What is the contest?

This contest will take place in the carnage chat room. The contest is based on random trivia. RPGBot will ask public chat a question periodically, and you must answer it in its PM box.

Cool! So, how does it work?

Every 11 minutes and 15 seconds (anyone get the Lost reference? 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 -- 15 and 15-4=11!), RPGBot will ask a new trivia question. All you need to do is answer the question in the PM Box to RPGBot! Simple!

Okay, so how do I answer the question to RPGBot?

RPGBot has this cool answer system. In order to know what its commands are, just PM RPGBot anything, or just PM him "help" (without the quote marks). She will list the commands she knows.

In order to answer a question that was posed, type "answer #answer#". For example, if the question was: What color is grass? You would type "answer green" (without the quotes!). If you get it correct, you'll be awarded a certain number of points (see below). If you get it incorrect, you will have one more chance of submitting an answer, so if you said that the grass was blue before, type again "answer green", and you'll be awarded points. You will only have two chances to answer a question correctly. After that, you must wait until the next question is asked.

How are points awarded?

Points are awarded as follows: the first person to answer the question correctly receives 3 points. The next person to answer correctly 2 points, and any person after that whom answers the question correctly, 1 point.

I think I'm winning!! How can I can check to see who is in the lead?

RPGBot has a great command called "top5". PM "top5" to RPGBot and you'll get exactly what it says, the top 5 players, with their scores, accordingly.

What other commands should I be aware of?

The command "question" will tell you the current question, in case you missed it, or chat is going way too fast for you to see. Command "previousquestion" will give you the previous question as well as its answers. "points" will tell you how many points you currently have; use this if you're not on the top5! A VERY USEFUL COMMAND: Type "answermode" in PM to RPGBot to turn on answer mode. This mode will enable you to NOT have to type "answer" before everytime you want to submit an answer for a question. For example, with answermode off, I must type "answer green". With answermode on, I only need to type "green" (of course, without the quote marks).

I think Slayer is Googling! Isn't he disqualified because he's cheating!?

Nope! Googling is fair game. But, how long can you keep it up?

These questions are unfair!

Suck it up.

OK, Brent, stop talking and tell me what I can win!

First place will win: A Mageseeker [5x3381] (+100) 40,792,731

Second place wins: A Blade of Thuringwethil [73x1249] (+100) 25,126,277

Third place will win: An Amulet of Focus [0] (+11) 2,713,850

Man, this contest sounds awesome! When does it start!?

THIS CONTEST WILL START ON MARCH 7, 2008 AT 10:00 PM EST (This is 7 PM for west-coast folks -- <3 Californians.)

How long does the contest last?

This contest will last 48 hours. Read this again. THIS CONTEST WILL LAST 48 HOURS. From Friday at 10 PM to Sunday at 10 PM, this trivia contest is fair game!

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Clarification on how sexy OB really is? Post 'em here!

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention:

Most of the coding was completed by Mian, some of it edited by me, and most of the questions asked by OB.

How sexy is OB, exactly? I'm looking for vectors and formulas here.

Great contest and all but March 9th is the Sunday... On a unrelated note, can we do this next week? I won't be able to participate this weekend :(

Changed the date that was confusing.

Sorry, the contest will take place THIS WEEKEND. Friday at 10 PM to Sunday 10:00 PM.

Sweet contest, when is this going to start for Europe? Cuz EST? whats that?

amazing contest, very interesting, prizes are hot but playing triviabot is hotter, this will surely make a lot of players stick to the game longer

finally i will be able to play triviabot as i did not knew how to play before like many new player i guess. Thanks a lot AdminBrent.

I find this contest interesting. Thanks for something new again.

On a side note, EST would be UTC-5. Which I think can be referred to as server time as well.

The change to Daylight Saving time occurs on Sunday. 10PM Friday to 10PM on Sunday Eastern Time in the U.S. will only be 47 hours (if the contest reflects the switch from EST [UTC-5] to EDT [UTC-4]). I don't know the rules for elsewhere but thought I would post this question. Will this contest actually be 48 hours or will it only be 47 hours?

Good question, colonel.

To answer your question, I'll still likely make it 48 hours since we're collecting that many trivia questions. So, apparently, this will end at 11 PM EST on Sunday, for a total of 48 hours.

Henk: I believe Europe is about 8 hours ahead of time from Californians. So, if the contest starts at 7 PM for us west-coast folks, then it starts at 3 AM in Europe (provided you're not in another time-zone in Europe).

It's easy to find EST time: Go to Community > Server info.

benefit! 1337!

Care to say that again, drudge, but in English this time? :)

practicing for the contest

You do realize it's a TRIVIA contest, not a word contest, yes?

Very nice idea Brent.

no, i did not realize til right now. ill go re-read how about

~47 hours until this game is on!

*ootydances all over this competition*

-cough-

is this like the old trivia tcl's modules you could load into egg-drops?

Sorry, drudge, I'm not following your question. Not sure how to answer it, so...I'll say no, to be complete in my answer. :)

~23.5 hours until the game begins!

Thanks for all the instructions Brent ;) It really helps people like me that don't know much about computers get in on the fun!

The contest has begun! :)

Score update:

1st: 'PrissyPeach', 58
2nd: 'InebriatedArsonist', 42
3rd: 'NightStrike', 26
4th: 'Snow_Doctor', 26
5th: 'Mikel', 26

Learn to spell! nephron isn't nephrone!

and nephrone isn't nepheron ;)

It would be very cool if at the end you could post all the questions, with answers as i missed checking up on some, and would be intrigued how many i slept through i would have got first (not googled). Once again, great contest, i am never gonna win, but great contest.

Never gonna win? We're 12 hours into a 2-day contest and you've given up already?

About 24 hours left! (half-way there)

Here's an update on the current scores:

PrissyPeach: 173
Nemerizt: 127
NightStrike: 89
Mikel: 85
Mystic531: 75

(sneak update)

PrissyPeach: 221
Nemerizt: 154
Nightstrike: 114
Mikel: 103
Mystic531: 95

Question 190: How many toes did Marilyn Monroe have?

Answer - 11

Why am I posting? Because of this:
http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/mmtoes.asp

It's completely false. She had 10 toes, not 11. The typos, ambiguities, and germanic inflexibility of answers is one thing. Questions where the first hit on google is a snopes article contradicting it.......

Nightstrike:

Then just don't play. To put it as politely as I can, go away.

will there be a prize for 4th or 5th?

I'm extending this contest for another 2 hours because of RPGBot's downtime in the first-half of the game because of some technical difficulties.

The contest will end at 1 AM EST (server) time.

(From this post, there are 3 hours, 20 minutes left for the contest.)

ooty,

If you and Brent are going to hold a contest where nice, high level prizes are being given, then we do expect the answers to be correct.

NS is correct in his post, you should have ashamed of yours.

Ranger, do you know how much work it took to gather all of these questions?

It is one hell of a job, and OB and I did as best as we could. Give us a break. We're trying to give away nice and free stuff. Come on, cut us some slack, for crying out loud.

Ranger, you can kiss my rear.

I worked hard finding tons of trivia questions, putting them in the proper format, and attempting to come up with all the answers you freaking psychopath perfectionists would throw at the bot. Not only that, but afterwards Brent checked them after me, so you aren't even throwing your insults at me alone.

Every question is not bad - in fact only a very small minority were messed up - and Brent was even fixing them as we go.

Bunch of ingrates.

I truly enjoy the contest.

Even give kudos to you and Brent doing all the questions.

I have seen personally 10 or so that were ambiguous or incorrect.

However, ooty's response to NS was out of line and I am pointing that out.

NS was showing where something was wrong and ooty went medieval on him, and now me.

Very unprofessional. There were plenty of other ways you could have responded to NS, but instead basically said "kiss off".

As a person who often gives those type of responses, I feel yours fits well into that category.

OK, Ranger, great, 10 questions. Out of 256 unique questions. Wow, 4%.

I think your point is a valid one, and we are discussing ways to better the contest, if we dare hold another one because of all of the negative feedback. However, I don't think your point is valid to the extent that the contest is considered 'bad' or 'corrupt' (my words, not yours). We tried our best with the questions, but apparently it's not good enough for you guys.

256 unique questions with trying to give multiple answer selections was extraordinarily hard for OB and I (more so for him since he did almost all of the questions). It took about a week to do all of this work. Yes, I agree there could be a better answering system, and that's probably more my fault than OB's. So, if you're going to go on a name-calling adventure or finger-pointing hunt, then point your finger at me, and not OB. And, yes, we're already talking about how to fix it.

Oh, and Ranger, I'd highly appreciate it if you could please refrain from posting in this contest thread anymore. Thank you! :)

RPGBot is pretty cool, good job on all the coding.

Just wanted to say that the contest could've been over about 8 hours ago, as mathematically it would be impossible for anyone else to catch up to prissypeach's lead.

Also I'd love to see this contest again, simply because everyone was interested in it and it was a lot of fun (especially after all the kinks are worked out).

Few suggestions for future trivia contests:
- Smaller time-frame, 48 hours makes winning inaccessible to most people playing CB unless they don't sleep.
- Don't allow the same person to answer 10 questions consecutively for 3 points (this lets people with slow connections participate in the game at the same level as people with fast connections)
- Take out some of the more ambiguous questions from the list, that way people have nothing to complain about when they "think" they are answering it right. ;)

Considering there are 3 prizes, I don't think "just because Prissy Peach has the most points and nobody will overthrow him" gives enough of a reason for me to end the contest early.

48 hours was chosen because not everyone can be on at the same time. Thus, I tried to give a "fair advantage" to both time-zones. If I only made it 6 hours in a certain time-zone, the other time-zone folks complain. Trust me, this is always what happens with my contests. It was something new.

The "ambiguous" part of the code has already been discussed with, and I already have an idea on how to fix it for a future trivia contest, if there is one. I haven't heard much praise for the contest, most of it has been negative, as far as I'm concerned.

As far as limiting users to a certain number of points, I don't really like this idea. If someone is going to stay up all night, then let them keep getting 3 points. If they want to win bad enough, they'll do whatever it takes. I don't think blaming the 'slow connection' vs. 'fast connection' is a good enough reason, though I have been throwing an idea or two around to spice up the way RPGBot will spit out a question in chat, so that it's not always predictable.

BTW, I didn't do the majority of the coding, Mian did -- I only edited a few things -- this was mentioned in the first post you didn't read. Thank you for your constructive criticism.

I'd like to thank Brent for putting this contest together. It was a lot of fun, despite the fact that I have no chance of winning anything. There were a few bugs/problems, but it takes a lot of work to even put something like this together, and expecting perfection is unrealistic.

I think in future, it would be interesting to hold smaller 30 minute trivia games, with questions every 2 minutes or so, that are randomly chosen from the question pool (new ones could be added as well over time). You can't let all this good work go to waste after 1 contest!

So, thanks to Brent, Mian, and everyone else for putting this contest together.

P.S. On a scale of 1 to 10 for sexiness, OB doesn't even fall within the scale!!

I totally bet you mean I'm past a 10. *grins*

On the next one, if there are less questions about TV shows that barely anyone watches... that would be great. ^_^

Other than that, as long as the right answers are shown as the right answers in the upcoming sequel, I wouldn't mind at all playing again. I know it was hard work, and you two should be glad it went as well as it did. It could have been a whole lot worse. I think the bugs were rather small... :)