And the games began!

Last 1st and 2nd of june, the first Android Aalto gaming hackathon gave birth to a saga of episodes and a new era in the history of this community. Worth the wait was this hackathon for the multitude of attendees, a great blend of talented artists, android newbies, hardcore hackers and enthusiasts.

It all started with great spirit, plenty of creative ideas and discussions about hacking strategy and expectations. A total of 5 teams were formed and each brainstorming of ideas, defining the team roles and strategies.

The expert note

Then a special note was given by Sylvain Cunzi and Elif Buyukcan on building games the process, the roles, the tools and approach á la Rovio. Two main frameworks were described, AndEngine and Unity. Plenty of questions about what is the best framework, the best approach created a discussion, for which the conclusion was “it all depends”.

Then so we got hands on the work, started designing the game and explored 2 alternatives frameworks. But was all in the air, a thriller to be continued the next day….

Redeploying the forces

Thereafter, June 2nd 11 am a fresh new day, with more energy, more ideas, more challenge and adrenaline. Artists started crafting the visuals, designers got started with the logic and hackers with the code. Teams reorganize now with a framework installed and strategy defined.

The day was a long yet fun journey that little by little reveal more.

Finally, it was time for the truth, show me what you got! And it was amazing! each team was able to come up with a squeleton of the game, nice graphics and a logic pretty much ready to be implemented. Unfortunately, the complexity of the AndEngine framework was a barrier, well foreseen and highlighted by Sylvain. So was difficult to get a version ready to play but each team was eager to come back for revenge (Next screenshots and experiences from each team)….

Box Droid

Boxdroid is game in which you can fight against evil androids and aliens, using your mighty droid-boxing gloves. Shake the sides of the phone and your boxdroid will hit its oponent.

We wanted to use a native feature, and we thought the accelerometer would be great. We had a designer in our team who made cool pictures of the droid, one enemy and for the splash screen, but our main issue was to make the accelerometer work. After solving that, the next step is to set hit points and scores.

It was the first android game for all of us, so it was a great experience even when we didn’t finish it.

Anti Frogger

Years ago in Frogger you tried to get the frog across a street with heavy traffic, Now it’s time for a twist over the classic, in Anti-Frogger now you are the car! and the objective is to stop as many crossing frogs as you can.

It was a great time during the Android Hackaton, of course there was a little pressure to get a working game in one day but everyone there were having fun doing it. I must say it was an excellent experience, learning by doing with a team supporting you, highly recommended for anyone.

Finger Twister

The idea was quite simple – to bring Twister game to Android device, but instead of using hands and feet we wanted to twist users’ fingers. As proof of concept we decided to design a quite simple single player scenario: in the top bar a user can select “New game” option and see directions for next move: a color and a finger to place on screen. If a user can manage to get five fingers on the right colors he/she wins the game.

Last weekend I had a chance to participate in Android Aalto Game Development Hackathon. I finally came to Helsinki and experienced an awesome atmosphere of Aalto Venture Garage. We had a very young, but enthusiastic Green Team. After brain storm at the end of the first day we came up with idea of creating FingerTwister game.
In our team we had people with pretty different backgrounds, so it took a while to set up collaboration tools. However, everybody caught up quite quickly and in general it was pleasure and fun to work together on the project. We still have to adjust game play and multitouch, but we already have lots of ideas for further improvements.
I’d like to thank all members of the Green Team for great time coding together and of course special thanks to Android Aalto and Rovio for organization and support!

Flight Game

The game was about directing a (paper) plane to a target, without touching/being touched by balloons. During the brainstorming, there were some derivations of the game. This team seem to have the most fun, they chose from the beginning to use AndEngine and were able to come up with nice graphics.