It took 48 hours, minimal sleep, repeated use of energy drinks and determination, but Humber Game Programming students showed their skills in competing in the Great Canadian Appathon.
The national competition, held at schools across the country September 30 to October 2, is a competition where students design games, from scratch, in 48 hours or less. The event is sponsored by XMG Studio Inc., a developer of mobile video games, and the National Post. Teams submit their games and judging takes place over a number of days and stages, with the winning team being announced November 2, when the grand prize of $25,000 is given out.
Humber was one of the hubs for this year’s event. At Humber, 32 students in nine teams competed, with most of the students from Humber’s Game Programming advanced diploma program.
“XMG said we were one of the biggest hubs out of the 21 universities and colleges participating and the CEO of XMG chose Humber to give his opening speech because he was impressed with the excitement surrounding the event,” said Umer Noor, a professor who teaches in the program. “The students did a fantastic job. It is a massive accomplishment to build a mobile game in 48 hours.”
The theme of this year’s event, sports, was announced only four hours before the competition. Humber student Kyle Halladay and his team created the game Bird Flew. It involves tilting an iPhone to move the character on the screen as he skydives. While falling, birds attempt to kill the character, and the object is to stay alive as long as possible.
“We were very pleased with our game. Having an artist do all of our graphics really helped give us the programming time we needed. We managed to have enough time to polish the submitted product to the point that it was a sellable game, which can normally take months,” Halladay said.
Many students were chugging coffee and energy drinks in an attempt to stay awake as long as possible.
“We didn’t really have any strategy for dealing with the exhaustion,” said Halladay. “We just kept working until we were so tired that we were no longer being useful. After the event, we were all so exhausted that we went home and slept for as long as we could. It didn’t really sink in until Monday that we had made a good entry.”
Noor was pleased with students’ ability to handle the stress of a 48-hour deadline and a lack of sleep.
“Our students live and breathe video games, so the excitement of such a unique event helped keep them awake,” he said. “I was also impressed to see students talking to other teams and motivating each other through the weekend.”
For the students competing, the $25,000 prize is a nice goal, but the experience of competing and the chance to develop a game that a potential employer will see is the greater reward.
“Waiting for the judging is a bit nerve-wracking,” said Halladay. “Regardless of how we do though, we plan to put the game in the app store in the very near future. In the end, our goal was just to do our best and spend a weekend having fun making a game, and we did that.”
