A lot of the Startup Tucson Hackathon is about providing structure to those who need it. Some people have an idea in the back of their heads, ready to go. Others just want to socialize, and the task is irrelevant. And so I’m throwing a project out there for teams to work on, which I think could be a really fun project to work on. It could possibly pay for itself: Porting Monster Words to Android! The prize? A 50/50 profit-sharing deal!
Port Monster Words to Android
What?! Port a game to Android? In 24 hours? That’s right! The gist of it is that Adobe’s Air for Android product might allow for a straightforward port of the online flash version in a reasonable timeframe. While talking with a friend it seemed like getting the game up and running might be more straightforward than you might think. And if you’re a budding game developer you can become more familiar with the internals of a production game.
How does this work then?
If you’re interested, sign up for the hackathon. You might want to prep by skilling up on the basic tech. On the day of the hackathon, I will give you a tarball of the source. I’ll be available to answer questions from all teams involved about the structure and how to build. The team that provides the best working implementation can win a profit-sharing deal to put the app on various Android app stores.
The Basic Tech
The flash version of the game is built for Flash Player 11. It uses Starling and Stage3D for display objects. It uses a heavily modified version of Push Button Engine for the game architecture. I compile the game on the command line using an Ant build file or FCSH. There was no Flash or Flash Builder used in building the game. It is a good idea to be versed in ActionScript and also to have an understanding of the entity/component paradigm used in things like Torque/Unity/Push Button Engine.
The Great Unknown
For the most part these subsystems should work fine, but who knows? Perhaps user interaction won’t work. It might not scale correctly. Perhaps performance is poo. These issues will need to be worked out. Once its working on the device, the more of these issues you can hammer out over the course of the hackathon, the more likely you’ll win. But don’t worry, even if these aren’t worked out, it will be a great coding adventure!
Profit Sharing
So at the end of the day, if there is a green-lightable version of Monster Words on Android available, then that team could be part of a profit sharing deal if they so choose. I will split the profits of the Android version 50/50 on the condition that all details and polish are worked out post-hackathon. This includes:
- Memory/crash issues.
- Polish items such as animations and interaction.
- Device compatibility issues.
- Enough levels to go live.
So with 24 hours of work, you could qualify for 50% of the profits on the game. There will need to be more work done to ship post-hackathon. And if you don’t want to continue, that’s cool, too!
Legal Stuff / Details
You must physically be at the Startup Tucson Hackathon to participate. You may be required to sign a contributor agreement before receiving source code, and the source will not be public. Everything will be very loosy goosy during the hackathon, so that means the contingencies of any legal agreement outweigh the timeframe. For that reason you’re just going to have to take me at my word on this.
In general I will own the rights and I will provide any profits to you in perpetuity on the port that you create. You will be required to support the port for a certain duration. Profits will be split 50/50 after any percentages from 3rd parties are taken.
If you have any questions/thoughts on this, feel free to email me at hackathon at enemyhideout dot com.