We’ve updated a few old machines used for some optimization puzzles and thus rerun solutions for these.
Your submit history is still there but you may see some outdated solutions.
With this change, we’ve added the possibility for us to rerun scores for all optimization puzzles and code golf puzzles with a simple click. We could add validators to these existing puzzles at any time (and possibly break hardcoded solutions).
I used to have a score of 8619 in CodinGame Sponsored Contest. I understand it has been invalidated by the rerun, but what’s strange is that it does not even appear in my history anymore. It’s not super serious in itself, but it’s a bit worrying if scores (and code!) can disappear from the history…
Because i just checked the puzzle and my score was weird. The IDE displayed a score of 6800, but a ranking of 9500. I checked the leaderboard and the leaderboard said that my code was in Kotlin with 22 points.
Since the (new) validators are not seen, wouldn’t it be difficult to develop hardcoded solutions via repeated submissions and trying out which ones work?
You can find a new validator in one day, more or less. And the recaptcha security is not really an issue because you can create accounts as much as you need. There’s no rule about multi-account in an optimization puzzle.
I’m pretty sure you can no longer view validator replays outside of the submission window (if applicable). I tried with the bridge, it didn’t work (got a 403 Forbidden)
But you can still download the json data via the API.
That’s enough to obtain the validators, just print the level input to stdout and you have it in plain text.
@eulerscheZahl shared interesting hacks to obtain validators for animation games. What about puzzles that do not have animations? Do you guys just try it out manually @Magus, @eulerscheZahl?
Another question: if there are sufficient amount of validators (e.g. 30-50), wouldn’t it be more difficult for a harded-coded solution to be shorter than a genuine solution (since hard-coded answers in lookup tables also count in code size and compressing many answers into one program would take quite some efforts)?