For this year's SUSECON Digital, we are looking to drive home the message of Innovate Everywhere by showcasing the creativity of our Engineering team. The theme this year features a leap into space and a nostalgic design.

Goal: Engage with our audience through game play that highlights the points of Innovate Everywhere. We want them to keep coming back to play throughout the SUSECON Digital experience.

Requirements: This needs to be space themed and any gameplay style is welcome, but it must be simple to understand and play. Think of creating a fidget spinner - addictive but don't need to know to how use. Ideally the game would be obviously SUSE-influenced (chameleons, cattle, etc)!

If a viable game is created, it will be directly visible to customers and all attendees as part of SUSECON. Gamer points accumulated will contribute to attendees’ SUSECON gamification participation point totals, helping them win event prizes.

*Where we need support: *We are looking for help on the graphic element, cloud service element and game logic. Non-coders welcome too!

Resources: Public domain, clone and remake sources ok. GitHub has thousands of repositories for inspiration, information and data sources…

If you're interested in participating, please get in touch with Sara Stephens - sara.stephens@suse.com

Looking for hackers with the skills:

game games space gamification

This project is part of:

Hack Week 20

Activity

  • over 3 years ago: lcaparroz liked this project.
  • over 3 years ago: dleidi liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: mlnoga liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: dancermak liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: ories liked this project.
  • almost 4 years ago: SaraStephens originated this project.

  • Comments

    • dancermak
      almost 4 years ago by dancermak | Reply

      Not exactly what you're looking for, but maybe interesting anyway: https://hackweek.suse.com/20/projects/workadventu-dot-re-at-suse

      • jevrard
        almost 4 years ago by jevrard | Reply

        We would indeed be happy to link to a web page mentioning the game in our workadventure project!

    • mlnoga
      almost 4 years ago by mlnoga | Reply

      Consider using a cross-platform engine like Defold. Their GitHub is here. Comes with full artwork editing tools, so our marketing colleagues can participate, too.

    • SaraStephens
      almost 4 years ago by SaraStephens | Reply

      Great suggestions thank you both!

    • digitaltomm
      almost 4 years ago by digitaltomm | Reply

      I created a game 8 years ago, in Hackweek 2013: https://digitalflow.de/geeko/ But no space theme there ;-)

    • jevrard
      almost 4 years ago by jevrard | Reply

      Other suggestion for engines, and other resources: https://github.com/Calinou/awesome-gamedev

    • dleidi
      over 3 years ago by dleidi | Reply

      In case of need for more inspiration, I am aware of this instead https://gather.town/

    Similar Projects

    SUSE Prague claw machine by anstalker

    Project Description

    The idea is to build a claw machine similar to e.g. this one:

    example image

    Why? Well, it could be a lot of fun!

    But also it's a great way to dispense SUSE and openSUSE merch like little Geekos at events like conferences, career fairs and open house events.

    Goal for this Hackweek

    Build an arcade claw machine.

    Resources

    In French, an article about why you always lose in claw machine games:

    We're looking for handy/crafty people in the Prague office:

    • woodworking XP or equipment
    • arduino/raspi embedded programming knowledge
    • Anthony can find a budget for going to GM and buying servos and such ;)


    SUSE AI Meets the Game Board by moio

    Use tabletopgames.ai’s open source TAG and PyTAG frameworks to apply Statistical Forward Planning and Deep Reinforcement Learning to two board games of our own design. On an all-green, all-open source, all-AWS stack!
    A chameleon playing chess in a train car, as a metaphor of SUSE AI applied to games


    Results: Infrastructure Achievements

    We successfully built and automated a containerized stack to support our AI experiments. This included:

    A screenshot of k9s and nvtop showing PyTAG running in Kubernetes with GPU acceleration

    ./deploy.sh and voilà - Kubernetes running PyTAG (k9s, above) with GPU acceleration (nvtop, below)

    Results: Game Design Insights

    Our project focused on modeling and analyzing two card games of our own design within the TAG framework:

    • Game Modeling: We implemented models for Dario's "Bamboo" and Silvio's "Totoro" and "R3" games, enabling AI agents to play thousands of games ...in minutes!
    • AI-driven optimization: By analyzing statistical data on moves, strategies, and outcomes, we iteratively tweaked the game mechanics and rules to achieve better balance and player engagement.
    • Advanced analytics: Leveraging AI agents with Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) and random action selection, we compared performance metrics to identify optimal strategies and uncover opportunities for game refinement .

    Cards from the three games

    A family picture of our card games in progress. From the top: Bamboo, Totoro, R3

    Results: Learning, Collaboration, and Innovation

    Beyond technical accomplishments, the project showcased innovative approaches to coding, learning, and teamwork:

    • "Trio programming" with AI assistance: Our "trio programming" approach—two developers and GitHub Copilot—was a standout success, especially in handling slightly-repetitive but not-quite-exactly-copypaste tasks. Java as a language tends to be verbose and we found it to be fitting particularly well.
    • AI tools for reporting and documentation: We extensively used AI chatbots to streamline writing and reporting. (Including writing this report! ...but this note was added manually during edit!)
    • GPU compute expertise: Overcoming challenges with CUDA drivers and cloud infrastructure deepened our understanding of GPU-accelerated workloads in the open-source ecosystem.
    • Game design as a learning platform: By blending AI techniques with creative game design, we learned not only about AI strategies but also about making games fun, engaging, and balanced.

    Last but not least we had a lot of fun! ...and this was definitely not a chatbot generated line!

    The Context: AI + Board Games


    Port some classic game to Linux by MDoucha

    Let's pick some old classic game, reverse engineer the data formats and game rules and write an open source engine for it from scratch. Some games from 1990s are simple enough that we could have a playable prototype by the end of the week.

    Write which games you'd like to hack on in the comments. Don't forget to check e.g. on Open Source Game Clones, Github and SourceForge whether the game is ported already.

    Hack Week 24 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares & Chaos Overlords

    Work on Master of Orion II continues but we can hack more than one game. Chaos Overlords is a dystopian, lighthearted, cyberpunk turn-based strategy game originally released in 1996 for Windows 95 and Mac OS. The player takes on the role of a Chaos Overlord, attempting to control a city. Gameplay involves hiring mercenary gangs and deploying them on an 8-by-8 grid of city sectors to generate income, occupy sectors and take over the city.

    How to ~~install & play~~ observe the decompilation progress:

    • Clone the Git repository
    • A playable reimplementation does not exist yet, but when it does, it will be linked in the repository mentioned above.

    Further work needed:

    • Analyze the remaining unknown data structures, most of which are related to the AI.
    • Decompile the AI completely. The strong AI is part of the appeal of the game. It cannot be left out.
    • Reimplement the game.

    Hack Week 20, 21, 22 & 23 - Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares

    Master of Orion II is one of the greatest turn-based 4X games of the 1990s. Explore the galaxy, colonize planets, research new technologies, fight space monsters and alien empires and in the end, become the ruler of the galaxy one way or another.

    How to install & play:

    • Clone the Git repository
    • Run ./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make install
    • Copy all *.LBX files from the original Master of Orion II to the installation data directory (/usr/local/share/openorion2 by default)
    • Run openorion2

    Further work needed:

    • Analyze the rest of the original savegame format and a few remaining data files.
    • Implement most of the game. The open source engine currently supports only loading saved games from the original version and viewing the galaxy map, fleet management and list of known planets.

    Hack Week 19 - Signus: The Artifact Wars

    Signus is a Czech turn-based strategy game similar to Panzer General or Battle Isle series. Originally published in 1998 and open-sourced by the original developers in 2003.

    How to install & play:

    • Clone the Git repository
    • Run ./bootstrap; ./configure; make && make install in both signus and signus-data directories.
    • Run signus

    Further work needed:

    • Create openSUSE package
    • Implement full support for original game data (the open source version uses slightly different data file contents but original game data can be converted using a script).


    SUSE Prague claw machine by anstalker

    Project Description

    The idea is to build a claw machine similar to e.g. this one:

    example image

    Why? Well, it could be a lot of fun!

    But also it's a great way to dispense SUSE and openSUSE merch like little Geekos at events like conferences, career fairs and open house events.

    Goal for this Hackweek

    Build an arcade claw machine.

    Resources

    In French, an article about why you always lose in claw machine games:

    We're looking for handy/crafty people in the Prague office:

    • woodworking XP or equipment
    • arduino/raspi embedded programming knowledge
    • Anthony can find a budget for going to GM and buying servos and such ;)