Eastern Michigan University's 24-hour Hackathon
Eastern's Hackathon was the first programming event that I attend while in college. I wasn't quite sure
what exactly a "Hackathon" was, but I was extremely excited to meet and work with other programmers at
and beyond my level. I was paired up with another
student named Yinan Li and we decided to make a mobile game similar to the classic arcade game, Space Invaders.
We both didn't have much experience in mobile
development at the time, but were determined to make a presentable game. Together, we spent the 24 hours
discussing game design and implementing
each of our ideas. Yinan Li focused on creating and designing the artwork in Photoshop, while I used CoronaSDK and Lua to program our game.
SuperAsteroid, is a 2-dimensional Shoot 'em up game in which the player
attempts to dodge asteroids and other space objects,
while shooting down enemy spacecrafts in order to advance. Player movement is four-directional and
points are scored upon destroying a spacecraft or enemy.
Most of the time spent during development went
towards the final boss fight. It has four eyes, which periodically shoot lasers out of all but one
random eye. The players must react and
reposition themselves to the blinking eye or face disintegration. The time limit of 24 hours put a
strain on how much content we could produce and also caused one major problem. The game is much too
difficult for the average player to even reach
the boss. Nonetheless, we had a blast designing, implemeneting, and presenting our final boss, The
Spider Queen.
When it finally came to presenations, we were
thrilled to see what the other groups had designed. For me, this was the best part of the hackathon.
After presenations, groups were given
awards based on their presenations and programs. To our surprise, SuperAsteroid placed first!
