I’ve bandied about the idea of creating a hard, puzzle race that players can participate and compete each other against on either Friday or Saturday at something like 9pm EST. This is similar to what other gaming communities may do. Anyway, thoughts, players interested, questions, etc.?
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A single puzzle version of this was done in eternacon, and I had much fun (hog’s creation). Also, I and Astro are on a race for finishing the first 500 3 switch malcolm puzzles (including the future ones), which really helps keeping me from losing interest in the site.
However, Eli once mentioned to me for my dailies idea that a content that makes people be less active in labs shouldn’t be put in without consideration (to which I agree and isn’t what I think you are doing in any way). Of course, when there are no labs, like right now, it is a great thing to do so people don’t lose interest in the game. However we need to think what to do to make it synergize with labs, rather than compete with them.
Also, I think that there should be more than one hour each week when we can participate, as 9pm EST is after midnight for parts of Europe + the middle east. Or maybe make it a “weekend challange”, that is open all of the weekend? The problem then becomes that people with a lot of free time get an advantage over those without a lot of free time, and it becomes much more time consuming.
And one final technical note- in the eternacon race, the lab panel in the main page had 2 states, one for the lab and one for the race. It should probably be used in something like this.
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Oh, I meant this is a completely unofficial capacity. Every week the hard puzzle would be published and then the link posted in chat. I’m just gauging interest in people wanting to participate~
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Sure sure, I’d be interested in participating, but a race trying to sync up world times would be tricky…unless it could be a timed thing, so say the designer of the puzzle holds the link, and people message the designer for the link and that counts as the start time, and then when the puzzle is solved the person messages back the copied string for solve and that counts as the end time. There might be a doodle poll type thing either that could record times of link access too or something similar? Ya know?
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This is a great idea and would love to participate!
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Interesting though: Why not stream some of this on Twitch? 
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Laziness (also don’t have the equipment).
Oh, I don’t have *any* equipment. I just have a Windows Surface 
You can run OBS on a Surface (btw, I’m jealous XD)
Sure, but using this old Surface 3 for streaming would probably be the thing that destroys it.
Next Friday then!
Hoo ever makes the hard puzzle cant play so a dif maker each week!
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the goal of this isn’t to have a race in any official capacity. Otherwise, there would have to be development of all kinds of boring stuff, like timers, leaderboards, etc. More or less, this would just be a community thing that players could participate in if they’re online at the time, that doubles as a bit of friendly competition. The issue is whether or not players would be interested in this, given one may as well just publish puzzles in a regular capacity if there is no interest.
I had the same idea, LFP6 - might be down for it tomorrow morning if my lappie can handle it
Had the thought that there ought to be a Redspah-style of rankings based on time, but also possibly other factors such as AU count or lowest GCs used (among other superlatives). Also, cf., “Astronomy Puzzle of the Week” posted in that group: