game:rybak_proposal [WinLibre Wiki]

There’s a hockey-like field without gates. There are 2 snakes. Snake is a number of disks (2D balls) linearly connected with rubber ropes. The disks slide along the field’s surface with realistic physics of ricochet (with another disk and with the border) and the stretching of the elastic ropes.

Note that this isn’t just a head and a body, with body following the head’s trajectory. Due to ropes being made of rubber it’s totally different. For instance, say we have 2 disks connected, a head (H), and a tail (T). H starts moving, T stands still for a second, slowing H down, and then slides off, hits H on the “back” and gives it another acceleration and so forth.

Both snakes have the head (first disk), the tail (last disk), the strong body (the half of the disks closer to the head), and the soft body (the half of the disks closer to the tail). Note that some disk that was considered part of strong body may become part of soft body if snake looses several disks.

You bite! Moving a mouse means moving the head of your snake, and clicking means head finds the closest disk of the opponent’s snake and bites it (if any is near enough, of course).
You can’t bite opponent’s head
When you bite his strong body, you loose a tooth.
You only have 3 teeth in the beginning :E
When you bite his soft body, nothing happens
When you bite his tail:
- his length is decreases by 1 (pre-tail disk becomes tail)
- You swallow the opponent’s tail
- It starts moving down your body
- During this you can’t bite
- Finally the new disk reaches your tail and enlarges your length by 1
- You can bite again.
Due to inertia, longer snake is less maneuverable, so it becomes harder to bite when winning
If your tail hasn’t moved for last 2 secs (or has moved only a bit):
- you yell out a “Yahoo” and the body springs out, becoming a straight line.
- We need this because elseway you can simply surround your tail with your body and protect it from the opponent.
- In addition, we could cut your tail for inactiveness (without giving it to the opponent); such punishment is half-like an opponent’s succesful bite.
Other items on field.
- Obstacles and bounties appear on field; bite bounties and don’t touch the obstacles.
- Bounties are all temporary:
  - speed rising
  - invincible tail
  - enlarge opponent’s tail’s size (radius)
  - decrease your tail’s size (radius)
  - nail down your opponent’s tail
- Obstacle is some bounty to your opponent

I want to do this not because I’m terribly good at games development, I just had this idea and would like to fulfil it under an expert’s guidance. My experience falls into another area, which is algorithms RnD. Of course, every now and then this included writing small games like 2D races or checkers-like ones, so I have a bit of experience.

Hopefully the following of my achievements could assure you I *can* do this well enough:
- a bronze medal at IOI 2001 Finland
- team bronze at ACM Finals 2003 USA

I’d also like to mention that I surely have enough knowledge for the physics’ part.

Yes, I don’t know Python. I’m eager to learn it together with PyGame library; I could safely write this game in C++ but why not learn something new if there’s such a great opportunity as this, with mentor’s support and everything.

Kyiv Nature-Scientific Liceum #145 Kyiv National Taras Schevchenko University, Cybernetics Faculty: bachelor this summer, masters in 2 years

Thank you for taking time to review this application and for organizing the exciting event