The Spark
How Geese Love Merch was created
Beware this story may make you cry when reading .When our team first applied to Hack The North, we were excited about the iconic goose merch typically given out during the opening ceremony. As we approached Laz Hall, we aimed to secure the best spot for a chance to catch one of these flying geese from the cannon. We chose to sit in the first row on the second floor, hoping to be in the perfect position. However, our hopes slowly disappeared when we realized that the geese that were being launched to the second floor were always falling down or being aimed at the worst spots for us to grab them. Disappointed, we decided to create Geese Love Merch to fill the void left by our missed opportunity. We hoped this would encourage the organizers to aim higher and throw some gooses our way. (please do).
Powered On and Secure
What is Geese Love Merch ?
Geese Love Merch is based in the famous Lazarus Hall, featuring our *main character the iconic goose on wheels (yes, we know its amazing). The game's primary objective is to fire merch at sponsors randomly appearing across the seats every 6 seconds. The more sponsors you hit with merch from your gun, the closer you get to securing your dream internship as the ultimate prize. The game gives a fun atmosphere letting the user have a fun and different objective to play on.
Gameplay Highlights
- Setting: The famous Lazarus Hall
- Main Character: The iconic goose on wheels
- Objective: Hit sponsors with merchandise
- Timing: Sponsors appear every 6 seconds
- Goal: Secure an internship by hitting the most sponsors
YouTube tutorial, Google Search, Code, Repeat
How we built Geese Love Merch
The technology we used for Geese Love Merch we went into cold, with barely any experience. The whole game was built Unity, with primary language being #C. We used tools to enhance our projects such as the Unity asset store, AI modeling and blender to create our own designs. We then further levelled our game up by including animations, text and music to give more of a lively feel towards our game.
The Urge to Break our Laptops
The challenges we ran into
One of the major challenges our team faced was the struggle to commit to a single idea and see it through to completion. Throughout the 36-hour hackathon, we had around 4-5 different project ideas and even began work on a few. However, our biggest struggle was learning Unity and C# in such a short timeframe (essentially a day), and pushing throughout our all nighters. Another significant obstacle we encountered was the limitation of working on Unity one person at a time. If multiple team members ran the project simultaneously and pushed changes, it would cause the game to crash, potentially ruining our entire progress.
Key Challenges:
- Difficulty in settling on a single project
- Learning Unity and C# in a day
- Preventing crashes
The Top of the Hill
What we're proud of!
Finishing. This 36-hour hackathon has been a rollercoaster of emotions; however, we chose to do something that we loved and would play ourselves. We took this period not only to learn Unity and C# but also to create something that we enjoyed making. At first, we were scared and picked ideas that we thought would be the "winning idea"; however, we soon realized that we weren't having any fun or really learning anything. So we decided to risk it all and attempted to do something we never imagined we would do when we first got here.
Sunday Morning
What we learned
Have fun and don't take everything too seriously.. This is the biggest lesson our team learned, and we wish we had learned it sooner. Initially, we wanted our idea to be the next big thing in Silicon Valley; however, the reality was that we weren't having much fun. We were working on something none of our group members felt proud of. Then we decided to create "Geese Love Merch," which completely changed our group's energy. We started laughing and became excited about what the final product would be.
What's next for Geese Love Merch
We want to keep working on this even after the hackathon and add to it to make it a even better game. We hope you enjoy the game as much as we enjoyed making it :)
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