(We are very sorry, but all the dull documents and boring questions are removed from this version of game 😏)
After introducing new strategy in their multinational organisation, client wanted to create some positive excitement. They needed people really know about this.
So they decided to introduce the new strategy using a series of eighties arcade style games. There were extra valuable prizes, given to the best players and for the correct quiz results.
As it is usual for big companies, there were offices on different continents - with wide selection of outdated computers. Connections were slow and firewall ridden.
The new system had to fit into the existing intranet software and use the same single sign-in.
Their existing system was built on Symfony PHP framework. This was quite unusable for such a task - Symfony has heavy footprint and is too slow for games.
The client was a technology company and gave away quite expensive prizes (eg trips and iPads), so outsmarting the users and implementing anti-hacking systems was a big part of the project.
Main measure used was result validation system, using constantly server timestamped game log, synchronisation during and heuristical analysis in the end of every game.
For a real-time game, the programs speed for user was really critical. App had to be robust, fast and have a very small footprint.
Because of limited budget, the optimisation based mainly on custom MySQL tables and database models on server side. Frontend got robust javascript, especially optimised for old (older than 10 years) computers and browsers.
Both player side and the backend are kept together by BC CMS. Thanks to this the user experience is snappy. It is possible to reuse parts or even whole of the system in any other project, for example on this page.