Gunn Elimination Recap

I've totally been slacking off on my blogging, but let's try to do this before I forget everything.

Elimination ended eight days ago, but it feels much longer than that. I think it's because the kills really started to die down at the end since it's really hard to kill a tryhard. This is the final standings, with Liam Wong winning the game.

Managing the Game

There were a few road bumps here and there, but the game went pretty smoothy overall. Someone even said, and I quote, that it was an "honor to meet the CEO of Elimination." That felt really good.

Forgetting to click save

Somehow, I forgot to click save when I disabled Supabase signups, so over 50 new users signed up on the first day. That was problematic because I was getting reports of people not having targets, and it checked out on the database. This had me panicking, and so I manually set their targets (this is while simultaneously handing out plushies at lunch, and holding my own plushie to be safe).

Luckily, a friend texted about wanting to sign up but not be in the game. That's when I was really surprised because she shouldn't have been able to sign up in the first place, and I realized that it was because I didn't click save (but because of this, I was able to smuggle James into the game without anyone noticing).

Lots of freaking emails

Let's say 2% of the population are little bitches and complain about getting killed without reading the rules (and these Gunn people really love to write elaborate, long essays to defend their stupidity). For the first few days, that's like 14 emails a day, which is totally unmanageable. I sent a message on the first day saying that I would no longer be "reviving" players and that they should read all rules before giving their codes. It got a lot better.

Still, I was getting like 5 emails a day, which is fine but just annoying when I have to make a judgment on each edge case while trying my best to make sure they aren't lying. I gave up on responding to emails about a week.

I hate freshman

Not only did these freshmen have the nerve to find Matchomatics data on my GitHub and call it "hacking," but they also decided to brute-force elimination codes. I really did not think this would be an issue, and I really did not want to implement rate-limiting or some penalty (I'm a very trusting and lazy person I guess). But I guess that kinda backfired.

The freshman who did it actually succeeded after about 6 hours, which not only led to a bunch of frantic emails but also totally increased my server costs. Look at the number of API requests below.

I thought I was running some million-dollar corporation for a second.

I ended up being nice about it, since he emailed me an apology letter explaining how he did it and why. I told him that he could implement rate-limiting for next year's Elimination.

The interviews

Apparently, I'm not a great interviewer. I had very little to say, and when Oracle released their news article I was very scarcely quoted (and I was saying some stupid stuff too). I guess I'll work on that for the future.

Some kid even interviewed me for her English project, but that's like totally a waste of my time bro.

Some Final Elimination Stories

Last year, I'd say my craziest story is when a very dedicated Senior tried to eliminate me. He followed me outside of CS Capstone and tagged me right when I left the N-building stairs; but when I looked up, I still had the roof over me. I then sprinted across to the little theater, weaved through the overhangs to try making it to basketball practice, and asked Sangeet to get my stuff from my car. Luckily, the roof connected all the way to Titan Gym, so I was good for now.

When practice ended, my car was the only one in the parking lot, except for the a suspiciously parked truck next to me. Some guy came out and was like, "yo can you jump my car, I think it died," and I was a little suspicious (but more trusting because my car also died last week too). Suddenly, the guy popped out, I dropped all my stuff, and I bolted back to Bow Gym where there was an overhang. I guess we were in a little stalemate, with him trying to follow me every step I took, and his friends lurking around my car. But somehow, I outmaneuvered him at the last second and sprinted to the car, he might've tagged me in the car, but it didn't matter since the car has a roof too.

He was persistent though, and he got his friends to stand in front and behind my car, preventing me from driving off. We were there for almost 30 minutes, and he was like "yeah I have nothing better to do so we can do this all day." Some of his friends drove over too.

Eventually, I just got tired, and I told him I was letting go of my brakes. And I did. And he moved, but shocked at the idea that I would run him over to escape. When I cleared them, he tried sprinting along side my car, but I accelerated and I was gone.

Someone's little brother

Bro, I'm not gonna write much since I'm getting tired, but if you know I have my plushie in my hand, and you try looking at my from an angle where you can't see it, of course that doesn't count. That's what Nathan's little brother tried doing and it pissed me off. The worse part is that he's a freshman and he felt so entitled, saying shit like "oh you had your fun coding the site, so the other players should be able to have their fun and you're preventing that by not following the rules." Like bro I wrote the rules, and you're literally stupid.

Anyway, later that night I stayed to shoot an hour after practice. When I went out, he popped out behind my car and tagged me, but I was prepared and was holding my plushie. Yay.

A betrayal of sorts

I reshuffled targets at Cheney's house, after our big Paly game win, and my new target was Ethan Zhou. I feel kinda bad, cuz he was trying to help me with the site (even though it was too late), and spent all night making this.

It looks pretty cool, but it would be too hard to integrate that style for the entire site, and make it work for mobile.

But anyways, I was stupid enough to tell Steve and Chloe that I had him, so they instantly warned him. Steve was too scared to lead me to Ethan during lunch, so we wandered campus for the entire lunch. I didn't find him, until after math, I saw him at the little theater. The theater is it's own island, so there's no wall connecting to the N-building (which is where he had English). Surely, this meant victory.

But he was persistent and just waited there, thinking that he could outlast me.

After 15 minutes, and after his friend brought out the assignment for him, he dropped his plushie to grab a pencil. I immediately capitalized on the opportunity and got the kill.

A trip to GRT

I definitely shouldn't have made eye contact with Vivian, and definitely should not have been so obvious when trying to tag her. She immediately sat down, so she was safe, and I had to come back later that night to get her during GRT.

After practice, James and I got some Zareens, then went back to Gunn. It's like 9:30 PM at this point, so GRT should be getting out. But someone saw me and snitched, so now the entire GRT is teaming up to try to get Vivian to safety while I'm just waiting for the opportunity to tag her.

I sit while they take their meeting, and it's been like 30 minutes. Some dude spills lychee jelly on my head, then offers me $60 to leave. Of course, I said no because first of all, he's definitely not giving me $60, and secondly, I don't want his money.

When it's over, she slides all they way to the back parking lot into her mom's car, and at the last moment when she needs to stand up, five GRT kids shove me. I'm a little embarrassed that these scrawny kids could do that, but I guess I'm as tough as I think I am.

She escaped... or did she? I ran into James' car and we pursued her in a 5-minute car chase, at which point James said that this was going too far and we went home.

I have some funny videos if you (AKA future me) want to look at your camera roll for Feb 9, 2024.

JORTs?

Thanks Fuey.

My death

After all the craziness in the last few weeks, the way I died was incredibly anti-climactic. I was talking with some friends outside the brunch line, and... someone tagged me from behind. That's it. That's how it all ended...

Conclusion

Elimination was very fun, and I learned a lot from building the site. In terms of reach, this is a great step in the right direction; I had more users than ever before, and people actually found my site intuitive.

And maybe, just maybe, there might be another chance to win—in our unofficial, water-gun-using Senior Assassin later this semester.