(Simon Squared) x n: The Multi-player Challenge

A new year, a new challenge.

The end of 2010 found me scrambling to build a Windows Phone 7 game in 3 days using the XNA framework, spurred on by a competition deadline and the potential reward of a $10,000 prize. The challenge was to “build something that developers will love”, and who doesn’t love reading of a race against the clock?

Well, I got the game done (Ok, maybe not done done – it will still stand some polishing) only to find the deadline moved by two months, and thus my unique selling point rendered an unlovely shade of void. So I need a new challenge, a bigger, a bolder challenge.

How about making a multi-player version of the game?

Using GPS to locate players nearby?

In 3 days?

Oh, and I nearly forgot the geeky dessert topping: I’ll be using Windows Azure to pull it all together.

Now, just to be clear, my calendar doesn’t contain three consecutive day-sized gaps, so these 3 days will have to be spread out over the next couple of weeks. In betweenwhiles, I can’t guarantee that my eye won’t stray to the MSDN pages about Windows Azure, or that my brain won’t allocate a background thread to designing message protocols. But I will promise to keep my Visual Studio solution firmly shut whilst the clock is not ticking.