1st Place and Best Windows Mobile Application Winner

Username: Fuche - a collaboration between Michael Minutillo and Jarred Sargent.
Application Name: Turbulence

Application Description:
Since the dawn of time man has pitted himself against his fellow man in what can only be described as a gruelling competition of physical prowess. In this spirit, we brought the timeless game of Tag (also known as Chasey and "You're It") to the Windows Mobile Platform.

The game requires a Windows Mobile Device with GPS which in turn talks to the game server (a WCF service) to communicate with other players. If you don’t have GPS on your phone you can still participate by running around with the arrow keys on your phone. You'll be a bit faster than everyone else and able to run through buildings like a superhero.

When you start the game you will see a Virtual Earth map of your current location and other players nearby. You can walk around and see the players update in near real time. If you're tagged or "it" then when you get within 10 meters of another player the option to tag them becomes available.

To put a bit of a twist on it, when you tag a player you will then be presented with a target selection screen. From this screen you have to select the target out of a line up of several players, so you may need to survail (stalk) the target for a little while before tagging them.

Technologies used in this project:

Compact Framework
WCF
Virtual Earth
OneNote
Team Foundation Server (Codeplex)
Halo 3 (it helps me code, honest!)

We were actually hoping to build a little more of the app including a website to provide high scores / monitor the game which was to be done in Silverlight and persist the data from the WCF service in SQL 2008 to make use of the new spatial data capabilities, but unfortunately we ran out of time!

Blogs:
Jarred Sargent: jsarge.wordpress.com/
Michael Minutillo: wolfbyte-net.blogspot.com/

2nd Place

Username: tarnacious_barfish
Application Name: Desktop Racer

Application Description:
Micro Machines was one of my favourite old school games and I thought it would be cool to race a Micro Machine around a fictional Devsta desktop. Who wouldn’t want to race around those icons and windows, trashing the desktop with tire marks?

Desktop Racer is a Silverlight 2 game. It has a Micro Machine like zoomed in mode, and also a mode where the whole desktop is visible. Players can play 1 or 3 laps time trails.

Blogs: blog.sharpthinking.com.au

3rd Place

Username: Dean
Application Name: Missile Command 2008

Application Description:
A new take on that classic game "Missile Command". If you don't know what "Missile Command" is, just watch Terminator 2 again. John is playing it in the video arcade when the T1000 first finds him...

Now, rather than trying to stop ICBMs, in 2008 you're tasked with stopping remotely-controlled vehicles carrying explosives.

Obviously, instead of ICBMs, you're being attacked by cars carrying explosives.
You have friendly vehicles trying to leave the base that you need let through.
There are obstacles on the battle field that you can shoot over and that the enemy vehicles need to drive around.
The game more fast-paced -- you have unlimited missiles, but the enemies come a lot faster (especially on the later levels)

The game is over if all your rocket launchers are destroyed, at which point you can save your high score.

Your rocket launchers get rebuilt after 3 levels, if you can survive that long...

Blogs: codeka.com/blogs

4th Place

Username: biomechanic2
Application Name: ENIGMAIL

Application Description:
I have long been fascinated with Enigma, not just the ingenuity of the machine itself, but the ingenuity of those at Bletchley Park - Alan Turing is one of my biggest inspirations - as well as the lesser known cryptanalysts at the Polish Cipher Bureau. This is how I believe the Enigma machine would look if it were invented today - as an ordinary email client!

The blue buttons act as the rotors and can be set to whatever combination you want (assuming you both have a copy of the codebook with today’s code in it!).

To encrypt: Enter text in the plain text textbox and hit the green button.
To decrypt: Set the rotors back to their original position, and enter the encrypted text in the right hand textbox, then hit the orange button.

To send the encrypted email: Hit the grey button. Voila!

5th Place

Username: Jimmo
Application Name: Ataye Ascii Image Viewer

Application Description:
Get back to the old school era of text based demos and graphics with the Ascii Image Viewer. It displays images in a rendered text format using new cool technologies like GDI+ and DotNET. The image viewer features on demand rendering and a slideshow function to keep you amused for hours :o)

It also includes an old school 'Demo' intro to introduce the image viewer. The app and intro renders animated graphics in text, and renders into images for display. It uses GDI+ and a custom animation engine.

Blog: www.ataye.com.au