Hi this is Kun Wu, an ECE Ph.D. student at UIUC. I do not quite understand the rules of Terminal Live and need some clarifications.
Terminal Live is held in NCSA, UIUC on the next Saturday. Will Terminal LIve have the same (or similar) game settings, APIs, map, and rules with the global competition? If so I do not understand the meaning of a brand new live event. And it seems hard to ensure fairness because each team could invest as much time as they want before coming to the live event.
Hello!
I’ve been to a live event before, they are a lot of fun!
The fundamental rules remain the same (e.i, map size, information movements, hp, etc.). What will likely change, and what changed at my live event, was the cost, speed, damage, and hp of some of the firewalls(defense) and information(attack) units.
Becoming familiar with the game and writing some algos for the global competitions will definitely help you a lot. Although, the changes made to specific units will make drastic changes in the meta/the best things to do will change a lot.
I don’t think anyone will have an unfair advantaged at the live event. What advantages they gain will only be comfort in the terminal game which can be obtained reasonably well in a few days.
Note that there are other things that are simple to change and can change the game a lot like hp of players and the decay rates of bits or the scaling of bits etc.
Maybe think about these things. But I would recommend being familiar with terminal before thinking about what they might change.
What blonded said is about right. The ruleset will be significantly different for live events such that different strategies will be viable. Of course it will be advantageous to spend time playing online, but we see this as in line with seeing practice problems before a basic programming competition.
Thank you so much for the clarifications, Blonded and C1Ryan!
Happy to help