About 6 weeks ago I found out about the Google Android Developer Challenge 2. I had read about the first version of the contest about a month after it had ended, and could have kicked myself for not finding out about it in time to enter. So with just 6 weeks notice I told myself I could not let this one pass me by.

Melanie had been wanting me to do a SET-like game for a while, so we settled on trying that first. After finding out about the first content I had already downloaded the SDK and played around a little, but I had a lot to learn. The game we came up with is called Firefly and uses the attributes of color, orientation, and blink rate as the aspects you have to find the same or different, much like in SET.

Firefly took about 3 weeks with all the learning I had to undertake, but once I got it 95% where it needed to be I decided I had time to try another one for the contest. I had always wanted to do a game loosely based on the arcade classic Locomotion (and as evidenced on my Palm software page started but never finished for PalmOS) so that's what I decided to tackle next. My Firefly experience really helped save some time and I got Taxi Run knocked out in 2 weeks. That left me 1 more week before the contest deadline.

Being foolishly optimistic I decided I could crank out a third contest app in a week. I was originally going to do a game similar to Rebound and got started on the physics engine for it. Melanie, however, had other ideas. She came up with a greatly simplified version of a concept for the iPhone we had been kicking around for months. This simpler concept was for simulating drawing on fogged glass - you could blow into the phone's microphone to "fog" up your screen, then draw with your finger. I came up with the name Foggle and started working furiously - and got done over this past weekend.

So all-in-all that leaves me today until about 2:00 am to put on the final touches and get these 3 apps packaged up and uploaded to the contest. It would be way cool to win any of the prizes, but in the end we all love playing the apps I've come up with so that's enough. And of course there is always the Android Market to sell them.