Engineering student creates game on Android tablet - University Daily Kansan

Blake Hefley said that he’s always had a mind for computer programming, but it took a University programming class for him to realize it. Hefley, a sophomore from Wichita, studied music at New York University before deciding to return to the University and try something different.

“That was me trying to run away from it, but really, I knew I belonged behind a desk programming,” he said.

Hefley has already designed his first game, one that’s a basic Pong style, on the Motorola Xoom tablet that he received last fall from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Last fall, alumnus Brian McClendon, the vice president of Google Maps and Google Earth, donated $50,000 to the department to provide students with Android tablets. Google announced in February that the company would donate another $50,000 for the same purpose next fall.

Photo by Ashleigh Lee

Blake Hefley, a sophomore from Wichita, poses with his Android Tablet, which he used to design a Pong-like game. After he graduates, he hopes for a company that creates video games.

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science professor Bo Luo said that Android programming is becoming more important and that using Android tablets allows teachers to show students how Java, the programming language used in Android, works firsthand.

“It’s something we can use to show students what cool things they can do,” he said.

Luo said that when students enter the job market in a few years, the capability to work with Android programming would give them a significant advantage.

“If you look at the market share, Android is taking more from Apple,” Luo said. “That will make our graduates very popular.”

He said one of the most popular lab classes is one where students use programming code to make bubbles appear on the tablet’s screen. Hefley said that was the lab where he got the idea for his Pong game. He said he decided to try modifying the original code to change the bubbles’ behavior.

“I wanted to see if I could tell the circle where to go instead of just popping up,” Hefley said.

Hefley said his first attempt at changing the code looked like the Windows screensaver with the ball bouncing from edge to edge. Next, he decided to deduct points every time the ball hit an edge. He used code to build one bar that the player could control with the up and down arrows and another computer-guided bar. Hefley said he learned some of the game’s coding in class, but for other parts, he simply changed the coding until it performed the function he wanted.

“Most of programming is just fiddling with what’s already there,” he said.

He said that he considered uploading the game to the Android Market but decided not to because of a few bugs he hasn’t been able to fix.

Now that Hefley is in a second-level programming class, the focus has shifted from Java to C++, another popular coding language for video games and other software. Hefley said that the shift has been a problem for him because the class is based on C++ â€" the language that was originally taught in the previous class â€" not Java.

Luo said the conversion from C++ to Java has been a challenge for the department, but students are expected to learn both languages by the time that they graduate.

“We have a handful of questions we have to handle before we think about the future,” he said.

Luo said the department would meet to discuss what changes they should make to follow-up courses.

Hefley said that even though there are more job opportunities in software and security programming, he plans on sticking with video game programming. He and a friend have been talking about creating a story-based game, like Zelda, but they haven’t started yet.

“Video gaming is what I do in my spare time, so it’s inevitable that’s what I’d program,” Hefley said.

After graduating, Hefley wants to go move to Japan and work for a major game maker like Square Enix, the makers of the popular Final Fantasy series.

â€" Edited by Taylor Lewis