Unnatural Selection - Team Asiana's Game Jam Entry

This game came out of our recent 48-hour game jam. It was made by Team Asiana, which included Youhao Wei, Zuoming Shi, Duy Huynh, and Ky Tran. They made the game using GameMaker, and it was interesting that they decided to figure out how to give the game an isometric perspective.

The premise of this game is to control an army of artificially created monsters. The game allows you to select from several different monster parts, and putting them together gives you units with different stats. It's mostly functional aside from the fact that you don't have any enemies to attack (they were removed during the last few minutes before the deadline due to some glitches that couldn't be solved). Despite those problems, this game was perhaps the most well presented, since it featured a menu screen, music, and lots of great artwork.

Click here to play the game.
Click here to download the source files.

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Humans Attack - Team Awesome's Game Jam Entry

This game was made during our recent 48-hour game jam by Team Awesome, which was composed of Hunter Haynes, Rachel Brindle, and Sean Stephens. They started out with a very ambitious game idea: they wanted to make some kind of real-time strategy game with online multiplayer, and the central mechanic was built around allowing players to hack into parts of the game. It was about halfway through the weekend, they realized that their idea was impossible.

When Team Awesome decided to abandon their original game idea, they took an old particle-based system that Sean had worked on sometime ago and turned it into a game about zombies. The premise is that the player controls the waves of zombies (in green) and tries to use them to kill the humans (in blue). They loosely tied it to the game jam's theme ("Artificial") under the idea that zombies are artificial life.

People seemed to generally really like this game, and it was voted second place out of all of the games from the event.

Click here to play the game.
Click here to download the source code.

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Plants vs. Robots - The Red Team's Game Jam Entry

This was the winning game from our recent 48-hour game jam, and it was made by the Red Team, which included Cindy Trieu, Sean Grogg, Livio De La Cruz, and a little help from Joshua Djakaria. During that weekend, this team was pretty inspired by the Studio Ghibli films that they had watched recently, and they were even listening to the films' soundtracks while working on this game.

The main mechanic of this game is the ability to grow vines by clicking and dragging on them. Both the character and vine animations received a lot of praise, even though the rest of the game was relatively unpolished and had many glitches.

The funny thing about this game is that it's almost completely contradictory to the game jam's theme, which was "Artificial". If it wasn't for the one robot in the game (which was literally added in the last 20 minutes of the game jam), then the game technically wouldn't have qualified.

Click here to play the game.
Click here to download the source code.

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Photos and Stories from the Fall 2013 Game Jam

This semester's game jam was pretty awesome! We had 13 participants, and we made four games in 48 hours. Most of the returning participants agree that this game jam was a lot more fun than last semester's, and we were able to make four games in 48 hours.

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Freely Available Assets from Game Jam 2013

The artists participating in our Game Jam a week ago has allowed the club to release assets they produced during the Game Jam for free!

Get them here!

We would appreciate it if you cite Cindy Trieu for the CindyAssets pack, and cite Ky Tran if you use the KyAssets pack.

Since the premise of the game that the KyAssets pack is based from requires customization in body parts, each creature body comes with a sprite strip of 12 body parts that are already correctly positioned, assuming both the body and parts share the same origin point.

   

Enjoy!

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9/28/2013 - Video Recording of the Intro to Game Programming Workshop

We finally uploaded a video recording of the Intro to Game Programming Workshop that we held almost two months ago. The workshop was done with Java, since that's what the department teaches, and some of the topics we covered include: how to draw images to the screen, how to animate images, the concept of a game loop, how to listen to keyboard events, how to detect collisions, and more!

The workshop lasted for two and a half hours, when it was scheduled to last only two hours. The recording, however, is only a little over an hour long because we cut out a lot of empty segments, such as when we were waiting for participants to finish writing their code.

If you want to download the code from the workshop, we have three collections of files for you to use:

WorkshopGame_3pm.zip
This is the code that we had at 3:00pm when people started leaving. At this stage we had a simple window with a circle in it that moved around when the player pressed the arrow keys.

WorkshopGame_Finished.zip
This is the code that we had at 3:30pm, after we decided to stay late and add an enemy to the game. We figured out how to detect collisions between two circles, and we added logic to "kill" the player when they got hit by the big evil circle.

WorkshopGame_Pre-Workshop.zip
This is the game that we made while planning this workshop. The variable names are slightly different, but the main difference is that we added an image background to our level.

If you have any questions about the material covered in this workshop, or the source code, feel free to ask Livio at livio@interguild.org.

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Game Night on Friday, November 15th!

Once again, the GameDev Club is teaming up with the IEEE club to hold a game night! There will be food, and everyone is encouraged to bring their own games, snacks, TVs, computers, etc.

• When: Friday, November 15th, starting at 5:30pm until midnight.
• Where: Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) building, room 105 (map below)

This will be our last game night of the semester! Also, this is a completely free event as usual, but please feel free to bring some money to donate to our food and to support the clubs!

Important Info

1. Please RSVP using this form: http://bit.ly/IEEEGameNight.
2. You can park for free in the parking lot by the ECE building (lot #3039) after 5:00pm.
3. The doors for the building, as well as the elevator, close at around 6pm, so call the IEEE room at 520-626-7324 if you're locked out. It's best to add that number to your contacts, just in case.
4. In order to get to the bottom floor of the ECE building, please only use the South stairwell door, which will be left open.
5. While we've never had any incidents before, the clubs are not responsible for damaged, lost, or stolen valuables. It's generally good practice to label your things to make sure they don't get mixed up.
6. In accordance to university policy, no alcohol, firearms, or weapons will be allowed.

University Map

Below is a map of where the ECE building is. To view the map in another window, click here.


View Larger Map

Questions

If you have any questions, send an email to Livio at ldelac01@email.arizona.edu.

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Game Development Resources

(Sfxr, speedy sfx generator.)

On Monday, we covered a variety of handy resources to use for our upcoming game jam. Here's list of the resourced we covered, highly useful for not only the game jam, but game development in general. All items here are free for most functionality, and are arranged in no specific order save for categories.

Before you jump into exploring these resources, note that 3D-related tools tend to have a much more significant learning curve, so we do not recommend attempting to develop a 3D game during the game jam without significant prior experience.

Update 11/8: added several new tools to our game development list, and categorized our tools into either the Rapid category or the Advanced category.

Game Development
Rapid:
Stencyl - popular 2D game-creation software with visual scripting and integrated physics engine.
Game Maker Studio - speedy game-development tool with extensive community.
Construct 2 - 2D game-development engine.
RPG Maker - popular program for creating JRPG-style games.
Advanced:
LibGDX - Open-Source Java framework for deploying on PC, iOS, HTML5, and Android.
Unity - strong 3D game-creation tool.
Ren'Py - Python-based visual novel creation engine, no prior programming experience necessary.
Pygame - popular Python extension for game creation.
Flash Builder - Fast IDE for flash games, using AS3.
Unreal Development Kit - complete 3D game-development engine. Beware: high learning curve.

Graphic
Rapid:
Tigsource Assemblee Competition Part 1 - graphics for sound assets for public use
GraphicsGale - highly useful and (mostly) free pixel art creation program.
GIMP - standard free open-source program.

Microsoft Paint- don't laugh! Paint is actually a very handy tool for quick edits.
Advanced:
Photoshop CS2 - this old version of Photoshop is now free! Note that Windows 7 needs special support.
Pixen - open-source pixel-art creator for Mac OS X
Blender - free 3D graphics rendering software.

Sound
Rapid:
Audacity - powerful open-source sound-editing program.
Sfxr - instant 8-bit sound effect generator. Check out bfxr for flash version and cfxr for Mac version.
FreeSound - huge database of quality sound effects, under a variety of references.
Incompetech - another database of free sounds.
Advanced:
GarageBand - powerful tracking/SE tool for Mac.
Acid Xpress - free music recording and creation software for Windows.

Misc.
Tiled - map-creation software for tile-based games.
MakeHuman - random 3D human model generator.
PolyCount - community for 3D art creation and game development.
ModDb - community for game modding.

Comment if you have more resources that you think fits on this page, and good luck if you are attending the Game Jam!

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10/28/2013 - "The Lost Meeting"

This week was pretty weird. We started off with a bunch of announcements about the upcoming game jam and a potential workshop that we're thinking of holding. We then spent a good amount of time talking about the talks that we're thinking of giving during the upcoming weeks. We listed all of our potential talk ideas on the board, and then we voted to see which talks had more interest around them.

Then starting at around 13:40, Josh started his talk about conveyance in game design. Conveyance usually refers to how well you can explain something to the player, and the term is usually used when talking about subtle, nonverbal ways to inform players. Josh actually decided to play an outdoor game for his talk, which involved us going outside for most of the meeting. This is why we only recorded the first 20 minutes of the meeting.

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48-Hour Game Jam on November 8th!

photo credit: gamedevhouse.com

The GameDev Club is holding its second game jam during the Veterans' Day weekend! We're hoping that having that Monday off will allow participants to still get homework done after the game jam is finished.

• Starts: Friday, November 8th at 5:00pm
• Ends: Sunday, November 10th at around 7:00pm
• Location: Electrical and Computer Engineering building, room 105 (the IEEE room)

Please RSVP if you think you might come. This is a free event, and there will be free food all weekend!

What is a Game Jam?

A game jam is a super-fun, multi-disciplinary event where teams try to make a video game in only 48 hours. The main purpose of the event is to challenge yourself and gain new skills, so the event is open to everyone, regardless of skill level or experience. The game jam is also a great opportunity for artists and musicians to work on a game project and to see what it can be like to be part of a game development team.

In order to prevent people from starting their games early, every game has to be made around a theme, which is revealed at the start of the game jam. These themes are usually vague and open ended, so you'll have plenty of room to come up with something creative. For instance, the theme for our previous game jam was "evolution."

If you want to get a much better idea of what the game jam is like, click here to read about how our previous game jam went.

Schedule

On Friday, from 4:00pm to 5:00pm, many people will be transporting their computers, monitors, musical instruments, tablets, etc., into the room. If you want to bring anything earlier, please contact Livio at ldelac01@email.arizona.edu.

Then, from 5:00pm to 6:00pm, we're going to have a "social hour." During this time, participants will get a chance to eat some free dinner, talk to other participants, and most importantly, form teams. People also use this time to prepare their workspace so that they can work more closely with their team.

At 6:00pm, the theme is announced and everyone gets to work. This is when the 48-hour countdown begins, so everyone's games will be due on Sunday at 6:00pm.

Most people will go home during the first night so that they can get some sleep, and this is especially convenient for those who live on campus. Others, however, like to bring in sleeping bags and toothbrushes so that they can sleep in the room. We will have multiple officers on duty throughout the entire event so that we can keep an eye on everything and to make sure that nothing gets stolen or damaged.

On Sunday at 6:00pm, everyone will stop working, and everyone will get a chance to look at all of the games that have been made. We'll also start cleaning up and helping everyone get ready to go home. It's also likely that we might all decide to go out to some restaurant together for dinner (the food would not be free in this case).

Tips and Advice

Important: Please put the room's phone number into your phone contacts: (520) 626-7324. If you ever get locked out of the building during the event, you can then call this number and we will send someone to let you in. We will likely have poor cellphone reception throughout the event, since we will be in what is essentially the basement of the ECE building. This is why we insist that you call the room phone because that will be the most reliable. Also, the poor reception will eat away at your phone's battery, so you might want to bring your charger.

You should be able to get free parking in the parking lot next to the ECE building starting at 5:00pm on Friday. Parking on campus is usually free during the weekends, unless there's a big event such as a home football game.

Also, please plan to take a lot of breaks. It's not healthy to sit in front of a computer for more than a few hours at a time, so use this as an excuse to get up, go outside, and get some sun. One of the best things that we did during the last game jam was to have the entire team take breaks together, which made for some great team-bonding moments as we would just spend the break time goofing around and having fun.

And finally, don't get discouraged if you don't have a lot of experience! Usually half of our participants are new to game development, and the game jam is actually a great environment to learn how to build your first game. The constraints of the event will teach you how to focus on the most important parts of your game, and you'll get to more clearly see how your work gets translated into the final product.

Also, don't forget to RSVP!

Questions

If you have any more questions, please ask Zuoming at zuomingshi@email.arizona.edu.

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10/21/2013 - "Takeaway & Theme" or the design of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

This week, Dylan gave an hour-long talk about The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. He talked about several other games as well, including FTL, Gone Home, and Shelter (which we played at the end of the meeting), but the underlying idea that tied the talk together was what Dylan called "takeaway," or your ability to take away something meaningful from your experience with a game.

It was a very engaging and interesting talk. If you ever wondered why some people love Majora's Mask so much (or why others find it so strange and nontraditional), this talk does a great job of explaining it, while still keeping it accessible to those who haven't played the game without too many spoilers.

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10/14/2013 - Orange U. Blue Postmortem, and the alternate reality game SPY

We started the meeting by announcing the new three-week competition, which starts today. We spent a good amount of time talking about the rules of the competition and how the submission process works.

Then at 7:15, Livio started his presentation about one of his old game projects, Orange U. Blue. This game was made for the club's previous three-week game competition, and the talk went over what went right and what went wrong with the project. It's a good example of what a small, first game project looks like.

Then at 27:00, Dylan started talking about SPY, which is an alternate reality game where you take on the role of a secret agent and you try to complete missions throughout your everyday life. It's intended to be played on college campuses, and much of the game is focused on trying to figure out who's a spy (who's playing the game) and who isn't. We learned about the game when we were contacted by the lead developer of the game, and you can play the game for free if you register on the game's website with your university email address.

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Intro to Game Design Workshop this Saturday!

This Saturday, the GameDev Club will be holding a game design workshop. This will be a hands-on introduction to the field of game design, and you'll learn some great skills about how to apply good design perspectives to your game projects.

When: Saturday, October 19th, from 1pm to 3pm.
Where: Gould-Simpson building, room 942

Click here to RSVP!

This workshops assumes that you've had little to no exposure to the field of game design (or any design field), and most of our time will be spent on small design exercises that will try to teach you how to think like a game designer. If you're interested in a career as a game designer, or if you've ever wondered what the profession was like, then this workshop will help you see what kind of skills this job requires.

(You can also take what you've learned in this workshop to increase your chances of winning our Three-Week Game Competition.)

Don't forget to RSVP!

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Three-Week Competition: Halloween Theme!

Today the GameDev Club is starting a competition! The challenge: try to make a game in just three weeks. And the theme for this competition is: Halloween.

This doesn't mean that your game has to be about Halloween; all it means is that your game has to tie to the Halloween in some way. For instance, you could make a game about candy, or maybe something about ghosts, or perhaps a game about Autumn. It's a pretty loose and open theme, as long as you can find a reasonable way to tie your game back to the theme.

There will be prizes for the winners, and we'll reveal what the prizes are once the competition has ended. Since the scope of the competition is so short, the main point of the competition is to just have fun trying to make a very small game, so try not to get too competitive!

So here are the rules of the competition:

1. You may work in teams or you can work alone (teams of 2-3 recommended). Please fill out this form in order to register your team into the competition. You can enter the competition at any time before the final due date. If at some point you decide to change or add to your team mid-competition, just register again.
2. You may make either a video game or a non-digital game, such as a board game, card game, or maybe even a sport?
3. Final submissions are due on Monday, November 4th, 2013 at 11:59pm. We will post special instructions on how to submit your projects soon. Make sure you are on the gamedev club's mailing list in order to receive these updates.
4. If you're making a non-digital game, then you need to submit your game to the officers by the club meeting on that Monday (so from 5:00pm to 6:00pm at ECE 105). If you can't make that time, then please contact the club officers to coordinate another time to drop off your game.

If you want to make your game for the club's OUYA console, you can click here to get started. The OUYA is an Android-based console, so you can develop for it using Java, and you can test it on your own computer. If you want to test it on the OUYA console, then please come to the IEEE room (room 105 of the Electrical and Computer Engineering building) and then ask for the IEEE officer in the room to take out the OUYA for you. If you have any questions about it, just ask a GameDev officer about it.

Good luck everyone!

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10/7/2013 - Club Trip to the Game Developers Conference!

At last week's meeting, we spent most of the time talking about our past trips to the Game Developers Conference and why you should come with us to this year's GDC!

Tyler has been to GDC twice as a conference associate (CA), which allows people to volunteer their time to help run the conference and they get a a free trip to GDC in return. We encourage all of our members to apply to the CA program, because it's a pretty awesome program.

Then, starting at around 30:10 in the recording, Livio started a mini-talk about his trip to GDC two years ago, in which he learned that the Expo Pass probably isn't enough, which is why he's been saving his money up for a more expensive pass for this year.

And finally, starting at around 43:05, Greyson demoed his latest game. It's called "Laserbike Racing," and it's basically a recreation of Tron inside of the game Roblox.

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9/30/2013 - Giving Feedback, and Experience-Driven Design

Our video for this meeting was uploaded a little late because Patrick got sick and wasn't able to finish editing it in time.

Jordan started the meeting by talking about a Skyrim mod that he's been working on. Specifically he was asking for playtesters so that he could get a better idea for whether or not his mod is improving the leveling system in the way that he hopes it is.

Then, starting at around 5:02 in the recording, Cindy gave a talk about giving good constructive criticism. It was a very interactive talk with lots of fun examples, and you can see that the group was in fact getting better at giving useful feedback.

Finally, starting at 39:30, Patrick gave a talk about how centering your game design around a specific kind of experience can lead to really great games. He used Mark of the Ninja as an example of a game that does this exceptionally well, and we also talked a bit about stealth game design in general.

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10/11/2013 - Photos from the Game Night!

It's likely that this may have been our best game night yet. Here are some interesting facts:

• There were around 37 people at our peak.
• There were about a dozen of us who stayed after midnight, and we finally left at around 2am.
• We ordered Jimmy Johns for food, which was the second time in our club's history when we ordered something other than pizza for food. It was expensive, but it was worth it!
• When we ran out of food, we ended up ordering pizza anyway.

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Game Night on Friday, October 11th!

Once again, the GameDev Club is teaming up with the IEEE club to hold a game night! There will be food, and everyone is encouraged to bring their own games, snacks, TVs, computers, etc.

• When: Friday, October 11th, starting at 5:30pm until midnight.
• Where: Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) building, room 105 (map below)

Important Info

1. Please RSVP using this form: http://bit.ly/IEEEGameNight.
2. You can park for free in the parking lot by the ECE building (lot #3039) after 5:00pm.
3. The doors for the building, as well as the elevator, close at around 6pm, so call the IEEE room at 520-626-7324 if you're locked out. It's best to add that number to your contacts, just in case.
4. In order to get to the bottom floor of the ECE building, please only use the South stairwell door, which will be left open.
5. While we've never had any incidents before, the clubs are not responsible for damaged, lost, or stolen valuables. It's generally good practice to label your things to make sure they don't get mixed up.
6. In accordance to university policy, no alcohol, firearms, or weapons will be allowed.

University Map

Below is a map of where the ECE building is. To view the map in another window, click here.


View Larger Map

Questions

If you have any questions, send an email to Livio at ldelac01@email.arizona.edu.

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09/23/2013: Career Advice Talk

The video for last week's meeting is finally up! Below is a summary of everything we did at the meeting:

1) OUYA Announcement

We started the meeting with an announcement about the club's newly purchased OUYA console. It was paid for by the computer science department, and it's a pretty awesome fit for club considering that it's so easy to develop for and considering that most members know Java.

2) Game Projects Updates

Next, starting at around 4:00 in the recording, we went around the room and talked about all of the game projects that are currently going on. We had around eight different projects that we went through.

3) Discussion about Storytelling in Games

At around 14:25, we kinda went on a really interesting tangent about the challenges of storytelling in games. We later continued the discussion on our Facebook group, where we basically just shared some awesome talks by Rhianna Pratchett, as well as Extra Credit's episode on how to construct a game narrative.

4) Career Advice Talk

And finally, starting at 21:20 in the recording, Livio gave a Career Advice Talk, which focused on helping people get jobs in the games industry. There was a lot of content covered in this talk, since it included both general and industry-specific advice.

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Workshop this Saturday: Intro to Game Programming

This Saturday, the GameDev Club will be holding a workshop that will try to teach you the basics of programming a game!

When: Saturday, September 28th, from 1pm to 3pm
Where: Gould-Simpson building, room 906.

Click here to RSVP!

Video Recording:

>> Click here to watch the video recording of the workshop. <<

Prerequisites:
This workshop is intended for people who have at least some programming experience, so basically if you've taken either CSC 127 or 227, or if you have experience programming elsewhere. We'll be covering several game programming techniques, such as the concept of a game loop, how to draw to the screen, how to read in user input, and more!

Tools:
The workshop will be done in Java, so make sure you have the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers downloaded and installed before coming to the workshop.

Please RSVP: here

If you have any questions, email Livio at ldelac01@email.arizona.edu.

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9/16/2013 - How to Manage a Game Project, and Getting Started with your First Project

We started the meeting with Livio's talk, called "How to Manage a Game Project". It was basically a collection of practical tips and advice that the club had accumulated from working on game projects over the years. In the video recording, the talk starts at 4:04, and you can click here to download Livio's notes for the talk.

The second half of the meeting was Zuoming's talk, which was called "Actually Making a Game". There was a bit of overlap with the first talk because we didn't plan it well, but basically this talk focused more on the practical steps for starting your project. It begins at around 31:14 in the recording, and you can download either the PDF or the PPTX of the slides that he used.

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Photos from the Game Night

The game night on Friday was pretty awesome. This post has all of the photos and videos that we took during the event.

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09/09/2013 - Intro to the Club and the Language of Game

We started our first meeting of the semester by introducing the club to new members, and then we had everyone introduce themselves. The second half of the meeting was dedicated to Dylan's talk called, "The Language of Game," which was basically about why game experiences are so meaningful to people and how certain design techniques can help take advantage of these reasons to make your game more successful.

We had 30 people show up to this meeting. Below is the full video recording, and some of the pictures that we took:

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Schedule for the First Meeting and First Game Night

First Weekly Meeting on Monday, Sept. 9th

Our first meeting will be on the Monday after Labor Day:

• When: Monday, September 9th, at 5:00pm.
• Where: Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) building, room 105 (map below)

We'll meet every week at the same time and place, but if you can't make it to the meetings, we will post video recordings on the club website. You can also stay involved with the club by joining our mailing list and Facebook group, and by attending some of our many events, such as:

Game Night on Friday, Sept. 13th

Our first game night will be on the Friday after our first meeting:

• When: Friday, April 13th, starting at 5:30pm until midnight.
• Where: Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) building, room 105 (map below)

We always hold our game nights in conjunction with the IEEE club. There will be free food, but we also collect donations for our food fund. Also, everyone is encouraged to bring food, games, controllers, consoles, TV's, etc. in order to help contribute to the event.

Important Info for the Game Night

1. Please RSVP using this form: http://bit.ly/IEEEGameNight.
2. You can park for free in the parking lot by the ECE building (lot #3039) after 5:00pm on Fridays
3. The doors for the building, as well as the elevator, close at around 6pm, so call the IEEE room at 520-626-7324 if you're locked out. It's best to add that number to your contacts, just in case.
4. In order to get to the bottom floor of the ECE building, please only use the South stairwell door, which will be left open.
5. While we've never had any incidents before, the clubs are not responsible for damaged, lost, or stolen valuables. It's generally good practice to label your things to make sure they don't get mixed up.
6. In accordance to university policy, no alcohol, firearms, or weapons will be allowed.

Where is the ECE building?

Below is a map of where the Electrical and Computer Engineering building is. To view the map in another window, click here.


View Larger Map

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GameDev Club at the Fall Club Fair

On Tuesday, we shared a table with the IEEE club at the Fall Club Fair. This time, we had a new tent, which was paid for by Livio and Jonathan. As usual, we played video game music, collected emails for our mailing list, and informed people about the club. Most of the pictures that we took were taken at one time of the day, but we had several members show up throughout the day to help man our booth.

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7/7/2013 - Virtual Meeting #4

Today, we held our fourth Google Hangout summer meeting:

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6/16/2012 - Virtual Meeting #3

Today we held our second Google Hangout virtual meeting, but due to technical difficulties, we don't have a recording of it.

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6/2/2013 - Virtual Meeting #2

Today we had our second Google Hangout summer meeting:

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5/18/2013 - Virtual Meeting #1

Today we held our first virtual summer meeting! We didn't really have anything specific planned for this meeting, but it was a lot more fun than expected.

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4/29/2013 - A Business Perspective to Starting Projects

This week Jordan gave a talk on how developing and producing video games intersects with the business world. His focus was on what developers should take from the business world to be more efficient with their time and be able to communicate more effectively with those on the business side.

The first thing he brought up were the differences between programmers(developers) and entrepreneurs when it comes to creating a game. The core of a programmer's motivation when developing is to bring an enjoyable experience to as many as people as possible. On the other hand, "Business people" want make money. This doesn't mean that both sides can't learn from each other.

Jordan broke up the pre-development process into multiple steps:

Step 1: Feasibility
            Do you have the technology? Knowledge? Tech support (for when you get stuck)?
Step 2: Buedget
            Do you have time, interest, and motivation to see the project through?
Step 3: Market Research
            Is there a market? What is the competition? What can you do to beat the competition?
Step 4: MORE Market Research
            What is your distribution platform? How will you communicate with users?
Step 5: Post-Release Support
            Listen to the symptoms the players bring up, but don't listen to their diagnosis.

Some tips:

1. If no one plays then no one is having fun regardless of how great the game is.
2. You can tell when your game is doing great if you have a consumer base that gets annoyed when you release a patch.
3. Do not bring other people into the project until you have done everything you can alone.

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4/22/2013 - Introduction to Construct 2

Today, William gave a talk on the rapid prototyping tool called Construct 2, which is coincidentally on sale this week for 40% off. William mainly focused on the parts of Construct 2 that set it apart from other similar tools such as GameMaker and Stencyl.

After William's talk, Jonathan showed us some of the hilarious things that players have been doing with Moonbase Alpha and its text-to-speech converter. But the reason he brought up the game in the first place was to show us an AutoHotKey script that he wrote this morning to help him cheat in the game.

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04/15/2013 - The Game Design of Racing Games

This week, Livio gave a presentation about his favorite genre. Here's a list of all of the video clips that he showed during the presentation, as well as from the discussion that followed (the Dirt 3 video is the best):

1. Test Drive 5 (1998)
• Developed by Pitbull Syndicate (U.K.)
• Published by Accolade (USA & Europe) and Capcom (Japan)
2. Demolition Racer (1999)
• Developed by Pitbull Syndicate (U.K.), used the same engine.
• Published by Infogrames (PS1) and Atari (PC)
3. Flatout (2004)
• Developed by Bugbear Entertainment (Finland)
• Published by Empire Interactive (USA & Europe), Konami (Japan), and Valve (Steam)
4. Motorstorm (2006)
• Developed by Evolution Studios (U.K.)
• Published by Sony Computer Entertainment
5. Dirt 3 (2011)
• Developed and published by Codemasters (U.K.)
6. Mario Kart Wii (2008)
• Developed and published by Nintendo (Japan)
7. Burnout Paradise (2008)
• Developed by Criterion Games (U.K.)
• Published by Electronics Arts.
8. TrackMania (2006)
• Developed by Nadeo (France)
• Published by Deep Silver (U.K.), Buka (Rusia), Enlight (U.S.), QV Software (Australia), Valve (Steam)
• [2nd video]
9. F-Zero GX (2003)
• Developed by Amusement Vision (Japan)
• Published by Nintendo
10. Extreme G (1997)
• Developed by Probe Entertainment (U.K.)
• Published by Acclaim Entertainment
11. Split Second (2010)
• Developed by Black Rock Studeio (U.K.)
• Published by Disney Interactive Studios
12. Art Style - Light Trax (2010)
• Developed by Skip Ltd (Japan)
• Published by Nintendo (WiiWare)
13. Trials Evolution (2012)
• Developed by RedLynx (Finland)
• Published by Microsoft Studios (Xbox Live Arcade) and Ubisoft (PC)

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Photos from the Game Night on April 12th

This game night was pretty amazing, especially considering that we usually get our lowest turnout during this time of year. This post contains the photos that we took during the event.

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2013/04/08 - TF2 Discussion Part 2

This week we continued our discussion on Team Fortress 2. We discussed several topics, including character design, the programming behind the graphics,the play style of each class, the quality of different game modes, the different techniques that the game uses to manage pacing, and much more.

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Game Night on Friday, April 12th!

Once again, the GameDev Club is teaming up with the IEEE club to hold a game night! There will be food, and everyone is encouraged to bring their own games, snacks, TVs, computers, etc.

• When: Friday, April 12th, starting at 5:30pm until midnight.
• Where: Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) building, room 105 (map below)

Important Info

1. Please RSVP using this form: http://bit.ly/IEEEGameNight.
2. You can park for free in the parking lot by the ECE building (lot #3039) after 5:00pm.
3. The doors for the building, as well as the elevator, close at around 6pm, so call the IEEE room at 520-626-7324 if you're locked out. It's best to add that number to your contacts, just in case.
4. In order to get to the bottom floor of the ECE building, please only use the South stairwell door, which will be left open.
5. While we've never had any incidents before, the clubs are not responsible for damaged, lost, or stolen valuables. It's generally good practice to label your things to make sure they don't get mixed up.
6. In accordance to university policy, no alcohol, firearms, or weapons will be allowed.

University Map

Below is a map of where the ECE building is. To view the map in another window, click here.


View Larger Map

Questions

If you have any questions, send an email to Robbie, the chair of the IEEE, at laityr@email.arizona.edu, or to Livio, the president of the GameDev Club, at ldelac01@email.arizona.edu.

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04/01/2013: GDC and TF2 Rant

Engineer: Hey, look buddy. I'm an engineer. That means I solve problems. Not problems like, "What is 
                beauty?," because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of 'philosophy'. I solve 
                practical problems.

Game Developers Conference

After missing last weeks meeting due to GDC, Tyler returned to tell us all about this year's experience. This is a summary of what he talked about...

The Game Developers Conference is a collection of talks and showcases technology and concepts that are innovating the video game industry. Attending is not cheap, and so perhaps the best way to attend the event is to volunteer as a Conference Associate. Associate's get a (mostly) full-access pass just for working about 20 hours during the event. It is a superb way to meet other like-minded individuals, see new technologies and games, as well as networking with company owners, potentially for internships or jobs. 

There were numerous talks about everything from Intel's perceptual computing technology to Blizzard technical artist's explaining inventive ways to texture particle effects. Unfortunately, Valve did not announce Half-Life 3. -_-

Team Fortress 2 Discussion

As a club, we finally managed to get around to our first "game-talk", Team Fortress 2. To drive our conversation Patrick took the front of the room with our esteemed leader, Livio. Since most people enjoy TF2 Patrick ranted focused on what he disliked about the game.

The fact that TF2 is a class based first person shooter really separates it from the mainstream fps's commonly found on consoles. The nature of a multi-player, class oriented game that receives updates from the developers causes "the meta" to change around. In this case if you take a break from playing it and come back you may be just as lost on how to play most effectively as a player new to the game. In addition to the unusual (or at least was) class system it also incorporates a % chance to crit. Personally, with guns, in a straight up first person shooter this doesn't make sense to me, but there's no reason they can't have it if they want it.

That all being said, Gabe Newell is quite the man. <3 Steam (and it's now on Linux). The source engine is very versatile and goofy nudging people towards a positive mood even when they lose.

If you haven't played Team Fortress 2 yet, then play it!!!!!!

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03/25/2013: Outreach Officer Election and Virtual Harlem

2013 - 2014 Outreach Officer!

After barely falling short in the race for president Cindy's name once again appeared on the ballot. This time for outreach officer. Her competition was a self-taught and talented designer, William, who also wished to bring more variety to our club as well as more people. Both candidates have contributed much to the club already. Cindy has started crafting the club logo and William is working to spruce up our website. Thanks to both of them!

In the end Cindy received the majority and became the new Outreach Officer, but both were/are highly qualified.

Now that elections are over we can focus on getting some talks and projects going.

Virtual 1920s Harlem

After the elections, our special guest, Dr. Bryan Carter, from the Africana Studies Department pitched an idea to the club. His goal was to enlist some interested members in working on improving a 1920s virtual rendition of Harlem, New York.

The project has been in motion for years, but after expensive "cave" units his focus is on bringing Harlem to the desktop. The first manifestation of the game was built on second life and then on the open-source version, open sim. Now, developers at Unity are porting over the game into their engine which will may allow for an increase in the graphical capability if there are no other bottlenecks. 

He pictures a collaboration of the humanities and the sciences to create a historical world full of games to drive the interest of students. Hopefully incorporating a "game" atmosphere with a  foundation of history will lead students to roam the virtual world and discover things about the time period, however big or small.

After Dr. Carter departed some ideas were tossed around on how the virtual world should be molded. Not making it like Assassin's Creed was an easy consensus for the group to come to, but we did decide that would needed to be more immersive and come alive for the players. 

If you are interested in improving 1920s virtual harlem while getting some academic credit (summer availability also) and perhaps something to add to your portfolio then contact Dr. Bryan Carter. In addition, next semester he will be teaching a colloquium on education and mobile Apps, so look for that.

Email: bryancarter@email.arizona.edu

For information and a tour of the project visit his blog and twitter.

 - Visit his Twitter for a link to 13 minute video showcasing the environment.

 - Visit his blog to read about the development, create an avatar, download the client, and explore.

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