In Short
Juice was a event hosted by HackClub in Shanghai, China.
We had to make a Game in 100 hours,
and when we were allowed to fly to China. where we hosted a Open
Cafe
and in total, there were almost 100 people that completed there 100 hours
Not Quite Finished
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fully complete the game to my linkings.
There were still a few bugs left, and some features I wanted to add just didn’t make it in time.
But even with all the chaos, it was an amazing learning experience—and I’m excited to keep working
on
PartyVR in the future!
The Game I Made
I created a game called PartyVR.
Imagine a wild party, but in virtual reality—dodge flying cakes, dance with your friends, and
compete in
wacky
mini-games, all in the same virtual room!
Building it was a blast. I used Unity and the Meta XR SDK, and spent way too many late nights
laughing
at my own
bugs.
My Struggle
The hardest part? Networking!
Getting everyone’s avatars to move smoothly together was like herding virtual cats.
Objects would randomly fly across the room, get stuck in walls, or—most of the time—not move at all for
other
players because everything kept desyncing.
Sometimes, you’d throw a cake and only you would see it fly, while everyone else just saw it floating in
midair!
But after a lot of trial and error (and some questionable dance moves in my living room), I finally got
it
working... at least most of the time.
In China
Cultural Experiences
Since it was my first time traveling alone, I decided it would be best to bring my brother with
me.
We both had a great time and made many new friends.
When we arrived, we immediately noticed so many differences in the culture.
I especially enjoyed trying all the different foods and attempting to communicate with people who
didn’t speak
the same language.
One thing that really stood out to me was the lack of tourists.
Of course, there were some, but not nearly as many as in other countries.
There were also many people who stared at us and took pictures.
I think this was because we were the only white people in the area.
At the “open cafe” we hosted, we all demoed our games and showed them to random people who stopped
by.
But unfortunately, since I made a multiplayer game, I was not able to demo it.
Local encounters and vibrant street scenes made every moment unforgettable.
We found some local people selling all kinds of fruits like melons, oranges, and mangos, which we
made
juice from.
Both making the juice and showing our games led to lots of laughter and fun times with all the Hack
Clubbers
there.
The cultural differences that surprised me the most were the old buildings integrated with new
technology.
Since we weren’t directly in the center of Shanghai but more in the popular downtown, we saw many
places with
random cabling running across the street.
QR codes were everywhere, especially for things like restaurant menus—almost everything was done
with a QR code.
The most popular app for this was Alipay, which is used for paying, ordering food, and even renting
bikes.
Another app, Didi, is like the Chinese version of Uber and is used for getting around the city.
