It’s time for another game jam!  If you’ve been to a jam in the past, it will be very similar.  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 August 21th @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 uses the space Saturday mornings), and we won’t have a meetup Sunday, August 23rd.

We’ll share and recap our entries at the following meetup, September 13th, 2015.

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
• Make an account on Itch.io (optional, but great place to host your entry)
• 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.

Here is a big list of the links that came up at today’s meetup!

• Spring ’15 Game Jam: April 17-20th 2015
• Theme Voting
• Kickstarter: Makers Donuts
• MomoCon Indie Games Showcase and Contest
• Steam Discovery promoting more than 4,000 titles per day
• Itch.io: Introducing open revenue sharing
• Top Tips: 10 things you didn’t know you could do with Unity
• XNA is no more, as the phoenix rises from the ashes
• Windows 10 launching this summer
• What is Twine? (For Developers)
• Narrative and design insights from 80 Days’ writing lead
• Playing Detective or How I Would Fix Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
• Game Development Tools List on Zeef
• CodeStock
• Scruffy City Music and Film Festival
• Synapse Gaming: Sunburn Engine
• Unreal Engine First Impressions
• EvilQuest Steam sale history

News Items and Articles:

• Looking back at XBLIG: The do-it-yourself console marketplace
• C# Memory Management for Unity Developers (part 1 of 3)
• Making textureless 3D work, a how-to/making of guide
• Devs Play (Season 1)
• Introducing presskit() 2.5 & distribute()
• 15 Amazing Game Landing Pages You Need to See

Software Shown:

• Godot Engine
• Pickle
• Aseprite
• Verve Painter

Starting with this Sunday – November 16th, 2014 – the Technology Cooperative will be open the third Sunday of the month from 2PM – 5PM for an “Open Game Lab”.  In addition to these Sundays, the Technology Cooperative will also be holding a weekly Open Game Lab every Tuesday night from 5:30 PM – 8PM.  Because these are on going events, please check the Technology Cooperative Program Calendar for any last minute cancellations or changes.

These labs will be 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 of other game designers.  There will be no presentations scheduled during the labs, those will continue to be held on the 2nd Sunday of the month at the regular meetup.

The Technology Cooperative does have a few older laptops and Raspberry Pis available for use running open source software that can be used.  These systems are not super fast and may limit the tools you can use in making a game.  If you have the means to bring your own system to work from it is highly recommended.