On Saturday, May 9, we held the UCSD Spring 2009 Programming Contest. Students developed software bots using the IBM CodeRally API to develop a rally car and make decisions about when to speed up, turn, or slow down based on the location of other players or checkpoints, their current fuel level, and other factors.
There were 72 undergraduates competing on 47 teams (students could compete either alone or in a group of two). During the first 5 hours, the students programmed using the CodeRally API, testing their strategies locally on their machine and in a public practice contest.
After all the final bots were submitted, we held the official contest. First, all teams competed in a qualifying contest. Five teams competed at a time in random matches for a number of rounds, accumulating points in each match. The top 16 teams then competed with each other for the generous cash prizes provided by Mike Dini.
The winning honors go to Wilfried Tacquard.
Thanks goes to Mike Dini of The Dini Group for providing the generous prizes, food and drinks. The software environment was provided by IBM. Michael Vrable organized the contest, and Zach Tatlock set up and ran the software for the contest. Michael and Zach put in a huge amount of work, and the contest would not have happened without his efforts. Additional thanks go to Pat Rondon, Jan Voung, Anne Tatlock, William Matthews, and Dana Dahlstrom for also helping organize and run the contest.
Place Team Name Team Members Score ----- --------- ------------ ----- 1. "42" Wilfried Tacquard 578 2. "Orailoglu" Tim Martin & Jeff Lu 492 3. "UninvitedGuest" David Watson & Li Pi 443 4. "tirebot" Robert Gross & Alaric Zhu 410 5. "wolfgang" Luan Pham 280 6. "PixleyTerraBaller" Eric Levine 276 7. "SuperSpeeding" Haoxi Fang 264 8. "LoveBug" Corey Smith & Jason Viafora 241 9. "cs12x(7|11)" Elliott Slaughter & Talha Amin 228 10. "Snake" Claire Luciano & Evgeny Matsak 207 11. "Sunny Day" Jason Moore & Robert Dunlap 206 12. "MichaelJFox" Mathieu Pelletan 203 13. "The Hindencar" Shane Grant & Kevin Heins 202 14. "The Short Bus" Rene Claus & Ted Sanders 114 15. "t1-v2" Thavidu Ranatunga 103 16. "World-Famous George" Marc Mounzer 34