Hackathon Wizard

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  Dashboard

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  menu

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  Design

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  Ideation

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  Presentation

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  Box-cover concept art

Inspiration 💡

I am a game artist and have experimented with game environment art, technical art and in-game sounds in my projects, but never a playable project. Initially, I wanted to make a document for hackathoners to use to build their projects from a productivity and management perspective. However, I also wanted to express my creative side and help my project stand out, while keeping things interactive and rewarding. This is essentially how the idea for Hackathon Wizard, a hackathon simulator, emerged.

What it does ✨

Hackathon Wizard is a hackathon simulator for hackers that can help hackers with hackathons in several ways. For example, it can:

• Help them practice their skills and learn new technologies in a fun and interactive way.
• Help them develop their creativity and problem-solving abilities by exposing them to various scenarios and challenges.
• Help them improve their time management and teamwork skills by simulating the hackathon environment and constraints.
• Help them prepare for their presentations and get feedback from judges and mentors.
• Help them gain confidence and motivation by rewarding them for their achievements and progress.
• Help them discover new ideas and opportunities by exploring different themes and technologies.

How we built it ✅

I first wrote a design document with notion while doing early research for ideas on what to build. I landed on a game design and vertical slice or demo project with unreal engine. As a game artist, I am able to create 3d models and visual designs for games, but with this project, I will have to focus on more technical parts of game development to create my solution for the theme.

• Unreal Engine with Blueprints scripting for game development
• Notion for design documentation and productivity template

Challenges we ran into 🚀

I am more on the game art side of the indurstry at the moment and have only used visual scripting for technical aspects of my work. For this project, it was a challenge to realise the vision for the game using only Blueprints scripts. Unreal Engine Blueprints uses the logic of programming with ability for artists to create for loops, functions, state machines and much more. I decided to stick with blueprints and use this as an opportunity to sharpen my scripting skills. Even though the project is not playable as a game at this stage, I was just as excited to revert to the original idea of making a productivity template for users to build upon.

• publishing an unreal engine game for the first time

Accomplishments that we're proud of 🪄

• publishing my first notion site
• demonstrating game design skills

What we learned ℹ️

• How to setup Github and Azure devops for Unreal Engine projects
• Designing a reward system for a game
• Concepting game prototype

What's next for Hackathon Wizard 🧙🏻‍♂️

• Troubleshooting our prototype interface, optimising file sizes and overall performance
• Publishing the playable prototype for users from MLH, Devpost and broader online community to test and provide feedback.

Built With

• notion
• unreal-engine