Reminders and Announcements:
Open Game Labs: The group hosts an Open Game Lab every Tuesday 5:30PM – 8PM and on the 3rd Sunday of the month 2PM – 5PM. These labs are unstructured time for anyone to come to the space, hang out and work on their game. If you are just starting out this is also a great time to come ask questions!
Call for Topics: We need speakers! If you’ve been to a meetup you know that the group is very informal and you do not need a well timed and polished presentation. A presentation can simply be discussing a topic while showing a demo on a laptop. If you are interested in presenting or have a request for a topic you would like to see covered please contact Michael at michael.neel@gmail.com
Next Game Jam: The next game jam is scheduled for April 17th. Now is the time to block out that weekend on your calendars to make sure you have the time set aside. If you are curious what happened during a game jam and how to get ready, check out the post from December’s jam.
Facebook and Twitter: It’s been mentioned in the meetings but never sent out until now but the group has a facebook group. The group is closed, so you’ll need request access and it make take a day or two to get approved. If you don’t get approved in a few days, send me an email at the address above. There is also a twitter list maintained by Levi. For info on joining the twitter list, contact Levi @gatechgrad.
This Month’s Topic: Analytics and FPS Level Design
This month Michael C. Neel will be speaking on tracking your players with analytics and sharing some design tips for levels in a first person shooter (these are two separate topics, not analytics for FPSs).
For the analytics portion we’ll cover two services for analytics, the established and popular Game Analytics (any engine) and the new Unity Analytics Beta (Unity only). Michael has been collecting stats for a few of his games and will demonstrate how to use the data to find and fix weak spots in the game’s design.
In the second topic Michael will share tips learned from researching Doom and Quake level design. Then Michael will share some methods for making a Quake style game in Unity using Blender as a level editor. Yes, Michael is using Blender now proving old dogs can learn new tricks and programs with horrible user experience.
Location and Time
The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative located at 13 Emory Place, Knoxville TN. Parking is available in front of the Technology Cooperative. As always we will start at 2PM and open with a Show ‘n Tell where everyone can show a bit of their in progress game, favorite tool, mechanic they love in another game, or anything they find helpful and want to share with the group.