Virtual X Game 2007

About the organiser

NTU is a leading university ranked among the top 20 technology universities in the world today (Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement 2006). The university has a strong engineering college that is the world’s largest engineering colleges and among the best globally. The School of Computer Engineering is one of the six engineering schools in the college offering robust undergraduate and graduate programmes in computer engineering and computer science.

About the National Infocomm Competition

The National Infocomm Competition is a multi-themed inter-school challenge created to uncover top infocomm talent in Singapore. Divided into three circuits - secondary schools, junior colleges and ITE/polytechnics – the competition will encompass challenges focused on areas such as business IT, digital media, mobile technology, security & networking and more. For more information, visit
http://talent.singaporeinfocomm.sg. The National Infocomm Competition is organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, universities, polytechnics, ITE, Singapore Computer Society and Singapore Science Centre.

General Description
The contestants, grouped into teams, will pit their coding and problem solving skills against each other in a contest, conducted using a game application. The contest consists of three tournaments; each tournament comprises a series of battles; and each battle involves sets of virtual combatants battling for supremacy of a virtual battlefield. These virtual combatants are operated and controlled by software programmed by the competing teams (i.e., student contestants). The fighting and survival characteristics of the virtual combatants are of each team’s choosing and ingenuity. The virtual combatants, with the best mix of characteristics and the most robust code structures, will emerge the victor.

Analyzing & Designing
Upon the starting signal, the competing teams will open their problem package, read the problem documentation, formulate alternatives for solving the problem, choose the preferred framework for their solution, and build the solution design.

Coding, Inspection and Unit Testing
The students will write the software representing their solution for the problem, and then conduct their choice of inspections and tests to confirm the soundness of their design.

Operational Testing
The contestants will load their solution into an special “light” version of the game application, to observe the generic behavior of their virtual combatants in the game application’s battlefield.

Submission
Upon the finishing signal, the competing teams will submit their tested software to the contest operators

Conduct of the Contest
The contest operators will execute every team’s software in accordance with a predefined tournament-ranking scheme. The progress and outcome of each battle will be displayed to the audience using a large screen and projector

Amendments on solution (optional)
The competing teams are allowed to amend their solution after each series of battles. The coaches may advice their students in this amendment phase

Ranking
Only the competing teams are ranked; individual contestants are not assigned points or ranked. The ranking is determined from the total number of points accumulated by each team. The team with the most number of points will be recognized as being in 1st place. The team with the next most number of points will be recognized as being in 2nd place, and so on.

Prizes
Over S$12,000 worth of prizes to be won!