My Great Canadian Appathon Experience

This past weekend was the Great Canadian Appathon, a 48-hour game design and development competition.  I was on Team Harmony with some of the guys who helped out with Gram's House, our Imagine Cup game.  We'd already worked together before, so I had high hopes for the weekend.  I was not disappointed!

 Photo by Jennifer Pagliaro, from the National Post

This was the first hackathon event I'd ever participated in.  I really enjoyed the atmosphere in the little classroom all the on-site teams worked in.  Everyone was friendly and having fun.  As great as this was, it was also very distracting in terms of writing code.  I didn't get much done Friday night as a result.  I tried to keep my headphones on all day Saturday, and on Sunday I decided to save commuting time and work from home.  Though this meant fewer distractions, I didn't get to see the final game on an actual Windows Phone 7 device. (I was at least able to try it out in the emulator.)

Something else I noticed is just how often we changed our game concept throughout the weekend.  And we weren't the only ones - it looks like most teams did that, too!  Our final concept was called Sandscape, a fluid simulation puzzle game that has you scratching trenches in the sand, and tilting the phone to get certain colours of fluid into various goal drains.  This is pretty different from the Chinese-philosophy-based tile flipping game we originally designed in preparation for the competition.

As usual, I was one of the only girls participating.  There was a female volunteer and a female artist on one team, but I was the only coder working on site (turns out a friend was also developing, but her team worked completely from home so I never saw her).  This was noticed, so the National Post journalist assigned to Carleton wrote an article about me:

Gail Carmichael is accustomed to being something of an anomaly.

It’s not because the 27-year-old computer science PhD student is wired-in to her Acer laptop at the Carleton University hub for the Great Canadian Appathon, sporting a blue “You had me at Hello World” t-shirt.

It’s because she’s the only female coder in the small classroom.

You can read the whole article online.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how the competition went.  I'm glad most of us were able to keep to a normal sleep schedule, and that we managed to submit a complete game.  No matter what happens with the judging, we have something we can be proud of.  That, in my books, is success.

Met a Girl from My First Ever Mini-Course Yesterday

I went to Almonte and District High School yesterday for a pilot project called Futures Fair.  Community members were invited to give workshops and mock university lectures to students who could sign up for the topics they were interested in.  I did my usual computer science stuff, this time talking about how artificial intelligence and computer graphics are used in games.

One of the coolest things was seeing a girl from my very first mini-course Computer Science and Games: Just for Girls! four years ago.  She was in grade nine then, and grade twelve now.  She was so excited to see me, and still totally enthusiastic about the CS stuff I talked about and the activities we did.  She showed good understanding of the material, too.  It was awesome!

Of course, I then had to ask her what she had applied for at university.  I secretly crossed my fingers it would be something technical.

Her answer?

Political science and law.

(Needless to say I was sad.  I did at least tell her she could consider a minor in CS.)

Introducing Gram's House, Our Imagine Cup 2011 Game for Girls and Computer Science

Computer science is still a gender-imbalanced field. Outreach efforts by various non-profits and companies like Microsoft seem to make an impact on this issue. Inspired by this, we designed Gram’s House to reach an even larger audience of middle school girls. We believe that encouraging more girls to participate in computer science has the power to help those who are lesser privileged see new career possibilities and improve their situation. Furthermore, a diverse computing community will be in a better position to solve many of tomorrow’s problems, from education to the environment to health care.

In Gram’s House, the player takes on the role of a computer scientist. She wants to ensure her grandmother can stay in her house, so she uses her skills to outfit the place with technology Gram can use to remain independent. Each piece of technology must be activated by solving a computer science related puzzle, ranging from binary numbers to theorems to algorithm design. The first technology is a mail ordered robot, and subsequent technologies are obtained through a simple questing mechanisms. In the next version, a world map will allow players to travel to different areas of the city, and will provide opportunities for collaboration with other computer scientists and engineers. The player must balance Gram’s independence with her satisfaction with the various machines and devices collected.

The story of Gram’s House is meant to give the girls playing it an emotional investment in the problems they are trying to solve. Research has shown that girls do indeed care about making a social difference.

While point and click puzzlers are nothing new, they are well loved by middle school girls. The combination of a compelling story, puzzles, and learning real computer science topics is something new and exciting that could make a big impact on the game world and the field of computer science.

Watch the game video below and download an installer to try the game yourself.  I'd love to get your feedback!

One Positive Thing, Martial Arts, and Hitting the Proverbial Wall

The other day I read Cate's post on One Positive Thing:

The power of sustained small achievements is underrated. If every day I did one positive thing for my health, my living space, and my relationship, what would my world look like a month, six months, a year from now?

I love this concept.  If you're ever feeling overwhelmed, whether by grad school, work, or just life, focus on one positive thing you can do.  Chances are, other good things will follow, but even if they don't you still have that one positive thing.

After reading this, I immediately thought about a technique I've been using in my Taekwondo training recently.  I've been trying to push myself more - just ten more pushups, 30 more speed kicks, better patterns, whatever. Whenever I have hit the proverbial wall, I have been doing one of two things.

One is to think of Bruce Lee and how much he was able to push himself. I remember the story about someone being pushed to run just a little more by Lee and think of that. For some reason it gives me a jolt of energy and desire to succeed.

The other is yoga breathing. The other day doing 100 speed kicks on each leg was suddenly so much more feasible when I focused on deep breathing and keeping my body calm - it's like my leg was doing its own thing and I didn't even think about the fatigue.

These ended up being my "one positive thing" for Taekwondo.  Now that I'm thinking about the concept, I'll be watching for opportunities to use it whenever I get frustrated or lose confidence in my research.  There is always something small I can focus on that I can accomplish quickly, whether it's directly related to the area I'm being frustrated by or not.  And who knows, maybe some yoga breathing will do the trick. ;)

What do you do when you hit the proverbial wall?

Great Canadian Appathon

Carleton's Game Development Club is one of six host schools for the upcoming Great Canadian Appathon:

The Great Canadian Appathon is a chance for post-secondary students across Canada to showcase their skills in developing great games. Students can get together in teams of up to 4 people to hack their game together for 48 hours. The event is presented by XMG Studio and the National post. The Prizes are being sponsored by TELUS and the finale event is being sponsored by KPMG.

A few friends of mine were hoping I would join their team, and yesterday I finally decided that I would.  (I was a little worried about time because there are a few projects I have to wrap up in the next couple of months, but this looks like a really fun opportunity I don't want to miss.)

This is supposed to be one of those hackathon-type events where you work for 48 hours straight to come up with a game programmed completely within the allotted time.  I've never participated in any of these before.  The closest I've come is the one all-nighter we pulled for our school's notorious software engineering class project.  (And that's the only all-nighter I've ever done in my life!)  I'm a little nervous about it because that's not really how I work usually.  My eye problems alone make it impossible to work all night.

Luckily, it sounds like the plan is to design as much of the game ahead of time as possible, and maybe even prototype it.  Then the idea is to have us work in shifts with partners, so those who like working at night can.  According to the Appathon's rules, you don't even have to be on campus - you can work online if you want.  I don't know if it's a gender thing or just because we're getting older, but I personally really appreciate this flexibility.

The competition is happening March 11-13, so I'll post about our experience after that.  In the meantime, if you happen to be a student, consider giving it a shot yourself!