I'd like to suggest that to date we have missed a class (or maybe two) of programming puzzles.
ai-player would indicate a game played against a defined (but initially unknown) input or against a specified (but initially undisclosed) AI. The goal is to write the most successful program.
king-of-the-hill would indicate a one-on-one game played in a round-robin all-against-all. The game would need to have well defined rules and scoring, and the goal would be to write a maximally competitive program. Existing example can be seen in iterated prisoners dilemma contests and corewars. Example on codegolf.SE.
Problem these face on codegolf.se:
- Keeping the game simple enough without letting it be trivial
- Having someone to run the heats
- Specifying the execution environment for the contestants
- In the case of the AI player problem, when to reveal the contest input, and what to do if it is either too hard or too easy
Aside: I realize that these may be harder to write and police than code-golf, but we have had a number of complaints that the site is too close to all golf all the time. I hope to encourage enough diversity to maintain the interest of the people issuing those complaints, and to give them enough room to offer some non-golf puzzles.
