MechMania 16 Competition Information
First, see http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/Conferenceware/Page/MechMania for information.
The majority of information here is only useful for the actual competition.
The Arena
During the competition, you will have the option to submit your client to the arena. When at least 4 teams are submitted, they will continuously battle, with new teams added as they are submitted. Updates may be submitted at any time.
The arena determines your starting position into the bracket.
Final Tournament
The final tournament will be run using the code submitted to the arena at 9am on Sunday. The tournament will be run on the same computer as the arena, so make sure your code works there. Submit early for best results. The arena is running on a different setup than your lab machines (64 bit Linux in the labs versus 64 bit OS X for the arena).
The final tournament is single (or double?) elimination, with best-of-three games played at each part of the tournament. This should eliminate the impact of any random crashes. This is subject to change without notice.
Corporate teams may participate in exhibition matches against student teams but will not affect the student winner. If possible, a corporate bracket will be run as well.
Prizes
Student teams: A representative from your team must be present at the closing ceremony to win. We'll want a picture of your team with your prizes, so try to have everyone there.
Corporate teams: Sorry, you are not eligible for prizes beyond bragging rights.
Getting Assistance
During the competition, there will be someone at the front of 0216 (the larger lab) to answer questions. If there is no one there, then check if someone wearing a staff shirt is running around the lab frantically, and try waiting up front.
You will be subscribed to our team discussion list, mm-help AT acm.uiuc.edu. This is public to all teams. For private matters (especially after the competition), email mechmania AT acm.uiuc.edu.
We also have an IRC channel. It's "#mechmania16" on irc.freenode.net. The channel ops are MechMania staff.