Saturday night at 5 we arose from our jamming and took a brief walk in the now very summery weather. Our destination: barbecue! We found a nice big park and set up shop with burgers and bratwurst. We spend a good few hours enjoying the sunny afternoon before some people started heading back to work in the labs.
Sunday was the last day of the jam, with work officially to cease at 3pm. My task at the moment was to integrate the UI for the game end screen, showing the scores and player names. The coders meanwhile were scrambling to clean up bugs. By the time of the presentation, our game unfortunately did not have it’s core mechanic implemented. It did, however, feature working networked multiplayer between 4 computers.
Post Mortem: Strike Counter was kinda doomed from the start. Not to fail, but to not get very far. I was impressed by how my team was able to get networking up, but the time and energy spent on this one feature left little room to integrate any of the interesting design ideas that inspired the game.
After every team’s presentation and respective critiques, we posed for a big group photo. We were told this photo would go on the fill the last empty spot in the university’s hall of fame, so I guess I’m a little honored. The rest of the day was left to us, and I had one last castle to get to.
Schloß Neuhaus is a really pretty castle surrounded by the same peaceful river that flows through Paderborn. It apparently functions today as a high school. Sunday, however, was right in the midst of Schützenfest, a lively holiday in which certain townspeople are crowned royalty for a year. That night, the kings and queens of the last year had their final celebration in their finest clothing as the whole town gathered for festivities. I helped myself to some ice cream and finally tried out currywurst before heading back through a scenic wooded area right on the water.
We also had one last dinner with some of our good friends who wouldn’t be joining us in Frankfurt. The place we chose sold a 40 euro burger that can apparently get you in another hall of fame, but we decided to save it for next time.
