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GAFs Amateur Devs Chronicles

Mik2121 said:
I would have accepted if it wasn't because of the "animation" part. I can't really animate 2D Sprites. I mean.. I "can" if I learn it, but I have yet to learn anything regarding that. In fact, I have yet to learn anything about 2D sprites (everything I've made until now was just by looking games' styles and seeing what they do, etc..)

If you just wanted an "artist" (not like I'm calling myself such... yet.. :P) that can help out with anything besides animation, I'm over here.. :D

Hit me up with your email/msn via PM so we can talk:-
 
JasoNsider said:
Yeah, I'm 100% dedicated to see it through :) It's easily the most challenging thing I've done so far, but also the most rewarding! My motto is that I have to always finish what I start :)
That's awesome, keep it up.

Honestly, you could release it almost exactly how you have it right now. It's a very straightforward game in terms of control so the controller shouldn't be too big a deal, right? Still, you've got a huge amount of groundwork there, you could easily work on it from the ground up using the model you already have. We spent a while playing it in its current state, after all :)
Yeah I could release it like this (pending minor changes as I don't have the rights for the font or the sounds), but I think it could be so much more and I don't want to put something out that I'm not totally happy with, we will see!

CowGirl said:
This makes no sense.
I was being droll.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
The site looks good, and definitely don't worry about using your pseudonym as the URL. The video quality is fine too.

I'd say you are safer getting rid of the joke. It's key to be professional, and although you may feel you want to add personality into your application, a "clever joke" is more likely to give a bad impression than a good one in my opinion.
Good point. The second line is long, superfluous and possibly detrimental to the perceived quality of the website.

Disambiguation is a strange word to use, but I kind of like it. It's an accurate description of the purpose of the page. That isn't immediately apparent, but it's an interesting way of thinking about it.

The Friendly Monster said:
You are probably doing this already, but you definitely need a deeper discussion of what exactly your role was on the project. Also are you planning to have anything else in your portfolio?
I'd tended to think that this would be more of an overview of the project to give them a sense of what it is, but talk about it in more detail in person. That's a good point, though... I should probably make that information available there for if anyone wants to read it. Better to have too much information than too little. (As long as its well-organized, of course.)

As far as other projects are concerned... Yes. I do plan on getting more up there. It is rather sparse. I was planning on putting up my final project when that is complete, as it will certainly have a reasonably interesting youtube video... But now that you mention it, I could go back and put up a few programming-related videos from term projects. None of them are quite as good, as they were all much less complicated software projects... but the resulting videos might help fill some space.

Worth it?
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=SLZlS-sN4no

I really want to put more personal software stuff up there, but trying to dedicate time to that while school's still ongoing... Any time I would spend on that SHOULD be going towards my homework. Still... I've gone back to working on that collision code. After tremendous rewriting, I'm much, much closer to success. What will it eventually become?

A cross between what you saw and Mario Golf. Hopefully coming to XNA Community Games before July...

The Friendly Monster said:
What roles are you going to be applying for?
Beginner programmer roles. Entry-level tools programmers, gameplay programmers, etc. Any sort of programming job which doesn't request an applicant with extensive experience.
 
Slavik81 said:
I'd tended to think that this would be more of an overview of the project to give them a sense of what it is, but talk about it in more detail in person. That's a good point, though... I should probably make that information available there for if anyone wants to read it. Better to have too much information than too little. (As long as its well-organized, of course.)
Yeah good idea, I think that with team projects it's worth being clear to prospective employers about exactly what your role was on the team. Don't worry about saving stuff to talk about in person, the first step is getting an interview and you should do your best to impress.

Slavik81 said:
As far as other projects are concerned... Yes. I do plan on getting more up there. It is rather sparse. I was planning on putting up my final project when that is complete, as it will certainly have a reasonably interesting youtube video... But now that you mention it, I could go back and put up a few programming-related videos from term projects. None of them are quite as good, as they were all much less complicated software projects... but the resulting videos might help fill some space.

Worth it?
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=SLZlS-sN4no
Yeah I think that would be good to add. You obviously don't want to overfill your portfolio, and you definitely want to direct employers towards the parts which you feel are most impressive, but a bit of variety in your portfolio is definitely a good thing.

Slavik81 said:
Beginner programmer roles. Entry-level tools programmers, gameplay programmers, etc. Any sort of programming job which doesn't request an applicant with extensive experience.
Cool, good luck with it all.
 
Nice thread, here's my stuff (there's 2 prototypes in the downloads page), I've posted them before but whatever:

www.freakita.com

CaiserCity.png


I do the games with MMF2. I think need help from someone who knows MMF2 better than me cause I'm stuck with my new project.
 
So my project is finally finished, but I've ran into a VERY strange issue with XNA. Doing a build for release and I go check my /release/ folder. Size is around 15 megs, which isn't TOO bad, except for the fact that for some reason that one of my font files (just a regular font created in XNA) is 4,101 kb in size. The largest image I'm using (1280x720) is only 3,601 kb so something is wrong here. If anyone knows how to make it smaller I would appreciate it very much, because I'd rather have a smaller project on the web than a larger on for bandwidth purposes... :lol

edit: while another font is just 261 kb... thats why I find the 4,101 kb size so strange.
 
wow awesome thread...i just bought a little tablet because I am doing my own art for my xna game. Pretty excited to fully dive in. I should keep a personal journal of the whole process, might be good to look back on and learn from the mistakes I've made and the ones I've yet to make :P
 
Tashi0106 said:
wow awesome thread...i just bought a little tablet because I am doing my own art for my xna game. Pretty excited to fully dive in. I should keep a personal journal of the whole process, might be good to look back on and learn from the mistakes I've made and the ones I've yet to make :P
Keep a journal for sure. If I set out to make what I've made so far I could easily get it done in probably two weeks now, but since I was lazy and made several BAD choices, along with not working at it very hard for most of the semester, it took several months :lol

As for the font, I just said screw it, only 2.8 Mb when packed, so I guess size won't be that big of an issue. Now to just get my sound working by the end of tonight :lol
 
rhfb said:
Keep a journal for sure. If I set out to make what I've made so far I could easily get it done in probably two weeks now, but since I was lazy and made several BAD choices, along with not working at it very hard for most of the semester, it took several months :lol

As for the font, I just said screw it, only 2.8 Mb when packed, so I guess size won't be that big of an issue. Now to just get my sound working by the end of tonight :lol


yea i've kind of put off working on my game to focus more on school and also to learn more c#.

Also, maybe having a larger file size will make people think your game has a ton of content cuz I know some community games are like 2.8 mb total. :P
 
I forgot to have the sound working. Now it weighs in at just over 5 megs :lol

going to put it online now so people can try it out

edit: well going to upgrade to 3.0 because I guess that makes it easier to distribute :lol
 
rhfb said:
http://math.uaa.alaska.edu/~ascjr19/

Here is the link. I haven't tested this yet on any other computer other than mine... and I haven't really spent that much time bug testing, so if you do try it, be kind :(

Now to just do a formal write up for it :|
I like it. My biggest complaint is that it is very slow. Often sometimes painfully so. I reached the first level with the switching backgrounds and gave up after finding that getting my shot over that first hurdle didn't also mean I'd get it over the second. I'd go further, but I don't have much time at the moment.
 
Slavik81 said:
I like it. My biggest complaint is that it is very slow. Often sometimes painfully so. I reached the first level with the switching backgrounds and gave up after finding that getting my shot over that first hurdle didn't also mean I'd get it over the second. I'd go further, but I don't have much time at the moment.
I kinda had to make it slow because any faster and the gravity begins to play either too big of a role or not a big enough one. Was going to be an xbox game so the background color corresponds to the current direction the gravity is "pulling". That first switching level is probably the 2nd hardest level in the game, usually takes me quite awhile. I could go back and make it easier, but there has to be a challenge somewhere in the game :)


edit: Well I'm going through and kinda see what you mean by some being very very slow. I'm in the process of going through all the levels and making them quicker, and I'm also going to knock the difficulty down for that ultra hard level. Try the updated version come tomorrow (well most likely before noon tomorrow PST).

edit2: Updated, but even with the speed changes, I still kinda prefer the orig. Will see how this plays out though, maybe bump this tomorrow or create my own thread to get some views.
 
rhfb said:
I kinda had to make it slow because any faster and the gravity begins to play either too big of a role or not a big enough one. Was going to be an xbox game so the background color corresponds to the current direction the gravity is "pulling". That first switching level is probably the 2nd hardest level in the game, usually takes me quite awhile. I could go back and make it easier, but there has to be a challenge somewhere in the game :)


edit: Well I'm going through and kinda see what you mean by some being very very slow. I'm in the process of going through all the levels and making them quicker, and I'm also going to knock the difficulty down for that ultra hard level. Try the updated version come tomorrow (well most likely before noon tomorrow PST).

edit2: Updated, but even with the speed changes, I still kinda prefer the orig. Will see how this plays out though, maybe bump this tomorrow or create my own thread to get some views.
Surely you could increase or decrease the strength of the gravity to balance the change in speed?

I tried the game but couldn't get past the second level using keyboard controls.
 
Hey guys!

Still can't show much about what we're working on, but I think you guys will like it :) The one thing I'm wondering is if some of you guys could see value in writings on developing a game. My partner and I were thinking of starting something like this, but it would probably be all-encompassing. So some days you might get an article on coding, other days an article on game design, etc. And of course, it would display our progress with the project too.

I could just post the info here, but with a blog everybody could see it and even contribute.

For all the amateur devs on GAF - keep posting your work! It's very great to see others working hard :)
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Surely you could increase or decrease the strength of the gravity to balance the change in speed?

I tried the game but couldn't get past the second level using keyboard controls.
I ended up doing that, but if the bullet gets moving fast enough the animation begins to look very choppy. I'm also going to work on writing a better manual to make playing easier. The first 5 levels should take just a few tries each, if that. The ones after that are the tricky ones.
 
In my physics engine, my acceleration may be changing over time quite unpredictably. What altnernatives are there to d = vt+0.5at^2? Even with an arbitrarily small step size, my error has a lower bound of ~10-15% for that, depending on how significantly acceleration changes.

(I ran the error calculations on a sample function of d(t) = t + t^2 + t^3. Though, the change in acceleration may even be of higher order.)

EDIT: Ok. I came up with d = (1/6)d'''t^3 + (1/2)d''t^2 + d't + d, where d' = velocity, d'' = acceleration, d''' = jerk. The largest component of acceleration change should be constant, so despite smaller changes... if I assume a constant jerk, it should be reasonably accurate.
 
Slavik81 said:
In my physics engine, my acceleration may be changing over time quite unpredictably. What altnernatives are there to d = vt+0.5at^2? Even with an arbitrarily small step size, my error has a lower bound of ~10-15% for that, depending on how significantly acceleration changes.

(I ran the error calculations on a sample function of d(t) = t + t^2 + t^3. Though, the change in acceleration may even be of higher order.)

EDIT: Ok. I came up with d = (1/6)d'''t^3 + (1/2)d''t^2 + d't + d, where d' = velocity, d'' = acceleration, d''' = jerk. The largest component of acceleration change should be constant, so despite smaller changes... if I assume a constant jerk, it should be reasonably accurate.
Is this to work out where your object is going to be at some distant point in the future? Why do you need to do this? For predicting collisions?
A change in acceleration can be pretty instantaneous and of absolutely massive magnitude. Think of when two objects collide.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Is this to work out where your object is going to be at some distant point in the future? Why do you need to do this? For predicting collisions?
A change in acceleration can be pretty instantaneous and of absolutely massive magnitude. Think of when two objects collide.
No collisions, I'm trying to build a model of the solar system using dynamics. Just F = Gmm/R^2.

F = ma = Gmm/R^2
a = Gm/R^2

I'm trying to make my calculations as accurate as possible to see if I can get nice elliptical orbits and such. The big test will be adding the moon and seeing if it goes around the earth properly.

Actually, I suppose both the x and y components of acceleration would basically be sine waves... Xacceleration = -cos(2pi*t), t is in years... but the year length would vary by planet. A reasonable approximation that would apply to all circular motion is needed.

My brain hurts. Perhaps I'm over thinking this.

EDIT: Having redone my error calculations... They were definitely wrong.
I think this will work. Using the jerk might even been unnecessary.
 
Slavik81 said:
No collisions, I'm trying to build a model of the solar system using dynamics. Just F = Gmm/R^2.

F = ma = Gmm/R^2
a = Gm/R^2

I'm trying to make my calculations as accurate as possible to see if I can get nice elliptical orbits and such. The big test will be adding the moon and seeing if it goes around the earth properly.

Actually, I suppose my acceleration would be more or less a sine wave.
Interesting project, is it 2 or 3 dimensional? How many bodies are you going to add in? Also how many frames per second are you going to calculate at?

If you do the expansion you were talking about with d''' being "jolt", which you assume to be constant between frames, where do you get the value from? The same value as the previous frame?

Your approximation is the Euler method with step size 'length of 1 frame'. Maybe you could get even better results using another explicit predictive algorithm like a Runge-Kutta.

Perhaps also you would achieve nicer looking results if you fudged the results to ensure energy and momentum are preserved. I'm worried with the frame by frame step that you might end up with a slowly decreasing or increasing total energy, obviously not desirable.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Interesting project, is it 2 or 3 dimensional? How many bodies are you going to add in? Also how many frames per second are you going to calculate at?

If you do the expansion you were talking about with d''' being "jolt", which you assume to be constant between frames, where do you get the value from? The same value as the previous frame?

Your approximation is the Euler method with step size 'length of 1 frame'. Maybe you could get even better results using another explicit predictive algorithm like a Runge-Kutta.

Perhaps also you would achieve nicer looking results if you fudged the results to ensure energy and momentum are preserved. I'm worried with the frame by frame step that you might end up with a slowly decreasing or increasing total energy, obviously not desirable.
2 dimensional to start with. There should be 10 bodies total (8 planets, 1 star, 1 moon), though I'll start with only 2.

The jolt would be the difference between the acceleration from the last frame and the acceleration in this frame. It's presumed constant over the interval and will be incorrect, but close. And I can't just keep taking derivatives endlessly.

I plan on equating one earth-year to 365 real seconds and iterating 10 times per frame at 60 frames per second. That is, 219 000 iterations per simulated year (once ever simulated 2.5 minutes).

That is definitely interesting... I hadn't thought of that. Looking at my approximation vs. simple circular motion, you might be right. My error might be systemic and cumulative. That would be a problem, and I doubt I'd have noticed it unless you pointed it out. Awesome.

As for Runge-Kutta, I vaguely recall something about that from long ago. That will have to wait until I get back, though. I left my Calculus textbook behind for Christmas break and Wikipedia is incomprehensible on math topics (even when you know what its referring to!)
 
Very interesting! I can't help much on the math calculations at the moment, but this is an interesting model to work with here.

I agree on Wikipedia being useless in these cases, too. Sometimes for this stuff getting quick fast answers is not the right solution anyway. Wikipedia seems to boil the math down so much that I cannot follow it. A real text book might actually be more worth your while :)
 
Slavik81 said:
2 dimensional to start with. There should be 10 bodies total (8 planets, 1 star, 1 moon), though I'll start with only 2.
Cool, the really interesting stuff should happen once you stick three in there!

The jolt would be the difference between the acceleration from the last frame and the acceleration in this frame. It's presumed constant over the interval and will be incorrect, but close. And I can't just keep taking derivatives endlessly.
Yeah this is a fair approximation I think if you are doing as many frames as you are. Although with the moon's orbit of the earth it will have a very strange acceleration w.r.t. the the inertial frame of the sun.

I plan on equating one earth-year to 365 real seconds and iterating 10 times per frame at 60 frames per second. That is, 219 000 iterations per simulated year (once ever simulated 2.5 minutes).
Cool although I'd make it as flexible as you can, you will probably be able to boost up the resolution of the physics orders of magnitude and not challenge your cpu. Also it'd be fun to speed up and slow down the solar system.

At that speed Neptune should take around 16 hours to go around the Sun I think, slower than the hour hand on a clock!
 
Merry Christmas to the amateur GAF devs! :)

I know that 2009 is going to be a REALLY good year. What are you guys planning for the new year? Here's mine:

-A1 priority is to finish the game project by Christmas 2009, and show you guys and a couple others what we have before March :)
-Become more involved with this group right here. There's a lot we can contribute, and a lot we can learn!
-Study more mathematics and physics for future projects
-Start a journal of development notes

How about you guys?
 
JasoNsider said:
Merry Christmas to the amateur GAF devs! :)

I know that 2009 is going to be a REALLY good year. What are you guys planning for the new year? Here's mine:

-A1 priority is to finish the game project by Christmas 2009, and show you guys and a couple others what we have before March :)
-Become more involved with this group right here. There's a lot we can contribute, and a lot we can learn!
-Study more mathematics and physics for future projects
-Start a journal of development notes

How about you guys?
Merry Christmas!

Aside from other resolutions like joining the gym and joining a choir etc...

- start a new project in my own time, almost certainly on XNA, and almost certainly strongly connected to sound and music
- learn as much as possible at work
- stay active in this thread and any others similar
- maybe look for someone to work with on something later in the year, I think small collaborations can be really effective
- play some more games, stop watching shit tv
 
for 2009 I hope to

-finish my first game and get it up on Xbox Live
-Keep a thorough journal of everything that i do
- make some money!!! lol
 
I'm using Game Maker and I've got 90% of my player controls in tact, I am going to change the mighty bomb jack hover to a regular glide, I think.

Check it out, just keep in mind the only thing you see that is staying is the controls, everything else is just there to give me ideas.

controls are:

Left and Right are move
Up is jump, and double jump (and a special jump called an air jump which activates if you fall off a ledge)
down does a butt stomp
mashing space in air will allow you to float


check and tell me what you think I should change
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OBH9ZZLX
 
sp0rsk said:
I'm using Game Maker and I've got 90% of my player controls in tact, I am going to change the mighty bomb jack hover to a regular glide, I think.

Check it out, just keep in mind the only thing you see that is staying is the controls, everything else is just there to give me ideas.

controls are:

Left and Right are move
Up is jump, and double jump (and a special jump called an air jump which activates if you fall off a ledge)
down does a butt stomp
mashing space in air will allow you to float


check and tell me what you think I should change
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=OBH9ZZLX
Feels good, and your 'programming' seems solid.

Doing a second jump out of a butt stomp seems inconsistent.
Butt stomp isn't very different to falling at the moment.
Don't like the hover, particularly if you do it immediately after a jump or butt stomp.
Is this always going to be played on a keyboard? Because it works well with keys but I wouldn't like it on a pad.

Keep it up, how is Game Maker to use?
 
In 2009 I am hoping to get a game up and running.

-keep notes and ideas sync with phone and computer
-draw more often to refresh my self
-keep fun the main goal
-find more forums and community pages to keep track of
-flesh out the layout on little big planet (see how it works) and XNA (so it can be published quickly).
 
sup Amateur GAF Devs! i wish to join your ranks! i have a game idea, two artists, a fellow script writer and Game Maker 7. it'll be a point and click adventure in the noir style. by summer i hope to have the whole script with all dialog trees planned out as well as a complete storyboard. by the end of the year, hopefully most of the art will be taken care of and then i can start using GM7 for putting the rest together in 2010. ideally, the game will last 3 hours for your average joe with a range of 1 to 5 hours. hope i have something to show for 2010 :D
 
In 2009 I plan to work on an XNA arcade racing game project as designer and 3D modeller, it's my first real step in the door when it comes to games since all work in the last few years has been for university projects.

I aim to hopefully make my own version of a 1990's styled arcade racer, not a direct clone of others to keep it slightly original.

b84rdg.png
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Merry Christmas!

Aside from other resolutions like joining the gym and joining a choir etc...

- start a new project in my own time, almost certainly on XNA, and almost certainly strongly connected to sound and music
- learn as much as possible at work
- stay active in this thread and any others similar
- maybe look for someone to work with on something later in the year, I think small collaborations can be really effective
- play some more games, stop watching shit tv
didn't you get a job at a game dev? you aren't bound by contract to not release games on your own? a friend of mine who does the websites for a game publisher came to me wanting to do an XNA game, but since we couldn't charge money for it according to his contract, and since you can't release a free XNA game on 360, we ditched the idea.
 
dfyb said:
didn't you get a job at a game dev? you aren't bound by contract to not release games on your own? a friend of mine who does the websites for a game publisher came to me wanting to do an XNA game, but since we couldn't charge money for it according to his contract, and since you can't release a free XNA game on 360, we ditched the idea.
Yes I did. I don't have anything explicitly stated in my contract, but my boss tells me to ask management and it should be fine (he also makes XNA stuff). Anyway distribution and selling is not the number one priority for me. Even if I couldn't get a game on XBLM I would make personal projects anyway.

I think it's an unfortunate rule, and not a particularly well defined one, but I can see why it is there.
 
Happy New Year!

Hey guys just checking in to see if any Gaffers would be interested in entering an indie games contest.
It is set to launch in the next few weeks.

We are mostly looking for small indie mac/pc downloadable titles and flash games that would be ideal conversions to consoles.

Should be open to users of MMF and other game making tools as long as you have full rights to the game.
Might open it up to XNA and others as well but still unsure of that.
Titles that have been entered in IGF and other competitions are okay.

Prizes include cash and a chance for publishing deals :D

More info to come, PM me for any more details.
 
I use:

- Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer
- Adobe Flash CS4
- Adobe Photoshop CS4
- Fruity Loops

All 4 of those things basically allow me to create anything in a 2D space, which is how I want to continue to making games. Still working on putting together my website, so I can use it as a resume/gallery.
 
Toneroni, make sure to keep us all in the loop :) If we can find a way to pack an installer with the PC version of an XNA title, I'm definitely in with bells on.

Amateur Dev GAF - first real challenging task and query to you guys for 2009: chaining bodies with physics (soft body, rigid body). Has anybody done this before? Basically what I'm talking about is chaining bodies together with nodes or anchors so that there are essentially joints to potentially make things like chains, ropes, flags, etc. Tons of games use this technique to great success. As a quick example off the top of my head, something like the talons on Ganondorf's swords in Wind Waker use this sort of setup.

My main question, having never done this setup before, is whether or not to make "joints" be the same as a vertex on a 2D polygon shape, or to store a "joint" location as a positional amount that can sit anywhere in one body. Of course, either setup has to store the "connected" body reference.

I turned this up for XNA. It sounds complicated (naturally), but pretty thorough. http://www.ziggyware.com/readarticle.php?article_id=229

Anyone?
 
doomed1 said:
sup Amateur GAF Devs! i wish to join your ranks! i have a game idea, two artists, a fellow script writer and Game Maker 7. it'll be a point and click adventure in the noir style. by summer i hope to have the whole script with all dialog trees planned out as well as a complete storyboard. by the end of the year, hopefully most of the art will be taken care of and then i can start using GM7 for putting the rest together in 2010. ideally, the game will last 3 hours for your average joe with a range of 1 to 5 hours. hope i have something to show for 2010 :D
Learn XNA, and sell it on the 360. There is no excuse for this. C# is way too easy a language to learn, and the tools provided by XNA are top-notch in terms of usability.
 
JasoNsider said:
My main question, having never done this setup before, is whether or not to make "joints" be the same as a vertex on a 2D polygon shape, or to store a "joint" location as a positional amount that can sit anywhere in one body. Of course, either setup has to store the "connected" body reference.
I have a rest pose and pivots for individual parts of a body. The parts feature relative location and orientation so that they inherit down the chain.

So I have a hand that has a palm to which are attached the finger parts and so forth.

The pivots are there for rotation exclusively in my setup.

To rip off a finger, I'd translate the pivot and rotate in addition to translating the finger part that's about to be detached; then, the rest of the finger would automatically follow because of inheritance.

That would be a rigid setup. I had a soft setup, but that didn't work perfectly. I'm sure it'd be possible to pull off a soft setup with this concept though.


I'm sure there are smarter ways to do this.
 
The Friendly Monster said:
Cool, the really interesting stuff should happen once you stick three in there!

Yeah this is a fair approximation I think if you are doing as many frames as you are. Although with the moon's orbit of the earth it will have a very strange acceleration w.r.t. the the inertial frame of the sun.

Cool although I'd make it as flexible as you can, you will probably be able to boost up the resolution of the physics orders of magnitude and not challenge your cpu. Also it'd be fun to speed up and slow down the solar system.

At that speed Neptune should take around 16 hours to go around the Sun I think, slower than the hour hand on a clock!
That's the plan!
Although it's been shelved until I complete my final project.

Thanks, btw.
You've been a lot of help.
 
If any of you are in the Philadelphia area (or willing to come here for a weekend), the Philly IGDA will be hosting the Philly Game Jam sometime in March. We don't have a firm date yet, but the Game Jam will be hosted on the University of Pennsylvania's campus, will last 48 hours, and there will be sponsors (and of course refreshments). Participants form or join teams to compete and make games according to a theme in 48 hours. There is no restriction on the software used to make the game (I think we would accept board games as well). Anyone who is interested, PM me and I'll let you know of any updates as they come.
 
toneroni said:
Happy New Year!

Hey guys just checking in to see if any Gaffers would be interested in entering an indie games contest.
It is set to launch in the next few weeks.

We are mostly looking for small indie mac/pc downloadable titles and flash games that would be ideal conversions to consoles.

Should be open to users of MMF and other game making tools as long as you have full rights to the game.
Might open it up to XNA and others as well but still unsure of that.
Titles that have been entered in IGF and other competitions are okay.

Prizes include cash and a chance for publishing deals :D

More info to come, PM me for any more details.
...any update with this?
 
through PM, he said there should be an update by the end of the week :)

edit: BTW, JasonNsider -- you ever start a blog/devJournal?
 
dfyb said:
through PM, he said there should be an update by the end of the week :)

edit: BTW, JasonNsider -- you ever start a blog/devJournal?

Hey dfyb! Well, we're actually just getting things going right now :) Outwardly it likes like things are static, but we've actually been really busy!

Haven't started the development blog just yet. One of my own problems is that our effort is literally creating something from nothing. Never had any formal training on how to put together a game and never been into software programming. However, all of us have a dream to create a game and my ambition is to prove to everyone that a) it can be done with enough determination and b) amateur developers can make a difference to the world.

If the audience will have it, the blog will be open to contributions from those who have walked this road before. Thanks for reminding me! I gotta put the development on pause long enough to boot up a blog :)

Hope everyone is gearing up for a great '09! :) I suggest that all you budding developers head on over to see the finalists for this year's IGF:
http://www.igf.com/02finalists.html

Now a question to you guys - do you find inspiration in seeing works that are expertly crafted, or does it just remind you how much further you have to go in order to attain such greatness?

For me it's a bit of both, but it reminds me that I have to work twice as hard as those who have experience here.
 
Just wanted to say that although I sometimes pop into this thread and pretend I know what I'm talking about, you are all far better programmers and far far better artists than I am and if someday I become as good as you all on a professional level then I would be forever grateful and content.
 
JasoNsider said:
Now a question to you guys - do you find inspiration in seeing works that are expertly crafted, or does it just remind you how much further you have to go in order to attain such greatness?
The first one I think.

I have done fuck all games wise recently in my spare time, respect to people who work so hard on their projects on top of a job.
 
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