Ever wondered how the games you play on your phone or computer are made? MCPT presents the all-new Game Dev Series, starting this Thursday, November 11th at 4:15pm!

The Game Dev Series is a great opportunity for both beginner and advanced coders alike, whether you want to get your running start into the world of game development or if you want to sharpen your skills with our fun challenges.

Inspired by Bloons Tower Defense, you will create a fully functional game by the end of our three interactive workshops. We will go over how to implement ideas into game features and dive into the mechanics of a tower-defense game.

This series will leave you with everything you need to know about Game Dev so that you’re prepared for our first annual Game Jam, happening during winter break! For those interested in participating in the Game Jam, it is recommended to participate in the Game Dev Series to earn participation and challenge points that will count towards the Game Jam.

See you on Thursday!

P.S. Check out our new home for all things Learning at learning.mcpt.ca! Over the course of this year, we’ll be adding resources, leaderboards, and more.

Teams of four. Two and a half hours. One premiere coding contest.

You and your teammates are invited to sign up for our first Lyon's Computing Competition of 2021!

The Lyon's Computing Competition (LCC) is a team programming contest held by MCPT every month. Teams consist of 2, 3, or 4 members. Whether you're just starting to program or have practiced competitive programming for years, there's a fun challenge for everyone! If you’re a bit younger or newer to programming, our Junior Division will be perfect for you! For those who are older or seek a greater challenge, the Senior Division is a great choice!

LCC is a great opportunity to work with friends to solve challenging coding problems and gain insight into the competitive programming world. Our inaugural competition will have five problems and will be hosted virtually on Thursday, October 28th from 4:30pm to 7:00pm.

Anyone looking to participate in the esteemed Canadian Computing Competition in February must also first participate in a minimum of 3 of our monthly LCC’s in order to qualify.

Register your team now at https://mcpt.ca/lcc/signup by Tuesday, October 26th at midnight! Note that to maintain your rating status and points the same team name will be used to sign up for any future LCC events.

The LCC is only available to students of William Lyon Mackenzie C.I. For those from other schools, we offer the MOOSE Contest, which uses the same problem sets but with a windowed time period over a few days. Look out for signups in the near future!

MCPT is just about ready to start running again!

With lessons, game jams, and new team events planned, we can't wait to get started with the year! To join, be sure to fill in the following signup form.

To stay informed when these weekly events happen, join our Google Classroom.

What can you expect from us this year?

• Lyon's Computing Contest - The LCC is a Mackenzie-wide coding contest. Form a team of up to 4 and show off your coding skills. LCC consists of a Junior and Senior division, so there's something for everyone, regardless of your experience level!

• Competitive Lessons - Learn about common algorithms and concepts used in coding contests. The material is commonly tested in coding interviews and on national contests such as CCC! Topics covered include Graph Theory, Dynamic Programming, Data Structures and more!

• GameDev Series - A series of game development workshops held by the Learning branch. Using Processing, you'll acquire the skills to make a game from scratch.

• Game Jam (Winter break) - A 36-hour competition taking place during winter break where teams will be challenged to make a game. The event will be filled with workshops and other games to participate in. Prizes will be awarded to winners!

• Hackathon (March break) - The hackathon will give you an opportunity to compete with a team of up to 4 members and design a program of your choice. Participants will be asked to create a program showcasing their creativity and coding skills to present to the judges. The hackathon will be filled with workshops and games as well as prizes once again for the winners.

• Mentorship (Afterschool daily) - Sessions where you can ask an experienced exec for help with content in the ICS courses.

July, August, and now September - with the start of a new school year comes the applications for our new exec team!

Join us in one of Mackenzie's largest and most prestigious clubs through making graphics, writing contests, teaching students, and really anything programming! Shortly after applications close, you will receive an email if you have been selected for an interview. A quick summary of this year's branches below:

Communications - Making all of our beautiful posters and helping out with the public side of our events.

Competitive - Good old competitive with the same contests but with a focus on more engaging lessons.

Learning - Teaching more general programming and ICS-related topics with some fun, interactive events planned.

Judge - Making sure all of our technological infrastructure doesn't disappear in to any internet black holes.

Make sure to fill in the form with your student email. Best of luck! :D

Apply: https://mcpt.ca/execs/apply/2021/

Role Descriptions: https://mcpt.ca/execs/roles

Submissions end September 22nd at 11:59pm.

The school year has finally ended, and with it, another season of LCC and MOOSE competitions. LCC, hosted for students from Mackenzie, has brought together approximately 70 Mackenzie students each month for the past 5 years — and students outside of Mackenzie can join in on the fun with the MOOSE contest, which offers the LCC problem sets on the MCPT website. All contests were hosted virtually.

This year offered 10 LCC and MOOSE contests combined from December 2020 to April 2021, with 221 212 lines of code submitted over 650 hours by 111 participating teams. There were a total of 491 correct submissions, each having an average of 8 other submissions. This led to a total of 4 396 submissions throughout the contests, with most of the MOOSE submissions being made between 2:00PM-6:00PM. Most correct solutions were coded in C++, with an AC rate of 16% - but only 2% higher than Java and Python! Java, however, ran into the most MLEs (memory limit exceeded) and TLEs (time limit exceeded) while Python had the highest rates of CEs (compile error) and ABs (aborted).

Though this year was particularly difficult, MCPT pulled through with a thriving community and great memories to look back on — thanks to you. We truly appreciate each and every one of you all for your support throughout the past few months. You took the time to participate in our competitions, and you are the reason MCPT can continue to inspire, teach, and encourage students across the TDSB. We hope that you'll continue to support us in the upcoming years — but until then, enjoy the summer break and keep coding!

This year's CyberTitan Finals has finally ended - with Mackenzie's team placing top two!

CyberTitan is a competition that focuses on providing students with learning opportunities through hands-on simulated environments in a competitive environment. It aims to help develop the critical, digital skills necessary to pursue post-secondary education STEM programs.

Participating teams must display exceptional performance for three rounds to be selected to compete against top teams across the country. Placing out of the teams was Teapot, with Grade 11 Mackenzie students Steven Guikal, Celeste Luo, Nathan Lu, Matthew Li, Tracy Wang, and Quentin Fan-Chiang; and placing was Premature Optimization, with Grade 12 Mackenzie students Theodore Preduta, Larry Yuan, Andy Cai, Feng Xiong, and Om Patel. We are extremely proud of our teams for their incredible performance, and hope that the upcoming year will only continue to give Mackenzie’s students opportunities to shine!

Got nothing to do over spring break? Well, the April MOOSE contest has got you covered!

MOOSE, a competitive programing competition, is an awesome way to have fun problem-solving with your friends while also brushing up on your coding skills. Every skill level is welcome and it’s up to you to decide to compete in either the junior or senior division.

This month’s MOOSE will be hosted over 2 days, from April 10-11. The contest will last a total of 2.5 hours. You may start at any time within the given timeframe, but note that starting after 9:30PM on April 11 will result in the contest ending before the 2.5 hours pass.

Registration is now open for all schools until 11:55PM on April 8! Students must register a team here if they did not do so in a previous month. Visit our MOOSE info page for more information!

Please note that the MOOSE contest is only available for students outside of William Lyon Mackenzie CI.

Welcome to William Lyon Mackenzie's first-ever hackathon: LyonHacks !

Over 36 hours from April 13-15th, form teams of up to 4 people and build a project for the chance to win monetary prizes and certificates!

What's a hackathon?

A hackathon is both a social event to interact with other students, as well as a windowed competition where teams create projects to fill niches. Hackathons are all about ideas, creativity and learning; even if you've never programmed before, we'll lay out some fundamentals to make the event accessible to everyone! Typically, projects try to address some sort of problem or have an entertainment value; for example, a website finding bubble tea places near you, an AI to analyze body movements and form, or a video game based around the COVID situation. You'll be given prompts for inspiration along with resources and workshops to help guide you along your journey, in addition to fun social games we'll be hosting during the window!

Dates

This event will start at 6pm on April 13th, and end the afternoon of April 15th. An opening ceremony will kick things off, and teams will have the entire window (36 hours) to work on their project. Submissions will close at 10am, and internal judging will commence until our closing ceremony at 3pm.

Registration

Participants must register INDIVIDUALLY here by 11:59pm on Sunday, April 11th. Make sure you're signed in with your student email to gain access to the form. Only students attending William Lyon Mackenzie CI are eligible to participate.

Prizes and Judging

You do not have to stick to a prompt, feel free to create a project based on whatever interests you. Monetary prizes such as gift cards will be given to the winners of each category, in addition to certificates. For a full list of prizes, rules, and judging criteria, visit our Devpost page.

Registration for the 2021 provincial ECOO Programming Contest is now open to all students!

ECOO, an annual competitive programming competition hosted for high schools across Ontario, aims to provide computer science students an opportunity to demonstrate their skills and knowledge while representing themselves and their schools against other students in the province. This year, the contest will run as a single, individual, online contest.

Students of all skill levels are encouraged to register for ECOO, as it is designed to provide a manageable challenge to all computer science students in Ontario regardless of their proficiency in programming.

This year’s contest will be hosted on Saturday, May 1 from 11:00AM to 2:00PM. A practice contest will be offered from April 15-20. Registration can be found here and is open until April 14, 6:00PM.

You can find more information about ECOO here.

March's MOOSE contest is coming up, hosted just for your aMOOSEment!

MOOSE, a competitive programing competition, is an awesome way to have fun problem-solving with your friends while also brushing up on your coding skills. Every skill level is welcome and it’s up to you to decide to compete in either the junior or senior division.

This month’s MOOSE will be hosted over 2 days, from March 6-7. The contest will last a total of 2.5 hours. You may start at any time within the given timeframe, but note that starting after 9:30PM on March 7 will result in the contest ending before the 2.5 hours pass.

Registration is now open for all schools until 11:55PM on March 4! Students must register a team here if they did not do so in a previous month. Visit our MOOSE info page for more information!

Please note that the MOOSE contest is only available for students outside of William Lyon Mackenzie CI.