Yesterday evening I attended Ansca’s first developers kitchen. They invited local developer to come in and check out their office and staff. It was a great networking event and I got to see some some old faces and meet some new ones.
I had a chance to catch up with Tobiah and Angel from Yobonja. I shared a little bit of my up and coming game (which I’m building with my brother) Roly Poly with Angelo, we ended up exchanging some technical advice on how to design a level editor. Tobiah shared some of his experience on supporting multiple image resolutions for the iPhone. I also got a chance to play their game Tap Party, which was quite impressive.
There was another team of developers who are working on a music based game that reminded me of Tetris Attack. We got into discussing the pros and cons of doing an LLC vs a partnership. It’s always nice to talk about business with other small start-ups, gives you a sense that you are going in the right direction. Unfortunately they were without business cards and I forgot the name of the game =/.
All in all it was a great event. My brother and I even got a great picture taken of us supporting “Corona” 
My brother and I showing our support for "Corona" (Photo provided by Ansca)
Be sure to checkout a recap of the event on Ansca’s blog: http://blog.anscamobile.com/2011/03/recap-first-ever-corona-sdk-developers-kitchen/
This past weekend I headed over to San Francisco with my brother (@cesar_miranda_) for Start Up Camp (Game Developers Conference edition). My brother and I were able to snag some free last minute tickets to the event by tweeting @ansca, who were one of the sponsors of the event.
We showed up Friday evening not really knowing what to expect, this was the first time that I or my brother have ever attended a Start Up Camp. All we knew was that we had three days to work on something, and that there would be prizes! We also knew that Ansca would be there, and that we would be able to use the Corona SDK, which we would find out later to be a tremendous help in speeding the development on our game.
The first night consisted of people pitching ideas. We didn’t really come in with an idea, so I just made an announcement that we were looking for an “idea person”, someone to come on to our team and flesh out a really nice game idea. Unfortunately everyone seemed to be more focused on application instead of games. At the end of the first night we came to the conclusion that we were going to have to do this ourselves.
The next morning, Saturday, I find out that my brother stayed up for a large portion of the night (he only got 3 hours of sleep) thinking of game ideas. We went to breakfast and narrowed down the ideas to a couple game mechanics. The main game mechanic would allow the user to draw real-time platforms with physics properties. The second game mechanic would be the ability to flip the phone 180 degrees and change the gravitational pull of the game. Both of these mechanics would be used to help our rolling ball find it’s way home.
Once we got back to San Francisco, later that day, we fleshed three levels on the white board, and I began coding while my brother started on the artwork. I was able to get the walls and physics mechanics by the end of the day thanks to Corona’s built in physics engine based of the popular Box2D Physics Engine (which I’ve used in the past). By the end of the day we had a decent base of code and some nice artwork, we also came up with the code name “Sticky Spider” (which we would later change).
On the final day we decided to come in at 9am, since we needed as much time as possible to finish up the game. I spent the first half of the day implementing our real-time platform creating mechanic. My brother spent time finalizing the background and working on a replacement for the ball in our original idea, a roly poly (which we ended up using as the final name for the game). After finishing off the first game mechanic, I finalized our first level and we were ready to move on to creating level two. Level two consisted of the user flipping the phone around and changing the gravity of the game. This took nothing but a couple lines of code thanks to the physics engine and the easy accelerometer support provided by the Corona SDK. We soon realized that we wouldn’t have enough time to put in all three levels, so we decided to concentrate on putting in two very good levels. After a couple of hours of polishing up the game, we were ready to present!
Level 1 of Roly Poly (Photo provided by Ansca)
While getting ready to present we found out that only 2 out of the 5 teams made it through the Start Up Camp, so at the very lease we would get 2nd place, but we were aiming for first! We presented first and everyone was impress with the artwork and how quickly we were able to put the game together. They were especially impress with how very little lines of code it took to create the game: 340 lines (including blank lines). After our presentation we got a nice round of applause, and watched the second teams presentation.
After the second team’s presentation the judges were ready to cast their votes. We were extremely gratified when we were declared the winners! Winning an iPad, $500, and a years subscription to the Corona SDK. The judges explained that it was the fact that we had a working game with two levels that caught their eyes. In a market where games come and go, you have to be quick on your feat and have to be able to put out a game very fast.
My brother (Cesar Miranda), the Co Founder and Chief Evangelist of Ansca (Carlos Icaza), and me (Photo provided by Ansca)
I had a great weekend with everyone at Start Up Camp, made lots of great connection, and had lots of fun. I can’t wait to finish up Roly Poly with my brother and have it out on the Apple and Android market!
Be sure to check out Ansca’s summary of the event at their blog: The Miranda Bros. conquer Start Up Camp with Corona SDK