Castelvolturno was the scene of events in the past controversial news, but the story we want to tell in this article has only positive meanings, it comes from the Municipality of the province of Caserta and should fill with pride not only Campania, but all of Italy.

The protagonists are Sandro Traettino , app develop er of Spingram , and Huawei , with its Apps UP 2020 – HMS App Innovation Contest . The Chinese giant’s annual contest aims to incentivize the development of applications, supporting professionals with the aim of making the proprietary ecosystem based on HMS and HMS Core ever more sparkling. After a gestation that lasted three years and a success already achieved on iOS, the very Italian Spingram won in the European category “Best game” , with 100 Doors and Streamer Sim Tycoon. And its story is undoubtedly unique within the entire contest.

From the port on AppGallery for participation in Apps UP 2020

It all started with the meeting between Sandro Traettino and Francesco Stranieri , a Developer Technical Support Engineer (DTSE) from Huawei. The DTSE is a figure that goes in search of attractive software for users and helps app developers to bring the best apps to the AppGallery with maximum efficiency, supporting them throughout the integration and development process. Sandro and Francesco Stranieri met during a call between the latter and a commercial partner, a friend of the former, in which Sandro sneaked almost without permission asking for explanations to perform the porting of Spingram on AppGallery and have visibility on the official store of Huawei devices, available on hundreds of millions of devices in the world.

It was however Francesco who proposed to Sandro to participate in the contest: “When I asked Sandro for the contest, the first thing he said to me was: ‘No, I’m not registering'” , Francesco Stranieri told us smiling: “But he understood that between not participating and losing there is no difference. By participating you can say that you have tried, it is free and above all you get a lot of visibility “.

At the time (summer 2020) Spingram had already achieved good success on iOS and was also present on the Play Store, but was not yet present on other platforms, nor on the AppGallery. An operation that can be completed in record time, even if a third-party graphics engine is involved. Spingram is developed with Unity , and The already present support from the engine on HMS Core was also fundamental, so the work was based on the transfer of the management of the dependencies present from the GMS to the HMS, or the removal of futile features for participation in the contest. The sign-up time was running out and there was no time to complete the necessary bug fixes on some features.

A chat with the Spingram developer

We exchanged a few words with Sandro Traettino , who defines himself “not a university-educated developer, but self-taught” . His history in the tech world begins in 2011, when a friend of a university student of computer science proposes to collaborate within the development project of an app for his skills in design and graphics. For various reasons the project does not go through, but Sandro tries his hand at the independent study of programming with e-books and video courses. After three years he publishes his first app on the Google Play Store, Holo Droid , which shows some information of the device in use giving the phone wallpaper “a futuristic look”.

Holo Droid was a first experience in the world development, fundamental “because it allowed me to open my eyes a little better to the world of mobile app development” , the developer told us. The interest in the development of mobile games was born a year later, in 2015, with a consequent training – always self-taught – more vertical towards game design, and the request for advice from developers already active in the field. After evaluating the situation of the gaming world on smartphones, Sandro begins in 2017 to look for an idea for a puzzle: “A simple project, with a certain originality” , described it, as indeed other successful single developers had done.

“I set out to develop something completely new and began to set my research on a game that allowed you to manipulate an object on the touchscreen to create a new type of puzzle, and the final inspiration came with Shadowmatic “, the developer of Spingram told us. On Shadowmatic you can manipulate suspended objects that cast a shadow on a wall, which must go to build a hidden shape, different for each level and more and more complex as you go along. Spingram is actually not that different as an idea, but it is in the concrete as a gameplay.

It is also based on anamorphism and, instead of shadows, the player must use some sort of cube that can be manipulated on the screen as if it were a Rubik’s cube, to create the geometric shapes required level after level by the same video game. It is interesting to note that Sandro has never had a Rubik’s cube, nor has he ever finished running it, however he has managed to develop a successful game based on the same concept. It is clear that for a single developer this is a considerable effort, and that is why the works were concluded only in 2020: “Many individual developers may struggle to produce such a product in the same time frame” , Sandro admits.

If Sandro’s effort may already seem pachydermic , the development of Spingram was carried out without neglecting the alternative professional obligations to the tech world. During the entire period in which he developed the puzzle game, in fact, Sandro continued to work in the family tobacconist together with his brother : “I often carried my computer at work and between a pack of cigarettes, a Lotto game and a Scratch & Win I wrote a few lines of code “ , he told us. “I invested a lot of time even at night, staying awake until 2 am planning, and free time I have often invested in my work as a developer “. A story that culminated with the victory of Apps UP 2020 .

In the light of Sandro’s story, a contest like Apps UP acquires a fundamental role: “Sandro is a self-made developer, and since I met him I understood that he wanted to continue the app development path but to do so he needed a prize “ , commented Francesco Stranieri. An award that came above all “because he believed it” , underlined Huawei’s DTSE, both during the long years of solo development, and for having participated in the contest, winning it.