Would you compete in a MWG Mini-Game Contest?

[Anonymous]

I haven't voted as until such time as I see an actual challenge question posed in such a way as to make it unambiguous and open for all without any scope for modification "on-the-fly" by the designer of the question - I see no point. I would say however that a hangman game is hardly worthy of getting interested in. The so-called "pros" which I've yet to see any sign off here can safely ignore it, the "noobs" I suspect would consider it below them without any real comprehension of why the question is being posed. The rest of us, well I can't speak for anybody except my self, and if we are looking at developing a mini-game, I'm sure I could squeeze something a little more impressive out.

As for judging it; readability is certainly a good point. Too long have people simply used their host's basic editor and upload badly indented code, lacking in useful comments. Usability is a tricky one; scripts may well be heavily environment dependent - does the reliance on PostgreSQL make a script more or less usable? Security; probably not overly useful outside of basic type and range checking unless the developed result is specifically for embedding within an existing and from what I've been able to discover poorly written framework. Complexity, I'm not sure I understand. How do you define this in the scope of program code. Highly efficient code is liable to be complex, just look at fast-Fourier techniques for multiplying large numbers - complex certainly, but is the easy method (schoolboy long multiplication) a better method? As for how close it is to the given subject target - of course, I'm all in favor of people actually answering the question.

The reliance on pre-existing engines may not be entirely fair as it imposes a certain framework on people; yes I'm sure most people here know PHP, but how many know GRPG for instance - not me certainly. Of course you then run into a similar problem on language and environment - Apache/Lighttpd/Nginx, Native/CGI/FastCGI, MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQL-Server etc. Perhaps this is why the questions posed in any decent text book are often language and environment agnostic?

[Spudinski]

I haven't voted as until such time as I see an actual challenge question posed in such a way as to make it unambiguous and open for all without any scope for modification "on-the-fly" by the designer of the question - I see no point. I would say however that a hangman game is hardly worthy of getting interested in. The so-called "pros" which I've yet to see any sign off here can safely ignore it, the "noobs" I suspect would consider it below them without any real comprehension of why the question is being posed. The rest of us, well I can't speak for anybody except my self, and if we are looking at developing a mini-game, I'm sure I could squeeze something a little more impressive out.

As for judging it; readability is certainly a good point. Too long have people simply used their host's basic editor and upload badly indented code, lacking in useful comments. Usability is a tricky one; scripts may well be heavily environment dependent - does the reliance on PostgreSQL make a script more or less usable? Security; probably not overly useful outside of basic type and range checking unless the developed result is specifically for embedding within an existing and from what I've been able to discover poorly written framework. Complexity, I'm not sure I understand. How do you define this in the scope of program code. Highly efficient code is liable to be complex, just look at fast-Fourier techniques for multiplying large numbers - complex certainly, but is the easy method (schoolboy long multiplication) a better method? As for how close it is to the given subject target - of course, I'm all in favor of people actually answering the question.

The reliance on pre-existing engines may not be entirely fair as it imposes a certain framework on people; yes I'm sure most people here know PHP, but how many know GRPG for instance - not me certainly. Of course you then run into a similar problem on language and environment - Apache/Lighttpd/Nginx, Native/CGI/FastCGI, MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQL-Server etc. Perhaps this is why the questions posed in any decent text book are often language and environment agnostic?

I would have to agree, there is certainly a big margin between the "pros" and "noobs".

I suggest that there is something easy, like hangman, for novices, and for the more experienced, maybe something such as creating a virtual world in 3D with PHP GD, or any other similar.

The virtual world will have to be movable, rotational, coloured, and in a resolution of at least 1024x786. I do believe this will be possible with a twist of Gtk thrown into the mix. Many developers has done something like this in Javascript, just to prove the concept that with minimal additions(or like PHP's extentions), it is possible to obtain the most difficult of tasks.

Just my two cents.

[jaymo]

I perhaps would :)