Programmer's Challenge 3 GDC 2003 unofficial, ultra-rough transcript (+ minor editing) by Geoffrey Hom (geoffhom@cal.berkeley.edu) [Transcriber's foreward: This transcript is best enjoyed while simultaneously listening to the audio files, which are in AAC format. Likewise, the audio files are best enjoyed by simultaneously glancing at the transcript, because not all answers to the questions are heard. If you somehow got this transcript but don't know where to get the audio files, try http://www.geocities.com/geoffhom/GDC03_prog_chal/vgGDC03_prog_chal.html, or e-mail me. Finally, I would like to thank all those who put together the Programmer's Challenge; I obviously enjoyed it greatly. :-)] Host Casey: "Before I bring up the screen I'd like to introduce the judges and the contestants for this year. First of all we have the judges. Starting off we have Jeff Roberts from RAD game tools down here. He writes a lot of the questions. A lot of the humor is all Jeff. "On the right side we have Mr. John Miles, also from RAD game tools. John, for those who don't know, built the buzzer system here in about an hour from hacked parts. And this year we forgot the power supply, so he rigged us a new power supply just 5 minutes ago. [The power supply was taken from a monitor.] "And finally, we have a new judge this year. The reason we have a new judge is because last year there was a lot of trash talking, and we wanted to put a judge in who would evaluate that and, for good trash talking maybe give some points, and, for bad trash talking that was just, you know, lame, take some off. And so, ladies and gentleman, Mahk LeBlanc. "Now, I'd like to introduce our two teams. To the left of me, we have our returning champion captain, Mr. Jonathan Blow. And a new contestant who's never played before, Mr. Krister Eriksson. And everyone's favorite--been playing since we started this, since the very first game--Mr. Michael Abrash, also from RAD game tools. Lastly, from Oddworld Inhabitants, we have Mr. Thatcher Ulrich. "And now we have the returning, not-quite-so-champion captain, from Definition Six, Mr. Chris Hecker. From Ion Austin, we have the person who thinks he's the bad luck charm because his team has lost every time so far. Hopefully he will not lose this time...Mr. Brian Sharp. And our two new contestants on this team: also from Oddworld Inhabitants, we have Mr. Charles Bloom, and finally, from Muckyfoot, our other new contestant, Mr. Tom Forsythe." Jon B.: "Can I have a second here, Kasey? "It's a little after 6:30, and we all had to wait a bit to get started, and I think 6:30's break time--you know, time to kick back...so I brought some presents for everybody. "For my team, I've got some beer, some brewskies-it'll make answering the questions a little more interesting...perhaps this will turn into a drinking game. But I don't want to be exclusionary, so I got the judges something as well. I got them some of the hard stuff. "The programmers' challenge is a very friendly game, and I don't want to exclude the opposing team. But it's a little bit dicey picking drinks for these guys, so I got them what I figured they could handle--ginger ale! This is our promise that our handling of your team will be as gingerly as this ale. "And, I can't just kiss up to the judges; I have to kiss up to the audience as well, because applause is a big factor here. So I have audience beer, with a bottle opener, which I will give away to whomever can answer this warm-up trivia question. I have nothing to do with this game, but I like it a lot: In Gothic I and II, there's a big, buff necromancer dude: What's his name? Anyone?" "Galstaff!" "That is incorrect. It is not Galstaff. Ok, I need a new question... Who wants some beer?" [Goes to a guy in a Superman shirt.] "Ok, I'm done." Casey: "So before we get started, for those who haven't played before, I'm just gonna run through the rules of the game. So basically the way the Programmer's Challenge works is-you're all familiar with Jeopardy!-and essentially the Programmer's Challenge is sort of like a version of Jeopardy!, but instead of playing by yourself you play in two teams. And what will happen is one team will be in control of the board, and they'll pick a category, but they don't get to pick the dollar amount, because we found they took too long just to pick the categories...and then I will reveal the next question from that category. Now the category names don't necessarily tell you exactly what they are, so the first time you pick a category there will be a little explanation screen: Category: What if...: Description: Things You Think Would Be Cool [Other categories include "Back in Your Q.A. Days," "I Have To Take This Call," and "Selling Your Soul."] "We'll go to the question for that category and I'll read the question out loud... [100 points] The development team has made a straightforward racing game, but you realize it would be cooler if... [Someone conveniently buzzes in.] "If one team buzzes in before the question is done, then they have to answer right away and they don't get to see the answers revealed." a. You could run over pedestrians b. It was more "Walmart-ready" c. It used the new X-Men license you negotiated d. You had any talent and/or a clue "...in this case...wait a minute, this doesn't seem like, uh...did I launch the right app here?" [App was "Producer's Challenge 3," not "Programmer's Challenge 3."] "So now, without further ado, let us begin. The teams were unable to pick names for themselves, so I assigned programmer names for them. Chris' team is going to be known as the 'Cheetos,' and Jon's team is going to be known as the 'Mountain Dews.' So here we go. This is Round #1. "The categories for this round are: Quotables, Colorspace, Violently Graphic, and Industrial Strength. [answers at end of round-one questions] ---------- Quotables: Questions about Recent Industry Statements that have been made. [Quotables, 100 points] ATI recently announced their new 9800 series graphics card, which boasts what highly anticipated new feature for an ATI card? [buzz-in: "Drivers that actually work."] a. Rock-solid drivers b. "Rock-solid" drivers c. Rock-solid "drivers" d. New drivers ------- Colorspace: Questions Dealing with Color Space Conversions (8-bits per channel) [Colorspace, 100 points] Name the following RGB color: [255, 255, 0] [correct buzz-in] a. Cyan b. Pink c. Yellow d. Burnt Sienna with Chartreuse highlights [Colorspace, 200 points] Name the following HSV color: [0, 255, 255] [buzz-in by Chris: "It's white..." Casey: "Is it white? That zero makes it look a lot not like white..." Chris: "...or black..."] a. Green b. Red c. Blue d. Orange [Chris: "It's white."] [Colorspace, 300 points] Name the following YCrCb color: [16, 128, 128] a. Yellow b. Grey c. Black d. Cyan [Casey: "...or white."] [Colorspace, 400 points] What is the corresponding RGB for the following HSV color: [85, 255, 255] a. [255, 0, 255] b. [0, 255, 255] c. [0, 0, 255] d. [0, 255, 0] [Colorspace, 500 points] If you consider the RGB colorspace to be a cube, what shape would form an isosurface of constant saturation? a. Cone b. Sphere c. Torus d. OK dude, hand over the bong ------- Violently Graphic: Questions about Common Graphics Issues [Violently Graphic, 100 points] The ROAM algorithm uses what kind of data structure? [buzz-in correct] a. A quadtree b. An octree c. A k-d tree d. A bintree --------- Industrial Strength: Questions about the Game Industry at Large [Industrial Strength, 100 points] Valve software is pioneering a new style of game development where they don't actually develop games themselves, and instead they just publish other people's mods. This is called "steam." What is the correct release date order for some of these mods? a. Team Fortress, Counterstrike, Day of Defeat b. Day of Defeat, Team Fortress, Counterstrike c. Counterstrike, Day of Defeat, Team Fortress d. Barney Sunshine, Gordon's Bad Fur Day, Black Mesa After Dark [Quotables, 200 points] Microsoft recently announced the purchase of Rare for over $300 million. What possessed them to pay so much for a developer who's last title was 'Conker's Bad Fur Day'? a. They sent someboyd to the UK to buy Rockstar Studios, and they got the wrong address b. Because of their highly valuable properties including Donkey Kong, Starfox, and 007-oh, wait... c. Actually, $250 million of it was in Digital Anvil stock d. Your guess is as good as ours [Violently Graphic, 200 points] AGP memory has the following characteristics: a. Write-combined and cached b. Write-through and cached c. Write-combined and uncached d. Write-through and uncached [Violently Graphic, 300 points] Which of the following pairs of inventors and their algorithms is NOT correct? a. Henrick Wann Jonson / Photon Mapping b. Bruce Nader / BSP c. Alvie Ray Smith / Alpha Channel d. Hughes Hoppes / Normal Mapping [Violently Graphic, 400 points] The quaternion [0, sin(Pi/2), 0, cos(Pi,2)] is what kind of rotation? a. 180 degrees around the Y axis b. 90 degrees around the X axis c. 90 degrees around the Y axis d. It is the kind of rotation I don't understand because I cut-and-pasted Shoemake's code into my app and I have no friggin clue how it works [Violently Graphic, 500 points] Which of the following pixel shader instructions would give correct results for a standard normal-mapped surface? a. dp3 r0, t0, v1 b. dp3 r0, t0, v1_bx2 c. dp3_sat r0, t0_bx2, v1_bx2 d. hist->IsRenderMonkey()_CG(Pixel Shader 3.0 ? ARB2 : Carmack) [Industrial Strength, 200 points] From which regulatory agency does John Carmack need to obtain approval prior to transporting 5,000 gallons of hydrogen peroxide to his launch site? a. Texas Cosmetology Commission b. UN Security Council c. Texas Department of Transportation d. Texas Department of Mental Health [Quotables, 300 points] Which of the following reasons did nVidia NOT give for denouncing the new 3DMark benchmark? [buzz-in: "We're sorry, but ATI's card actually is faster than ours."] a. They have to pay to participate in it b. It uses pixel shaders that are too new (PS 1.4 instead of PS 1.3) c. It uses pixel shaders that are too old (PS 1.4 instead of PS 2.0) d. Their cards don't get the highest scores [Quotables, 400 points] Due to the success of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Activision has gone crazy with licensing in all sorts of sports no one has ever cared about. Which of the following is an actual Activision licensed title? [buzz-in: "Tiddlywinks."] a. Tanya Harding's Pro Female Boxing b. Travis Pastrana's Pro MotoX c. Mike Tyson's Relationship Manager 2003 d. Wilt Chamberlain's Extreme Knock-Up 20K [Quotables, 500 points] What was hardware manufacturer VisionTek's post-foreclosure marketing slogan for the ATI Xtasy 9100 video card? a. "BI-A-TCH, GO MAKE ME A SAMWICH." b. "It's the Shizzle Nizzle, yo." c. "Ever have TWO MONITORS at one time? Throw in DVD support and you have yourself a threesome." d. "Now that's what we call bowel-loosening frame-rates." [Industrial Strength, 300 points] ATI printed pompous shirts for the GDC show floor that have what catch phrase? a. We make videocards, not drivers b. We make videocards, not hairdryers c. We make videocards, not leafblowers d. Now hiring: anyone familiar with the Win32 DDK [Industrial Strength, 400 points] Freelancer is in serious danger of shipping. Which of the following Digital Anvil titles received a mercy killing so that they would not have to endure being so painfully outdated? (not that the market isn't clamoring for a mouse-controlled space combat simulator in 2003...) a. Kilrathi XTreme Litterbox Volleyball b. Battlecruiser ShipDate 3000 AD c. Used Office Furniture Tycoon d. Loose Cannon [Industrial Strength, 500 points] The Final Fantasy compilation soundtrack was recently released in Japan. Which of the following songs did NOT appear on that soundtrack: a. Dancing Mad b. Who's Chocobo is This? c. Force Your Way d. Fight with Seymour answers for Round 1: Quotables [1.d 2.d 3.d 4.b 5.a] Colorspace [1.c 2.b 3.c 4.d 5.a] Violently Graphic [1.d 2.c 3.d 4.a 5.c] Industrial Strength [1.a 2.c 3.b 4.d 5.b] Round 2: Categories are Hardly Consoling Videophile King Size Binary Likely Story ------- Videophile: Questions About Common Video Cards [Videophile, 100 points] Which of the following generates the most heat? [buzz-in: "The hairdryer."] a. ATI Radeon 9700 b. Thermite c. The Sun d. nVidia GeForce FX 5800 Ultra [Videophile, 200 points] Which of the following does NOT have a stencil buffer? a. ATI Radeon (original) b. ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 c. nVidia TNT (original) d. Matrox Paraphenalia [Videophile, 300 points] Which of the following has the MOST number of textures per pixel? a. Matrox Parhelia b. Kyro Prophet 4500 c. GeForce4 Ti4800 d. Nokia nGage [Videophile, 400 points] Which of the following has a PURE ALPHA (A8) texture format? a. nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4600 b. 3DFX VooDoo5 5500 c. Kyro Prophet 4500 d. ATI Radeon 8500 [Videophile, 500 points] Which of the following has the LOWEST core clock frequency? a. ATI Radeon 8500 b. nVidia GeForce2 Ti 200 c. Matrox Parhelia d. Intel Itanium Processor --------- King Size Binary: Questions about Bit-wise Operations on Sugary Snacks {Nougat Caramel Chocolate Peanuts} [Casey: "The way King-Size Binary works is that we are going to give you a binary expression that is given entirely in candy bars. The high bit is nougat, the next bit is caramel, the next bit is chocolate, and the final bit is peanuts. Now, you must pick one of the candy bars we list. So if you pick a candy bar that happens to be equivalent but isn't on the list you don't get points." Chris H.: "Doesn't that violate the candy bar isomorphism?" Casey: "No."] [King-Size Binary, 100 points] {Nougat Caramel Chocolate Peanuts} Milky Way >> 1 a. Snickers b. Three Musketeers c. Reese's Peanutbutter Cup d. Baby Ruth [King-Size Binary, 200 points] {Nougat Caramel Chocolate Peanuts} Snickers << 1 a. Milky Way b. Hershey Bar c. Sugar Babies d. Intel Hypernougating [King-Size Binary, 300 points] {Nougat Caramel Chocolate Peanuts} Milky Way & ~Three Musketeers a. Snickers b. Sugar Babies c. Milky Way d. Microsoft Bar for Windows [King-Size Binary, 400 points] {Nougat Caramel Chocolate Peanuts} ~Baby Ruth | Caramello a. Reese's Peanutbutter Cup b. Milky Way c. Three Musketeers d. Snickers [King-Size Binary, 500 points] {Nougat Caramel Chocolate Peanuts} (Milky Way ^ Caramello) >> 2 a. Sugar Babies b. Baby Ruth c. Hershey Bar d. nVidia CineYum (let cool before eating) ------- Likely Story: The Infamous Story Problems Category [Likely Story, 100 points] Suppose that there was actually a game produced at some point that actually used DirectMusic for the XBox. Once they link in the 37 megabyte DirectMusic library, and accounting for a 4 megabyte framebuffer, how much room would they have for their actual game? a. 21 megabytes b. 23 megabytes c. 32 megabytes d. Wait, wait-37 MB is the debug version! The retail lib is only 21 MB. [Likely Story, 200 points] Valve's games register 3.5 billion "player minutes" a month. How many of these player minutes have accumulated during their current five-year development cycle? a. 35.5 billion b. 28.0 billion c. 67.5 billion d. 17.5 billion [Likely Story, 300 points] The average human can comfortably hold about .32 XBox controllers in their hands at once. In order to hold exactly one XBox controller comfortably, how big did the alien species they focus-tested it on have to be? a. 3.125 times larger than a human b. 3.250 times larger than a human c. 3.325 times larger than a human d. Humans cannot fully comprehend the size of an alien that would be able to comfortably use an XBox controller [Likely Story, 400 points] The GeForce FX is 20 db louder than the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. How much louder does that mean it sounds to a listener? a. 4 times b. 5 times c. 20 times d. Wait-does that count the noise from BOTH slots, or just the AGP one? [Likely Story, 500 points] Electronic Arts spent $10 million dollars to launch Majestic. Because they accidentally forgot to launch a game along with it, they ended up with only 300 paying players. At $10 a month, how many years would they have to play before the launch money was recouped? a. 234 b. 257 c. 278 d. 298 ------- Hardly Consoling: Questions about Console Hardware [Hardly Consoling, 100 points] Which of the following chips is NOT a coprocessor on the PS/2? a. VU0 b. Graphics Synthesizer c. DRAM1 d. You can't say, because Sony's draconian contracts forbid you from talking about it [Hardly Consoling, 200 points] Calling Stop() on a DirectSound buffer on XBox does what? a. Stops the playback and waits the hardware to stop accessing the sound memory b. Stops the playback and immediately returns c. Stops the playback so that calling Play() restarts at the beginning of the buffer d. How is it possible that a function called Stop that takes no parameters is confusing?! [Jon B.: "That was a *double* trick question." Casey: "It WAS a double trick question." Jon B.: "It was like trying to be a trick question, but then--" Casey: "--but then it was not."] [Hardly Consoling, 300 points] Which of the following is NOT an analog button the XBox? a. XINPUT_GAMEPAD A b. XINPUT_GAMEPAD_RIGHT_THUMB c. XINPUT_GAMEPAD Y d. That one you can't reach because your hand aren't big enough--oh wait, that's all of them [Hardly Consoling, 400 points] What format is the GameCube's frame buffer? a. YCrCb subsampled by 2 along the width b. YCrCb subsampled by 2 along the width and the height c. RGB d. Who cares? [Hardly Consoling, 500 points] What frequency is the GameCube's audio out vs. its audio DSP? a. 32 kHz vs 22 kHz b. 32 kHz vs 32 kHz c. 48 kHz vs 22 kHz d. Why are there more GameCube questions in this category than there are people who bought GameCubes? [Casey: "So, unfortunately this year, the bribery appears like it paid off, because the Mountain Dews have a 2000-point lead at the end of the game and there are no more questions. So, ladies and gentlemen, let's give them a big round of applause. (applause) Sorry about that guys; I guess Brian is the bad-luck charm through no fault of his own." Brian: "Next time I'm going to insist that I'm on Jon's team. We'll form a singularity, a black hole." Casey: "Thank you all for coming, we hope you had a good time."] answers for Round 2: Hardly Consoling [1.c 2.b 3.b 4.a 5.c] Videophile [1.d 2.a 3.b 4.c 5.c] King Size Binary [1.d 2.a 3.b 4.b 5.c] Likely Story [1.b 2.d 3.a 4.a 5.c] -----------------------------047485629054451 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="userfile"; filename=""