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 – April’s Meetup is Open! 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: Virtual Reality
Daniel Buchanan will be our speaker this month, discussing using Virtual Reality in games and how to make games using the Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard. He will discuss some of the unique challenges VR presents to game developers and how those challenges have been overcome in the past. Daniel will be working in Unity3D and will present development for games on the PC/Mac/Linux platform as well as the Android and iPhone mobile platform. Q&A will follow the presentation and he hopes that the discussion will make VR more attainable to the local game development scene.
About the Speaker: Daniel Buchanan is an AR/VR Experience Engineer at Agilibility. He has worked on web application development and mobile application development in the past, however his main focus lately is developing Augmented and Virtual Reality applications for the Oculus Rift and the Google Cardboard. Daniel believes that 2015 will be the year of Virtual Reality and that VR will fundamentally change the way people work and play. He started VARDNet.org, the Virtual and Augmented Reality Developers Network, which meets every fourth Tuesday at 6pm at the Knoxville Entrepreneur Center in Market Square. Daniel works in Unity3D and C#, as well as in Illustrator and Photoshop to make assets and textures for his experiences. He has two games in the Android app store, Pocket Graveyard and Cardboard Graveyard. He just published his first game in the Oculus Share store this year.
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. We start at 2PM and open with some roundtable discussion and 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.