Noc Robotů

Project Overview

Researchers’ Night of Robots (Noc Robotů) is a 2D Unity web application created for the annual Researchers’ Night event, developed in collaboration between Masaryk University (MUNI) and Brno University of Technology (VUT). The game uniquely combines a narrative-driven chat and trivia interface with a “Zuma”-style action puzzle mini-game.

Players interact with sci-fi robots while answering trivia. To drive engagement, the game allows players to represent various faculties of Masaryk University (FI, FF, LF, FSS, etc.), allowing them to compete on global leaderboards.

My Contribution: Online Database & Score Integration

While the core game mechanics and UI were developed by the rest of the team, I was responsible for bridging the browser Unity experience with the database by building the C# SQL/JSON backend bridge.

• Secure Data Serialization: I utilized custom JSON serialization to cleanly format the player’s session data, and puzzle scores for web transit.
• Database Communication: I developed the SQL helper module, which acts as the bridge to securely send the serialized data to an external SQL database.
• Dynamic Leaderboards: This backend integration allowed players to view top scores globally or filter results exclusively by their chosen university faculty, driving a highly successful competitive element among peers.

Team Architecture & Technical Highlights

Even though my primary focus was the database integration, the overall project codebase is a great example of scalable Unity architecture developed by the team:

• Data-Driven System: The chat and trivia systems avoid hardcoded text. Instead, dialogue and quiz questions are dynamically parsed from external spreadsheets, populating reusable UI prefabs that simulate a messaging app.
• ScriptableObject Architecture: The codebase heavily utilizes ScriptableObjects to keep data decoupled from behavior, allowing designers to tweak properties without touching the core C# scripts.
• Action Mini-Game: The Zuma clone is governed by robust controllers handling pathing, physics, and color-matching logic, smoothed out visually by the industry-standard DOTween animation engine.

Impact & Statistics

The game proved to be highly engaging during the event. Looking at the statistics (checked in 2023), the platform saw impressive traffic:

• 7,439 games started
• 6,710 games finished
• 2,008 games successfully won
• 2,226 full story views

This project stands as a great example of combining trivia with polished, competitive gameplay mechanics to engage the public in scientific events.