Digging for Knowledge at the J2ME Nokia.ICE Workshop
Some time ago, the Informatics Engineering Student Association (HMIF) ITB collaborated with Nokia Indonesia Community Enthusiast (Nokia.Ice) mengadakan workshop mengenai mobile programming J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition) took place in the Multimedia room of Labtek V ITB for 3 days from 24 – 26 May 2011. This event aims to learn J2ME technology and create game applications in platform mobile Nokia.
The workshop was instructed by Alex Budiyanto, Nokia.Ice Academic Developer Evangelist. The number of participants was approximately 36 people. Not all of the workshop participants came from the Informatics Engineering Study Program, but there were also two from the Electrical Engineering Study Program and one from the Mechanical Engineering Study Program.
It's worth noting that this workshop is part of a roadshow series organized by Nokia.Ice, which includes workshops at various universities. In Bandung, workshops were held not only at ITB but also at several other universities, such as UPI, ITT Telkom, and Polban. Reportedly, subsequent roadshows will be held in Yogyakarta and Malang.
The first two days the material taught is the basics of making games, both in terms of... user Interface, game looping, and others.
On the first day, as in most lectures, the material presented was an introduction to J2ME. In most lectures, the first session would probably be called "J2ME."Introduction to J2ME". In the first session on the first day we received material regarding Java ME Architecture, focus device, and create simple applications using high level And low level User Interface (UI).
In the second session, still on the first day, we created an application by following the steps outlined in the assigned module. The application we created was a simple one that introduced the use of high-level UI tools, such as Lists, TextBoxes, Menus, and persistent storage.
Still on the first day, in the third and final session, we went straight to implementing a low-level UI in a simple game. The game we were working on was Pong. In the process, we learned about general game development schemes and how to utilize threading in our games.
On the second day, the material provided was still about game creation, but this time it was more complex. The game we created was a bird shooting game. In the game, the main character, Mr. Smith, had to throw stones at birds flying overhead to score. The game also implemented the use of sprites (game characters), sprite animation, sound, and collision detection. Collision detection in this game was when the stone hit the bird (which then displayed an explosion animation) and when the bird hit Mr. Smith. The three sessions on the second day were all spent completing the game.
On the final day, or the third day, there was no more material given because the material had been condensed during the previous day. On this third day, each participant was asked to create a free application, it could be a game or something else, in one day, exactly about six hours. Before that, at the beginning of the third day's meeting, each participant had to present the idea of the application they would create that day. Nokia.Ice promised attractive prizes for the three participants with the best applications. The prizes were not small, three handsets in the form of a Nokia N8, C3, and X3-02. For approximately six hours each participant focused on programming their application that day.
Towards the end of the event, before the final presentation of each participant's application, there was a presentation from Narenda Wicaksono, an IF'02 alumnus, as a representative of Nokia Indonesia. The presentation material given was about the current mobile opportunity. He revealed the enormous opportunity for developers to gain profits by entering the mobile content industry because it has a very large market, including Indonesia. There are even people who can earn tens of millions per month by 'just' making themes for mobile phones. Therefore, Naren encouraged the participants to seize this opportunity. It would be a shame if local developers did not take advantage of this opportunity, and instead foreign developers benefited from this enormous market potential, where Indonesia is the third largest market in the world.
For approximately 20 minutes Naren made a presentation. After that, the next event was the presentation of applications from each participant to be assessed by the judges. The judges were Alex, Naren, and Mr. Firstman (President of Nokia.Ice). After all participants finished presenting their respective applications, and before entering the announcement of the winners, Mr. Firstman gave a few shares and tips on making applications, especially games. Mr. Firstman at that time explained that he was speaking in his capacity as a game lover. A good game according to him is a game that can make users always curious, so that in the end they will be addicted, namely always wanting to play, play, and play again.
After that, it was time to announce the winners of the app competition, which was held briefly that day. And… the winners turned out to be all friends from IF 2008. They were Anselmus, Ecky, and Maulana. Congratulations!
The announcement of the winners also concluded the three-day workshop. Beforeward, we all took a group photo as a souvenir.
Source: Digging for Knowledge at the J2ME Nokia.ICE Workshop