competitions and are quite saddened by the fact that they are becoming less and less frequent each year. One day, we decided to organize our own competition :) Despite the fact that such ideas often remain just ideas, this time we have a serious mindset, and now we want to invite you all to participate in the first — and hopefully not last — Code Weekend #1!
The competition will be held in a format quite similar to ICFPC/Google Hashcode — there will be one problem and several dozen tests for it. You will need to submit just an output according to the rules of the problem for each test, which can be obtained using any algorithms, written in any language, and running for any duration of time. Midway through the competition, the problem statement will be expanded, and new tests will be added.
The competition starts on June 7th at 21:00 UTC and will last 48 hours. A day after it begins, on June 8th at 21:00 UTC, a second, expanded version of the problem along with a set of tests for it will be released. The competition ends another day after the release of the second version, on June 9th at 21:00 UTC.
The expanded version of the problem will be a superset of the basic version. For instance, if the problem is "given a chess position, find the best move," the basic version may only include pawns, bishops, and knights, while the expanded version will use rooks and queens.
The competition is team-based, and there is no limit on team size, but we've tried to balance the problem in a way that larger teams don't have a significant advantage over smaller ones. Therefore, the recommended team size is 1-4 people.
Unlike ICFPC, the focus of the competition will be on heuristic algorithms rather than functional programming (although in recent years ICFPC hasn't been focused on FP either).
Attention! The contest will be held on the website https://codeweekend.dev, you need to register there (once per team). All the announcements during the competition will be in the Discord chat, so join it via the link https://discord.gg/M6pG5zp3DF. Be sure to invite your friends, relatives, pets, and anyone else who might find it interesting :)
UPD. Our competition will be generously sponsored by the TON Foundation, for which we are immensely grateful!
As a result, the following prizes will be awarded in the competition:
- 1st place — 400 TON
- 2nd place — 300 TON
- 3rd place — 200 TON
- 4th place — 100 TON
Additional prizes:
- 1st place after the first day of the competition — 111 TON.
- At the end of each minute of the competition, the current leader (provided there is at least one team with a positive score) receives 0.1 TON.
- 300 TON will be distributed equally for the best solution of each test at the end of the competition. For example, if there are 10 tests, and Team A has the best result in the first three tests while Team B has the best result in the remaining seven, Team A will receive 300/10*3 = 90 TON, and Team B will receive 300/10*7 = 210 TON.
All ties are resolved by time — the team that achieves its result earlier ranks higher.
Thus, the total prize fund for the competition is over $10,000 at the current exchange rate.
