Android Aalto is back to strike! and to hit the walls hard again this semester. We welcome all new students interested in android business and development to join our events.

Rise of the droids

This will be at Aalto Otasunnistus (5th and 6th of September)

> Come and join the rise of all droids of autumn 2012! Get your Android Aalto badge and identify

> The opening party will be at Otaniemi open area check out the official web site:

Aalto Opening Party 2012

Return of the droids

This will be at Aalto Kampuskarkelot (17th, 18th, 19th of September)

> Come to our booth and meet the Android Aalto Community, know more about our events, drop to talk about android, to exchange ideas, to chat about new stuff in android markets and APIs, to know about planned events.

The invitation is again for all android enthusiasts to join us at:

Summer Hackathon 2012
Saturday 28.07.2012
From 14:30 to 19:30
Aalto Venture Garage
(Betonimiehenkuja 3, Espoo)

We will keep the agenda open:

• We would like to get back to hacking on the community projects from previous events
• We would like to recap and play some videos of Google I/O 2012

Although not compulsory it would be great if you can RSVP at our
Facebook event
or
Event Brite event
 

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.

To Be continued…

Also think of the thousands of games available online and the multi-million mobile gaming industry. It is time take mobile gaming seriously, it is a real attractive business.

And because people asked for, it is time for a real Gaming Hackathon! are you ready for this “battle” !!!!

We will have a small introduction workshop session on Friday June 1st and the core hacking will happen on Saturday June 2nd.

We will help you to go through the basics but it will be great if you could already take a look at how to set up the Android environment, you can follow these instructions: Getting Set Up for Development

This time there will be refreshments and food during the event thanks to our sponsors:

Preliminary Program

June 1st (Preparation and preliminary design)

17:00 Welcome
17:30 Intro to the hackathon – Organizing teams
18:00 – 19:00 Workshops
a) Game frameworks for android
b) Android basics
19:00 + Preparation for hacking
- create repos, design the game etc.

June 2nd (core design and hacking)

11:00  Organizing the designs and modules of the game
12:00  Implement functions, core hacking
14:30 Lunch break and teams huddle, what is next!?
15:00 More hacking
18:30 Integrate, Play with the games!!
19:30 Closing words

Remember:

Let the games begin! hackathon June 1st at 17:00 and June 2nd at 11:00 at Aalto Venture Garage!

Please RSVP at in EventBrite event: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/3500872203
There is also a Facebook event page to trigger the discussion: http://www.facebook.com/events/389805417738645
For more information you can contact us:
Facebook group
G+ page
Twitter

This keynote is open to all those enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and established companies that are planning to enter the Android mobile app and business eco-system.

Come and join us, there will be top speakers and open lively discussions.

Starting at 11:00 on 5th of May at Aalto Venture Garage!

Speakers:

• Kimmo Koivisto (Tellyo) – “Different biz models to monetize Android apps”
• Jussi Luhtasela (Google Finland) “Using Google channels to monetize good apps”
• Janne Toivola (Futurice) – “Mobile apps analytics”
• Perttu Ojansuu (Gapps) – “Monetizing in Google Enterprise solutions”, with a very special announcement about summer internships at Gapps

Thanks indeed again to our sponsors:

Please RSVP at our Facebook event: Monetizating Android Apps – Keynote

For more information you can contact us:
Facebook group
G+ page
Twitter

PS: Are you going to Google I/O 2012? Some of our community members are going! Let us know so we could meet and have fun in San Francisco! If you are staying in Finland, why not to join us we plan to make a Google I/O Extended?

After the great raise of the androids on last hackathon, where DroidKino has made it into the android market.And keeping the good spirit after Mobile World Congress 2012, with so much innovation, companies and startups showing great things done in Android.

We invite to all the community, people that has joined in previous events but also to you the one that just knew recently about Android Aalto, to do NOT hesitate to come over this next Saturday at Aalto Venture Garage to spend quality time discussing, learning and sharing about Android topics.

In parallel to the main stage, Android Aalto is inviting to join us for:

• Workshop on android basics, how to build an basic app end-to-end.
• Hacking space for teams to develop and showcase their own apps.
• Droidkino evolution to enhance the app, fragment and gesture support.

Again Many Thanks to Elisa and Reaktor for their support in our hackathons!

This month Android Aalto, Coss, Futurice and Ixonos hit the road for this exciting event in Tampere, FI, a great space to exchange ideas and discuss with Android enthusiasts outside the capital area. Tampere is also well known for the large IT community, and particualrly its great to see how the android community there is germinating and growing.

Event Details

November 23rd from 13:45 to 19:00
New Factory, Väinö Linnan aukio 15, 3rd floor, Tampere, FI.
Please RSVP since places are limited:
http://androidtampere-estw.eventbrite.com

Join the pre-discussion in Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=134188346685466

Schedule:

Organized by:

• Android Aalto – www.androidaalto.org
• Coss - www.coss.fi
• New Factory – uusitehdas.fi/en

Sponsored by:

• Ixonos – www.ixonos.com
• Elisa – http://www.elisa.com/en/
• Futurice – www.futurice.com

Welcome again, looking forward to have a lively KeyNote!

Where? and When?

Aalto Venture Garage – Betonimiehenkuja 3, Espoo

October 30th starting at 1pm

Welcome everybody to AA October Hackathon!

Three proposed areas/topics:

• Haunted Garage – For everybody that wants to get started in android, Don’t be afraid to say hi to the android spirits! Aalto Venture garage will be a safe great place to start by installing the sdk, trying examples and learning the basics.
• Horror movies - For the ones that feel like continue working on our community projects – working on horror movie schedules using Droidkino and weicked sounds from Soundfuse.
• Xooming to the beyond – At some point we will establish a link with some Honeycomb’s (Android 3.x) apis and see some features there. Similarly we could do for new stuff that is in 2.3.x as well.
• Other topics – Feel free to propose other topics.

Two short “paranormal sessions”

• Scary story telling - There will be room to tell scarey stories about bugs, memory crashes, exceptions and other issues you could have experience while doing android projects. But also this is a good place to tell about some lessons learned and to demo /show your app if you would like to.
• Lets explore the strange activity – or activities that are not behaving well inside your projects, perhaps we can try debuging or troubleshooting to find out that they are not actually paranormal and could be tamed

Community Hacking

We use Git and Github to handle the community projects. Feel free to check out the Android Aalto Github account:http://www.github.com/AndroidAalto
Please refer to this previous post to know more about How to Collaborate using GitHub

Special Thanks to Elisa !

Many thanks to Elisa for collaborating with us to build a nice Android ecosystem, and for sponsoring food and drinks for all of the attendees.