On Saturday, November 9, 2019, approximately 100 students from across the Phoenix area came to UAT’s campus for CodeDay, a 24-hour marathon to test their skill in app and game design. Students of all experience levels teamed up and worked all night long, learning from mentors and presentations along the way. “We provided sessions for them to learn about different coding languages, as well as actual applications like GameMaker, Construct, and Unity,” explained Kathy Mitchell from State Farm, one of the main event sponsors.
In its 5th year in Phoenix, CodeDay was created by SRND, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing computer science enrollment for students. The November event was held nationwide, with students in cities across the country concurrently competing for awards. Phoenix placed third nationally in CodeCup, presented by Splunk, a capture-the-flag style of virtual game that teaches the students about cyber security.
Awards at the UAT location included:
Best in Class, Game (solo)
Wyatt Summerville for his game with advanced time variables
Best in Class, Game
Obby Busters, a competitive obstacle course game designed in Robeblox Studios
Best in Class, App
Maxim A, a GUI interface for discord servers
Best in Show
SleepBuzz, a website and android app that helps users set location-based reminders
Special awards:
Young Age
Team Cheese, middle-school aged attendees who stayed extra and worked overtime to make a funny game experience with a 3D, first-person shooter and great memes
Data Science Technology
Ben Ciccarelli, A SageMaker deep machine learning AI chat bot
Most Creative and Fun
Toastmasters, a game where toast ejected from a toaster becomes ammo against malicious jars of jam and peanut butter; a playful take on a traditional shooter game
Check out photos from the event!
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