Since I joined CodinGame almost two years ago, I haven’t missed a single coding contest.
Obviously, you work at CodinGame.
No; I mean I’ve coded an AI for each one of them — and streamed on Twitch for some.

CodeBusters 👻
Hypersonic 💥
The Accountant 💸
Fantastic Bits ⚽
Ghost in the Cell ❤
Coders of the Caribbean 🏴‍☠️
Code4Life 🤖
Wondev Woman 👩
Mean Max 💧

And, in less than two weeks, I’ll participate in Botters of the Galaxy!

I understand the competition can dishearten some developers — I’m fairly competitive myself — but, to me, a coding contest is much more than just a competition, it’s a real game. I just love to watch my code come to life and improve it.
CodinGame’s contests have changed quite a lot since Codebusters (to me, they’re even better now). Two of the major changes are quite recent, and one of them is completely unprecedented.

Built by the Community for the Community

As you probably know, the Mean Max contest launched in November 2017 was created by four members of the community. As it turned out to be quite a success, we decided to launch more community contests and hold them more often. As of today, 3 teams of game creators are working in parallel — and also helping each other — to craft the next 3 games. Honestly, following the progress of each team and properly guiding them tends to be quite a challenge, but we’re improving. \o/

We’ve also made good progress in building a simple toolkit to create programming games for CodinGame. This sdk, as we call it, is available on Github, along with some documentation to understand how it works. This toolkit is still WIP (Work In Progress), but imagine what could be possible in the next few months; just like community puzzles, anyone could create a game and submit it for the approval of the community!
You’ll soon get an idea of its possibilities since we’re going to release a multiplayer game built with the toolkit. And then, obviously, you’ll see its full potential when we publish Botters of the Galaxy.

Now, what’s really peculiar about Botters of the Galaxy is not the fact that it’s built by the community, even though that’s already quite an achievement.

fun meme

Suspense!

One More Step Towards a Better Tech Industry

Antisquid, Illedan and Wildum are really proud to announce that the contest will support a good cause: it will officially support CoderDojo. Yes, the goal of this contest will be to raise funds for the CoderDojo movement.
Obviously, the game will still be free to enter, and you will be able to enjoy the whole experience without having to donate.

During the contest, not only will you be able to enjoy programming for fun with thousands of other developers, but you’ll also have the possibility to make the tech world a better place. The CoderDojo movement helps children learn how to code by organizing programming clubs, called “Dojos,” led by volunteers. As Antisquid wrote in our Slack, it “builds up people for the future.”

All funds raised will benefit the CoderDojo foundation. In the light of this change, we have decided to drop the usual prizes for the three top players (there are still 20 T-Shirts to win) and to kickstart this fundraising with an initial donation from us. We hope you welcome this change, as we would like every upcoming community contest to support a charity, too.

I personally love this change, and you can expect to see a donation from me. Not as a CodinGame employee, but as myself enjoying fun coding and improving the tech industry at the same time.

Unleash the Hero in You

Now is the time to reveal the outstanding cover of the contest.

And also the type of game!

That must be a surprise for most of you since we usually keep the secret until the end.

fun meme

Drum roll #2

The game will be two-players (1 vs 1) MOBA and will feature a fight between heroes (greatly inspired by the Marvel Universe!).

Artwork of the coding contest "Botters of the Galaxy"

The team of creators refused to reveal more details; they have to keep some mystery surrounding the game after all 🙂
I’m super excited to start coding an AI for this contest because I love this type of game (I love Heroes of the Storm). I’m eager to enter the battle arena and see all the different strategies that the game will allow. In any case, it will be fun competing with you all.

See you in 9 days!

Check out the new contest page


About the Author:

Thibaud Jobert

Fond of challenges and board games fan, I like to solve people’s problems. CodinGame Community Manager since July 2016, I still code a bit in Java.

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