Howdy everyone, I'm pleased to announce the first Opus Magnum Computational Tournament! I'm zorflax, I'll be your host. If you have any questions about the tournament or any juicy gifs to share, you're welcome to contact me either through discord, or via e-mail at zorflax@hotmail.com

Structure

This year there are five puzzles - one non-scoring puzzle and four scoring puzzles. The first scoring puzzle will be released about two and a half days after this post goes up, so keep your eyes peeled.

Each puzzle will have unique computational parameters, explained in that puzzle's respective submission website, which can be found on the events.critelli homepage once released.

Scores will be tracked cumulatively across the four scoring weeks, and at the end the player with the highest sum total score will be crowned the champion. See below for more detailed information on the scoring system.

Here is the schedule for puzzle reveal dates and deadlines/stream start times:

week 1: 21st October at 11pm GMT - 30th October at 11pm GMT

week 2: 28th October at 11pm GMT - 6th November at 11pm GMT

break week: end of week 2 stream - 13th November at 11pm GMT

week 3: 11th November at 11pm GMT - 20th November at 11pm GMT

week 4: 18th November at 11pm GMT - 27th November at 11pm GMT

So late Wednesdays or early Thursdays depending on your time zone is when puzzles are revealed and late Saturdays or early Sundays the following week are when the solutions are due.

On the deadline for each puzzle I will be hosting a results stream at twitch.tv/zorflak where we'll work our way up through the rankings all the way to the winning solution.

Scores and Metrics

Opus Magnum solves are differentiated according to one of a few different metrics, like cost, area or cycles. These, along with an ever-growing number of community home brew metrics are how each solution gets ranked.

Each puzzle has had one metric chosen for competitive purposes. Each metric has a secondary metric to break any ties, and a tertiary metric to break any secondary ties.

A solution's score for a metric is based on its position in the ranking according to that metric. The formula used is:

300 / (rank + 29)

Where rank starts at 1 for first place and increases for each lower-ranked solution. Complete ties are ranked equally, with further solutions continuing after a gap. For example, if there's a three-way tie for second place, the ranks will go 1, 2, 2, 2, 5, …

Rules

The rules are similar to previous tournaments with one addition. Players are not allowed to:

- Collaborate with other players. Your submission must be completely assembled by yourself.

- Submit as someone else or submit for someone else.

- Publicly post details about puzzles before the deadline. Including solution details, predictions, tech speculation, etc. This also includes talk about all nonscoring metrics. My DMs are open to everyone who'd like a rubber ducky to show their solutions or chat about the puzzle to.

(To help enforce the previous rule, the discord's events channel will be locked down. An overflow thread will be provided for all non-computational tournament event topics. The channel will re-open shortly before and during the results stream, and locked back down roughly 3 hours after the end of the stream (This is intended as a test run for next year's tournament)).

- Exploit glitches or modify solution files to achieve what cannot be done in game unless stated otherwise. (Glitches include, but are not limited to: overlapping glyphs, overclocking arms, duplicating single-use glyphs, editing in unallowed glyphs, etc)

- Use an AI to generate a scoring solution. If AI was found to be used, the guilty player will be immediately disbarred from the tournament.

- (Programs such as omclone and F43d1t are welcome; if there's anything else that you feel needs clearing up, do please let me know)

Remarks

So that wraps up all the official stuff. Unofficially, I'd like to remark that players of all skills levels are encouraged to give the puzzles a go; just solving these puzzles is an achievement in and of itself.

Be forewarned; some of the best players have put thousands of hours into optimizing, others have proven themselves to be freakishly talented. In short; get ready to be schooled.

This is a unique chance to explore some of the new, weird and wonderful ways that all of the new glyphs can be used, perhaps along with some old favourites. If you're interested by all of this, I'd be honoured to have you along for the ride.