History of Imagine Cup 2014 through the eyes of Brainy Studio

Last year, Briany Studio’s wonderful team of software students from Perm went to the final of the Imagine Cup competition at the headquarters of Microsoft on Seattle and brought Russia victory in the “games” category. Now, when the main stage of the competition in Russia is just beginning, the guys decided to share their impressions of the trip in order to inspire other teams to participate in the contest and win. We are happy to publish the impressions of the guys in our blog.

Hello! In the summer of 2014, our Brainy Studio team found itself in the finals of the international Imagine Cup competition , where we represented Russia in the Games nomination with our TurnOn project. We managed to take first place, win the main prize of $ 50,000, and also receive 20,000 euros for the development of our startup in the additional competition AppCampus Award .



If interested - go under habrakat, there are still many beautiful videos!
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We have written a lot of publications from Komsomolskaya Pravda to Look At Me . Even there was a special page "Brainy Studio: Instructions for a Dream" on the site Imagine Cup . And it was great! However, we would like to write our own history and share with you the complete material, how it all happened with our eyes, how these 10 unforgettable days passed in Seattle (USA) in the homeland of Microsoft.

We hope that this article will be useful to all those who are participating or planning to participate in the Imagine Cup. We also hope that this material can inspire those who did not succeed in the first time - because we won the Imagine Cup the second time, and the AppCampus Award in the third.

As mentioned above, for us this was the second attempt to participate in the Imagine Cup - the first participation was in 2013: in April we reached the Russian final, where we took the second place. After that, it took us another half a year to finally release our first game WitchCraft at the end of October 2013, which was made absolutely free and without advertising on the Windows Phone platform.

After the first release within 3 months, we were engaged in the development of the continuation of WitchCraft 2 - on the new for us Unity 3D engine. But soon came the awareness of the fatigue of the setting and the understanding that with a small team we are not ready for a quick transition from 2D to full 3D. And by the end of 2013, it was decided to freeze the project for a while.

After the 2014 New Year holidays, our artist Ilya at one of the meetings shared an idea for the next project: "It should be an atmospheric game about a small electric spark that lights up the light in the city." Having discussed the main points, we agreed with the concept and began to develop the idea further.

The first tasks were the design of the design document and the assembly of the prototype of the game. Two weeks later, we learned about the start of the Games Jam Kanobu contest, and this contest turned out to be an excellent test of the viability of the game.

At that time, there was not even confidence that by the end of the competition we would be able to collect at least a small prototype of the game. But over the month of development, we worked in detail on a design document and rolled out a working demo version of the game with two levels. As a result, we received excellent feedback and comments on the project - most appreciated the concept, the atmosphere and the proposed gameplay. This gave an additional charge of motivation and desire to continue to do the project.



Moreover, in the “Realization” nomination we unexpectedly took the 3rd place and received a free license of Unity Pro, tickets to participate in the DevGamm conference and 30,000 rubles, for which we later went to this exhibition to show our project.

Naturally, in February 2014 they decided to try a second time to apply for the Imagine Cup competition with TurnOn and began to work hard on the game, so that over time it would become more than just a two-level prototype. As time went on, the game grew, we added new content, checked the gameplay, tested and reworked it.

The regional final of the Imagine Cup in Perm was very easy for us. We showed a good level of preparedness of the project, and already in April we were at the Russian final of the competition, where we also won first place. Video about how the Russian final passed:



Following the results , 3 projects of the winner in each category were selected : “Games”, “Innovations” and “Social Projects” . For a month, it was necessary to take into account the comments, rework the project and all materials into English, and also record a 10-minute video of the presentation entirely in English in one duplicate. After that they had to choose only one team, which will represent the country at the international final. And on June 6, 2014 we received a letter that we were chosen from three teams and in 2 months we will go to the international final of the Imagine Cup in the USA.

Two months of preparation passed very quickly and during this time we had a lot of time:

• Finalize the project, add several new levels and implement clear learning.
• Adapt levels and realize virtual reality support not only for Oculus Rift glasses, but also on mobile devices running Windows Phone
• Put a full demo version in public access
• Prepare for the exhibition of projects, make handouts and prepare versions of the game for different devices
• And most importantly, to work out and rehearse a presentation in English to automatism.

And so on July 24, 2014, our journey to America began:



We were very lucky when we asked Microsoft to make a flight to the USA 5 days before the competition at the time of booking a plane ticket, so that we had time to acclimatize and have time to see the city and the sights outside the main and very rich Imagine Cup program.

The only thing was to independently find a hostel where to live and choose how to spend this free time. This question was resolved in advance: while the whole team was finalizing the game and preparing for the presentation, our mentor Anton spent some time to plan the trip and we knew in advance where we wanted to go and what to see.



The next day, from so many walks around Seattle, everyone had sore feet, but it was impossible to give up, because on the third day, it was planned to visit the famous Museum of Flight - Aviation Museum, located on the territory where famous Boing planes are assembled.



On the fourth day of the trip, we had a meeting with our acquaintance Michelle Fleming , who until recently led the program of Microsoft partner students - she promised to take us on Facebook in June to take an unusual tour of the underground city.

And after the excursion we planned to go to the Bellevue area in order to find the headquarters of Valve , try to get there on the excursion and maybe buy souvenirs that were left from the past a week ago by The International 4 .



Every day we were attracted by the famous Mount Rainier , which was visible from all parts of the city. And the last free day was devoted to a trip to the national park at the foot of this mountain.



The trip to Mount Rainier was an excellent charge of emotions for the whole team to switch and be fully prepared for the most important event of this year. After all, tomorrow began what we came to the US - the Imagine Cup .



The sixth and seventh day were so intense that we physically lacked the strength to videotape everything that happens - after all, preparation for the presentation was the most important thing at that moment.

For the presentation, teams are given 35 minutes, of which the first 5 minutes is training outside the audience, where all the performance rules are repeated, then 10 minutes - equipment preparation, connecting laptops and necessary devices, the next 10 minutes and not a second longer - the presentation itself and the last minutes - questions and answers to them.



Despite all the difficulties, during the main demonstration, everything went perfectly. Ilya came out at the right moment, a little shocked everyone with an unexpected appearance and appearance (white coat and glasses). The interaction on the stage between the cartoon hero and the real person, and then his embodiment in the form of Ilya on the stage, was perceived with a bang. Our performance was a bit long and exceeded the allotted time, but at the very end of the presentation there was a very epic video, so no one could interrupt us.

We made the presentation itself in Prezi and can be found here .

The next day we had to go to the Microsoft campus and show the game all day at the exhibition, including the judges, so that they had the opportunity to play and appreciate the gameplay. It was on that day that the winners of additional nominations were to be announced, which was a complete surprise for us ...



The evening dinner at Space Niddle was a wonderful end to the day when we realized that we had done everything that depended on us and now we just had to wait for the results and enjoy the ride.



The World Championship award ceremony was the most vivid impression of the entire Imagine Cup - the full version can be viewed here .

On the final day, for all participants of the Imagine Cup, a large exhibition of projects at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) was organized, at which it was possible to show their projects to ordinary visitors. But as it turned out at the end of this day, another big surprise was waiting for us ...



After arriving in Russia, we had to prepare for PAX Prime 2014 , where TurnOn needed to be shown exactly one month later, all in Seattle, and a month later two people from the team visited the AppCampus educational program to promote mobile applications to Aalto University ( Finland, Helsinki). But that's another story, which we can write about in our blog .

Half a year has passed, the work on TurnOn does not stop, the project is not being developed as quickly as we would like, but for a development team of 4 people this is a good pace. Recently, TurnOn went into early access on the Windows Phone platform .

I hope this article was interesting and useful.