What are the prizes?
As this is a rather unconventional challenge format for hackaTUM, we would like to gauge interest irrespective of any specific prizes. We promise though that prizes exist and that they are (as far as we know) competitive with the others. :^)
What is the number of challenges?
The count of planned puzzles is currently at 11. However, the number of puzzles is not an entirely reliable indicator, as the main puzzle "paths" have been split up to provide for better pacing.
How are points distributed?
Most puzzles will give the same number of points to each team that solved it. To adjust for challenge difficulty, the points that a puzzle awards will change depending on how many teams solved it.
Other puzzle types may rank submissions based on performance or other criteria, for these puzzles the number of points awarded to each team will differ.
We reserve the option to award deductions or small point bonuses depending on certain criteria or achievements (e.g. a "first solve" bonus).
How much computing power is required?
Not much. Our challenges are considered bruteforce-free, but some (later) puzzles may be heavier than others. However, not all challenges are entirely deterministic and may require a very small number of attempts (using the exact same approach/solution) to solve.
What programming language do you recommend?
Basically anything goes. The only requirements from our side is that you might have to do low-level operations for some puzzles (e.g. launch syscalls) and have to communicate with a server over a socket for others.
Where can I upload documentation of our work?
If you want to submit a file for grading, then please do so using the submission script. For this, you need to fetch your team UUID from your team edit page, which will be used to uniquely and securely identify you. If you don't have a visible UUID, contact us.
Do note that files will be submitted using the name that they have on-disk. This does not include the path, so please make sure to give it a unique and identifying name.