Fall 2016 Game Jam FAQ

You can get the basic info and sign up for the event right here!

What's a Game Jam?

You have one weekend to form a team and build a game! Game Jams are exciting and fun opportunities for students of all experience levels to engage in game development.

Do I need to come with lots of experience or a set team?

No to both! Even if you don't have any real game development experience, the Game Jam is the perfect place to get started and make your first game! As for teams, most participants show up without a team, meet people at the reception, and form a team right before the Game Jam starts.

When and where does the Game Jam start?

The event kicks off at 6:00 PM, Friday, October 14, in ECE 105 (Electrical and Computer Engineering, room 105) , but we encourage participants to come to the reception starting at 5:30, where they can socialize and form teams.

When does the Game Jam end?

The closing ceremony happens at 12:00 PM, Sunday, October 16. There, teams present their games to the judges and contestants, and we announce a winner!

Do I have to stay at the event for its duration?

Nope! Most teams do choose to stay at the event, but the only parts of the Game Jam that participants absolutely have to attend are the kickoff and the closing ceremony. On the other hand, the event runs continuously for its duration, so some teams choose to stay overnight!

What restrictions are placed on teams and their games?

We only ask that teams make new games, instead of working on existing projects. Reusing individual assets, such as existing art, code, or music, is fine. There is no restriction on team size, but we recommend having a team of 3 or 4 people, since larger teams can get unwieldy.

Wow, this is all really awesome! Where can I sign up?

We're glad you asked! You don't need to sign up in order to participate, but it helps us get a handle on attendance. The link for signups can be found right here!

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Mock Design Meeting: Duck Simulator 2016

Well that was fun.

Hi everyone! This week's meeting was a little experimental, a little weird, a little... dangerous. Okay, honestly the biggest danger was giving Jeremy finger cramps from typing so fast, but still, finger cramps are no joke, and can be a symptom of a variety of health issues stemming from a sedentary lifestyle. What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, this:

Here's how it worked: We started with a basic Unity game, the very same one we created in the Unity workshop two Saturdays ago. Then we played out a mock design meeting, taking suggestions from members about features we want the game to have, and implementing them as rapid prototypes. While Jeremy furiously Unity'd changes into the game, I continued to take suggestions, all the while haphazardly assembling them into the bizarre hierarchical spaghetti graph you see on the whiteboard. Here's a closer look:

And so, what started as an abstract game about rolling a ball around to collect cubes became the heartwarming story of a mother duck trying to save her ducklings from falling off a cliff into a forest fire, while also being on fire herself. 10/10.

Just a couple important announcements this week:

• This Saturday, October 8th from 1-5 PM is our first Sandbox! Come and do... whatever you want, pretty much. This is your time to work on any projects, games or otherwise, that you just can't find the time to get done.
• The Game Jam is next Friday, October 14th! That's very soon, so clear your schedules and get hyped! A larger informational post about the event is forthcoming.

See you next week!

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Asset Creation Resources

Didn't get enough useful resources last week?  Want to know where to get art, models, music, and sound effects for your games?  Pow!  That was this week's talk hitting you squarely in the face, spilling its contents all over the floor.  It'll take forever to sweep all this stuff up.  We probably should have just handed it to you, instead of throwing it at you like that.  Sorry.

This week we're back with even more helpful resources, this time focused on assets!  Last week was all about design and development, but those don't add up to much without good assets to make your game as fun to look at and listen to as it is to play!  The asset resources we looked at tonight were...

2D Art

Photoshop

GIMP

Piskel

Paint.NET

OpenGameArt

Kenney

3D Models

Blender

3DTin

Textures.com

Unity Standard Assets

Music

BeepBox

MuseScore

Audacity

GarageBand

Incompetech

dig.ccMixter

SampleSwap

Ignite

Sound Effects

Freesound.org

Sonniss GDC Audio Bundle

We also made a game in Twine, everyone's favorite text adventure game engine!  The finished product is here.  Oh, and if you just want this week's slides, they're here!

Whew, that was a lot of linking!  You're welcome.

Now on to the important announcements!

• This Saturday, October 1st we'll be hosting a Twine Jam!  Sign up here for an afternoon of hanging out and making very silly things.
• GameDev T-Shirts are on sale!  For the next 2 weeks, you can get a cool blue shirt with our logo on it for $5!  As of 2015, that's less than a foot-long sub!
• We're starting a new thing!  Starting Saturday, October 8th, we're going to have Sandbox hours from 1-5pm on Saturdays that we don't have a workshop!  Use this time to study, work on game projects, or just hang out!

See you next week!

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Resources for Game Developers (and Hearthstone!)

Hi everyone!  Sorry the recap's a bit late this week.  It seems that classes have officially switched gears from "just show up and you'll do alright" to "I AM GXL'FWAJZ, EATER OF FREE TIME."  Typical college, amiright?

To kick things off this week, Jeremy gave a quick talk about the ingenious design of Hearthstone.  Is there a game you love, and want to tell us all about?  Sign up to give a talk today!

Afterwards, the officers talked about their favorite resources for getting started with game development!  If you're looking to start your own gamedev project, take note!  Here are links to every game engine we recommended:

• Unity
• Unreal
• Love2D
• Phaser
• GameMaker
• Twine

The slides for both presentations can be found here.

This week we also have some important announcements:

• We'll be hosting a Unity Workshop this Saturday, September 24th from 2:00-4:00!  There, Jeremy will teach you how to use the world's most popular game engine.  If you're planning on showing up, don't forget to sign up here!
• First, there were stickers.  Now, there are T-shirts!  For only $10, you too can have one of our blue-tiful GameDev shirts, on the one condition that you never tell anyone that I just used the word "blue-tiful."
• This semester's Twine Jam is also coming up soon!  It'll be on October 1st from 1:00-5:00.  Come and make a text adventure game in an afternoon, no coding experience required!

That's all for now.  See you next week!

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Game Design Workshop!

This week's meeting was a game design workshop! After a brief presentation from Jeremy, we organized into groups of 5-7 and were challenged to create a physical adaptation of a video game in only 30 minutes, and using only notecards, pennies, and two dice.  Not an easy task!  But nobody said game development was easy.  Alright, maybe a couple people have said that, but no statistically significant number of people said game development was easy.

Warning: This post contains an indulgent number of photos.

Thanks to everyone who participated!  It was lots of fun seeing what you guys came up with.

In other news, last Friday's game night was a blast!   Nothing like an evening of board games, video games, and watching Monster Factory for some reason.

Did you think we were done with photos?  No, we're just getting started.

Lastly, here are the week's important announcements:

• This upcoming Saturday, September 17th, Chris Klimowski (that's me!) will be hosting a Phaser Workshop!  Phaser is a fantastic engine for making browser games, and I'll teach you everything you need to know to make your own!  There will sadly be no free food, but there will be lots of learning, which is almost as good.  Sign up here!
• We're looking for people to give talks this fall!  If you have anything you'd like to talk about, be it a game you like, a gamedev-related skill you have, sign up here!  Your talk can be any length within reason.
• This semester's Game Jam will be on October 14th-16th, making it the same weekend as Parents' Weekend.  Sorry, parents.

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Welcome Back!

Hi, everyone!  We hope you all had a great summer!  There's a lot to look forward to this semester in GameDev, whether you're a new member (in which case, welcome!) or are returning from last year (in which case, welcome back!).

At our first meeting tonight, we introduced ourselves and talked about the games we played over the summer, from Overwatch to... well, Overwatch.  Overwatch is apparently a very popular game.  A true tour-de-force of shooting each other in the face, or so I hear.

Anyway!  Jeremy was our presenter tonight, and he gave a brief overview of the what, why, and how of GameDev.  Thanks Jeremy!  The slides can be found here.

Lastly, members were invited to show off their summer game projects.  We saw games from club members made using Unity, Phaser, Love2D, Twine, Roblox, and even a Google Chrome extension!

In case you missed them, here are this week's important announcements:

• Our first game night is Friday, September 9th at 6:00 PM!  Join us at our usual location in ECE 104 for video games, board games, and games that will make you never trust your friends again.  In a good way!
• Now is the time to start thinking about whether you want to attend GDC this year!  Stay tuned for more information about our annual trip in the coming weeks.
• Most importantly of all, official GameDev stickers are here!  Now you can affix our new and improved logo to your favorite laptop, water bottle, notebook, or child, just like you've always dreamed of.

We'll be taking next Monday off for Labor Day, so our next meeting will be on the 12th.  See you then!

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Spring 2016 Game Jam FAQ

What's a Game Jam?

You have one weekend to form a team and build a game! Game Jams are exciting and fun opportunities for students of all experience levels to engage in game development.

When and where does the Game Jam start?

The event kicks off at 6:00 PM, Friday, April 8, in ECE 105 (Electrical and Computer Engineering, room 105) , but we encourage participants to come to the reception starting at 5:00, where they can socialize and form teams.

When does the Game Jam end?

The closing ceremony happens at 12:00 PM, Sunday, April 10. There, teams present their games to the judges and contestants, and we announce a winner!

Do I have to stay at the event for its duration?

Nope! Most teams do choose to stay at the event, but the only parts of the Game Jam that participants absolutely have to attend are the kickoff and the closing ceremony. On the other hand, the event runs continuously for its duration, so some teams choose to stay overnight!

What restrictions are placed on teams and their games?

We only ask that teams make new games, instead of working on existing projects. Reusing individual assets, such as existing art, code, or music, is fine. There is no restriction on team size, but we recommend having a team of 3 or 4 people, since larger teams can get unwieldy.

Wow, this is all really awesome! Where can I sign up?

We're glad you asked! You don't need to sign up in order to participate, but it helps us get a handle on attendance. The link for signups can be found right here!

Continue Reading

Fall 2015 Game Jam FAQ

What's a Game Jam?

You have one weekend to form a team and build a game! Game Jams are exciting and fun opportunities for students of all experience levels to engage in game development.

When does the Game Jam start?

The event kicks off at 6:00 PM, Friday, November 20, but we encourage participants to come to the reception starting at 5:00, where they can socialize and form teams.

When does the Game Jam end?

The closing ceremony happens at 12:00 PM, Sunday, November 22. There, teams present their games to the judges and contestants, and we announce a winner!

Do I have to stay at the event for its duration?

Nope! Most teams do choose to stay at the event, but the only parts of the Game Jam that participants absolutely have to attend are the kickoff and the closing ceremony. On the other hand, the event runs continuously for its duration, so some teams choose to stay overnight!

What restrictions are placed on teams and their games?

We only ask that teams make new games, instead of working on existing projects. Reusing individual assets, such as existing art, code, or music, is fine. There is no restriction on team size, but we recommend having a team of 3 or 4 people, since larger teams can get unwieldy.

Wow, this is all really awesome! Where can I sign up?

We're glad you asked! You don't need to sign up in order to participate, but it helps us get a handle on attendance. The link for signups can be found right here!

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Game Jams

Our flagship events are Game Jams - weekend-long marathons where teams build games completely from scratch. There's no experience necessary, and you don't even have to be a club regular to participate! Members of Game Dev Club will gladly team up with anyone who doesn't come with a group.

We also provide food for the entire length of the Game Jam*, and take breaks where participants get ice cream, socialize, and talk to each other about their game projects. 

Game Jams tend to be pretty laid-back, and are great opportunities for students to gain real game development experience in a low-pressure environment.

*Food is not provided for our online-only game jams ;)

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Helpful Resources

This is a list of helpful software and media for anyone looking to make games! All of these have been used extensively by club members and officers.

Game Engines

Unity

One of the most feature-packed game engines out there, and it's completely free!* Unity is capable of building both 2D and 3D games, and has a powerful and polished user interface to get things done quickly. It uses C# as its programming language, which is like Java with some additional nice features, and has an incredibly large community 

*Until your game starts making thousands of dollars in revenue.

Love2D

The perfect game engine for learning game programming, Love2D is powered by incredibly simple and intuitive Lua scripting (if you've used Python... Lua is similar!). There's no interface to hold your hand here, but that also means Love2D projects are extremely lightweight and easy to collaborate on. Check out the wiki if you need help!

Phaser

Want to make browser games in JavaScript? In our opinion, there's no better way to do that than with Phaser. Phaser features a huge assortment of helpful tools and libraries, and runs extremely well on any HTML5-ready browser. We wouldn't recommend it if you're new to JavaScript, but if you've used it before this just might be your new favorite engine.

Ren'Py

Ren'Py isn't a general-purpose game engine like the previous ones. Instead, it's made for one genre and one genre only: visual novels! Ren'Py lets anyone try their hand at creating interactive stories, with no coding experience required! It's a popular choice with artists and writers who want to jump into the world of game development.

Asset Creation Software

Pixel Art: Piskel

Digital Painting: FireAlpaca

Sound Editing: Audacity

3D Modeling: Blender

Premade Assets

2D Art: OpenGameArt and Kenney.nl

3D Art: Unity Standard Assets and Textures.org

Music: Incompetech and dig.ccMixter

Sound Effects: Freesound.org and GameSounds.xyz

Websites to Follow

Extra Credits

Extra Credits is a web show that tries to bridge the gap between game developers and game fans with respect to the kinds of conversations that they're having about games. Not only do they frequently make thought-provoking videos that encourage you to look at games from a new perspective, but they're also a great resource for students who wish to eventually work in the games industry.

Game Maker's Toolkit

GMTK is a YouTube series that analyzes great games to find out what they can teach us about game design. If you're struggling to figure out how to make your games "fun", you could find a lot of great knowledge here!

Gamasutra

Gamasutra is one of the largest games industry news sites. It's targeted towards game developers, rather than game consumers, and the site features content that applies to any profession in the industry. You can find articles, opinion pieces, and guides written by prominent members of the industry. They also post great postmortems, which are retrospective articles that talk about the successes and failures of recently shipped games.

Great Books

The Art of Game Design

The Art of Game Design, by Jesse Schell, is definitely the best book on game design that you can find. It's written in a very honest and practical style that makes it a joy to read the whole way through. The book features 100 "lenses" that represent different design perspectives and questions to ask yourself when designing. This Book of Lenses is accompanied by a Deck of Lenses, which you can get as an app for Android or iOS, or as a physical deck of cards.

Challenges for Game Designers

While reading books is great, the vast majority of your design skills will be gained through experience. Challenges for Game Designers, by Brenda Brathwaite and Ian Schreiber, tries to teach you game design by providing hands-on, non-digital exercises that will let you give you a better feel of what it means to solve design problems and how to think like a designer.

Rules of Play

Rules of Play, by Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, is much a more academic and textbook-like approach to game design. Whether or not you'll find it useful or engaging really depends on your learning style. Despite that, it continues to be one of the most highly recommended and influential books on game design that you'll ever find.

A Theory of Fun

Like Rules of Play, Ralph Koster's Theory of Fun is another highly influential book in the field of game design. As the title suggests, it focuses on what exactly makes an interactive system fun, and it explores the fundamental reasons for why we like to play games.

Designing Virtual Worlds

Richard Bartle's Designing Virtual World is the definitive book on the subject of virtual world design. It's specifically about interactive virtual worlds, not fictional universes in general. This is a must read for any game designer.

Amazing Articles and Videos

Train (or How I Dumped Electricity and Learned to Love Design)

In this GDC 2010 talk, legendary game designer Brenda Brathwaite describes how she made a board game called Train and how the game was so emotionally powerful that it frequently brought players to tears. This talk also covers her personal history with game design and her desire to capture uncomfortable but powerful emotions through games. The video recording of this talk is one hour long, but it's an absolutely amazing talk.

John Cleese - A Lecture on Creativity

Monty Python comedian John Cleese gives a brilliant lecture about creativity. His main argument is that creativity is not a mysterious talent but rather a process that anyone can master. He talks about how play and persistence are crucial parts of any healthy creative process, and his advice is rooted in scientific research and practicality.

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

You've probably heard of this before, but Randy Pausch's Last Lecture is one of the most entertaining and inspirational lectures that you'll ever watch. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and he co-founded CMU's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), which is probably the best school for game designers that you can find.

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Our Meetings

Interested in the club? Come to one of our meetings!

We meet at 5:30 PM every Monday in Gould-Simpson Room 856! Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are currently hosting all of our meetings live on Twitch at the same time (5:30 PM every Monday): twitch.tv/uagamedev. Our meetings cover all kinds of topics: game design, art, music, and sound, the business of game startups, genre analysis, discussions about both little-known and popular games, and general career advice.

For the latest up-to-date information and announcements, be sure to join our Discord!

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4/06/2015 - Threes & Te... Seven Design Tools

Hi all, this week GameDev had two talks about the game Threes and almost 10 design tools you can use in 30 minutes. Along with that, there is talk about an end of the semester event, so stay tuned!

Announcements:

• Mark from Kihon games will be speaking next Monday 
• Potential Laser tag or sports/esports tournament/fun-time by the end of the smester 
• Officer elections for the 2015-2016 are coming up soon. If you'd like to be an officer sign up here by Friday, April 17th. 

Cool-stuff:

• Twinyjam
• Make a text based game. 
• It's over now, but look at all the cool creations 

Threes: the Mobile Masterpiece

by Jeremy

Threes is what you might call an adorable game. The goal of the game is simple, make the numbers bigger, and to do that all that is required is swiping in any direction. As you progress farther in the game you are given the ultimate reward: more and more cuteness. Graphic designers made this game, and that makes sense, because the game is mechanically simple, but the visuals kick in to make the player feel rewarded in a relaxing sort of way. This helps counteract the maddeningly addictive number mechancis of the game.

Threes emphasizes the importance of paying attention to the small details. When you swipe it's fluid and the feedback and transitions/animations are immediate and smooth. Due to the natural progression of numbers, advancing in the game explains itself. If you want to see the development process of the game it's been published online.

Ten Game Design Tools That You Can Use in 30 Minutes

by Zuoming

This is an unapollegitically, "click-baity" title that you would see on LifeHacker, but lets roll with it. Below is Rory's summary of each Game Design Tool. Though it's very note esque (since it's his meeting notes), I think it fits the list layout. Thanks Rory!

1) Initiative

When you enter a new game, you want to learn something, but it's a taxing experience. Would you play a new game everyday? No. It's exhausting. Learning can be daunting. A player comes in with some level of initiative with a willingness to learn how to play your game.

As the player learns to play the game, they will lose initiative until they do something cool that engages them. Eventually, they may just give up on playing the game.

Can your game get the player past their sinking initiative?

The beginning initiative is dependant on context and various factors.

• Assigned in a class 
• Friends play the game 
• Cultural phenomenon 

2) Mechanics

No debate on what mechanics are. We'll go with base definition.

"Construct of rules that allow you to interact with the game."-Wikipedia. 

Different mechanics give different mileages. Trivial when said aloud. "How in the space of possible mechanics can I find the most mileage?"

3) Tutorial

Tuorials hurt initiative unless its hidden within the game. Or you can "bite the nail" and put it all in the beginning of the game, and make it short. 

4) Affordance

Affordance is used in various design disciplines. "How can you use things that already exist in real life to make your design better?" An example given in the archetypical book on design the Design of Everyday Things: doors designed to know whether or not a door should be pushed or pulled.


Example of Affordance

Extra Credits example: low resolution game with cash register, green rectangle, and grey circle? That low-resolution stuff is obviously money! Affordances make it easier to add more things to your game.

Example: a button that will increase upwards velocity with downward acceleration. That's jumping. Constant upwards velocity? Elevator? Think of good affordances to make things intuitive. Eventually, though, things will get too complicated, so you'll have to just teach it in.

Another example that Zuoming loves: Braid affordances Mario (affordances is now a verb, deal with it). Real-life is not a necessary source of affordance. Gets into the concepts of genres (not on the list).

5) Conveyance

Choose how to limit the players to do what you expect them to do. The beginning of Mario is a good example. The game conveys to the player that the player must go right. Conveyance can reduce the need for tutorials.

6) Inherent Challenge

Made the terminology up, don't look it up online. Something that already exists that adds interesting properties to the game (related to affordance). Example: local multiplayer. It's hard to break local multiplayer into something not fun. Deck building (aka probability).

Question: definition of inherent challenge? Free packages of affordance.

Another example: gravity.

7) Elegance

Extra Credits talks about depth-vs-complexity. Zuoming thinks of it in terms of amount of initiative/intuitiveness required vs variety of the game. Elegance is important beyond beauty, good for design, because when there are few rules you can really play around with them and really make it adaptable and change it.

Jumping mechanic is intuitive, but orbits are complicated.
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Don't worry, you're not crazy. There are only 7 tools so far.

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