All posts by Moe

Mini GameJam June 2014

This weekend I hosted our next Mini GameJam at Werk1 in Munich. Thank you, Werk1 team, for giving our Jams a home!

This time, we had only a few people around and decided to create one game with everybody. It combines Tetris and a Shoot’n’Up as a two player game with asynchronous game play: ShmupTris!

shot3Enjoy the game!

Mini Game Jam Munich / April 2014

Last week-end we had our next  Mini Game Jam in Munich. Despite the date (Eastern), we had 9 people participating. After the good experience of a break in the jam, we kept this type of event and I think it will become the default mode.

We formed one large team and started with a game idea instead of a topic. We decided to create a survival game with a lizard man to introduce some new attributes the player has to care for (=> cold blooded animal).

lizard

We had two days full of fun and finished with a little prototype: Lizard’s Journey. Some of us decided to continue development, so please check the GitHub page if you want to get regular updates.

Thank you to everybody for making it an easy event to host (just all the stairs to walk to let people in…), see you next time.

Mini Game Jam Munich / February 2014

This weekend, I had the honour to host another Mini Game Jam in Munich. We had 11 participants that created 2 games. Thank you to everybody for coming and giving me an easy life as host. This time, I set the topic to

Improving your odds doesn’t guarantee success. (Bill Gates)

My team decided to create a space racer. Regarding the topic, we decided that all bonuses and actions will also have some negative effect, e.g. acceleration makes your ship harder to control. This time, I did code and audio/music.

racingThis time, I used the game jam to try a new concept: Work in two sessions instead of 24 hours without break. I really like that both teams finished with something playable and nobody turned into a zombie-like person. I am about to credit this to our new mode.

In some discussion, we revisited more interactive audio again, so we might have another music dedicated jam soon again.

Global Game Jam 2014

Each year in January, people around the world meet at various locations for 48 hours to share one passion: to create awesome games – and, of course, to have a great time together. Welcome to Global Game Jam. This year, 485 locations in 73 countries participated. Tom and I hosted Munich with more than 70 participants with Martin helping us out when we could not be on site.

I was very happy to see how people were helping each other and living the spirit of Global Game Jam.  This made our life easy and I was able to join game development. I hope all our guests enjoyed their time, too.

This year, we had a short introduction to our location, some organisational topics, and a brief introduction to game jamming. After that, we had the keynote and announced the topic:

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

We started in small teams to brain storm ideas, presented them, built final teams, and finally started to create our games. Sunday, we set a soft deadline to submit games at 3 pm. When we finished our uploads, we met again and presented all 15 games and took a group pictures.

Everything went smooth, but we could improve on some topics:

  • The adventures of VCS (version control system): We had multiple jammers that tried version control for the first time. We saw multiple issues with merges and people who did not know how to solve them. Next year, we should consider to have a technical talk about it.
  • Unity monoculture.  Nearly all of our games were made in Unity and it would have been nice to have some diversity. Please don’t get me wrong, it is a nice engine, but I always love to see new technologies and to talk about it. Maybe we should try to encourage people to use something different, too.
  • Get known to each other. In the last years, Munich has always had a rather large location with 70 and more participants. We try to help people to get known to each other by giving everybody the chance to tell a few words about himself. It always takes some time and it is hard to remember names, skills, and faces. I would be happy if somebody has some cool games/methods how to improve here since we want to keep it.

If you are additional feedback that you did not provide to us already, please post a comment or send me an e-mail.

If you are a jam host and if you want to know more, feel free to write me an e-mail, too.

boardgame_objects

After writing so much about organisation, let me move on to game development. My team started with an idea that multiple characters have to race against each other to reach a certain object and that collisions of players would trigger a certain event. We started to prototype this game and started play tests on a paper version. The paper version and its iterations were really enjoyable and we decided to create it as a board game. We also decided that we want to have a digital version so that everybody can play it without much effort. We started to create the game and I ended with typical software engineer’s tasks: I made graphics for the digital version since our Unity experts decided that it is not possible to work in it at the same time. In the last minute, our game got its name: Cupcake Kingdom: Animal Run. Please find more details, screenshots, downloads etc. on its page.

Finally, let me say thank you to everybody who helped to make Global Game Jam happen and to our guests who made this event so adorable. Hope to see you soon again!

Aliens From Space

Since some months now I am working on a new Android game: “Aliens From Space”. You will play an alien ship and fight against other ships. Sorry, I do not have any release date yet. Here is a first screenshot:

device-2013-12-29-000923

As you can see, the game will use a comic style.

The game will use the touch interface to control your ship with no pseudo input controls. Don’t worry, I spent quite some time to adjust the game play to this input method.

The game will feature different weapons, multiple enemies, upgrades, … all the things you love from core games.

So stay tuned!

Mini Game Jam Munich / November 2013

Recently, I took over the organisation of Mini Game Jams in Munich. The first episode that I hosted was November 2013. The topic for this Game Jam was ‘Unexpected’. Thank you to everybody who came and joined us.

My team decided to implemented a game called Passierschein A38. We decided to create a game with a dynamically changing world. Unfortunately, we did not finish and the game is not full playable and sound effects are not working. Checkout the code if you want to take a look, we do not have a binary so far. Here is a screenshot:screenshot_level

 

Devmania 2013

Devmania had its 5th birthday this year and I went there to meet game developers from all over Germany. Like every time, I had a good time and enjoyed to talk to other hobby game developers. Happy birthday Devmania and a big thank you to the organisers.

This year, the overnight contest used a news paper and “pick any word you like” as topic. At first, we did not find a good game idea and enjoyed presentations and talking to other developers too much, so that we were undecided if we want to join at all.

Somewhen at late evening, we decided to create a simple game: Smash a fly with a news paper. After a few minutes, we had a first prototype and we started to enjoy development. We used a few hours to improve and polish the game, create sounds, music, more graphics, some basic physics, … and we ended up with a full game. Enjoy Zeitung!

screen2

Global Game Jam 2013

Once a year, thousands of game makers meet around the world and create games with 48 hours: Welcome to Global Game Jam. This year, we created a side scroller / 2D Shoot’n’Up: Bacteria. Here is the trailer:

Enjoy the game, I had a great time. Thank you to all who made this event possible!

Devmania 2012

Last week, the largest German hobby game developer conference called Devmania took place. It was a nice event to meet old friends and to see the current developments in the scene. People showed technologies and their game projects, but less people than usual came to Mainz this year. Anyway, it was a nice event and I enjoyed the time. Like each year, an overnight competition took place and we participated with Four.

Thanks to the organisation team of this event, I enjoyed it! See you next year.