Couple of questions

1) If there's more than one digit, the number of repetitions is the sum of the digits? So "12H" would translate to "HHH", and not not to "HHHHHHHHHHHH"? Odd.

2) Are external graphic files allowed?

3) Does any character have a special meaning we can know about? Or is everything (apart from "b") a wall?

1) Odd, but makes it easier for us!

2) I would doubt that this is possible as you can only submit one file (from what I understand) -- maybe you could reference files via http, though.

3) I have the same question. I have finished writing a script on the assumption that all characters besides 'b' (for space) and '*' (for start or end, not sure which) are walls and are being treated as such.

Here's a question... So do we have to solve the mazes, or just draw them?

-steve

Since the name of the file should read createmaze.php I don't think the goal is to actually solve it...

I think all characters besides b and * should be different looking walls.
Hey, Matt, this is a great contest!

1) Yes it is odd

2) Yes they are. The only restriction is that the main script file (the one I will run) is called createmaze.php).

3) No characters have special meaning. But, you can represent any character any way you wish. You can represent all Y's as diamonds, all X's as stars, etc. Take a look at a game like Nethack, you will see they use all types of characters in the mazes. Really, the look of the maze is up to you. That's what you are being judged on. Be creative!

Is it true that *'s are the ending location?

Not necessarily....

So, you mean the graphic files can be any size? You might like to set an upper limit on that. Something like "total submission size must be less than 1Gb"

Well, considering that there about 28 different characters to be represented (A-Z,b,*), for the file size to reach 1 gig each chracter would need to be represented by a 35.7 meg file. I find it hard to believe that anyone would do something like that ;)

that sounds like a challenge

do we need to use GD and generate a picture file? or can we simply create HTML table with different colors for walls, spaces, and goal/exit?

if we do have to use the GD library, do we assume it is compiled with php on the testing machine?

nope, you don't have to use GD. Use ascii art for all I care

I think the keyword of this contest is to make use of GD or something like it.. (perhaps even flash? and to make the maze look cool/special/extraordinary. The code to display the maze in plain ascii/html is pretty straight forward.

What about if there are more than two numbers before the letter?
Do we need support for that?