The Raspberry Pi Mix Minecraft Competition at Sand Creek

This meeting we'll be holding our first-ever Minecraft Challenge. Two teams will have 90 minutes to accomplish a set of building goals on identical worlds with the same amount of resources. Contest participation is limited to 20 individuals who will need to provide their own computer and have a valid copy of Minecraft, but anybody is welcome to attend, observe, and ask questions.

RSVPing for this event guarantees a spot in the competition, after which participation will be permitted on a first-come, first-served basis.

The actual goals of the competition will be kept secret until the competition starts. The rules, however, are provided below. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them to the discussion page (https://www.meetup.com/Raspberry-Pi-Mix/messages/boards/thread/35631832) and we'll do our best to answer them as quickly and thoroughly as possible.

Introduction

Each team starts in an identical world (same seed) with the exact same resources. In 90 minutes, each team must:

Choose a leader

Choose a team name

Review build requirements and optional bonus goals (revealed when the competition starts)

Assign jobs and tasks to team members

Build and gather resources as fast as possible!

Rules

General

Participants must be between the ages of 6 and 18.

Individuals 18 and older are welcome to observe but may not provide guidance to participants once the competition has begun.

Individuals using inappropriate language (verbal or typed) or engaging in willfully destructive behavior (real or virtual) will be disqualified and asked to leave immediately.

Individuals intentionally disturbing or otherwise hampering the activities of the opposing team may be disqualified and asked to leave immediately.

Participants must provide their own computer and own a legal copy of Minecraft, already installed on said computer.

Participants will be responsible for setting up their computer in an area designated by a judge. Adults or other non-participating individuals may assist the participant in this task.

In the event that a participant’s computer crashes or otherwise becomes unresponsive during the competition, a non-participant is permitted to assist the participant so that they may rejoin the competition.

Judges will not provide technical support for participant’s computers during the competition.

Participant computers must be capable of connecting to the wired (cat5e) competition network; judges will provide networking cables if necessary.

The competition will consist of the following phases:

Check-in and setup (15 minutes) - participants are assigned to a team, given a copy of these rules and building requirements, and permitted to up their computer in their team’s designated work area.

Reveal of competition details (5 minutes max) - Each participant is given a hardcopy list of the starting resources, requirements, goals and definitions of the competition challenge. Judges also take this time to go through the list as a group. At the end of this phase, all participants are permitted to connect to their team’s Minecraft server.

Goal reveal and teamwork phase (90 minutes) - participants begin work as a team

Scoring and judgement (15 minutes) - judges review each team’s city, score each entry, and announce winning team

Review and discussion (optional, recommended) - teams discuss different approaches taken and participants provide feedback regarding the competition

Teams

Team members will be assigned randomly by drawing a participant’s name out of a hat. The drawing will take place at the beginning of the competition.

Judges will ensure that teams are equal in size, if possible.

Any participants that arrive late will be assigned to the team with the fewest members. In the event that both teams have an equal number of members, a coin toss will determine the receiving team.

Minecraft Worlds / Server Settings

Each team will play on a dedicated Minecraft server on an independent network without Internet connectivity.

Each Minecraft world will be on “Peaceful” setting, in “survival” mode.

Each Minecraft world will have an identical generation seed.

Each team will receive the exact same additional resources, if any.

Only judges will have administrator rights on the servers.

Once the competition has begun, the world seed and starting resource information will be provided to any observers if they wish to set up their own Minecraft worlds independent of the competition networks.

In the event that one of the Minecraft servers crash, the team on the other server will be paused for the time it takes to correct the issue so that both teams still have an equal amount of competition time.

In the unlikely event of a catastrophic in-game accident (explosion, fire, etc), a team may request a one-time reset of their game world. All members on a team must agree to the reset, which will restore that team’s game world to its original, pre-competition state. No player items may be carried from the old world to the new, and the other team will not be paused for the time it takes to reset the game server.

Miscellaneous

Participants may bring any notes, diagrams or help guides for use during the competition, as long as such notes are not being exchanged with a non-participant.

A laptop with Internet access will be made available to teams if they need to look up crafting recipes or other Minecraft-related information during the competition. Participant use will be restricted to one minute’s time if a member of the other team is waiting to use the laptop.

During any point in the competition, participants may ask judges any question pertaining to the rules or challenge specifics; the question and answer to this question will be made available for the other team to hear.

Judges will not provide building guidance or Minecraft crafting information.

Judges will announce when 60, 30, 15, 10, 5 and 1 minute(s) is/are remaining in the teamwork phase of the competition

Violation of any stated rules may result in removal from the competition.

We look forward to seeing you there!