The first ever PubHack went off with a bang! We had 100% attendance, with 25 geeks from around the South coming to take part in our 10 hour digital hackathon in Portsmouth at the Brewhouse and Kitchen.
The Brief
After an early morning bleary eyed introduction, we kicked things off slightly early at 8:40 with the brief. The word was Post-Apocolypse. There were some surprised reactions but the teams got off to a start and we darted around the room throughout the day to see what everyone was up to.
The Entrants
We had six teams enter:
- Applied Bonzolance
- Chris & Dave
- Moov2
- The Four Horseman
- #DevsDoDesign
- Plug & Play
Each team made something really unique, let’s talk you through each project…
The Results
PubHack #1 Overall Winner – Chris & Dave “Rise of the Nerds”
Chris and Dave produced a brilliant zombie based game using Unity, basing the zombie game inside the venue we were in (The Brewhouse and Kitchen), which in itself was awesome. What really clinched it was the overall design of the project. The guys took photographs of various textures and items around the pub to build a realistic environment. Not only that they took photos of people taking part in PubHack and used their faces to create the zombies (with terrifying effects).
PubHack #1 Best Design – Applied Bonzolance “Apocalhipster”
Try saying that when you’re drunk! The four guys from Applied Bonzolance (Nathan, Karl, Lee and Phil) created Apocalhipster. A game which pitted hipsters against their zombie counterparts in a web-based game built using create.js and node.js. They used websockets to send real-time accelerometer data from iPhones and iPads allowing anyone to control a character on the big screen just by waving their phone around. Hipsterlicious.
PubHack #1 Most Likely to Commercial Succeed – #DevsDoDesign
Robb, Dan, Ed and Ali made up the awesome team name #DevsDoDesign. Their entry was the Shaun of the Dead inspired Has It Blown Over Yet? which took the concept of UK Snow and turned it into a zombie outbreak tracker. You can enter your postcode, the level of zombie outbreak and a message and it will plot it on the map using Google Maps & Twitter. It also shows you local safe houses so you can grab a pint and wait for all this to blow up.
View it here: http://blownover.meteor.com/
The other awesome entries
Moov2 – Last Man Standing
The guys from moov2 in Southampton created an awesome game which we all got to enjoy. It uses the battery API so you can log in and locate other users and see who’s using power, cutting them off at the source.
View it here (Firefox Only): http://pubhack.moov2.com/
Four Horsemen – Helping you survive the apocalypse
Three guys teamed up at PubHack to create a website that lets you find forts to help you survive the apocalypse. Not only that you can submit forts, check in and rate them according to their level of safety, stability and capacity.
View it here: http://perfectmurdercompany.co.uk/4horsemen/
Plug & Play – Mapocolypse
Plug & Play also came from Southampton and created the Mapocolypse – a worldwide map using Google Maps to plot outbreaks of various apolacypse type creatures such as zombies, man eating plants and aliens.
View it here: http://markblythe.co.uk/zombie-nation/
