On March 19, Dulaney High School (DHS) AP Java and C++ students competed in a tournament to test their coding skills in the space combat software Astraeus. The software was created by computer science teacher Michael Malafarina.

In the software, students must attempt to gather resources and destroy their opponent’s mothership; however, the game can’t be influenced when running.

“The catch here is that the only way to play the game is through code,” says Malafarina. 

For several months, students have been working in teams to learn about the game and code their strategies using the Java coding language. The students underwent several tests to pit their own code against the strategies of computer opponents.

“We have teams who use a lot of very quick, fast light units… Others build up a large heavy fleet that fights in a formation. It’s a very open-ended set of problems to solve.” says Malafarina.

On March 19, students took this one step further and faced off against other teams in a double-elimination tournament. Each team employed their unique strategies against each other in a real-time simulation. The tournament bracket was made up of 13 teams from the two AP Java classes and 3 teams from the more advanced C++ class, which had the first and second-place winners. 

The winner of the tournament was Marcus Lapinski, a C++ student who worked independently.

The second-place team consisted of C++ students George Darraj, Adam Zeineldin and Jason Lu.

The third-place team consisted of Ap Java students Owen Massie and Nathan Revelle.

“We do a lot of cool creative projects in these classes… I really value students being able to creatively solve problems.” says Malafarina. 

The variety of coding skills developed by DHS computer science students allowed them to apply their knowledge and succeed in the tournament.

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