Tank Tinkerer: A Micro:bit Competition
National Infocomm Digital Making Challenge 2018 (Senior Category)
Update, 2019: We have a new competition for this year! It’s called Paint Tinkerer, because we ran out of names. Find out more at http://tk.sg/painttinkerer.
2018 article follows:
A year ago, we wrote about Getting Singapore making with micro:bit and the Digital Maker Programme. Since then, we’ve been busy creating new micro:bit kits and writing tutorials for our micro:bit Tinker Kit— and we’ll tell you more about these soon!—but here’s an exciting project we’ve been working on: designing our very own micro:bit competition.
For this year’s National Infocomm Challenge, we wanted to do something different from the “usual” micro:bit hackathon. So, for the inaugural version of this micro:bit competition in Singapore, participants will create their own game controllers to play a capture-the-flag style video game we made, called Tank Tinkerer:
(And yes, it’s called Tank Tinkerer because that’s an anagram of our company name. We felt clever for days after coming up with this.)
This is the official competition website, just for info, because registration has closed and we’re on to the finals soon:
At time of writing, we’ve reviewed 60+ teams in the preliminaries, and are looking forward to the finals at Tech Saturday this weekend (2 June, 10am) at Suntec City. We’ll share pictures and videos on our social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), and we’ll hopefully have our very talented young intern Jerrayl write about his experience creating the game in Unity.
In the meantime, we’d like to share a bit more about the competition: what is Tank Tinkerer, how is Tank Tinkerer played, and (with apologies to one green-skinned Guardian), why is Tank Tinkerer.
What is Tank Tinkerer?
The game itself is available for download from itch.io, linked below.
What do participants actually do in this competition? The simple answer: Design micro:bit controllers that send wireless signals to control their tanks in the Tank Tinkerer game.
What we hope participants do, though, is to make the controllers be as visually striking as possible. As such, we’re hoping for entries such as giant cardboard constructions, DIY craft props, a co-ordinated dance sequence, and/or lots and lots of wild, flailing limb movements.
How does Tank Tinkerer work?
We (well… mostly Jerrayl) made the game in Unity, out of a variety of open-source models and prefabs—you can grab a copy of the source code here:
Aside: Look at that URL! Tinkertanker/TankTinkerer! Ahha haaha haha! Oh, ahem, sorry.
How do controllers talk to the game? The Tank Tinkerer game reads serial input from a receiver micro:bit, connected to the game computer by USB. The micro:bit controllers, or senders, simply send keyboard commands (e.g. W to move forward, S to move back) to the received to control the game. Our installation guide has information anyone needs to get the game set up properly.
Won’t participants experience lots of lag time by having to send their controls over the micro:bit radio? Yes. This is intentional, and also hilarious to watch.
How do participants win? We split the competition into two main categories, with prizes for the top controller designs, and a 64-team tournament for the best players. We’re also hoping to see some teams dress up for the Best Theme.
Why this competition?
When designing this competition, we were heavily inspired by the Nintendo LABO launch video from earlier this year:
By having the competition be about designing game controllers, we aim to have participants create physical, real-world objects that interact with our game’s virtual world. We think this is a great way to bring together maker concepts such as sensors & actuators, inter-device connectivity, and even a dash of augmented reality, to excite participants into thinking up their next great connected device project.
Many Tanks To…
Our competition partners Zenitant for all their invaluable assistance in organising the competition, and registering and co-ordinating with schools; the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore for making the Digital Maker Programme happen; and the Methodist Girls’ School Infocomm Club for their critical support and play-testing in the game’s early development.
Want to run your own?
Are you interested in running a Tank Tinkerer competition in your school, district, or country? All the source code and executables are free to use! Just please drop us an email so we know where this ends up, if you really need some help setting up, or if you have improvements to make.
