There are 16 days left before the beginning of the next online coding contest Hypersonic. We will celebrate the second anniversary* of the platform and we’re really excited to share it with you. We hope you’re ready!
Here’s Hypersonic diary, from its origins:
Day minus 117, Conception
“It’s a girl, we need to find her a name”
Romain, Art Director
Romain working on the main illustration
This is the time to work on the main illustration. A vote is done in the development team to help Arthur and Aude find the prizes. “What would you like to win?”Another vote is conducted to find the name of the contest. Not an easy task!
Contest name: results of the vote
All of this should be done really early. Indeed at the end of a contest, the registration page of the next one should be updated. So everything needs to be ready at the end of Codebusters.
Day minus 85, Hacking
“Hey, the contest has to be crazy good, because another company is ready to work with us”
Alexis, Corporate Relations Hacker
Some developers register for fun and glory. Others want to get noticed by companies. Our goal is thus to showcase lots of interesting job opportunities to them.
Obviously, this isn’t a one-day job. As of today, there are 19 sponsors for Hypersonic.
Day minus 54, Brainstorm
“_ We could do a game like StarCraft?
_ Too complex.
_ Something chess-like ?
_ Too classic.
_ A game with bluff like poker?
_ Too random…”
The whole dev team
At some point, the type of game should be decided. Either we stay very close to an existing game (Puyo-Puyo for Smash the Code) or we build our own game (like for Codebusters). Indeed we try as much as possible to provide you with something reminiscent of the illustration, but it’s not always easy to do.
The dev team also begins to discuss the possible rules for each league.
Background of the game
Day minus 50, Building
“The status for Hypersonic, well, it’s ongoing.”
Julien, Game Builder
Each game is mainly built by one developer only. Of course, all the team can help with anything: testing, code review…
It usually takes 2 full weeks until a prototype can be tested. At the same time, the design team (Romain and Malia) starts to work on the assets of the game.
An asset of the game
Day minus 36, Testing
“Yeees, I beat the boss”
Jerome, Product Manager
Follows a series of iterations between the game builder and the testers. Usually, all developers try the game and give some feedback. Rules are tweaked, the statement is improved, art assets are added to the game…
One important concern, as you might guess, is the difficulty of the game.
Day minus 24, Promotion
Thibaud, community manager: “Already 5 CodingHubs!”
The more, the merrier. A contest is a programming competition, but it’s also a fun event where a lot of developers discuss and share their passion for coding. For example, in a CodingHub.
This is the time we start to communicate more about the contest, like with this blog post (blogception!).
Hour minus 1, Excitation
It will seem like a normal day at work although it’ll be Saturday afternoon. Most of the team will gather to ensure a smooth launch of the contest.
We look forward to seeing you on Saturday the 24th of September at 12:00 pm EST for the opening of Hypersonic!
*CodinGame isn’t 2 years old, the platform was just really different before.