Best use of tools and technologies.

In a combination of the Pirate 365 Recruit and Pirate 365 Enhance applications we claim the ROCK SOLID GEEKNESS badge.

Pirates 365 Recruit – Recruitment of pirates

By using several AI components in Power Automate and leveraging vue.js, pinia, three, troisjs, tensorflow, and ChatGPT. The list goes on..

• The Existential Risk – using AI to detect potential recruits and giving them proper pirate names | Arctic Cloud Developer Challenge Submissions (acdc.blog)
• Using Power Automate to create Pirate Names using OpenAPIs Davinci model | Arctic Cloud Developer Challenge Submissions (acdc.blog)

The Pirate 365 Enhance app

What is the best use of tools to create a game? Canvas apps of course🤠🤓

We have used Power Apps canvas app to create a game that allows new pirate recruits show their skills and prepare them for the sea.

In short, the game uses a Timer that we use to move the ship forward. The timer repeats on short intervals and in the OnStart event we move the ship object on the Y axis and also calculate if the ship touches any of the different obstacles. If a collision is detected, the ship explodes (change the picture on the Picture object). If a crash is detected on the first level, a Game Over popup is displayed and the pirate is automatically offboarded (which technically means we call a Flow that deactivates the user in AAD…. and in real life the recruit is fed to the sharks).
We also check if the ship has reached to top of the screen. If it does, the level is complete and the next level will be shown.
We have a total of 4 levels.

If the player reaches level 2 (or more), we navigate (no pun intended) to a ‘final’ screen where the total points achieved are displayed – IF a collision is detected OR if the user reaches the top of the screen on level 4 OR docks the island on level 4.

We calculate ‘running scores’ as the ship moves forward and every time a new level is reached, points are added to the total score (these points we query from Dataverse). For each ‘event’ (e.g. reach new level) we log this to Dataverse (System User table). These events are used to calculate the total score for the user and is used in our other app to suggest a role for the recruit/pirate.

The crash detection and level completion require extremely complex expressions😉

If(
    shipPositionY > 85,
    Set(
        shipPositionY,
        shipPositionY - 10
    );
    Set(level1VariableScore, level1VariableScore + 1);
    Set(totalScore, totalScore + 1),
    Set(TimerStart, false);
    Set(
        shipPositionX,
        645
    );
    Set(
        shipPositionY,
        611
    );
    Navigate('Level 2')
);
If(
    Or(
        And(
            Image_PirateShip.X <= Image_ReefOne.X + Image_ReefOne.Width,
            Image_PirateShip.X + Image_PirateShip.Width >= Image_ReefOne.X,
            Image_PirateShip.Y <= Image_ReefOne.Y + Image_ReefOne.Height,
            Image_PirateShip.Y + Image_PirateShip.Height >= Image_ReefOne.Y
        ),
        And(
            Image_PirateShip.X <= Image_ReefTwo.X + Image_ReefTwo.Width,
            Image_PirateShip.X + Image_PirateShip.Width >= Image_ReefTwo.X,
            Image_PirateShip.Y <= Image_ReefTwo.Y + Image_ReefTwo.Height,
            Image_PirateShip.Y + Image_PirateShip.Height >= Image_ReefTwo.Y
        )
    ),
    Set(shipVisible, false);
    Set(shipExplodedVisible, true);
    Set(startGameOverTimer, true);
    Timer_GameRun.Repeat = false;
    Reset(Timer_GameRun);
    ,
    false
)

The game consists of four levels:

Level 1:
Easy level obviously. Must be passed to continue with the onboarding process. Only two obstacles in the water.
Tip: You don’t really need to do ANYTHING to pass this level 😉

Level 2:
Some more obstacles and you WILL have to move the boat (using one of the two buttons on the bottom right side of the screen).

Level 3:
Even more obstacles and much rougher sea.
Caution: you might get sea sick here – for real!

Level 4:
Still rough sea and many obstacles. You can pass this level in two ways. Either you dock on the island on top of the screen (this will give you some bonus points) or you can just reach the top of the screen.

If you fail level 1:

Please take note of the sharks as obstacles. We listened to the judges!

Badges

arrgghh, we claim to be awarded the “Rock Solid Geekness” because…..

• A game in canvas app 🙌, great playability and great graphics.
• Because we have a digital 3D parrot that moves, talks, and onboards recruits with on a really creative way.
• We got face recognition and object recognition
• Error handling for to many pirates or object during the photo process.
• Feature to scare the hell out of the judges
• No server side code, all in the browser.

In the Pirate 365 Enhance module the pirates goes through a simulation to prepare for the sea. The simulator has different levels that the pirate needs to go through. If the pirates don’t pass level one the pirate is offboarded and has to walk the plank, and that means that the AD User is disabled in the Azure Active Directory. If they pass level 1 they will proceed in the onboarding process.

The pirates goes through the Pirate 365 Enhance Simulator and here they get a score that it used to suggest the best role for the pirate (this will be described later in the post).

Gif from a gameplay:

During the gameplay we collect points based on the different levels they pass. We have created a list of points in Dataverse that they can achieve as can be seen below:

During the game play we assign points to the pirate that is later calculated to a final score. In the image below you can see the log of the game play and what Score Points they achieved.

They also get bonus points on each level based on how far they get in the game.

To calculate the total score we are using Roll Up fields in Dataverse, like below:

For the Pirate 365 Enhance Bonus Score:

For the Pirate 365 Enhance Score:

and a Business rule to add the bonus and the scores together:

And we have added a section with the score on user (pirate) table in the Model-driven app, Pirate 365 Manage:

This score is used in the next part of the evaluation process.

The Pirate 365 Evaluation app

After the game is over the process continues to an evaluation process and the pirate score is compared to the score limit of the different pirate roles we’ve created in Dataverse.
The role can be seen in the image below:

In the evaluation process we are using the Pirate 365 Evaluation app module that is used to evaluate the pirates scores and assign them to an appropriate role and ship. To handle this we have a Canvas app.

When a recruit is selected in the leftmost list, a Power Automate Flow is called with the recruits ID. The flow then finds the role that has a Score Limit closest to the recruit’s score from the game. The role is sent back to the canvas app.

The flow looks like the following after a flow run and returns the suggested role.

When the suggested role is received in the app, the role is highlighted in the Role Gallery in the canvas app. The user can then click on the suggested role (or any other role, if the user humanly evaluates the recruit to not qualify for the suggested role, for unknown reasons) and on the ship the recruit should be assigned to.

A flow is called and assignes the role and ship.

The pirate then gets assigned to a pirate ship and eventually there is enough crew members that they can go onto the big sea. Arrrghh..

When a recruit, role and ship has been selected, the app goes to the final stage of the process. On this screen the user can choose to onboard the recruit (hence, becoming a true pirate) OR offboard the recruit (meaning sending him/her out on the plank and leap to certain death in the shark and kraken infested waters).

See the gifs below:
Gif showing the onboarding process in the app.

Gif showing the offboarding in the app

Addition content

To illustrate how both the onboarding and the offboarding processes are carried out in person, we hired a professional movie crew to record both processes in real life.
Both the pirate and to different recruits in the videos have asked to be anonymous, for personal reasons.

Onboarding video from the Pirate 365 Evaluation app:

Video from the Office 365 Enhance app for offboarding when the pirates fails on level one.

Summary:

Business value:

• A screening process for getting the right people on a ship
  • A easy assignment process for onboarding of pirates and ships

Learning take aways:

• Creating games in Power Apps
• Using Power Automate, Dataverse, Canvas apps to create a game