Yes this one is definitely a bit early; it doesn't start until August but I wanted to make sure there weren't any gotchas or things I've overlooked. If I've missed any crucial detail please let me know!
The Challenge is to write a program that generates a set of dungeons like you would use in role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. 30 Years ago I used to run D&D games. Then nearly 20 years ago I actually wrote a dungeon generator as part of a large postal game (called Quest). Mine also had treasures, traps, monsters and non player characters but this challenge is much simpler. Just generate a nine level dungeon with interconnecting rooms and corridors.
Both Microsoft and Google have released
open source versions of internal tools. Google's release is Ratproxy, a cross-platform
tool for helping identify security vulnerabilities in your web server if you're running a Web 2.0 site. Written in C, it monitors traffic flow
between browser and web server so there's no risk of disruption. It'savailable for Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS X, and Windows (Cygwin)
environments. I do wonder if people looking to exploit vulnerabilities might use it?
Microsoft's offering is their Sandcastle project for producing documentation. It was first released a month ago but only as closed source
onto their open source codeplex website. Not surprisingly this was not well received and it was quickly withdrawn. Now Microsoft has released it again but this time as open source. It's the same software that they use for generating api documentation for MSDN and works by examining assemblies and incorporating XML comments in source code if provided.
PS. Challenge Thirteen has been updated! The source code of entries is now available.
