The Cincom Smalltalk™ 2048 Brag and Swag Awards
2048 is a new and very popular game that has recently become a mobile gaming craze. Recently, we created a contest to program or enhance the game of 2048 using Cincom Smalltalk™ (Cincom® ObjectStudio® or Cincom® VisualWorks®). The application could be programmed in any supported version of ObjectStudio or VisualWorks, with the overall score being judged on:
- Animation of moves
- Simplest, clearest code and algorithm
- Best score average in 10 runs
- Best heuristic
- Innovative improvements
We are pleased to announce the contest winners:
FIRST PLACE:
- Ivo Vollrath: The “Innovation tour-de-force” – This example used an innovative heat map display with morphing heat map, concurrent tile animation, multiple speeds, animation on new tile, highlighted numbers on combinations, best low-depth heuristic, diagonal moves, additional grid sizes, multiple color palettes and good control layout with hoverhelp.
TIED FOR SECOND AND THIRD PLACE:
- Norbert Fortelny: The “Hi Score Beast” – The example had the best scores with adaptive depth tree searches, good tile animation and a clean simple interface.
- David Buck: The “Beauty” – This example used raytracing to render tiles, had concurrent tile animation, multiple speeds and “fireworks” animation on tile combination.
HONORABLE MENTION:
In addition, Alexander Varghese Raj and Arkadiusz Baranowski were the Honorable Mention winners. Arkadiusz Baranowski, who is new to Smalltalk, created an example where moves were reduced to two operations: a.) shift left and b.) rotate board, as well as a color scheme (with/without numbers). Alexander Varghese Raj produced an example with unlimited undo and nice layout and colors.
The winners were all announced during the 22nd European Smalltalk User Group (ESUG) Conference in Cambridge, England.
Congratulations to the winners of the 2048 Contest!