Updates to the Weekend Design Challenge

Hey Thunkers :wave:

Really hope that everyone has been enjoying the #wdc as much as we have. One thing I’m keen to avoid as much as possible is the weekly challenges becoming “chore” or folks feeling like they have to participate in every single one.

With that in mind we’re trialling a new tri-weekly schedule for the next few challenges to give you better visibility and choice around how you spend your time in the Community.

Broadly speaking, we’ll rotate between an app (re)design challenge, a game development challenge and an open forum for users to share their own apps and experiences with the building and publishing process.

Number Date Event Theme
11 Apr 16 #WeekendDesignChallenge Idea Generator
12 Apr 23 #WeekendGameJam Whac-a-Mole
13 Apr 30 #WeekendDesignChallenge Culture & Travel
14 May 7 #WeekendGameJam Plant Nanny
15 May 14 #ShowThunkable Open Call
16 May 21 #WeekendDesignChallenge TBA
17 May 28 #WeekendGameJam TBA
18 Jun 4 #ShowThunkable Open Call

:art: Weekend Design Challenge

The premise is pretty simple - take an existing mobile or web app and use it as inspiration to create an app of your own. It’s interesting because the main limit is your own imagination. There is no one “right” way to build an app with Thunkable so entries can have similar appearance or functionality and be built in completely different ways. By sharing our ideas with the rest of the Community we can quickly get feedback on what’s working or suggestions for improvements and new features.

:video_game: Weekend Game Jam

Similar to the Weekend Design Challenge but aimed at gamers, gaming enthusiasts, and game developers as a forum to showcase their unique skills. The aim is that the #WeekendGameJam will be a place for even more users to contribute to the Community and at the same time offer our regular contributors an opportunity for either a “rest week” if they want or a new type of challenge if they prefer.

:film_projector: Show Thunkable

Every third week we’ll make a #creator-lounge topic called “#ShowThunkable”. This is a space for users to show-and-tell us about their apps. Since everyone will be at different stages in the journey (designing, testing, publishing etc.) it gives users the option of either sharing what they’ve already built or to share their goals for their apps, i.e:

  • “I want to get my app published by the end of the month”, or
  • “I’m trying to find my first 100 users” or
  • “I built this app for class - should I keep working on it?” or
  • “I’m doing a full re-design of my app’s UI, what do you think of this?”

cc: @Power_Thunkers @1k_App_Developers @Teachers @Video_Creators

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Also, don’t forget to vote for your favourite game from our challenge last week:

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Of course it’s not a chore, at least for me! I’m enjoying every bit of the #wdc’s ! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Fridays are my favorite day of the week because of the WDCs. The tri-weekly schedule seems great. I also like the idea of #ShowThunkable. Can’t wait to get started on my travel-themed app this week!

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Love it! But where oh where is Poodle Doodles??Peach and Black Simple & Circular Animal Hospital Logo

I guess it’s going to have to be an app about traveling with your poodle? Hmm…

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Interesting… Now, when have I travelled with a pooch? Uh oh, i’m going to have to make it up then.

Are we getting some more guidance/inspiration for this weekend’s WDC? :slight_smile:

Or should I just, you know, put poodles on every screen?

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Poodles from around the world?

what is TBA in that table you posted?

And what does the #ShowThunkable mean?

We have a list of topics we’re working from but will only announce one of each at a time. TBA here means “To be announced”


There’s a #ShowThunkable section above :point_up_2:

Excited to think about Plant Nanny as a theme for this weekend’s challenge. It really has me a little stuck, though, because a game like that should be played in landscape orientation. I know it’s possible to preview a Thunkable project in landscape but I don’t think there’s currently a way to Design in landscape… is there?

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I had last week’s Poodle Doodles game (built with the snap to position interface) working on phone in landscape and on the web previewer in portrait, but it was a huge pain the butt, since I was basically designing blind. Of course, since I was cloning, I was basically working blind anyway…

How do you preview in landscape? (Besides in Thunkable Live?) Am I missing a good trick?

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Nope, just in Thunkable Live. Agreed, it’s not worth designing in landscape when you have no idea what it’s going to look like until you see it on a device.

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I might be thinking of a different app? This one looks like it’s designed to work in portrait mode:

I suppose, the essence of this challenge will be to create a habit tracker, for logging data, but ideally one that give some nice visual feedback of the growth that’s happening as you maintain your habit too

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Also really hoping the spawning and motion bugs can be resolved. I don’t think I can work on this challenge (edit: thought this was a bit different – see my next post) without having accurate positioning for sprites. Sigh.

Here’s a demo I made today that shows the problem. The initial “create Enemy” block should place the sprite at x=0 but not only does it not do that (@jane confirmed that sprites’ positions values are determined by a sprite’s top-left corner when ideally, at least as far as I’m concerned, they should be the sprite’s center)… it also “shoots” the sprite about 100 pixels to the right immediately after it’s created. The sprite has a speed of 1 (1 pixel per second, I assume) so it should move very slowly the whole time.

https://x.thunkable.com/copy/3b023adae1e49ffb2195d11ac09c317f

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Oh… sorry. I thought Plant Nanny was a cute name for Plants vs. Zombies. :laughing:

My mistake. So this is more of a gamify challenge than a classic game challenge. Hmm, alright, game(ify) on!

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I thought exactly the same thing! Like the Zen Garden in PvZ, or something similar…

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What does plant nanny mean? Was I supposed to do it? Sorry, not keeping track.

There’s a link a few posts up that links to the actual Plant Nanny app.

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hmm thts nice one… no ai competions :frowning:

@eko.devs.apploroceo please feel free to suggest topics if there’s something in particular you want us to cover.

Also, there’s nothing to stop you adding AI to a challenge any week if you want to.

Hope that helps

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