In the light of my last posts, I have been trying hard to get time to develop some video games and get some experience. Turns out I actually did, for a very good reason! On the last weekend of January I attended the Global Game Jam, at the Stuttgart site, more specifically at the SAE Institute.
I have been following the GGJ ever since last year, and finally had the opportunity to be part of one. I have to admit, I was hyped up for that weekend, and the expectations proved themselves right! I couldn’t be happier with the experience of making a game in a single weekend. It was a superb experience, and I hope I can correspond with results from what I have learned there from now on.
For 48 hours, I stayed over at the venue and managed to pull a video game out, with a group of people I found over there.
I went to this as a complete stranger, I knew no one. To say the least, I was nervous as hell, it’s not every day you go to an hackathon without knowing anyone. As soon as I got there, I went to the entrance and talked to the people organizing the Jam. They provided me with an entry card, and a small paper to fill in. This little paper would be a supposed door to get you into a group easily. The paper had a small square with a faceless bust, and three bars where you would evaluate yourself in code, art and misc, from a scale of 1 to 5. Being the programmer and self-acclaimed nerd, I went ahead and put myself a three on code , one on art and two on misc. On the face, well.. I drew myself with the eyes a bit torn apart! Just for the sake of fun. Not to mention the label that read:
bad/10 - what is this i don’t even i suck at drawing
Well, fun times. After all that, I pinned my little paper on a board, and proceeded to explore the venue. There I was, wandering around without knowing anyone. Felt a bit woozy, honestly. Well, who wouldn’t? A bunch of people stacked up in groups, talking about a variety of topics. After a few minutes, I gathered the courage to try speaking with someone. I managed to speak with two people, and exchanged some cool ideas about the Jam, and video game development in general. Was quite nice.
After some interesting debates, it was time for the keynote. I honestly couldn’t be more excited to listen to what people that have been longer on the field had to say, and of course the theme. From the keynote, however, I got the most amazing motivational speech for making video games ever:
“Create your worlds, and make your dreams a reality. And don’t forget explosions!” - Ramez Naam
I’ll keep the explosions in mind! But in the end, the so-long awaited theme: Ritual. Was funny enough to hear someone say “Hail Satan!” immediately. Because that’s exactly what goes through people’s heads when you hear Ritual isn’t it?
In any case, I just started brainstorming some ideas alone at first. Some stuff with summoning goats came to mind, but then I thought it would have been too much of a cliché. Then I thought about Rituals themselves. What is a ritual, actually? What does it represent? So I went look for the definition. Interestingly, the definition did not give me that much insight.. Apart from meaning sacrifice something, it could also mean some kind of routine. For the sake of it, I thought I would be better off seeking people to discuss the idea with. And that’s what I did.
I just joined a bunch of guys discussing some ideas. They had amazing ideas altogether, so I decided to drop in some contribution. A while later, me and 2 others kept the discussion alit with the idea of a ritual generator or simulator. Even though, we dropped after figuring that said idea was quite 2014-ish, and after coming up with a better one.
How about disrupting people’s rituals?
Sounds weird at first, right? But the idea is quite brilliant. Since a ritual can range from anything that is being summoned to someone’s routine, we could become Gods in a world where people have their choices, but where we’re not really pleased with the outcomes they might bring us. So, why not disrupt them and show them we’re actually displeased with what they do?
As the idea evolved, another person joined in our group and asked us for the current idea. We discussed some further details, and just made a group out of the intervenients of that discussion. Funnily enough, we were all programmers. Four people with the same basis and field of focus, creating a game. What bigger challenge could we want? We thought for the sake of it, who cares, we just want to make games, so bring it on!
We presented our idea to the public, and something among the lines of “You mix an hourglass with electricity, and you get Benjamin Franklin” popped out. For some reason, that senseless mix sounds funny. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Make combinations out of weird stuff to make even weirder stuff? I’m totally in!
The first day passed as we discussed the game’s details, created a repo, and decided who’s doing what. Two of the members had slight experience with designing, so their job was to take care of the assets. Meanwhile, the remaining guy and I would discuss programming details, data structures and other stuff around the likes of that. We decided to make the game go in Unity, despite me not having any experience with the program at all. For the sake of learning why not? I needed a C# syntax lesson anyway, and working with Unity seems to be the industry standard. So I went on with the plan.
After some hours of discussion, we came up with a solid plan and something we could work on. My partner and I started discussing data structures and general programming concepts, to then in the end realize Unity would take care of everything for both of us! So we embarked in an amazing journey of Pair Programming that would last the whole weekend, where in between I started getting a grasp of Unity. The other two members of our team had two sleepless nights coming up with amazing pixel art, animations and soundtrack.
By the end of the journey, we had a full game. We decided to name it “You’re doing it wrong!”, which indeed sounded funny and illustrative of the game at the time! You can check it out here, but I’ll leave a screen shot anyway:
At the end of the weekend, we had the opportunity to see what other people had worked on, and some amazing games came out of it. From Mayan tribes to politicians in suits discussing rituals of corruption, a lot of ideas sprung off that weekend. But the highest point to retain here is that I started working with Unity, and managed to learn some useful game development techniques, and procedures. Icy Fire will definitely be richer after this!
A big shout out to those amazing folks in my group. You guys deserve it.
And finally, a due apology for taking long with this. These two weeks have been a chaos, and I’m working on more news to give you guys. Some amazing stuff is coming up our way.
Nel is over and out, returning 0!