Summer Breakout Design Challenge Results!

Congratulations to the winners of our summer design competition, announced during the August 20 Vintage Gaming Tournament at the Warming House. Although each of this year's entries was extraordinary, our winning designs demonstrated an exceptional combination of coding ingenuity, rich use of media, engaging game play and clear evidence of a user-oriented design perspective. Each of the winners split $100 in cash prizes.

Colin Morris's Excavation demonstrated a coherent theme combined with attractive design elements, sound effects, animation, and an overall challenging player experience. His project included completely original graphic elements, scoring and lives, and an animated "game over" screen.

Isaac Moldofky's and Benjamin Silverman's Breakout! project demonstrated exceptional mechanics, original graphics, a smoke-effect animation, and a flawless and engaging player experience.

Summer 2010 Breakout Design Challenge

At our June meeting we set forth plans for this summer's game design contest, based upon the famous Breakout game (proverbially designed by Steve Wozniak for Atari in 1976).

The contest rules:

• The game must be created in Java using Greenfoot
• The game must be "inspired" by the original Breakout! but must include substantially customized features
• The customization must be such that the winning entry has a unique name and constitutes more than just a "clone"
• The winning entry will be decided by a vote of club members.
• The deadline for all entries will be August 20 (negotiable).
• The winning entry to receive a $50 gift card

There are some sample files available to help you along. Contact Brian to obtain these files. They include a completed (but buggy) version of the game, a starter (i.e., non-functioning version of the game) and a Powerpoint tutorial that you may follow which explains the code.

What you will need:

• Download Greenfoot at www.greenfoot.org
• Attend our Game Design Club meetings beginning Monday, July 12 (4:00) at the Warming House in Wilmette for tips and tutorials
• A rich imagination
• A "stick to it" attitude
• Brian's address for any questions you might have

May the best design win!

May 2010 Robocode Tournament Results

April 2010 Vintage Game Night and Birthday Celebration

April 2010: The club celebrated its 3rd birthday by hosting an exciting, fun-filled retro gaming tournament in the Wilmette Public Library auditorium. Over 30 participants (including dads and moms) played Atari, SNES, and N64 games on the original vintage consoles. In addition, we held a computer game trivia contest and served all-you-can-eat pizza to the hungry gamers. To top it all off, we served a delicious birthday cake baked for us by our friends at TAG's Bakery in Evanston.

Congratulations to Matt Sennett (winner of the bracketed N64 Mario Kart competition), Alex Nedeljkovic (winner of the N64 Smash Bros. competition), and Isabelle Sennett (winner of the Computer Game History Trivia Contest).

Special thanks to Colin Morris for supervising the brackets, Isaac Moldofsky for the tasty brownies, and Steve and Jill Becker for donating a Sega Genesis console to be used in our next retro event. Thanks also to Benjamin and Noah Siverman, and Anish Krishnan for helping set up the consoles and projectors.

January 2010 Robocode Tournament

January 10 and 17: Congratulations to Erik Beitel ($25 Gift Card), winner in the Melee competition, and Benjamin McCormick ($25 gift card), winner of the bracketed one-on-one competition.

2009 Retro Gaming Tournament/Scratch Workshop

Congratulations to Matthew Sennett ($30 Gamestop Gift Card), winner of the bracketed N64 Super Mario competition. Competition participants also took part in a Scratch workshop where we created a clone of the classic Asteroids game.