I like to spend my spare time making video games and learning new tech. After I accepted a job at Blizzard this didn’t change, but I now had even more incredibly awesome and talented people to help me build them. Enter Hackathon.
In 2017, I enrolled in that year’s Hackathon as a Test Analyst to help get some additional engineering expoure and further my knowledge of C# and the Unity Engine. I spent that week working on core gameplay mechanics and VR support for the game, which was named Zealot Defense. The core loop of the game involved you, the player, serving as a Zealot at a protoss base. Your goal is simple: protect your 3 pylons from the never-ending wave of zerg and see how long you can last. Getting the VR working was a huge plus, as it allowed us to run a demo during that year’s holiday party. It was a huge hit, with players taking over one of the conference room’s whiteboards to compete for highest score.
In 2018 I was prepared for a new challenge, and set out with my friends to build my first networked multiplayer game. This was called Space League. Space League was a spaceship shooter that had multiple game modes: from a simple free-for-all to a huge control map complete with towers/keeps and payload objectives (ala Heroes of the Storm). Here, I was again responsible for implementing core gameplay loops, but also got my first experience with network code for the multiplayer synchronization which turned out to be a much bigger challenge than I anticipated, but a real fun challenge.
Please reach out to me if you would like to see the source code for these titles!
Kirsten Kane 