Team MicroMario

This program was inspired by the personal mashing of Gus Kristiansen. In previous hackathons, he built several games for the Pebble Watch, but never had he seen Super Mario Bros on the device. Hence, when we formed our finished team (several hours into the hackathon), he provided a direction and goal to be achieved. I don't think any of us fully understood the amount of work ahead of us.

After 36 hours, many Monster Energy Drinks, and a collective dose of eyestrain to last a week, we are happy to present Plumber Person! It is a port of Super Mario Bros Original Nintendo game to the Pebble Watch. This game is intended for anyone who wants to be nostalgic about the early days of video game history, or generally wants to waste time.

In completing this project, we first had to play the game! (Some kid-friendly game play to figure out mechanics, necessary elements, things to emulate in 'small scale'.) The next task on our list was graphics design. We used CC0 images, copied and cropped the images, and then shrunk them down to fit on the Pebble. By making the scene out of a multitude of individual elements, each with a pointer reference, the scene can be rendered as code in the application source, then shown in real time on the device when needed. Next, all the little images had to be placed onto a matrix with references to each object. We used a Java GUI to do this. A project-within-a-project, this allowed an easier method of creating levels, in addition to lowering the space the data takes up, since it can be written into code within the application itself. Finally, we coded all of the elements together into the Pebble Watch app and tested and refined it over and over.

What key features are we most proud of? We are especially proud of the integration of the accelerometer into the application, allowing tilting the watch to control the direction of travel of Mario. We are also happy that the Java Level GUI made the process significantly easier through automation (instead of coding each individual element into a specific place, over and over). Finally, the website came out well, and marketing is just as much a part of a successful app as the app itself.