14 DAY TRIAL // Are you ready to add a Cloud twist to the traditional rock, paper and scissors game? Then you might be interested in Microsoft’s Rock, Paper, Azure Challenge. Well, fact is that technically, the Rock, Paper, Azure Challenge involves rock, paper, scissors dynamite and water balloon. And a few prizes for taking, nothing Cloud related, but still some rather sweet gear.
Devs interested in participating in the contest will need to get a Windows Azure account. The software giant is offerings 30-days free trials of Windows Azure via the PLAYRPA promo code.
Still, developers need to know that the trial is only free within certain usage limits, after which they will be billed according to standard rates.
Once the Windows Azure account is set up, devs can access resources that will help them build a bot to play in the Rock, Paper, Azure Challenge.
“To work on your own killer player (or ‘bot’ as we call it), you’ll also download a small Windows Azure application with an MVC website – the BotLab – which you can use to test out your code before you actually unleash it on the world,” revealed Jim O’Neil, Microsoft Developer Evangelist.
“When you’re ready, you’ll deploy your BotLab to Windows Azure and submit your bot to the contest. From there, watch the leaderboard and see how you fare, view the game logs, and tweak your implementation to annihilate the competition.”
Unfortunately, only developers that are also US citizens can participate in the Rock, Paper, Azure Challenge.
The top winner of the Rock, Paper, Azure Challenge will walk away with a 4GB Xbox 360 with Kinect. The contest is slated to start on April 2, 2011, and will end on May 13.
Microsoft will award prizes on a weekly basis, so there are quite a few chances to win a 4GB Xbox 360 with Kinect.
While the traditional rules of the game still apply, namely rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, and scissors beats paper, the Redmond company also introduced two new ones:
“Dynamite beats rock, paper, and scissors! But, you only get a few per round, so use them sparingly. Water balloon can beat dynamite, but it loses to everything else. You have unlimited water balloons.”