AI Challenge and Digital Fortress

We all love challenges, and it is said that if you don’t challenge your brain too often, it will lose its usual brilliance. So, this time around, Innovision, our college’s tech fest presents among others these two technical events which will hopefully bring some entertainment and purpose in the lives of idle reader reading my blog right now. I will discuss briefly the two of them and tell you more about what goes into the making of such events.

AI Challenge: As the name suggests, it is all about Artificial Intelligence, with the theme of this year’s event being Soccer. Yes, you have to control a whole team of 11 players through your code, and your superior strategy should be able to defeat the other team’s code in a computer simulated soccer match.

The idea is simple and the simulator along with sample codes are already available on the website : www.aichallenge.inno.co.in . So, what goes into the making of such an event, well lots of coding! Obviously first, Vijit and Chirag came up with this wonderful idea complete with drawings on chart papers as to how the thing will work. Now, Mohit worked alongside these two brilliant people to formulate a set of rules keeping in mind that these should be simple, yet effective. Now, came the task of designing a simulator which will run the user codes against each other and simulate the whole task. Once, the simulator was made successfully, there were brainstorming sessions and simple sample codes were written and tested out so that an easy idea on how to approach the problem can be provided to the contestants. I was there as always, with the motivation and constant reminders of the mistakes that we committed during the previous edition of AI Challenge!

Digital Fortress: The idea here is to give the reign back to the early hackers/programmers and provide them with some REAL problems to work with. This is not the usual run-the-mill C/C++ programming contest, but rather contains questions which will involve a mix of programming across various domains, Internet based skills, hacking and a cool smart head on the shoulders.

The event’s brain is Assim who always gets these wacky ideas in his head and is a true hacker by his nature. I can simply write another blog post on this wonderful person, but I guess now is not the time. After running Enigmata successfully for two years, which involves solving puzzles, there came a thought, why not make puzzles with a technical flavor. So, came the Digital Fortress. Rohil and Ritwik have been working alongside him to develop some of the most difficult levels which I know would require some really good effort to get through. Looking forward to it getting started soon. Check out more details at: www.inno.co.in/onlineevents.php .

Lets throw the floor open to comments, rants and words of encouragement from participants and observers alike.