9/17/2012: Lots of News, Intro to Game Development

Here's the recording of last week's meeting. I'm still surprised we managed to spend half the meeting discussing all of the news and upcoming events that were going on. The second half of the meeting is Tyler's talk giving a brief introduction to game development, for those of us who haven't made a game yet:

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9/10/2012: "First" Meeting, Intro the Club

This is technically our second meeting of the 2012-2013 school year, but this is the first meeting that we were able to record. We decided to structure this meeting as if it was our first, because many people weren't able to attend the first meeting, and we received many new members since the previous meeting.

Christian Greyeyes did a great job with filming and editing this video. It's thanks to him that these recordings are much more watchable and enjoyable than last year's. But a side effect of this is that it took two weeks to upload this video. I personally think the extra effort is worth it.

This year, we'll be uploading our videos to the GameDev Club's YouTube Channel, which you can subscribe to. All of last year's videos are currently still uploaded to my personal YouTube account.

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Weekly Summary - Sept 15, 2012

In order to cut down on the number of emails we send out, we decided to try making a weekly digest email that should summarize everything that's happened with the club during the past week. I spent a good amount of time designing these emails to have really nice formatting and an easy-to-follow structure, but then I realized that we really should be posting these summaries onto the website so that incoming members can get a better picture of what's going on in the club as well. Coincidentally, the formatting of this message is also way better now that it's on a website as opposed to in an email.

Table of Contents

1. Club News
1. Next Meeting on Monday
2. Next Game Night on Sept 28
3. What Talks would you Like to See?
4. Are you on the Club's New Mailing List?
5. New Resources Page
6. We Might Become an Official ECE Club
2. Project News and Opportunities
1. IEEE Mortal Kombat Arcade Cabinets
2. New Club Gaming Server,  Admins Wanted
3. Microsoft Windows 8 App Challenge
4. ACM-ICPC, Next Saturday
3. Facebook Summary
1. To the Moon, now on Steam
2. Game Studies - Research Journal
3. Tough times on the road to Starcraft
4. Avoiding game crashes related to linked lists
5. The Six Most Infamous Puzzles In Adventure Game History
6. Steam Big Picture
7. 5 Graphic Adventure Game Goofs (and How To Fix Them)
8. A Call to Arms for Decent Men
9. Escape From Mount Stupid: Point and Click Adventures
10. Super Crate Box
11. Wii U Release Information
12. Game Development Bibliography
13. 35 Years of Console Launch Prices
14. Zynga counters EA's copyright suit with a claim of its own
15. Learning Games Initiative Research Archive (LGIRA)
16. Tales from the Video Game Archive
17. Closure, now on Steam
18. Microsoft's UofA Page

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Game Night #1 on Friday

Here's the schedule for the upcoming week:

Monday - Labor Day, no club meeting
Wednesday - Fall Club Fair
Friday - Game Night!

As usual, the game night will be held in the IEEE room (which is in the ECE building, room 105), and it'll start at around 5:00pm. If you have any trouble finding the room or getting in, please call the room directly at 520-626-7324. You may want to put that number into your contacts, just in case.

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Detonator (GameMaker Prototype)

Detonator is a puzzle game where the player tries to detonate all of the explosives in a level using only three matches. Zuoming Shi created this rapid prototype over the Labor Day weekend using GameMaker.

Click here to download the executable for Windows computers.

If the executable doesn't work for you, click here to download the original GameMaker project. You will also have to download GameMaker in order to run these files (the lite versions are free).

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Pogo Octo (iOS Game)

Pogo Octo is a surreal action shooter about "two unlikely vigilante octopuses." The game's action is contrasted with relaxing music in order to create a hypnotic experience.

This game was made over the course of a year by Scott Wilson, and it features music by Tyler Griffin (also known as Okat). Scott made the game using GameSalad.

Pogo Octo was recently released on Apple's AppStore for $0.99.

Most members don't know much about Scott, since he's mostly been following the club from the background. But stay tuned for future meetings, because Scott plans to give a talk or two about the things he learned while making this game!

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Fall Club Fair

This Wednesday, September 5th, there's going to be a Club Fair on the grassy area in front of the Student Union Memorial Center, and it lasts from 10am to 2pm.

If you have nothing else to do, come find our table and hang out with us! We usually play video game music, and last time I brought a bunch of recent issues of Game Developer Magazine. It's usually a lot of fun, and if you're a new member, it's a good chance to learn more about the club, especially if you missed our first meeting.

Even though the club fair starts at 10am, it seems like none of the officers will be able to make it until 11am. So would anyone like to volunteer to claim us a good table at the fair, to advertise the club to people, take their emails, and give them handouts? You kinda have to get there half an hour early if you want a good spot, which means that you'll probably be there from 9:30am to 11am (1.5 hrs) before any of the clubs show up.

If you want to volunteer, you can post a comment on this post, or send out an email to the listserv, or post on our facebook group, or just email an officer directly.

I'm hoping more than one person will volunteer, and that many of you choose to stay (or come) after 11am, because it's just more fun to have more people there, and it makes us look better to those who've never heard of the club yet.

[Photo source: http://dianeagain.blogspot.com/2012/06/arizona-adventures-heart-of-campus.html]

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Fighting Blind (Flash Prototype)

Fighting Blind is a two-player game prototype about fighting in the dark. Both players are hidden in complete darkness, but almost every movement they make is noisy enough to visually give away their locations.

This game was designed and built by Livio De La Cruz last weekend, and the purpose was to practice rapid prototyping strategies. Livio came up with the idea for this game a couple days before starting to build it, and it only took about three days to make (less than 15 hours total).

Click here to play Fighting Blind.
Click here to view the project on Github.

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Meeting #1 Summary: Intro to the Club

The first meeting went great! Unfortunately, we couldn't film it, because OSCR is making us go through some two-day process before we can rent one of their cameras again.

After introductions and general information about the club, we spent most of the meeting talking about the different game projects that we're working on right now, the mistakes and horror stories of some of our past projects, and general advice for those wishing to start a new project. It was a really great discussion.

There were about 15 people there, but I imagine we probably would've had more if ACM hadn't stolen some of our members, if we had decided on a room early enough to have advertise in some of the weekly emails, and if the club fair wasn't cancelled. And maybe if we had pizza.

Announcements

We won't have a meeting next week because of Labor Day. But we will have a Game Night on the Friday after Labor Day. It's going to be in the same room as today's meeting, and we'll post more information about it as the date approaches.

We'll have our next regular meeting on Monday, September 10th, and I might give a talk about prototyping and the iterative development process. Dylan will also give a talk, but I'm not sure if he's decided on what exactly it'll be about yet.

Because today's meeting went so well, we decided to start holding our regular meetings in the IEEE room from now on. The room is great for holding club meetings, because unlike a classroom, it feels much more natural to have group discussions in there. It's also large enough that we don't feel crowded in there, as with our previous room.

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First Meeting on Monday

It's time for this year's first meeting!!

Our first meeting is going to be tomorrow (Monday) from 5-6pm in the IEEE room (ECE building, room 105). Normally, we hold our meetings in the Gould-Simpson building, but it's taking much longer to reserve a room than I expected.

This meeting will introduce new members to the club and all of the events that we're going to do this year. We'll also spend some time talking about projects, both the ongoing ones and the future projects that many members will inevitably want to start.

Below is a map, in case you need help finding the Electrical and Computer Engineering building:


View Larger Map

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Fall 2012 Meeting Times

It's time to pick our meeting times for next semester! Everyone needs to fill out this Doodle Poll by checking every time slot in which you'll probably be available for a meeting. We'll then use the final results to pick the time that works best for the most number of people, and if you can't make it to the meetings, then you'll at least be able to watch them on YouTube.

Even though the time slots in this poll are only half-hours, remember that we'll need a full hour for the meetings. If you plan to attend ACM meetings next semester, I think they're planning to continue their "Mondays from 6-7" schedule that they had last year.

Doodle Poll: http://doodle.com/h8mivsd97hy8z3zi

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We've Moved!

To go back to the old site, click here:
https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/

Looking for our (outdated) list of projects? Click here:
https://sites.google.com/a/email.arizona.edu/ua-video-game-developers-club/projects

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