UMaine Student Computer Games Competition Thursday

Contact: George Markowsky, 581-3940; George Manlove, 581-3756

ORONO — The lobby of UMaine’s Jenness Hall will become somewhat of an electronic games arcade Thursday, Dec. 9, from 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m., as eight teams of students will competitively showcase computer games they have created in a class, COS 125, Introduction to Problem Solving through Python Programming.

At stake are prizes of $100, $80 and $60 for games voted to be the best, and for one team, a $3,000 contract from Jackson Laboratory to write a STEM education game for distribution to high schools.

Students’ games are interactive and members of the campus community or the public will be invited to play. Many of the games are typical computer games where things move around and collide with other things. Some of the games feature rockets and others feature zombies or other favorite subjects, according to George Markowsky, professor and chair of the UMaine Department of Computer Science.

One game, for example, is “Escape from Neville Hall,” which requires the player to complete a variety of challenges to get out of Neville Hall, and another that requires a player to operate a spacecraft that must shoot and destroy or navigate around floating space objects.

The competition is part of Computer Education Week events at UMaine.

On Friday, Dec. 10, Cybersecurity Morning, from 8 a.m. to 12:20 p.m., in Room 120 of Neville Hall, highlights from DefCon 2010 will include topics such as jackpotting ATMs, bypassing locks, cybersecurity in China, hacking Facebook, hacking tire pressure systems and how anonymous is your browser? Afternoon sessions cover a range of programming topics.