Adventure Overview
Players: Mr. Rhyze, Morton, Tripp McIntyre, Moritus.
Enemies: The other programming teams, the Fat Man in a Speedo, the incompetence of Red-Shirts and more.
Mr. Rhyze was surprised that there wasn't more teams involved. In response, Allen noted that only the most 'extreme' programmers could stand a chance in such a competition. Plus, you needed to sign up in teams of two. This was apparently a problem for many potential entrants. With that issue cleared up, Allen told them the competition would be starting in about half hour, and suggested they stay tuned for that exciting webcast. In the meantime, they could browse adds for the CSSS upcoming events, which seemed to all be pubcrawls. Instead, Vance decided to prepare a stock of Coca-Cola products, something that would surely help in the competition to come. Unlike the diagrams that Diego kept churning out, which he claimed would pave the path to victory in the coming contest. All that remained was to wait. And with Free-cell available, Mr. Rhyze was ideally suited for this sort of task.
Meanwhile, Morton was still looking for an LSD drive, as well as a chance to practice his Blitzball hits. He found one of the above in the Hydrosphere. Noting that the Sphere was currently active, Morton decided to open it up and check who was using it. Rather than draining it first and removing the element of surprise, Morton decided simply to throw open the door. But he was the one who ended up with a surprise, when the water rushing into the hallway was joined by the massive and horrifying shape of the Fat Man in a Speedo. Apparently, the Fat Man had once more been using the practice sphere as his personal bath, and he was not pleased with this interruption. Although Morton was almost too disgusted to look, he did notice that the Fat Man had one item in addition to his speedo: a big beachball. As far as Morton was concerned, this gave him the authority to tackle the Fat Man, and he flung himself forward with all his Blitzball force. Seconds later, he found himself bouncing backwards after impact with the Fat Man's rubbery bulk. Annoyed with this attempt, the Fat Man pulled out a bowl of Jell-O and tossed it at Morton, for minimal damage. Rather than deter the pilot, this only seemed to increase his tenacity. After several more attempts, he finally managed to topple the horrifying Fat Man in a Speedo, though not before getting several bowls of Jell-O shoved in his face. It was at this moment that Moritus arrived on the scene. He was shocked by this security disturbance and demanded to know what was going on. Morton admitted that he had attempted to tackle the Fat Man with no real provocation, but added that the Fat Man shouldn't be using the hydrosphere for his baths. Moritus agreed with this statement, but added that Morton shouldn't go around tackling people for no reason. However, the security officer's claim that the sphere shouldn't be used as a private bath enraged the Fat Man, who started stomping towards Moritus, tossing Jell-O ahead of him. Several Red-Shirts quickly appeared on the scene, drawing out their guns while they screamed something about Godzilla. Not wanting to see another accident, Moritus instructed the Red-Shirts to put their guns away and clear the area. This proved easy, given the Fat Man's lack of speed, and he was soon exhausted, leaving Moritus to continue his search for Tripp.
At that very moment, Tripp was in Bennigan's, enjoying an afternoon drink with Jamal. In particular, he wanted to make a sales pitch. It seemed to involve the fact that Jamal was a bit overweight, and could use to lose a few pounds. And what better device to help in that cause than the George Foreman Grill. Tripp promised that it would knock out fat in no time flat. There was no doubt that Jamal was interested. However, his supply of money was rather non-existant. After all, the music labels were apparently so bad that they had embezzled a great deal of his money. J-Dawg even resorted to looking in his orange tuque, but found no cash with which to purchase the grill. However, he did have a Magic-8 ball, and was more than willing to offer it in a trade. Tripp was entranced by the amazing device, and agreed to the offer. Moments later, he asked the 8-ball if he had made the right choice. Not surprisingly, its answer was most definitely an affirmative.
By this point, it was time for the programming contest to begin. Mr. Rhyze and Vance were already tuned into the webcast. Allen started by thanking a few sponsors and by advertising upcoming events that were all pubcrawls. Once this was done, he went on to explain the rules of the contest. There would be five questions. The submissions from each team would be graded by a panel of expert judges on how well they accomplished the task set out in the question. This would earn the team a certain number of points. After each question, the team with the lowest cumulative point total would be eliminated from the competition. Thus, after five questions, there would only be one time left to claim victory. Once all that was clear, Allen went on to introduce the teams and direct the viewers to an online scoreboard for the event.
This sheet represents an online scoreboard for all the teams participating in this year's CSSS programming contest. The competition will consist of a series of problems. After each problem, the team with the lowest cumulative score will be eliminated from the competition. This will continue until only one team remains, making them the undisputed winners. This scoreboard will be constantly updated between problems, unless the site maintainer is busy at one of the CSSS pubcrawls or LAN parties.
Team Epsilon/Space Station Epsilon
Team California/California
The Chosen Ones/Unknown
The Invincible Team/Sphere
Logic-Bots/University of Tortalus
Problem with this Team/University of Deksiil
With this brief introduction to the teams, Allen proceeded to introduce the panel of distinguished judges that had been gathered for this event. There were two of them, who were both 'experts' in their fields. Allen seemed particularly impressed with the credentials of the first judge, and couldn't avoid mentioning them repeatedly. Then again, neither could the judge himself.
Al Gore After spending a few moments raving about the Internet, Allen introduced the second judge. It was photographer Tenmei Kanoh, who was apparently a computer expert as well as a famous food critic. It almost goes without saying that Kanoh didn't seem impressed by talk of the Internet, and noted that Al Gore was probably trying to fool them with his skills. In any case, now that the judges had been introduced, Allen was ready to transmit the first problem. Obviously, there would be a strict time limit for the submission of a team's solution. And like any good programming contest, Allen reminded the contestants that they were free to use any of the following languages.
Race: Politician
Occupation: Inventor of the Internet
Al Gore looked the part of a professional politician, with his grey suit, tie and laptop. But he was so much more. That's because, in his own words, he took the initiative and invented the Internet. This apparently made extreme qualified in any sort of computer setting. Al Gore's current occupation was somewhat of a mystery. Everyone seemed to know that he had lost an election somewhere (despite his invention of the Internet, and alleged ability to take it away), but no one knew the position he had been running for or who he had actually won this election. When he wasn't busy taking about his invention of the Internet, Al would often go on at length about how he was his own man, and was willing to fight for the people. As an expert judge called in for the CSSS programming contest, he tended to be rather harsh. He didn't believe many of the submissions displayed a level of initiative similar to the one he had shown when he had created the Internet. Fortunately for the participants of the contest, his colleague on the judging panel seemed to disagree with most of Gore's statements.
The annual CSSS (Computer Science Society of Spherus) programming contest is one of the most widely acclaimed competitions in this ever-expanding industry. Many of the most prestigious universities enter teams into the contest, hoping to bring home a big research grant and the fame that goes along with the victory. Of course, you don't necessarily have to be with an academic institution to participate. Anyone who could be considered a Wizard of Code and has a teammate is welcome.
The programming contest consists of series of programming questions. The participating teams must pick one of the languages below with which to solve the problem. Each programmer must make the associated check for their level of computer skill by rolling a d100 and adding their intelligence. They are awarded the points listed next to the language. Note that certain languages are also better at solving certain problems, and will thus receive more points in those cases.
| Language | Cs1 | Cs2 | Cs3 | Fail | 1-Success | Perfect |
| QBasic | 50 | 35 | 20 | -5 | 2 | 8 |
| The most basic programming language, as its name would imply. | ||||||
| Java | 65 | 50 | 40 | 0 | 4 | 11 |
| An excellent object-oriented language, despite what they claim at Eiffel.com. | ||||||
| Eiffel | 65 | 50 | 55 | 2 | 3 | 9 |
| A language that is not often used. It is known for crashing computers. | ||||||
| Prolog | 80 | 60 | 50 | 1 | 6 | 16 |
| An ultra-compact language that is also sometimes perceived as a sort of black magic. | ||||||
| MIPs | 95 | 80 | 60 | 2 | 8 | 15 |
| Very basic assembly language that is cryptic and confusing. | ||||||
| C | 70 | 65 | 60 | -2 | 7 | 14 |
| A very efficient language that is also a pain to work with. | ||||||
| The Matrix | 100 | 90 | 75 | 0 | 8 | 25 |
| No one can explain the Matrix. You have to see it for yourself. |
The first question arrived in Epsilon's computer lab moments later. It primarily involved very detailed manipulation of output, as well as a detailed user-interface from which to view it. Faced with this challenge, Mr. Rhyze wasn't sure which language to use. Eventually, he settled on Prolog, despite Diego's urgings to use 'Yava'. Of course, Vance denied the existence of any language called 'Yava', and set to work on some Prolog predicates. However, prolog was a difficult language to work with, and Vance soon found that Mr. Rhyze's predicates did not seem to be working properly. In addition, manipulating output with Prolog proved difficult. Of course, Team Epsilon was not the only group faced with such difficulties.
The Chosen Ones
You are…
Morpheus - a mysterious man greatly skilled in all facets of computer science, and in passing out cryptic hints that actually have no bearing on anything. You could be described as big, bald Loracian with a black trenchcoat and a very unique pair of sunglasses. These circular glasses seem to have no frame, and it remains a mystery that they don't constantly fall off, even to you. Of course, you would never admit that.
Computer Skills: Computers 3, Intelligence 20.
Preferred Programming Language: The Matrix.
Your reasons for participating in this programming contest cannot be fully revealed, and don't even really make sense. But in order to combat the domination of the machines, you know it's your duty to take home the CSSS top prize. Your typical colleague in such matters is a hacker named Neo. However, he has recently disappeared, leaving you to work with:
Trinity - a woman equally dedicated to your enigmatic cause. She always wears shades and leather, and is also known for moving in slow motion. This doesn't really help with programming, though.
Computer Skills: Computers 2, Intelligence 18.
The Logic-Bots
You are…
The Wizard of Code - a professor reknowned throughout the prestigious University of Tortalus for your incredible coding skills. In fact, you earned your title from your apparent ability to create code from thin air. Some might consider you something of a geek, what with your thick glasses, pointy wizard hat and linux T-shirt. However, they would do well not to underestimate your incredible programming skills.
Computer Skills: Computers 3, Intelligence 15.
Preferred Programming Language: Prolog. Of course.
The University of Tortalus participates in this contest every year. The teams from your institution used to place very highly, but lately haven't been performing so well. You blame it mostly on the lack of qualified teammates to aid you in this programming challenge. Most of the remaining profs at the U of T are highly theoretical, and wouldn't actually know a moose from a mouse. As such, you're forced to take whatever help you can get. And with your code wizardry, you can only hope it's enough to restore prestige to your academic institution. Your comrade in this contest is:
Wally - a man who can hardly be called a man at all. He's actually an engineer, but he was the only one who agreed to help you when bribed with enough coffee. He's short, bald and wears a big pair of glasses. He also seems to be incredibly lazy. The only work he's done so far is to give you a 'Wally Report' explaining why he hasn't done anything useful. The reason given was that he was working on the 'Wally Report'.
The Chosen Ones had no doubt about which programming language to use; in moments that seemed to pass in slow motion, Morpheus and Trinity had crafted an indepth Java interface that almost met with Al Gore's approval. The Logic-Bots were equally certain of their choice of language. Or more specifically, the Wizard of Code was certain that they should use Prolog. Wally, on the other hand, didn't seem to care, and was more interested in writing his Wally report. Despite this, he somehow managed to code up a very impressive Prolog interface. After all the teams had submitted their responses, Allen had his judging panel go over the programs and evaluated them. Al Gore was particularly dismissive of Team California's program, which was apparently written in very bad Eiffel. On the other hand, Tenmei Kanoh was impressed by Team Invincible's Q-Basic solution. He claimed that it preserved the natural 'flavour' of the program. Finally, The Problem with This Team submitted a MIPs solution that, though incomprehensible, did solve the problem. At the conclusion of the first round, Team California was ranked last, with Team Epsilon only slightly above them. This meant that Team California would be eliminated from the competition. Allen arranged a live feed to the California headquarters for some final words with the team. The scenes shown were shocking; they consisted of a bunch of french guys in barrets toasting each other with wine and giving their Eiffel programs three stars. This gave Vance another opportunity to talk about the lackluster quality of competitors in the contest. But he didn't have long before the next question was released. The second question seemed to involve some very basic arithmetic operations. However, the program was required to do many of them in a very short amount of time. As such, execution speed was crucial with this problem. As Mr. Rhyze and Vance prepared to write their program, the communications officer suddenly found his terminal beset by a nasty computer virus. It appeared that one of the other teams wanted to get them out of the picture through any means necessary. But of course, more than one team could play at that game.
Like most competitions, the Programming contest is not immune to foul play. Those who are willing to bend the rules and who have mad hacking skillz seriously skew the results of the competition. And in such a big event, it's almost guaranteed that some teams will try to take others out of the competition through dubious means.
The following viruses can be created and sent to one of the other teams. The checks work the same way as normal programming. The listed effect shows the penalty the targetted team will have for their next checks. Note that a team is not aware they have been hacked until after they have selected their language, unless they are doing Virus Protection, in which case they can ignore some of the negative effects.
| Name | Cs1 | Cs2 | Cs3 | 1-Success | Perfect | Description |
| Virus | 80 | 65 | 50 | -5 | -10 | Standard computer virus. Mildly annoying, but little more. |
| Virus Scanning | 75 | 60 | 45 | Ignore -5. | Ignore all. | Both participants scan and eliminate any viruses sent their way. |
| Ebench | 90 | 80 | 70 | -8 | -15 | The most debilitating virus involves the transmission of Ebench to the target system, causing it to freeze and crash. |
Team Epsilon had been stricken by a virus, courtesy of the Invincible Team. Moments later, one of their monitors displayed a message from that team. As expected, the main person responsible for the virus was Boris, who sat before a monitor clicking one of his exploding pens. His partner was more surprising; The General didn't seem to be using the computer in front of him, but instead had his rifle pointed directly at the webcam. Mr. Rhyze was shocked, and demanded to know how Boris had regained access to the prison computer labs. With a laugh, Boris informed him that he had not needed to do so. Little did his captors know that he had fashioned a SUPER-COMPUTER using only the parts found in the prison's metal-lab. And now he intended to take Team Epsilon out of commission. With Boris' virus infecting their computers, Mr. Rhyze and Vance struggled to work with the C programming language. Fortunately, Vance was able to complete his portions, but noted that Mr. Rhyze's code seemed to be full of dangling pointers. Meanwhile, the Chosen Ones had decided to go with MIPs. Morpheus had no problem with the basic assembly language, but Trinity's slow-motion typing proved too slow for a successful submission. As for the Logic-Bots, they once again went with the Power of Prolog. This time, the Wizard of Code wasn't able to get his portion working, but fortunately Wally held up the team by somehow completing his code between installments of his self-named report. Before long, Allen's panel of judges was once more commenting on the submitted programs. Al Gore noted that Problem with this Team seemed to have a problem with this question, as their MIPs program didn't seem to work properly. Meanwhile, The Invincible Team's C code was beyond reproach, despite the General's sketchy concept of typing. All the same, Tenmei Kanoh found the SIZE of the code files to be amazing. By the end of the judging, Team Epsilon and Problem with this Team were tied for last place. Unsure how to deal with a tie, Allen declared that both rounds would proceed to the next round, at which point the TWO teams with the lowest scores would be eliminated.
The third question was all about creating some sort of theorem-prover. Before getting to work on their program, Vance did some quick virus-scanning while Mr. Rhyze put in another call to the Spheran Warden. The Warden was still under the impression that Boris was a model prisoner, and was shocked to hear that he had been involved in more hacking from the metal shop. Determined to put a stop to this, the Warden declared that Boris would be spending the rest of his time in the prison library. Thus, even as Boris sent Vance messages proclaiming his invincibility, Spheran guards were moving in. Though the General's rifle proved a mighty force, the two were eventually subdued and taken away. It looked like one of the eliminations from the contest wouldn't have anything to do with score. Meanwhile, the Wizard of Code had decided to make Ebench 'appear' on the Chosen Ones' computer. With the help of Wally, this proved to be no problem. However, this was foiled by the Chosen Ones' successful virus-scanning. In terms of language, Mr. Rhyze and Vance had to go with MIPs on this one, while the Logic-Bots and the Chosen Ones went to Prolog. For the first time, both Mr. Rhyze and Vance succeeded in creating their program. The other teams were not so successful, though Prolog turned out to be a good choice for this question. The Wizard of Code's skills seemed to have 'disappeared', leaving Wally to miraculously complete the program. Which he did. And Morpheus was the only one achieving success over at the Chosen Ones. When all was done, the lowest mark was handed out to Problem with this Team, which had attempted and failed to do The Matrix. Although Kanoh liked the mysterious presentation of this program, Al Gore wasn't thrilled with the team's posts criticizing his typos. With the Invincible Team now in custody, only one other team needed to be eliminated that round, and it was Problem with this Team.
With two questions to go, the three remaining teams were were very close in the standings. As such, the next questions would prove critical. One of the two remaining questions involved providing an approximation algorithm for the Travelling Salesperson Problem, one of the staples of Computer Science. Mr. Rhyze and Vance once again scanned for viruses, while the Logic-Bots dumped Ebench onto the Chosen Ones' computer. Though Morpheus and Trinity tried to virus-scan, they were unable to counter Wally's amazing skills. With the presence of this compiler, it only seemed logical to try Eiffel. Unfortunately, Ebench froze repeatedly, making Trinity's portion incomplete. By this time, Mr. Rhyze and Vance had already put together a Java solution. The contribution from the Logic-Bots was a prolog program that was all Wally's doing. When it came to judging, Al Gore noted that there was a reason Eiffel hadn't been used to create the Internet. Despite Kanoh's endorsement of the Chosen Ones' assignment as a masterpiece, that team was cut from the running to leave only two. At the moment, Team Epsilon was ahead by a single point, which meant it would all be decided by the last question. The final question of the programming contest was the most difficult of all. That was probably because the question description didn't seem to make any sense. It was extremely vague, and written in very broken english. Even interpreting its intent seemed quite impossible. This time, it was Mr. Rhyze's turn to plant a virus. With Vance's aid, he uploaded a copy of Ebench to the Logic-Bots' computer. The Wizard of Code was already virus-scanning, but proving quite ineffective at it. On the other hand, Wally was more than up to the task. But when it came time to program, The Wizard of Code brought forth his coding powers to conjure up a complete Prolog program. And Wally continued his tradition of not failing a single check. Meanwhile, Mr. Rhyze and Vance had decided to go with a MIPs solution, since that language was just as confusing as the question itself. This turned out to the correct course of action, and their perfect program allowed them to finish the contest with a lead of a single point. Although Al Gore still wasn't impressed, Allen certainly was, and declared Team Epsilon the winners. He also outlined what they had won: computer funding for their lab, some CSSS shirts and tickets to an upcoming pubcrawl. After one last plug for this event, Allen ended the transmission, thus also ending the contest.
During all this coding, Morton had been up to a task of his own. He still needed an LSD drive that could fit the specifications for his Falcon-X. His last resort was Johnny. He figured The Man's Custom Falcon might have a suitable drive. Getting it out of the ship proved difficult, especially given Johnny's constant presence in the Military Bay. When finally asked on the topic, Johnny noted that he did have a spare LSD drive lying around. But he only agreed to hand it over after Morton promised to pay a small sum and talk up his skills to anyone, anytime. Before he could finish installing the drive, Morton was called up to the briefing room along with several other officers. When he arrived there, he found this to include Mr. Rhyze, Moritus, Tripp McIntyre and Fayde, though neither of the latter two were actually Epsilon officers. Commander Zaya and Jean-Luc Picard were waiting to brief the protagonists, and wasted no time in doing so once they had all arrived on the scene.
In fact, the first part of the briefing was delivered by Fayde. He was concerned about the Electran Steel Star Station. His most recent report to Commander Vydin had met with no response. In addition, all attempts to communicate with the station had met with failure. Concerned by this lack of communication, Fayde intended to make a trip over to Steel Star to investigate. However, Commander Zaya insisted it was too dangerous for him to go alone. She believed his Thunderer should be accompanied by a team of Epsilon personnel aboard Tripp McIntyre's armed transport, The Wild Isle. Since the APC was still badly damaged, it was the only armed transport on the station. Tripp was willing to show off the speed of his ship, reminding everyone once again that it had almost won the Kessel Run. Moritus was more than a little suspicious of this claim, and noted he should come along if only to keep an eye on Tripp. Mr. Rhyze was reluctant to go, but had to admit that his communications and computer skills could prove essential. Morton was more than satisfied, provided he could operate the weapons of Fayde's Thunderer. Their party wouldn't be quite so small; Picard noted that there were several Starfleet regulations that had to be followed. They would have to bring a squad of Red-Shirts, a scientist with a useless tricorder and a grumpy physician who would insist that people were dead. With such a team in toe, the group boarded Tripp's ship and made a rather grinding takeoff, with Fayde's Thunderer providing a close escort.
The trip towards Steel Star proved mostly eventless, with the exception of Red-Shirt continually bouncing a small ball within the Wild Isle, and the surly physicians's insistance that he was a doctor, and not a passenger. As they approached their destination, the science officer claimed to be picking up some anomalies on his tricorder. They could soon see why. Steel Star was in shambles. There were gaping holes in the station's structure, and a large field of wreckage and debris floating nearby. Mr. Rhyze quickly confirmed that most of these pieces seem to have come from Imperial Thunderers. Further scanning revealed that the station's life-support systems were still operating, though only barely. As such, the team cautiously disembarked in the sole landing bay.
The investigation of Steel Star continues on page three.
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