New Competition: Chain Game

[Galahad/FLT]

Getting a little bored of the Guess a Screenshot compo, so I thought i'd bring up a new one.

The idea is I give you a name/publisher/artist/whatever, and then I then give you another name/publisher/artist/whatever.

You then need to give me eight steps through HOL to link the two together.

For instance:

Start with 'Blastar' and get to 'Gary Liddon'



How I did it:

1). Blastar

2). Martin Iveson

3). Agony

4). Jeroen Tel

5). Supremacy

6). David Perry

7). Savage

8). Probe Software

9). Mortal Kombat

10). Gary Liddon

Easy huh?

Ok, i'll start you off with a nice easy one

Start with 'Tony and Friends in Kellog Land' and get to 'Psygnosis

[OddbOd]

Sounds a lot like 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, hopefully this is what you had in mind:

1) Tony and Friends in Kellogg's Land

...was published by...

2) Rauser Advertainment

...founded by...

3) Thorsten Rauser

...creator of...

4) Menateus

...a game with 3D programming by...

5) Heiko Schröder

...who also wrote the 3D engine for...

6) Panzer Elite

...which was published by...

7) Psygnosis

P.S. This answer probably doesn't count because some of the links are from sources other than HOL.

[CodyJarrett]

Tony & Friends In Kellogg's Land

...which was developed by...

Factor 5

...which developed...

Turrican

...which had music by...

Chris Hülsbeck

...who did the music for...

Carl Lewis Challenge, The

...which was published by...

Psygnosis

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

You then need to give me eight steps through HOL to link the two together.

So, first step would be the first name given, step 10 would be the final one, you need to come up with the other eight in between

[TCD]

1. Tony & Friends in Kellogg's Land

2. Factor 5

3. Katakis

4. Holger Schmidt

5. B.C. Kid

6. Ubi Soft

7. Secret of Monkey Island

8. Chris Hülsbeck

9. Carl Lewis Challenge

10. Psygnosis

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by TheCyberDruid

1. Tony & Friends in Kellogg's Land

2. Factor 5

3. Katakis

4. Holger Schmidt

5. B.C. Kid

6. Ubi Soft

7. Secret of Monkey Island

8. Chris Hülsbeck

9. Carl Lewis Challenge

10. Psygnosis

It's not the way I achieved it, but still correct.

I did it this way:
1). tony and friends
2). Rudolf Stember
3). B.C. Kid
4). Factor 5
5). R-Type
6). Electric Dreams
7). Millenium 2.2
8). David Whittaker
9). Chrono Quest
10). Psygnosis

Now its your turn

[TCD]

Okay, start with 'Gnome Ranger' and end with 'Richard Joseph'

[CodyJarrett]

Do we still have to supply eight links?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by CodyJarrett

Do we still have to supply eight links?

I did it with 8 steps and it seems that Galahad insists on it

[OddbOd]

There is an obvious flaw with making it 8 steps instead of shortest path, see if you can figure out what it is

1) Gnome Ranger
2) Level 9
3) The Legend Of Billy The Kid
4) Ocean
5) Wizkid
6) Sensible Software
7) Cannon Fodder
8) Stoo Cambridge
9) Cannon Fodder II
10) Richard Joseph

[TCD]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

There is an obvious flaw with making it 8 steps instead of shortest path, see if you can figure out what it is

1) Gnome Ranger
2) Level 9
3) The Legend Of Billy The Kid
4) Ocean
5) Wizkid
6) Sensible Software
7) Cannon Fodder
8) Stoo Cambridge
9) Cannon Fodder II
10) Richard Joseph

Mine was :

1. Gnome Ranger
2. John Jones-Steele
3. Alien Syndrome
4. Sega
5. Shinobi
6. Tony Williams
7. Beneath a steel sky
8. Virgin
9. Lure of the Temptress
10. Richard Joseph

Your turn and maybe you can enlighten the rest of us

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by OddbOd

There is an obvious flaw with making it 8 steps instead of shortest path, see if you can figure out what it is

1) Gnome Ranger
2) Level 9
3) The Legend Of Billy The Kid
4) Ocean
5) Wizkid
6) Sensible Software
7) Cannon Fodder
8) Stoo Cambridge
9) Cannon Fodder II
10) Richard Joseph

The only flaw I see (which won't occur very much) is that you were able to consolidate your answers to Ocean/Sensible Software and games and people relating to those.

That my friend, won't always work

[OddbOd]

Alllllll-righty then, start at Hewson, end at Mad TV.

@Galahad: This is exactly the same problem domain as Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon just played in two different directions simaltaneously, the smaller consolidation points are negated by the much lower total number of nodes (~15000). I'm fairly confident that a shortest path solution can almost always be found and coerced into 10 steps as I did above, unfortunately I don't have the knowledge to prove it mathematically

Another way of looking at this problem is that every other link in the chain is a person or company which means you can make the connections in purely social networking terms, true it won't always work but because any chain that does not link in to the overall network at some point is by nature totally isolated it's solution will be easily found by brute force.

[TCD]

1. Hewson
2. Cybernoid
3. Stephen Robertson
4. U.S. Gold
5. Monkey Island 2
6. Vince Lee
7. Secret of Monkey Island
8. Chris Huelsbeck
9. Rainbow Arts
10. Mad TV

[OddbOd]

7 minutes, nice, I had:

1) Hewson
2) Eliminator
3) Linel
4) Insanity Fight
5) Orlando Petermann
6) Rolling Ronny
7) René Straub
8) Black Gold
9) World of Business
10) Mad TV

[TCD]

Sorry, I was doing real life stuff this evening

Okay, start with 'Turrican II' and get to 'Arena 2000'

[OddbOd]

OK hopefully you will believe me that this is easy if I first show you the short path solution which took less than a minute to find:

1) Turrican II
2) Rainbow Arts
3) Hakan Akbiyik
4) Arena 2000

I did this by opening both game's pages and looking for which one has the least number of connections, this is the end we start from as we want the search to broaden as quickly as possible. Now pick the link with the largest number of connections, in HOL this is a publisher or developer, in this particular case we already have a connection to the end-point's publisher. Now, simply reverse the order and fill in the gaps.

1) Turrican II
2) Holger Schmidt
3) Factor 5
4) B.C. Kid
5) Chris Hülsbeck
6) X-Out
7) Rainbow Arts
8) Logical
9) Hakan Akbiyik
10) Arena 2000

While it's true that we can't be certain of an 8 step solution for any 2 game titles we can quickly establish with a high degree of certainty whether any solution exists by starting at both ends simultaneously. Also bear in mind that it's not necessary to understand graph theory to exploit it's effects, I don't understand gravity either but you don't see me floating away

[Codetapper]

I suggest a slight twist that Galahad will enjoy. One of the steps must include Tiertex

And bonus points if you can get the 3 T's - Tiertex, Teque and Twilight in your list of 10!

Also it would be interesting to try and get from one obscure game to another, something like from Belial to Top Banana, and bonus points if you avoid "easy" jumps like musicians such as Chris Huelsbeck that worked for tonnes of companies! Maybe if you can't use publishers that'd make it much more of a challenge!

[Galahad/FLT]

Hmmmmm......... I'll do it only if Maptapper has an anti-Tiertex game ripping function

[blade002]

We are both 39 years old Galahad, I don't even know how you could even be bothered thinking that much at our age to go ahead with this! LOL :P