Monash IT Challenge 2008 Result

I guess I'm on a roll. :D

About a month ago, I submitted a tower defence game called "Art of Defence" to Monash University to compete in their IT Challenge 2008 Competition. Today, at the BMW Edge Cinema at Federation Square, Monash held a prize ceremony for this competition. Art of Defence won first place in the Games Development category.

To be honest, I was surprised to win this competition - I had no idea the game would do so well. I wrote the core code for the game back in 2006, when I was in Year 10 (and just having completed Game Design as an elective at school). Art of Defence was written in C++, using DirectX 9.0. Sometime later on, I'll host it on microngamestudios.com for free download, just like I did for NextWar.

I'm not actually sure what the first prize is, but rumour has it that it's a new iPod Nano*. According to Monash, they're having some supply issues so it'll be a few weeks until I get the prize.

Once again, thanks to Mr. Adrian Janson for sponsoring me in the competition, and to the faculty of IT at Monash and to Andrew Owen for their work in setting up the competition. And congratulations to Alan Lahiff, too, who was the other Melbourne High prize winner. He won prizes in the Programming and Database categories, and came second in the running for the IT Challenge Student of the Year. He won a heck of a lot of stuff, so hats off to him!

Anyway, here's a photo of the trophy:


The text reads:
IT Challenge 2008
Category
Game Development

1st Place
Adrian Tsai
Melbourne High


* EDIT: I've just recieved an email from Andrew Owen about the prize - first prize in my category recieves a brand new 4GB iPod Nano! According to Wikipedia, I guess that would make it a 4th Gen iPod Nano. I'll also be getting free tickets to IDEF, the International Digital Entertainment Festival, which will be on during the 14th-16th November. Can't wait!