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.

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.

Welcome to 2015!  I hope everyone’s new year’s resolutions include ship a game! 

Quick Reminder – 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!

Also, congratulations are in order for Dylan who placed in the top 100 (#97) of game jam Compo entries!

Okay, details on the next meetup.  Last month we shared a bunch of different things in a series of micro talks, but these all had a “code” feel to them, so this month we are doing it again but with an art focus.  Currently we have two speakers lined up:

• Levi will be demonstrating Taron’s Verve Painter, a fluid dynamics based painting application.  It’s probably easier to understand by watching a video.
• Mike will be demonstrating two pixel art editors, Pickle and Aseprite.

If there is an art application you would like to demonstrate, send me a email and we’ll get it added to the list.

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.

Our next meetup will be a combination of game jam recap and some micro-talks on gamedev.  Currently the game jam is still happening and the list of KGD entries isn’t complete, but here are some of the games so far:

• Ice Fishing Derby
• TV World
• Click For Dragons!
• Build A Snowman

If you have a game not listed, please send an email to michael.neel@gmail.com to make sure it’s listed in the full roundup to be posted later in the week.

For micro-talks we currently have Levi talking about Playmaker and Mike covering initial impressions of Unity 4.6’s new GUI features.   More micro-talk topics are welcome!

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.

This month’s topic will be led by Michael C. Neel  and discuss using Unity with Sony’s Vita and PlayStation TV (aka Vita TV):

The Vita, Sony’s handled console, is often described as an also-ran to the Nintendo 3DS.  While the Vita’s estimated 10 Million units sold may not be enough for the number #1 slot, it is a large market and it is a market that is open to indie developers for free.  The recently launched PlayStation TV (aka Vita TV) extends the Vita platform reach with a $100 micro-console.

Is this session we will cover how to join the PlayStation Mobile Developer Program, setup retail (no devkits required) Vita and PlayStation TV consoles for testing, and how to use the free version of Unity for development.  The session will not go into game development in depth but we will cover Vita specific features experienced Unity developers need to be aware of.

Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee there will be no Coldplay references during this presentation

About the Speaker:

Michael C. Neel (aka @ViNull) is an active community leader who organizes the Knoxville Game Design group, co-founder and volunteer at the Technology Cooperative, a non-profit focused on technology access and education, and founder of CodeStock, a developer’s community conference in Knoxville TN.  Michael’s hobbies include writing about and creating videos of games and game design at GameMarx, and via FuncWorks, LLC. He is proud to be blessed with three amazing daughters and a wife who not only inflates and pops his ego as necessary, but works with him on his many, many projects.

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.

Our speaker will be Ryan Waller of local Knoxville indie studio Forthright Entertainment.  Ryan will be discussing their recent experiences working with Nintendo as an Indie, and advice for others looking for a platform holder’s approval.  Forthright Entertainment is a console and mobile game developer in in the heart of the Tennessee Technological Corridor with a goal of delivering innovative, fun and engaging games that enables players to just have fun.  You can check out and support their latest game Fake Colors on Steam Greenlight.

We also may have some special guests this month.  A group of 2nd grade students in the Lego League may come buy to ask some questions about game development.

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.