On October 18 and 20, a team composed of graduates and students from TELECOM Nancy took part in the first edition of the Game Jam Arcade Algorithms Adventure (AAA), organized by Inria and the University of Lorraine at LORIA. Around sixty participants, divided into ten teams, worked from Friday 10/18 in the evening until Sunday 20/10 noon before talking with professionals from different companies, laboratories and schools.
This initiative aimed to forge links between research and the development of video games. On this occasion, Joannès Guichon , a graduate of the 2022 class, shared his feedback with us.
“The AAA Game Jam is a video game creation event open to anyone. It consisted of two parts: the game development part and the round table discussion part with research and video game professionals.
The main idea was to build a bridge between video games and research. Participants therefore first had to vote for a theme from a list proposed by LORIA research subjects. The theme chosen this year was Space Garbage Collector: Collecting Space Junk Around Earth .”
Joannès Guichon tells how, with his team mainly composed of graduates and students from TELECOM Nancy, they created their game, named Spaper Cleaner .
Here are the members of his team:
- Sarah Depernet : PhD student in formal verification (applied to cybersecurity) at Loria and graduate of the Faculty of Science and Technology
- Paul Chipot : 2022 graduate of TELECOM Nancy and software engineer at Handi Exceller
- Florian Gonçalves : 3rd year IAMD student at TELECOM Nancy
- Raphaël Roullet : 1st year student at TELECOM Nancy
- Evan Weisse : 2022 graduate of TELECOM Nancy and double-degree student in video games in Chicoutimi
- Joannès Guichon : 2022 graduate of TELECOM Nancy and currently in the 3rd year of a thesis at INRIA Nancy
Although their team had the humorous name Free Food Collector , their project exceeded their expectations: they won the Theme Award for their game Spaper Cleaner.
In Spaper Cleaner , players take on the role of the Light Swivelling Collector with Cleaning Wagons (CLOWN) , a robot tasked with cleaning Earth’s orbit of waste.
The scenario : Year 2039.
Humans have still not understood the extent of their impact on the environment.
Their unbridled consumption continues, and now space has become the worst of dumps.
Fortunately, there is still hope: the Light Collector Orientable with Cleaning Wagons , aka the CLOWN , self-deployed in space.
And that robot is you .
Your mission? Clean up nearby orbits by collecting all the trash floating in the vacuum of space. But be careful, managing your energy will be essential. One bad strategy, and you could end up as a wandering wreck too!
Unfortunately, humans prefer to ignore the problem. Result? You’re not going to be out of work.
Be careful: you will need to return to your station regularly to recharge your batteries and recycle the waste you collect.
So, courage, young pollution-cleaning robot! Optimize your resources, and with any luck, you’ll clean up space… in just a few decades!
“One of the reasons we were honored to receive the Theme Award is that the idea behind our game’s graphics was to use as a base some of the trash we ourselves had produced during the event. The planets were stylized plates, space itself a paper tablecloth, our ship made of cardboard bricks, etc.
It seemed good to us to remember that even if we work to depollute space, we are at the same time still rotting our own planet.”
A big congratulations to the whole team for this intense and fun weekend and thanks to Joannès for his testimony!