Broader Frontends
Author : Kazuhiro Hara
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Our Team Created a Competitive Game for Apple Vision Pro at the Hobo Nichi Hackathon

The completed game for visionOS

At the Hobo Nichi Hackathon, held over two days on April 13 and 14, I joined Team 1 and participated in developing a competitive game for Apple Vision Pro.

The Hobo Nichi Hackathon was also held last year, and this year was apparently the second one.

In the end, I joined a team making an AR game using Vision Pro, but there was a slightly strange turn of events behind that.

I applied to this hackathon one day before the application deadline.

At the time, I had been diligently writing content on this site about making Vision Pro apps. I had started with SwiftUI-based development, moved on to React Native Vision OS, and was just beginning to touch Unity with the thought of writing a Unity installment next.

I assumed the hackathon would involve building something for iOS or Android, and thought I could manage somehow. But after my participation was confirmed, there were many adjustments to team composition, and I ultimately ended up on the team building for Vision OS. Only one team was developing for Vision OS.

I did volunteer because I thought it was a chance, but the decision was quite last-minute, so I wondered whether it would really be okay on the day. Since I did not have an actual device, I did sample builds on the simulator at home several times, got a rough feel for it, and went into the event.

Apps are not made only of code. Games especially need graphics and sound. Of course, choosing convenient assets from an asset store is one option, but since we were going to make something with our own hands, I thought handmade content would be better. In other words, I thought that was probably the position for me, given that I was not very used to Vision OS app development.

So I started preparing in advance to make the game's content side, installing Blender on my Mac mini and setting up my OP-1 synthesizer. We had not decided what to make yet, so the actual content would be created on the day.

Our team was Team 1, with three people. It was the smallest team among the hackathon participants, but we divided the work into system, UI/effects, and design, and successfully finished a networked competitive game.

What we finished in two days felt close to a miracle, and it really came together just before the presentation.

Incidentally, on the hackathon day, the other team members brought their own Vision Pros and developed with them, but since I did not own one, I borrowed one Vision Pro from Hobo Nichi.

In my case, I first had to spend some time learning how to operate Vision Pro itself, but because I had imagined and touched various things in advance, it went relatively smoothly. Building the app on the actual device also did not take too long, but one wrong step could have trapped me and made me spend the entire two days only on builds.

For what kind of app it was, one of the team members, @afjk01, has a video in this tweet, so please take a look.

Through this hackathon, I feel like I clearly understood the flow of Vision Pro development, which until then I had only vaguely seen. It was an extremely dense two days.

If you are interested, please consider participating next year.

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