[Event] Castle War?

What is it?

Turtanking is a game I invented a few months back that pits one team of programmers against another in a test of wits and skill. In it, teams each fill an identical fortress facing one another and use a limited supply of TNT and turtles to do as much damage to the enemy as possible! Doing structural damage, taking out your opponent's supplies and even killing your enemies in cold blood- all is fair game in Turtanking.

How do I set up a game?

First you'll need to build some sort of structure- traditionally we've used castles, but boats, houses, underground bunkers or anything else you care to imagine is possible. Try to make the structure quite big (proportional to the number of players you're playing with, and the amount of TNT available), and you'll need to include in your design one or more storage areas for team supplies of TNT, turtes and disks. Computers with modems and disk drives should also be set up somewhere in the structure for optional use.

Once you've done this, you should make an identical structure a short distance away- I recommend about 40-60 blocks distance. Try to keep the structures perfectly aligned if you can, and if you have copy-paste functions I'd recommend using them- they will need to be identical. Besides the distance away, it should be perfectly aligned and at the same altitude as well, so neither team has an advantage.

It's also a good idea to have something separating each base so players can't walk from one side to the other- having a stream of water (or lava if you're feeling vindictive) is a good idea.

Once you've got your arena set up, you should organize your players into teams of two. You can play with as many people as you like, but I recommend
- Having at least 2 players per team. This is very much a team game, and team organization is really important.
- Having about 20-30 TNT and 3-5 turtles per team member, this reflected in your available reserves
- Having balanced teams; even though this is a test of programming prowess, in my experience numbers do make a difference, and the unbalanced side is unfairly handicapped.

What is the goal?

Both teams are tasked with doing as much damage as possible, but you can set your own goals. Ones I recommend include:
- Doing as much damage to the enemy structure as possible (this can judged by appearance, or calling turtle.excavate and adding up the block tally)
- Killing enemy players
- Damaging one or more specific areas or targets within the enemy base, such as a chest or a nuclear reactor
- Amassing the most turtles once all TNT has been exhausted

One or more of these rules can be used in determining the overall winners of the bout, but it's almost always a subjective measure.

What are the rules?

These you can decide as you go along but here are the ones we play with:
- You may not cross the other side of the "dividing line" of your team at any time
- You may not block or steal turtles using your body or by placing blocks by hand. Writing a quick "turtle block" coroutine is legal but unsporting.
- TNT can only be set off by turtles, not by placing or firing it manually
- Building should only be done to make repairs to your own structure, when they become physically too damaged to be functional
- Mining turtles should only dig to steal enemy supplies or to enable the placing of TNT- calling excavate for example is not really in the spirit of the game
- Turtles can only be mined and removed if they have either terminated their program, stopped due to a bug in the program or are in an obvious infinite loop and are stationary. Destroying turtles that are running a routine is not allowed.


What are some tactics we can use?

I've played this a few times now and seen some very clever tactics. Here are a few to get you started:

Honourable tactics:
- Attacking from the sky, "cannonning" TNT by dropping lots in one place, or "carpet bombing" (a favourite)
- Doing keyhole damage in enemy structures by digging out a block and replacing it with armed TNT- especially useful in damaging rooms
- Using rednet to launch congruent turtle attacks- in addition to being quite effective, this unnerves opponents
- Attacking from underground, tunnelling beneath opponent bases and placing TNT underneath them

Dishonourable (but perfectly legal) tactics
- Destroying an opponents computer, disk drive or turtle they're working on by finding them and launching a pre-written script to bomb them, or steal their computer to add insult to injury
- Stealing supplies by sending a turtle to suck from the chest, or killing players and sucking their inventory
- Scavenging for supplies from stopped turtles around your base, or sending turtles to scavenge on the enemy's base
- Building fortifications from damaged materials (or even by restructuring your own base) with a turtle routine to make it better able to withstand attacks

Anything else I need to know?

It's quite fast and loose with the rules but playing fairly is important. The temptation to just start crafting tools (especially in tekkit) or blocking turtles as they arrive and stealing their materials can be high for less skilled programmers, especially if they've had one or two irritations such as being killed or losing their disk (this is in this game tantamount to ripping out the player's heart late in the game). Playing with unfair tactics, those that exploit minecraft's freedom to supercede programming skill are not in the spirit of the game and really ruin it for participants, so play sportingly.
However in a fair match, greifing with programming is not only acceptable, it's often necessary so play dirty! If your turtles can impede your enemy in any way, be it destroying an important staircase or nicking some vital supplies (or even just suiciding so neither player can have them), you should do it. A cart of your enemy's grain is worth ten of your own.

I'm in! How do I sign up?

Well, I've tried holding an event on ClankCraft, and will probably continue to do so, but a lack of participants (this is my curse) meant we can't really host it regularly as I'd hoped. However you're still very free to give it a try yourself with some friends, to test or perhaps reinforce your programming skills, and if you're short a player I'm always up for a game :)/>/>. We may host one in the future, depending on, well a lot of stuff. Email me if you're interested.

Happy Turtanking!

- Nitrogen Fingers

What would be the available resources? TNT is moderately expensive to make

and if it is a tekkit server :)/>/> NUKE ALL THE BASES!!!

Oh there's a drip feed of TNT to each team from the referees- no crafting or anything, we've tried that before and it leads to some very unsporting behaviour. I'm still refining the rules, though I'll post a detailed description on the game here if we rack enough people to fill out 2 teams.

Surely there is no such thing as 'unsporting behaviour' when you are trying to blow each other up :)/>/> all is fair in love and war right? if there is a way to win I say we should grab it. What did they do?

Well the point of the whole thing is programming but poorer programmers or those who lost patience after losing one or two turtles to bombs would give up and find more creative approaches to winning. Digging out the ground and building dirt walls to block enemy turtles, then stealing them, placing the TNT next to the castle in person and using a hand-crafted lever to blast them for example. It just sort of defeated the point of the exercise, which was to pit programmer against programmer, not to griefers against griefers.

Fair enough, that does defeat the point I suppose, I have some more questions:

(1) can we bring pre-built programs in? if not it will be a very hard thing to prevent. I would recommend giving each player a floppy with their pre-built programs already loaded on it

(2) how many turtles do we get and can we get more to replace lost turtles?

(3) is 'turtle stealing' allowed (only if stolen/mined by another turtle of course) or can we reprogram their turtles. there is a way to make a turtle permanently unusable - It is an interesting concept because then a rigged dummy turtle could be made in the hopes that it would be stolen

(4) can the structure be reconstructed or additional structures be constructed?

(5) are there no other methods we can use (in conjunction with programming) like a dispenser with gunpowder and cannon balls from the weapon mod

(6) if you are using tekkit is it on the latest version of CC with CCsensors?

EDIT: another interesting idea is to include a BIOS edit that uses coroutines to make a turtle always respond to a rednet message with 'ping' or another response that is team specific so turtles can 'see' each other and even differentiate between friend and foe

That sounds like a lot of fun. How do I sign up? What are the rules of engagement, kill them all, or cause irreparable harm to the castle? Is it just ComputerCraft, or can other Tekkit items be used? And like KaoS, I'm very interested to know, are our own, pre-built, programs allowed?

If I do join, my username is terrible, so please don't judge me. It was a bad day, and I thought I could change it later. I don't know what I was thinking. It's nothing profane, just stupid. Not Lettuce. Lettuce is awesome. I like my forums name.

–Lettuce

I think pre-built programs would kind of defeat the point of a live programming exercise, but I don't really see any way to prevent it other than the honor system. (Then again, if somebody has an army of turtles executing coordinated attacks by remote control 2 minutes after starting that would be a pretty good indicator…)

But if we didn't, it would go on forever, especially with my dial-in programs that take user variables. I have to bug-test for at least an hour, even two, before it works, and I get the precision I need.

This sounds like a ton of fun. If someone would like to form a team with me or let me join one that would be awesome :)/>/>

I'm assuming from what you said about remote controlled turtles that they will have modems. Is that correct?

KaoS, on 14 September 2012 - 10:24 AM said:

(1) can we bring pre-built programs in? if not it will be a very hard thing to prevent. I would recommend giving each player a floppy with their pre-built programs already loaded on it

Probably not. Giving programmers pre-built programs somewhat decides the battle before the game has even begun. The arenas we produce have their own variations anyway so except for very large scale programs that cover a lot of information which we definitely wouldn't allow, as it's not really sporting to the other team. The kind of programming I like to see at these events is a very different kind to the pre-preparation most programmers are used to, it's on the fly, dynamic, very fast. I'd like to see that in the programmers, rather than just giving them their programs and seeing what happens. If you really wanted to bring external code in you could probably pastebin it or keep a text editor open, that I can't really stop, but I don't think it's really in the spirit of the event.

Lettuce, on 14 September 2012 - 07:18 PM said:

But if we didn't, it would go on forever, especially with my dial-in programs that take user variables. I have to bug-test for at least an hour, even two, before it works, and I get the precision I need.

I would suggest these are not the kind of programs you want to be making for this. They have to be reliable, sturdy and fire-and-forget, because there's a real good chance you're not seeing that turtle again :)/>/> I don't really want to discourage this approach but the most successful programs I've seen are quite cleverly designed, and usually very short (never more than 50 lines)- because they have to work.

KaoS, on 14 September 2012 - 10:24 AM said:

(2) how many turtles do we get and can we get more to replace lost turtles?

This is almost always done by ear, but I suppose in a league match we'd have to think about it. Typically in the exercises we just provide equal numbers of turtles (and TNT which is a real limiting reagent) to each team when one team runs out and asks for more but we'd probably have a more structured system of set quantities being provided each day. Turtles are valuable, so providing them, and taking care in returning them is often worth the trouble (but not always, especially for novices)

KaoS, on 14 September 2012 - 10:24 AM said:

(3) is 'turtle stealing' allowed (only if stolen/mined by another turtle of course) or can we reprogram their turtles. there is a way to make a turtle permanently unusable - It is an interesting concept because then a rigged dummy turtle could be made in the hopes that it would be stolen

If only because it's too damn hard to prevent, I don't have eyes everywhere. The way I ruled on this last time was "if it's in motion and performing a task you can't steal it, otherwise if it's stalled/stopped/errored it's fair game" but people would erect walls to stop them moving and chase after them, it was very hard to enforce. I really don't like the idea of stealing someone's turtle mid-operation, again it strikes me as unsporting and adds some pretty big constraints to what kinds of programs teams can safely design. Open to suggestions on this.

KaoS, on 14 September 2012 - 10:24 AM said:

(4) can the structure be reconstructed or additional structures be constructed?

The last time we provided building materials to repair damage to their structures (in the event they become unservicable) they used them to start crafting items to give them an edge and built walls and towers to stop the turtles. They still lost by a big margin but it really ruined it for the other team and annoyed a lot of the novices who just couldn't see those things coming. So in short "no". It might be allowed if there's a very low tolerance of that sort of behaviour but again it requires exceptionally vigilant referees and adds even more rules and constraints that might be hard to judge on, so I think it's too much work to be worth it.

KaoS, on 14 September 2012 - 10:24 AM said:

(5) are there no other methods we can use (in conjunction with programming) like a dispenser with gunpowder and cannon balls from the weapon mod

Hmm… an interesting idea. I would probably keep it to one type of weapon per match just to keep things balanced, as this is an instance where one weapon really would be more power than another, but if we can find a balanced setup maybe there'll be a few kinds (nukes for example will always be favourable to TNT, and would make the game too short).

KaoS, on 14 September 2012 - 10:24 AM said:

(6) if you are using tekkit is it on the latest version of CC with CCsensors?

It is on the latest version of Tekkit. I never play on it myself (well rather I haven't but I assume it has CCSensors.

ChallengeMe, on 14 September 2012 - 08:10 PM said:

I'm assuming from what you said about remote controlled turtles that they will have modems. Is that correct?

Wireless mining turtles are the available programming device. Standard desktop computers also with modems are also available, these are usually housed inside the castle. I think the distance between the two might be greater than 50 blocks however so this will require forward thinking.

(3) I think stealing should be allowed as long as a turtle does the stealing, this is a competition of programming skills and if you can program a turtle to track down and steal their turtles then you should be permitted to do so (otherwise we must essentially let them blow holes in our base, no preventative measures permitted)

(4) Surely constructing walls as obstructers is fine (once again it must be done by a turtle of course) as this is a defence technique, if you can get your turtles to make barricades then why not?

I think I take a more confrontational approach to it but that's how I think it should be, one team pitted against eachother, this is a war of programmers so anything that can be done with programming should be allowed - Perhaps I just done like being told that I cannot program something to do a specific thing :)/>/> , programming should be used to do anything we want in my opinion

KaoS, on 15 September 2012 - 05:21 AM said:

(3) I think stealing should be allowed as long as a turtle does the stealing, this is a competition of programming skills and if you can program a turtle to track down and steal their turtles then you should be permitted to do so (otherwise we must essentially let them blow holes in our base, no preventative measures permitted)

That's all good and well, and I'd have no problems with intercepting turtles. The theft I'm referring to was done by hand- people would physically stand in front of turtles, block them and then steal them. Doesn't really test programming.

KaoS, on 15 September 2012 - 05:21 AM said:

(4) Surely constructing walls as obstructers is fine (once again it must be done by a turtle of course) as this is a defence technique, if you can get your turtles to make barricades then why not?

I think I take a more confrontational approach to it but that's how I think it should be, one team pitted against eachother, this is a war of programmers so anything that can be done with programming should be allowed - Perhaps I just done like being told that I cannot program something to do a specific thing :)/>/> , programming should be used to do anything we want in my opinion

I completely agree- in the programming world everything is fair game, any tactic I feel can be justified. Most of these slights however are not done by turtles, they're done by hand, which in my opinion defeats the purpose of the sport, because winning tactics could possibly be produced by a team that aren't doing as much programming, not a favourable outcome.

I don't see any real reason why turtles can't build barricades though- again these resources would have to be quite limited, and of a different material to the castles to distinguish them from the side. It's just that we've done this a few times, we provide people with these options on the grounds they're for use with turtles only, and they ignore the programming aspect in favour of the building/crafting/griefing aspect, which really ruins it as a spectator sport. That's the reason for my stringency- not because I don't want people to be creative and unique because I absolutely do- it's the one thing I love about this game. It's just when we've given that power in the past teams have abused it.

nitrogenfingers, on 15 September 2012 - 05:36 AM said:

KaoS, on 15 September 2012 - 05:21 AM said:

(3) I think stealing should be allowed as long as a turtle does the stealing, this is a competition of programming skills and if you can program a turtle to track down and steal their turtles then you should be permitted to do so (otherwise we must essentially let them blow holes in our base, no preventative measures permitted)

That's all good and well, and I'd have no problems with intercepting turtles. The theft I'm referring to was done by hand- people would physically stand in front of turtles, block them and then steal them. Doesn't really test programming.

I agree with you there, that is a cheap tactic

nitrogenfingers, on 15 September 2012 - 05:36 AM said:

I completely agree- in the programming world everything is fair game, any tactic I feel can be justified. Most of these slights however are not done by turtles, they're done by hand, which in my opinion defeats the purpose of the sport, because winning tactics could possibly be produced by a team that aren't doing as much programming, not a favourable outcome.

Is there no mod you can add in to limit the usable block ids for certain player ids? you could prevent players from breaking or placing any block that is not a turtle (have to include all 3 types of turtles), computer, modem or disk drive - you would also have to make a special allowance for labelled turtles/computers as this gives them a slightly different block id
I can openly admit to not knowing the first thing about modding minecraft, I haven't been playing for long and have just used tekkit so I'm afraid I won't be much help in finding one though

KaoS, on 15 September 2012 - 06:10 AM said:

Is there no mod you can add in to limit the usable block ids for certain player ids? you could prevent players from breaking or placing any block that is not a turtle (have to include all 3 types of turtles), computer, modem or disk drive - you would also have to make a special allowance for labelled turtles/computers as this gives them a slightly different block id
I can openly admit to not knowing the first thing about modding minecraft, I haven't been playing for long and have just used tekkit so I'm afraid I won't be much help in finding one though

You and I are on the same page there. I remember asking the server master, or moderator, or whatever you call them about that and he rolled his eyes. Not an easy thing to accomplish, I think it is possible to have build permissions but they're fiddly to set up. Turtles could be set to deconstructing and reconstructing your castle but I'd probably count that as damage done against it. So I'm not sure, I'll look into that.

I'm having trouble seeing how you could build a wall to stop a turtle. Surely any turtle in a game of war would be programmed to just dig through anything in its path?

D3matt, on 15 September 2012 - 07:14 AM said:

I'm having trouble seeing how you could build a wall to stop a turtle. Surely any turtle in a game of war would be programmed to just dig through anything in its path?

That's what I thought but I would also start by sending a turtle out that counts how far it goes and when it hits something sends back that info so I know how far away their base is for effective targeting, this would disrupt my technique but I wouldn't complain - all part of the game

Is there anyway you can take on spectators to wactch and learn? :)/>/>

I'm sure you can spectate but I doubt you could see them coding, you would need to see their screen for that (unless there is a mod you know of)

i would love to try this but im not that good at lua atm
don't know who i would work with but seems cool.

How do you determine the victor? When everyone on the other side is dead, or when the castle is utterly destroyed?

Where/how do I sign up?

I recommend dirt/wool/sand/gravel for player/turtle built barricades, those blocks listed are useless for tools, are easily spotted (especially colored wool) As long as you give players all items, and they can't use anything else, then they are useless for tools. I especially like sand/gravel, since these are difficult to mine, unless you know how, and even then take some time.

I'd love to try this.

–Lettuce

Lettuce, on 15 September 2012 - 03:36 PM said:

How do you determine the victor? When everyone on the other side is dead, or when the castle is utterly destroyed?

Where/how do I sign up?

It's a pretty subjective measure at the moment (I'll try to introduce a better system soon) but for now teams are given a fixed time, 15 to 30 minutes usually and the team that appears to have done the most damage to a structure is a winner. For official or close matches we'd probably send out turtles to count the number of bricks destroyed.

As for signing up, we really just need two teams who want to have a go at it. So I'd recommend spreading the word to other interested people, see if you can get some friends to form a team with, then send me an email with your names. Once we have two teams, we'll fire up a match, and see where it goes from there. In my wilder dreams I imagine this taking off as a bit of a sport, but lets start small.

Today I asked the people who run my server to have a go at coming up with an arena for this event, one that provides lots of freedom, emphasizes the importance of programming in the event and looks awesome. This is what they came up with…

My God… the glorious gloriousness

I have seen many incredible structures that are better than this but for an arena?…. AWW YISS

… Do want. Very much. That looks so incredibly cool. Imagine how awesome it would be if minecraft had realistic sinking :)/>/>

Man if only I knew how to program in lua already, I'd be all over this :)/>/> Looks amazing NF.

It would almost be a shame to see those beautiful ships (and blimp) destroyed by turtles. When we were talking about this, I had envisioned "two shabby stone shacks separated by water," or at best, two shabby towers. But two gorgeous (and highly flammable) ships? That's amazing, and a lot more effort goes into this than I expected. I could easily see this kind of thing turning into the new "programmer's spleefing." If this does turn into a legit sport, what shall we call it? Maybe "turstruction." Yes I know that's horrible.

Quick question: Are there fees for signing up?

I'd like to sign up, if it's on a weekend or after 4 PM.

To reiterate, to join you'll need to organize into teams of 3. Once you've got 3, post your names here. If you don't know any other people and everyone is okay with it, I can allocate teams myself.

I do hope for it to be something like spleefing, but no idea what to call it…

nitrogenfingers, on 16 September 2012 - 11:46 PM said:

To reiterate, to join you'll need to organize into teams of 3. Once you've got 3, post your names here. If you don't know any other people and everyone is okay with it, I can allocate teams myself.

I do hope for it to be something like spleefing, but no idea what to call it…

Sorry, I didn't see that. I don't know anyone else.

Forum Usernames or Minecraft Usernames?

Forum names for now (for organizational purposes), though eventually we'll need minecraft names as well.

If you're more comfortable, feel free to email me this information as well- if you're interested but don't have any other friends on the forums, or know any people you're comfortable asking, let me know and I'm sure I can find a team for you.

I will update the description of this event to indicate a call for teams, and post a video later with demo match to drum up publicity. If we get enough people to form two 3-person teams (or maybe even bigger teams?) I'll schedule a date on the server- a Saturday afternoon/evening US EST is usually best?

I wish there was something a bit more casual than what this has turned into I don't really want competitions and teams and stuff, I just wanna blow stuff up with turtles with a bunch of other people.

D3matt, on 17 September 2012 - 03:18 AM said:

I wish there was something a bit more casual than what this has turned into I don't really want competitions and teams and stuff, I just wanna blow stuff up with turtles with a bunch of other people.

This is a fair point, which I'll try to rebut there.

It is about as casual as sports get (we've tried to minimize rules and the sole objective is blowing stuff up).

I've asked to make teams because it's a team game and has been since it's inception. I've also asked people to make teams because I'm too lazy to make them myself, but I will if people want me to.
And competition is there to make the event sort of attractive- if it were just blowing things up with turtles, well it doesn't have much point. It's not a game then, it's just blowing things up. We have TV for that. By having people compete there's a drive to do well. It also makes it great fun to watch- I can vouch for that and there's a video on the way to demonstrate it.
The format I've proposed here is identical to that which I give in workshops, and the sole reason it's easier there is because people are already on the server, so we just divvy them up and let them go at each other. If it's any consolation, it won't be very official, it will be about as casual as a two-team contest can be. The goal is fun, and always will be. But there have to be some rules and some regulation because without it it's not very much fun to play except for a very few people. Same reason games like football have rules on tackles, and monopoly has rules on taking money from the bank. It's hard to produce anything especially interesting to do/watch without them.

nitrogenfingers, on 17 September 2012 - 02:02 AM said:

I will update the description of this event to indicate a call for teams, and post a video later with demo match to drum up publicity. If we get enough people to form two 3-person teams (or maybe even bigger teams?) I'll schedule a date on the server- a Saturday afternoon/evening US EST is usually best?

I'm on US EST, so of course I'm in favor of that.

I'm basically a free agent, I really don't care who I'm with, especially on these forums, I haven't met a person I don't like, we all help eachother here. I might PM some guys to see if I can get a team together. Otherwise, is there a "mercenary" system, where we just kinda get some guys who're interested and put them in a team, where no one knows eachother?

I don't so much mind the competition as needing to have a team and stuff. I'd love to just jump in a game with a bunch of randoms at a set time and just have games running all day or whatever.

Oh, oh. Me! :)/>/> Can I join? Me you and sledger could be a team. XD

if any one needs another person for a team pm me , i'd be more than willing to join in =D

I'll be posting a video shortly- we've played a trial run of this on the arena I showed earlier, and it was great fun. I lost by a very wide margin :)/>/>, though determining a winner is quite hard (something we have to work on).

Moopington, I'm up for it if you and Sledger are, and I think we hvae a few others I can cobble into a second team. We're good to go!
I'll show that video soon, and send out emails later.

Video is now up. I've now played two games of this, and it's one of the tensest games I've ever played.

Here are a few tips for prospective players:

- Plan targets carefully. Stairwells, supply chests and enemy computers are all good targets to aim for- even if it's not a 100% effective attack this will disrupt your opponents.
- Work as a team. Have a spotter on duty looking for enemy turtles. Do big tasks like organizing group attacks together. Organize targets to minimize overlap, or to maximize it. Repair debilitating damage like stair cases and ladders to other areas.
- Don't rely on the environment. What's true when you fire off a turtle may not be true when it arrives. Program your turtles to handle extenuating circumstances
- Don't overcomplicate your programs. Relying on too many details or untested algorithms is a recipe for disaster and wasted TNT
- Ration TNT carefully. TNT is more valuable than turtles so send empty turtles before sending full ones to make sure your algorithms work before sending one laden with explosives the enemy might steal.
- Be creative. Nothing unnerves your opponent like an effective attack- try attacking from underground, high in the clouds or with many turtles at once to really put them off guard.
- Be clever with your attacks. Dropping 10 TNT in one place is a waste. Try to spread it over a large area. Cannoning TNT is especially devious.
- Don't be a jerk. Don't intentionally block enemy turtles, attack them mid air with a pickaxe or go to the enemy base in person and sabotage them.

Oh god- I really want to be a part of this, but I don't know anybody else that can program in lua, or knows the API, for that matter.


My forum name is my account name, and I certainly intend to join- if I can find a team.

I'll go search for someone now…

I love the name, I love the video, that galleon was HUGE, and turtanking will be AWESOME. We must make this famous. I'm really excited to try it now, especially after seeing the video. We'll bomb their rum storage first. All I need is some flint and an iron ingot, they will know PAIN. Pyrotekkit.

*edit: One last question, if I may. Well, two. Are we given time to strategise with our teammates, preferably without angry turtles heading our way, and what are the official rules besides "Do not board the enemy, and/or intercept turtles with your own body."

Lettuce, on 21 September 2012 - 01:29 AM said:

I love the name, I love the video, that galleon was HUGE, and turtanking will be AWESOME. We must make this famous. I'm really excited to try it now, especially after seeing the video. We'll bomb their rum storage first. All I need is some flint and an iron ingot, they will know PAIN. Pyrotekkit.

*edit: One last question, if I may. Well, two. Are we given time to strategise with our teammates, preferably without angry turtles heading our way, and what are the official rules besides "Do not board the enemy, and/or intercept turtles with your own body."

Thanks! It took ages to make that video, easily the hardest I've ever made.


I think you definitely need to confer with teammates beforehand and I think 10-15 minutes of time exploring the arena, getting a feel for distances, key targets and strategies is wholly appropriate (when the game starts things get genuinely tense, and such planning is very difficult- as in the video, the sounds of explosion while coding is very unnerving!)


Anyway I'm rather keen to do this, this weekend if possible. So if you want to do this could you please email me, either here or on youtube? If you've got a team email me the details, otherwise just your name- I think we have more singles than teams so we can definitely find a place for you.

If possible I'd love to compete as well!

I would love to join =D

EDIT

Username: Rickydaan

I would love to participate, I am sure it would achieve more than 3 vs 3 so is there any more info such as server and It might be better if everyone interested went into the server and arranged teams in-game, just my opinion and also what time is it (UST)

Hey Nitro,

Loved that video of the battle between ships, and I'm even more pleased to see the idea taking off!

I don't have a team, and I have the added difficulty that my work schedule is often odd, but I'd love to get in a game. Looks like I might have "missed the boat" (ha ha!) for this weekend, but let me know when there's an opening!

We'll do it next weekend I think, seem to have enough people.

I'll send out emails and we'll schedule a game soon!

I'm in :P/>/>.
This seems like a very intriguing idea, good job Nitro. The god of CC ;)/>/>.

Firstly, this seems like an excellent idea!

Secondly, about your problem with stopping players placing blocks. Not so long ago, I did a fair amount of programming for my old bukkit server, writing plugins, and I was just thinking I could probably come up with something to sort that problem.

Also, I might be able to automate the system a little, with players being able to queue up for a game and get sent there, and the arena being fixed at the start of each game.

So the offers there, I'd love to help get this idea going! Just PM me if you'd like more info :P/>/>

I would definitely play in a match like this! This really sounds awesome. Of course I'd first have to learn how to program turtles, lol.
Anyone got any tip on their own strategy in a game like this? I'd probably just send one out on Recon, then send 1 on a bombing run.

I am so in. I have been looking for something like this for a long time. While I'm searching for fun computercraft servers and events, I find this! I'm literally crying with tears of joy. I don't care who I'm with and I play with random people on servers all the time. For all you beginners, I'm kind of new also but I know how to do loops and digging so who cares! All you need is knoledge of commands and stuff. I could easily have a turtle build a wall. Also an idea would be to have the two teams get to the ships by turtles. 4 turtles build the bridge and some more destroy it behind them. Is it possible for a turtle to get to a disk drive and steal programs? That would be fun, sending over a turtle to hack into their programs. A way to stop sabatoges is to have no placing anything except for turtles and computers. The way to open doors would be locks so enemies can't open doors. Is it possible to ride on top of a turtle while walking slowly?

My username is meeko011 and I'm on break from my school. Soon I'll go to the beach but I think that I'll be there. You should hire non-programmers to get the entire thing on video from many angles. A way to see blocks destroyed is to use turtle excavate. It will say blocks destroyed when it comes back. So have one destroy the ship when its whole to get number of blocks in the ship then get another one to destroy it after the fight.

Have it on a saturday.

I'm interested if, instead of Tekkit, it is just CC 1.42, that is what I like.
But, if needed, I will play on Tekkit.
I'll email you if necessary.

EDIT: I'm in! I'll email you shortly to save time on your part.

So it looks like we have more than enough people for a few teams- in fact we might have enough to have a sort of ladder! Two bouts between 2 teams, then one for the championship! Of turtanking! There is no greater honour.

Anyway I'll collate forum names later today, and send out an email with an invitation. We'll organize teams on the day- that's definitely easiest. For now we'll set the event for Saturday 29th September at 6pm United States EST. The bouts are faiirly long, but we can organize logistics later.

If you want to compete or just spectate, you're very welcome to come, and it's by no means too late, so stick your name here on the forum post or send me an email. This will be a pretty epic event, and it will be filmed and posted- so the internet may share in the greater glory of the victors!

NF

nitrogenfingers, on 25 September 2012 - 02:49 AM said:

For now we'll set the event for Saturday 29th September at 6pm United States EST. The bouts are faiirly long, but we can organize logistics later.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to make it that night. :P/>/>

I'll just have to keep an eye out for the video from the event, and be eagerly looking forward to the next time!

Sign me up! I would love to do this!

If no-one else is going to battle, then maybe I can battle you nitrogenfingers! >:P/>/>

(In game name is the same as my username here)

oh hell yeah ! i'm in.

just to get the time straight that would be 4pm pacific time?

etopsirhc = etopsirhc
the name is mine and no one elses :P/>/>
( even on skype / gmail if its needed ) lol

I won't know if I can make it until two days from now, but please add me to the list of invites, I'd love to hit this up. Love your Youtube channel btw.

Do you give the competitors disks and drives to assign programs to multiple turtles or have to use rednet? Sounds interesting - too late now but maybe next time.

I would love to come along and spectate, will be an awesome event

In game name - heroj04

*edit - unfortunately I won't be near an Internet connection on that day, maybe next time I'll come

Yay!!! This is awesome :P/>/>
Can i still sign up?
Forum and Minecraft name: Lion4ever

dammit why now D= * trying to get tekkit to launch properly*

ok tekkit launched … but why is their no one on the server and (guessing) no one whitelisted?

Server is up, I think 2 of the 17 people who asked to join are on the server?

If you're keen and just reading this we'll probably hang out for a little while- I'll be on the IRC if you want to join in.

NF

So we had a match, a few people turned up and it was great fun (I lost yet again!) but the lack of interest and numbers means my ambitions to turn this into a bit of a sport here on the forums have been put to rest, and there are no future plans to hold another event.

To that end, I've stuck the basic rules and how to play on the front page of the forum, so if you want to have a game with some friends you can- and if you do, record it and post it on youtube (you should post it here too), I'd love to see it! The game is great fun so if you're short a player send me an email and I'd love to join in.

Thanks for everyone's interest, and happy turtanking!

-Nitrogen Fingers

Wow that's too bad. Not what I was hoping to hear. Still wouldn't mind video though!

I still would love to try a game sometime as well!

aww D= i was hoping for more turtle carnage/ that was fun
especially stealing your turtle as you were programming it XD

That's a real shame. I wish I could have made it for the first and apparently only turtanking tournament. It seems most of us happened to have plans that night, could you host one more, there may be a better tun out. I had plans, my team-mate did, and it seems several more interested people as well. You have 60+ replies, after all. Besides which, the forum is pretty young, without a large base, so I'm sure 10 or more people is actually a decent turn-out, it just doesn't seem that big.

Tell your friends, everyone! Maybe if we can get a bunch of people interested Nitrogen Fingers will change his mind! I really want to see this take off, especially since I couldn't join. :)/>/>

Lettuce, on 01 October 2012 - 02:31 AM said:

That's a real shame. I wish I could have made it for the first and apparently only turtanking tournament. It seems most of us happened to have plans that night, could you host one more, there may be a better tun out. I had plans, my team-mate did, and it seems several more interested people as well. You have 60+ replies, after all. Besides which, the forum is pretty young, without a large base, so I'm sure 10 or more people is actually a decent turn-out, it just doesn't seem that big.

Tell your friends, everyone! Maybe if we can get a bunch of people interested Nitrogen Fingers will change his mind! I really want to see this take off, especially since I couldn't join. :)/>/>

Thanks for the feedback guys, the people we played it with had a lot of fun and it's buoyed my spirits to give it another go. I do have many more ideas especially for arenas so perhaps it's worth giving it another shot. I quote Lettuce here because if a few people seem interested I could probably be convinced to run another :(/>/>

Thanks again for all your feedback!

I would have loved to get in on this, sadly, I always work saturdays, and things like this always seem to happen on saturdays. :)/>/>

This thread looks kind of dead since the last post was September but if there is another Turtanking event Let me know and I might be able to show up.

random987654321, on 26 December 2012 - 06:39 PM said:

This thread looks kind of dead since the last post was September but if there is another Turtanking event Let me know and I might be able to show up.

Really? You bump a 3-month-old topic to say "this topic is dead"?