Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

PHP Contest: Revenge of the Apple Eating Robots

Posted by michael on from the berzerk dept.

Zack Coburn writes "The latest Codewalkers' PHP Coding Contest invites PHP programmers to write a script in PHP to interface with a judging library and play 'Apple Eating Robots,' a game based on the classic Unix console game called Robots. According to the contest description, the goal is 'to avoid robots, eat apples, and kill robots by forcing them to hit each other in order to get the highest score.' For judging, 'at least 100 rounds will be played. In the end, the sum of all points earned will determine the winner. In the case of a tie, the running time will be the tie-breaker.' According to an e-mail sent out to Codewalkers users, 'The PHP Coding Contest is now in its third year since inception and touts $2,000 worth of prizes. The first ten places will earn a prize, so even if you aren't the top winner, you have a chance at winning something.' Prizes for the current contest include Macromedia Studio MX, Zend Studio, PHPEd, and SourceGuardian Pro."

3 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. Speaking of which... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ..are there any good free PHP debuggers yet?

  2. Sorry if redundant... Where can i get classic src? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Article says it's classic UNIX game, Robots, but i have never heard of it and want to try.

    Where can i get sources? Where is Robots homepage?
    How interesting is it?

  3. Best Use? by Tellalian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm a big fan of PHP, but is this really the best usage for this language?

    This is a game, so ideally, some real-time graphical output would be nice. Yet isn't that not the nature of PHP? PHP's web-centric, so you're usually generating html. If I wanted to write a game that has to run continuously I'd write it in a general purpose programming language like python (or c++ if I was feeling masochistic ;). Python has a simple syntax and a standard GUI library, along with scores of additional modules for graphics, sounds, and almost anything else you can think of. I don't want to sound like I'm evangelizing python, but is this contest really the best test of ones PHP skills?