A new competition is on the horizon, but not any traditional comp – a coding competition.
Entelect Software, in partnership with NAG magazine, have come up with something pretty unique in the form of the 100K Challenge.
To break it down, budding coders and candidates will compete by attempting to write an AI (artificial intelligence) program which should have the ability to take on an opponent in a game of light-bikes, made popular by Tron. The trick is, it isn’t going to be easy, and entrants will have to design the smartest possible AI contender in order to survive.
The tournament will throw entrant’s AI characters together to see whose digital hero is superior. Tournaments will also be viewable online for the general public.
Living up to its namesake, the 100K Challenge will reward the winner with a R100,000 cash prize.
The finals will be held at the 2012 rAge, where the expo will provide a fitting finish for the 100K Challenge.
MyGaming caught up with Entelect’s Brett Callanan to find out more about the clash of the coders:
–Will the entrants/winner retain the rights to their AI code?
“Yes, all entrants will retain the rights to their own code.”
–How will the winner receive the cash prize?
“The cash prize will be transferred by EFT to the winner’s bank account.”
–What is the goal of this competition from Entelect’s perspective?
“The main goal of the competition is to increase awareness about Entelect within the industry. We also run these coding competitions internally and thought it would be cool to run a local competition for the SA developer group.”
–Aside from this competition, does Entelect support the local game development scene in any way?
“Well, we employ a lot of gamers! This is our first foray into this scene, and we’re looking forward to seeing if there are any follow-on opportunities for us to get involved.”
–Would you kindly provide a short description of Entelect that would enlighten our readers about the company.
“Entelect is South Africa’s leading software engineering company, based in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg, with a full service software solutions and resourcing offering.
Our clients are primarily listed and private entities in all major industry sectors and range from blue-chip international companies to small niche players. We house the finest pool of software engineers in South Africa and have designed and implemented hundreds of enterprise systems both locally and abroad. Our real differentiator is the quality of our solutions, our approach, our intellectual property and the qualification of our people. We have grown by referral and reputation since our inception in 2001, with an impressive list of clients and track record.”
Competition rules
In terms of the competition rules, and given the coding nature of the tournament, there are a few conditions to abide by:
- Your program must be able to be compiled in either a Java 7 or a .NET 4 environment.
- The operating system that will be used for the challenge is Windows Server 2003.
- Your entry must contain a source folder as well as a start.bat file that launches the program.
- Make sure you include a compile.bat file , we’ll use this to automatically compile your program.
- Java programs must be compiled using maven and .NET projects must be compiled using MSbuild.
- The size of the entire entry may not exceed 5mb.
More information about the rules and how to compete can be found on the challenge rules page on Entelect’s website.
The closing date of the challenge is 24th of September (at 13h00), so you better have your coding done by then if you’re looking to battle it out on light-cycles when the tournament swings around. No further entries will be accepted after this time.
Head over to Entelect’s competition page and get cracking, code monkeys!
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