We have a Podcast! – Next Game: The Beginner’s Guide

This email is being sent a little early (the meetup is next week, not this week) to give everyone who wants to participate in the podcast.

Each month a game is chosen, generally a popular indie title (but not from the group – that would get awkward) to play and discuss.  It’s like a book club but for games. This does mean those who join in have to buy and play the game, so while there may be an occasional exception titles will be $15 or less.

Last month’s game was Undertale – listen to the episode here.

This month’s game is The Beginner’s Guide (available on Steam). 

The Beginner’s Guide is a narrative video game from Davey Wreden, the creator of The Stanley Parable. It lasts about an hour and a half and has no traditional mechanics, no goals or objectives. Instead, it tells the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand.

I highly recommend taking notes while playing so you have a good set of taking points for the podcast and have less of a chance of forgetting something! 

The podcast will be recorded after the regular meetup ends.  The last order of business for the regular meetup will be as a group deciding on the game for the next podcast episode.

This Month’s Topic: From Blender to Unity

This month Mike will demonstrate creating a model in Blender and loading it in Unity.  This includes creating the mesh, mapping the textures, and rigging for animation for mecanim and retargeting.  It’s a short description but it will be a big topic.

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.

Reminders and Announcements:

Important! There will be no regular meetup next month (December 13th) due to the game jam – this will be the last regular meetup for 2015.  We’ll still hold the Open Game lab the following week (December 20th).

Open Game labs are held on the 3rd Sunday of the month (the Sunday after the regular meetup) and take place from 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! 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

Facebook and Twitter: You can also stay up to date with members of the group on Facebook.  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.

Next Game Jam: The next game jam will be held December 11-14th, 2015 – mark your calendars now! Details on the kickoff meetup to be held on Friday the 11th to come.

All this too much to keep up with? The Knox Game Design website has a calendar!

This Month’s Topic: Project Management for Game Design

With the holidays upon us, you might find yourself with some alone time to work on your game ideas.  The topic this month will be about how to get the most out of this time.  The format will be a discussion lead by Mike with plenty of room for Q&A and suggestions of alterative approaches you may have experience with you.  No system is perfect, and everyone needs to find the thing that works best for them so this will be less a prescription for success are more a presentation of what some options are.

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.

Reminders and Announcements:

Important Update!  The Tuesday Open Game labs have been canceled. The Open Game lab on the 3rd Sunday of the month still takes place from 2PM – 5PM – no change.  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! 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

Facebook and Twitter: You can also stay up to date with members of the group on Facebook.  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.

Next Game Jam: The next game jam will be held December 11-14th, 2015 – mark your calendars now!

All this too much to keep up with? The Knox Game Design website has a calendar!

This Month’s Topic: Unity Potluck

Put your Unity tips in a crockpot and bring them down to TechCo (that’s a metaphor, don’t actually do that).  Since many of us use Unity as our main game engine, this meeting will be a chance to share tips and features we’ve found useful.  As an example, I’ll be showing how to import models from Blender with multiple materials and texture them with substance file for some really nice looking objects for little effort.  I’ll also show how to bring in Make Human models with a Unity Mecanim compatible rig for animating and IK.

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.

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!

Next Game Jam – August 21st – 24th!  The date of the next game jam has been set; mark your calendars!

Call for Topics! 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

Facebook and Twitter: You can also stay up to date with members of the group on Facebook.  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.

All this too much to keep up with? The Knox Game Design website has a calendar!

This Month’s Topic: Quest For Fun!

This month’s topic will be led by Mike giving his take on game design and understanding the player:

What is fun? What makes an activity exciting and enjoyable? Can fun be planned? Can you design fun the same way an architect designs a building? These are more than abstract thoughts, but but questions that kept me awake at night.  As a game designer I want to know if I’m creating something fun long before the game is in beta test and years of development were wasted.

This session represents the years of research I spent answering the question, and the questions that followed.  We will cover why people play games, expectations of the design, decoding feedback, and most importantly the preferences of the player and how they relate to our own.

Ultimately this is a talk about how to be a better developer through the lens of game design, so even if you are not interested in creating games you will come away enlightened!

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.

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!  Special note this month – no Open Game Lab on Sunday April 19th due to the game jam.

Call for Topics! 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

Facebook and Twitter: You can also stay up to date with members of the group on Facebook.  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.

All this too much to keep up with? The Knox Game Design website has a calendar!

This Month’s Topic: Promoting Your Game with Social Media

This month’s topic will be led by Levi and cover how to leverage social media for your game:

In this presentation, we will cover how to use various social media outlets to promote a game to reach your customer base.  Topics covered include Twitter, YouTube, WordPress, Yoast SEO plugin, Reddit, Social Media Cards, Google Alerts, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools and more!

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.

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.