ODTUG APEX Gaming Competition - How'd They Do It? (Part 8)

At Kscope 15 this year we launched the first ever ODTUG APEX game competition. The APEX community responded with 15 entries! Each and every one of them left me thinking "How'd they do that?" So, let's find out more about the games and those who wrote them.

Marcelo Burgos...would you please stand and address the class?.

First off, tell me a little about yourself.

My name is Marcelo Burgos, co-founder of Argentina Oracle Users Group and the Apex Tour Conference. Also I work for the Universidad de Buenos Aires and I'm a self-employed Apex developer.

How many years of APEX experience do you have?

I've more than 8 years working with Apex.

What motivated you to participate in the APEX Gaming Competition?

My wife is a Math teacher and asked me for a solution for get their students put a little enthusiasm in the classroom. I thought I could kill two birds of one shot, developing a game for help the students to study geometry with fun, and if possible, for winning the Apex gaming competition.

What is the name of your game?

The name of the game is Leonhard, which is a tribute to Leonhard Euler, the Graphs theory father.

Briefly describe your game.

The game consists of multiple graphics, and you have to "draw" over all the lines of each figure without "lifting the pencil from the paper". You cannot pass the "pencil" twice for the same line. 

For draw a line you have to click at both ends.

How long did it take you to develop your games?

I  developed the app in five stages. Each stage took us a week for thinking and a couple days for coding. The game have a lot of artwork that took other two days to transform from analog (paper) to digital (database).

What was the most challenging element of your game design and how did you overcome it?

Technically, the app works drawing lines and points over a html5 canvas element.

An Ajax callback pl/sql process works dynamically building javascript code each time you clic a point. We had to resort to a lot of Oracle techniques such as functions and Apex collections, and we had to resort a special canvas library for facilitate the identification of the points you clic during the game.

Alright, how can I play?

You can play the game at the url https://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=31416 and uses open authentication although is mandatory to enter your name.

Anything else you'd like to add?

After the competition we follow working in the program due is expected to be used for my wife's students. After removing a couple bugs, now we get to include 3D shapes in the game, and now also we translated the app to spanish. That sounds simple, but we had to work a lot to fix an unexpected problem: numeric format after language localization brokes all the code inside the javascript.  

You learn something new every day.

Thanks, Marcelo. In the coming days we'll share more insight into a few of the remaining games that were part of the contest.

...our journey continues