Homestretch Hackathon

I attended a Homestretch Hackathon last week on Wednesday, April 13th.  The name "Homestretch Hackathon" is derived from the fact that it was during our last few days before final exams, and it was obviously a hackathon where students could come together to do work, study, or socialize.  This was probably one of the best hackathon's I have attended.  I only wish I could have come earlier at 6 when it started.  Unfortunately, I had a class and wasn't able to get to the hackathon until 8.

I had a ton of work that I technically could have been hacking away at, but instead my friend MrNex(github.com/MrNex) convinced me to hack on his homemade game engine.  The game engine, called NGen, is a 3D graphics and physics engine programmed in C, that MrNex had been working on for at least 2 years.  He also demoed some simulations in the engine at ImagineRIT.

From about 8 to 12:30am, MrNex and I worked on creating a parkour based running platformer game in the NGen game engine.  I vamped the speed up really high in the engine because I wanted the game to be like a first person version of Sonic the Hedgehog.  People noted that it was very similar to the game Mirror's Edge, in its movement controls.

I think the game came out really well as I know Nick put a ton of time into making his engine really high quality.  Nick would implement new game mechanics and then tell me to place platforms in the 3D space to both make a level, and also allow him to test the new mechanics.  The process went pretty well and we got a pretty cool rough draft of a first level made.

You can check out the engine here: https://github.com/MrNex/NGen

I recommend people take advantage of the Hackathons on campus because they are way more fun than just sitting at home studying or hacking away on a project.  It's also great because there are so many resources available at the hackathon in terms of people that could help with problems.  I know that there were a ton of super smart people at the hackathon and they were definitely willing to help out a friend in need.  I also always enjoy queuing up songs on the #foss_groovebot :)  Was super fun seeing decause, loothelion, dropofwill, ajman, bewhitty, and MrNex at the hackathon!