Challenge Overview
Project Overview
TopCoder Competition Engine is a system used for Single Round Matches (SRM) and Marathon Matches (MM).
Competition Task Overview
The arena engine generate some automatic notifications as the phases in a match change over time, these messages are created using static prefixes and suffixes and basic data about the match including name, phase name, date and time. This results in pretty ugly broken English messages such as:
Almost Contest Phase starts at <date time>
Pending System Phase starts at <date time>
Challenge Phase is ending for <match name> (although the phase has already ended, should say "has ended")
<contest name> Contest: Complete phase starts at <date time> (besides the broken English, it should say match, not contest)
The need is to refactor all of these messages so that they are simple, clear, and use appropriate grammar and terminology, by making the message generation more dynamic based on which phase the notification is for.
Please find all the related messages, and update it properly, if you are uncertain about the appropriate grammar and terminology, please post in forum for clarification.
Following are the general rules.
- The phase name should be clear, like Almost Contest phase is not very clear to use.
- Words like "is starting" , "is ending" is not properly.
- Improve the message templates to be easily generating better messages.
- Make sure the notification messages are properly shown in Arena Applet and Web Arena, general the clients should not need any change.
Verification
You can follow the SRM Problem Guide to carry out the standard verification process. Let me know if you need any more clarification.
About VMs
Before asking your own VM, you need to have a public key on your profile before asking for the VM.
You can find more details on how to generate a key http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/projects/Generate+SSH+Key and how to connect using it http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/projects/Connect+Using+SSH+Key.
Please reference http://apps.topcoder.com/wiki/display/docs/Competition+Engine+VM+Setup for general usage of Arena VM.
Previously, we have made several update for the Arena VM. So when the Arena VM allocated is available for you, there is a problem and a SRM contest already setup, you can reuse that for testing.
Final Submission Guidelines
Submission Deliverables
Below is an overview of the deliverables:
- new/changed files
- Working VM environment for verification.
Final Submission
For each member, the final submission should be uploaded to the Online Review Tool.