GameDev Potpourri! June 8th Meetup

Meetings

It’s another “fast month” and our next meetup is this weekend.  “GameDev Potpourri” may sound like another “open discussion” but it’s really an idea I want to test out this month that is a twist on last month.  Instead of one speaker filling the whole meetup, everyone (who wants to) can cover something for 10-20 minutes.

For example, I’ll talk about the new changes in Unity 4.5 that was released last week, and what to look forward to in 4.6.

If you know what you want to talk about, send me an email and I’ll add it to the list on the website.

If everything goes as planned we’ll have some awesome speakers for July and August.  Also in July is CodeStock where Dylan and I will both be giving talks on Unity.  As of this writing there are only 80 tickets left so don’t wait if you plan to attend.

In TechCo news, the Raspberry Pi meetup group is ending.  The group met every 3rd Sunday to discuss and work on projects involving the Raspberry Pi.  The group never built a following, so we’ve decided to end the group but keep the meetup.  What does that mean? It means every 3rd Sunday from 3PM – 5PM will be an “open lab” time at the TechCo.  You can come down and hang out to work on or discuss any project, not just Raspberry Pi related ones.

The Knoxville Game Design 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 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.

Open Discussion – May 11th Meetup

Meetings

Since this meetup is right on the heels of the game jam and taking place on Mother’s Day, we’re going to take it easy with an open discussion.  No set topic or speaker, so come ready to ask some questions and offer some advice.

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.

Project Spark, App Inventor, and April Game Jam – April 13th, 2014 Meetup

Meetings, Presentations

At our next meetup we’ll talk about two simple yet powerful frameworks you can use to make games.  Both of these are great options for your first game, or useful as a rapid prototyping tool for experienced developers.

Levi D. Smith will share his knowledge and experience in Project Spark.  Project Spark is a “game maker video game” for Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Xbox One, with Xbox 360 support planned.  All game building is done while playing the game, and creations can be shared online.  Levi will demo Project Spark on an Xbox One.

Michael C. Neel will introduce the basics of App Inventor.   App Inventor for Android is an open-source web application originally provided by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  It uses a graphical interface and system of blocks, very similar to Scratch, which let’s users drag-and-drop to games and applications that run on Android devices.  Michael will demo App Inventor on an Android tablet.

Spring ’14 Game Jam – April 25th – 28th, 2014

We will again take part in the game jam this month.  We’ll do this very similar to the game jam in December.  Some notes:

Your game does not need to be complex and you don’t need to spend every hour of the jam devoted to making the game.  Simple is better, and seeing friends and family is a good break to keep you fresh.  The goal is to finish, and the reward is having completed a game!  You can enter solo or as a team and parents, this is a great activity to do together with your kids.

We will meet Friday April 25th @7PM at the Technology Cooperative – The game jam officially kicks off at 9PM when the game theme is announced.  This will be a good time for any last minute questions on the jam, software, or process you have for making your game.

From Friday until Sunday work on your game.  We won’t be keeping the Techco open the whole weekend for the jam (and there is a group that will be using the space Saturday morning).

We will meet again Sunday 27th @7PM at the Technology Cooperative – The game jam “compo” ends at 9PM on Sunday, and the “jam” at 9PM on Monday.  Your game must be submitted by then, so if you need to skip / come late to finish your game, by all means do.  The game jam servers are notorious for being overloaded in the last moments so do not wait too long to submit your game.  We’ll meetup to share our games, war stories of success and failure, and check out other entries.

What you should do before the jam:

  • Read over the rules of the game jam and decide if you’ll be doing the “compo” or “jam” version.
  • Get your development system ready to go – figure out what software you’ll be using and make sure it’s ready to go.
    A list of common tools others have used in the game jam is listed on the Tools page, and links from previous meetups can be found on our site.
  • Make an account on the game jam website
  • The week leading up to the Jam, check the game jam site daily to vote on topics
  • It’s common to live stream your game development – if you plan to do this then:
    • Setup a Twitch.tv account
    • Install Open Broadcaster Software – a free, open source app for live streaming
    • Test out Twitch and OBS (don’t wait to the jam to start learning about live streaming!)
  • It’s also common to make a timelapse video of your development, and there are some tools to help with this too.  Again, test this out on your system before the jam beings.

In-app payments with OpenIAB and Unity – March 9th, 2014 Meetup

Meetings, Presentations

Important News! The Technology Cooperative has moved – read below for details!

Some cool news from members this month:

This month’s topic will be led by Dylan Wolf of FuncWorks, and cover his experience using the in-app purchase framework OpenIAB in Unity:

Setting up in-app payments in Unity can be confusing if you’re new to mobile app stores, even with a cross-platform, open-source plugin like OpenIAB. We’ll cover the basic concepts of in-app payments on Android and iOS, an example of configuring apps and products in an app store, and setting up OpenIAB in Unity.

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.

Next month our normal meetup will be replaced by the game jam, scheduled for the weekend of April 25th – 28th.  More details to come!

Audio and Video Tools and Techniques – February 9th, 2014 Meetup

Meetings, Presentations

Our next meetup will be a roundtable discussion on creating audio (sound and music) for video games and also touch on video production for game trailers.

Levi D. Smith will share his knowledge and experience in Garage Band, PxTone, Bxfr, and Audacity.  Michael C. Neel will cover Reaper, FL Studio, Levelator, Audacity, and also bring some gear to show and discuss from microphones to video capture hardware.

Everyone is encouraged to participate and if there is a tool or device you find helpful please bring it or bring it up in the discussion!

The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative located in the Knoxville Old City at 130 W. Jackson Ave.  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.

Making Unity Your Own – January 12, 2014 Meetup

Meetings, Presentations

The first meetup of the year will be lead by Michael C. Neel covering extending Unity with custom editors and file format support:

Over the holiday break I worked on a TMX map importer for Unity, called UTiled.  This session will cover the basics of extending Unity to add support for a custom file format, creating specialized editors for native and custom components, and some general tips on dealing with serialization issues in Unity.

I’ll also go into UTiled and the basics of rendering a tile map in Unity, both as a collection of 2D sprites and as a 3D mesh, and the pros / cons of each approach.

UTiled is available as an open source project, and can be downloaded from the Bitbucket UTiled Project page.  There isn’t much documentation yet, but Mike and Dylan created an overview video on using UTiled with Unity:

The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative located in the Knoxville Old City at 130 W. Jackson Ave.  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.

Game Jam Weekend Starts Tomorrow!

Meetings

The time is  (almost) now!

Tomorrow we will meetup at the TechCo starting at 7PM and the Game Jam officially kicks off at 9PM.  I’ve moved things up an hour as we may have a few guests from the press in attendance checking out the group and jam, plus I’ll also be bringing a laptop loaded with indie games to play and get the ideas rolling.

Let me stress again your game does not need to be complex and you don’t need to spend every hour of the jam devoted to making the game.  The game jam was started because “for many people, it can be difficult to find or make the time create a game or prototype for yourself. We’re here to be your excuse.”  If you’ve been lurking in the mailing list or thinking about making a game but don’t know where to start this jam is for you!  Come out, ask some questions, and the other members will help you get started.

For a full recap on how the weekend will go, check out the previous post December Meetup Changed to Game Jam Weekend

December Meetup Changed to Game Jam Weekend!

Meetings

Attention Knox Game Designers, based on our discussions last month our December 15th Meetup will be a bit different – it will be a Game Jam!  Here is what we’ll be doing, and what you need to know about the weekend:

We will meet Friday December 13th @7PM at the Technology Cooperative – The game jam officially kicks off at 9PM when the game theme is announced.  This will be a good time for any last minute questions on the jam, software, or process you have for making your game.

From Friday until Sunday work on your game.  We won’t be keeping the Techco open the whole weekend for the jam (and there is a group that will be using the space Saturday morning).

We will meet again Sunday 15th @7PM at the Technology Cooperative – The game jam “compo” ends at 9PM and you game must be submitted by then.  If you need to skip / come late to finish your game, by all means do.  Know however that the game jam servers are notorious for being overloaded in the last moments so do not wait too long to submit your game.  We’ll meetup to share our games, war stories of success and failure, and check out other entries.

What you should do before the jam:

  • Read over the rules of the game jam and decide if you’ll be doing the “compo” or “jam” version.
  • Get your development system ready to go – figure out what software you’ll be using and make sure it’s ready to go.
    A list of common tools others have used in the game jam is listed on the Tools page.
  • Make an account on the game jam website
  • The week leading up to the Jam, check the game jam site daily to vote on topics
  • It’s common to live stream your game development – if you plan to do this then:
    • Setup a Twitch.tv account
    • Install Open Broadcaster Software – a free, open source app for live streaming
    • Test out Twitch and OBS (don’t wait to the jam to start learning about live streaming!)
  • It’s also common to make a timelapse video of your development, and there are some tools to help with this too.  Again, test this out on your system before the jam beings.

Your game does not need to be complex and you don’t need to spend every hour of the jam devoted to making the game.  Simple is better, and seeing friends and family is a good break to keep you fresh.  The goal is to finish, and the reward is having completed a game!

Taking Unity to the Second Dimension! – November 10th, 2013 Meetup

Meetings, Presentations

Next Meetup Dylan Wolf will give us a tour of how he’s working with Unity for 2D games:

We’ll cover the 2D Toolkit and 2D Platform Controller from the Unity Asset Store, look at some demos, and see how they can be combined to create a side-scrolling platformer.

(Rephrase this however you need to fit it in the post.)

Admin Note: Let this be a notice to all future speakers I’m probably not going to rephrase your abstract and publish it as is! =)

The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative located in the Knoxville Old City at 130 W. Jackson Ave.  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.

Special Location Note: The meetup make take place in suite 105 instead of the normal suite (same building).  The Technology Cooperative is growing into a bigger spot but the move may not be completed by Sunday.  If we are in the new spot there will be a note on the door to direct you to the new location.

Oculus Rift Demonstration – October 13th, 2013 Meetup

Meetings, Presentations

At our next meetup, Adam Byram will bring an Oculus Rift dev kit:

The Oculus Rift is an upcoming virtual reality headset designed to deliver immersive 3D gaming experiences to the mass market.  The best way to get a feel for what this means to the future of gaming is to experience it first hand.  At this month’s meeting, we’ll have an Oculus Rift Dev Kit loaded up with some of the popular tech demos and games for attendees to try.  We’ll also take a brief look at the Oculus SDK, in particular, the drop in components for Unity 4 Pro integration.

If you want to bring your own project made with the Rift’s SDK to try out you can download the SDK from developer.oculusvr.com.  Adam has passed on that the SDK requires a Unity Pro 4.2+ license due to the use of external DLLs.

The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative located in the Knoxville Old City at 130 W. Jackson Ave.  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.