Our next meetup will be lead by local artist Justin A Dickerman of Ashers Art:

2D art with Photoshop, a digital painting overview

In this presentation we will be learning about Photoshops painting tools, and basics of digital painting. My process for taking an initial concept to illustration, and a few tips and tricks.

Justin is an alumni of the Art Institute, and has worked in the games industry before residing to freelance work as a digital artist.

The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative locating 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.

If you would like email reminders of the meetups, please sign up for the mailing list on the homepage sidebar.

The topic for our next meetup will be using Kickstarter to fund your game presented by Michael C. Neel:

Since the launch of Kickstarter, many projects have raised millions of dollars in funding. Beneath the headlines though lives a vibrant community of smaller projects getting the funds they need every day. Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing approach has unlocked a source of crowdfunding that anyone can use. Over 40,000 projects have been funded and the project success rate is above 40%. The question isn’t “can” I raise money on Kickstarter, but “how.”

Since February of 2011 I have been watching, tracking, and supporting projects on Kickstarter. I’ve noticed patterns in both successful and unsuccessful projects. In this session we’ll look at the lessons to be learned from previous projects, and cover:

• Figuring out if a project is a good Kickstarter fit
• Creating a welcoming pitch video
• Choosing the right pledge levels and rewards
• Raising awareness of your project
• A deeper look at Kickstarter statistics

About Michael C. Neel

Michael is a passionate developer who has written code for web, desktop, mobile, and games. With his co-founders at FuncWorks he hosts GameMarx, a weekly podcast for indie and hobby level game developers and operates XboxIndies.com – a central source for XBLIG news and reviews from more than 10 gaming websites and a full database of all XBLIG games. FuncWorks is currently working on games targeting the Xbox and PC platforms.

Michael is a regular speaker at developer conferences and has been awarded Microsoft MVP twice. He is the founder of CodeStock, an annual developers conference in Knoxville,TN and a co-founder of the Technology Cooperative to create a technology-focused community providing technology access and awareness to all. Proud father of three amazing daughters, Rachel, Hannah, and Jasmine. Loving husband to Cicelie who inflates and pops his ego as necessary.  You can reach Michael through his person blog at ViNull.com or on twitter as @ViNull.

At our next meetup Eric Johnson will cover the 3D game he’s developing using only HTML 5 and Javascript:

Discussion about a HTML 5 canvas 3D game engine written from scratch.  This engine runs with no frameworks, no plugins, and all original JavaScript.  Runs on all HTML 5 compatible platforms including mobile and desktop.

Given by Eric Johnson, a co-founder of the Technology Cooperative,  electrical engineer by training, geek by birth.

At our next meetup, Levi D. Smith will give the group a guided tour of 3D modeling with Blender:

Learn how to use the free and open source modeling tool Blender to create content for 3D XNA games. This presentation will cover the basics of using Blender to model a simple character, texture mapping, animating a model with an armature, and exporting a model to an XNA game.

Levi D. Smith has been a Blender user for over 10 years, and he is currently modeling with Blender for his next XNA game Blasting Bits. Levi released his first XBox Live Indie game called Resistor in the summer of 2012.

Below are the topics for our next two meetings.  We will be meeting on December 9th, 2012 and January 13th, 2013 at the Technology Cooperative from 2PM – 5PM.  As always we will start with a open discussion / Show and Tell before the topic so feel free to bring a game in progress to demo, a favorite tool, a mechanic you love in another game, or anything you find helpful and want to share with the group.  Its not required to bring something to Show and Tell, but it’s a great way to share with the group!

Coding for Charity

Today (Friday November 30th, 2012) and through Sunday I (Mike) will be coding a game from scratch live at twitch.tv/vinull!  I’m doing this to help raise $1000 for the Technology Cooperative.  You can read all the details and donate at gamemarx.chipin.com, and there is also a ChipIn widget on the live stream page.  Everyone is also welcome to just hang on in chat and encourage/mock me live!

December 9th, 2012 – 3D Point Clouds and Google Earth

Jeffry Turnmire will give a demonstration on 3D laser scan technology for generating 3D point clouds.  Discussion on point cloud manipulation tools and data extraction for generation 3D TIN surfaces. Demonstration on extracting 3D surface information from Google Earth.

January 13th, 2013 – Scrolling Tile Engine and Waypoint Pathfinding System with XNA and Windows Phone

Chris G. Williams, Microsoft XNA MVP, will be combining two talks into one on XNA and Windows Phone.   The first part is a fun and easy going talk that shows basic techniques for creating Windows Phone games with XNA that use a scrolling tiled map. Leveraging freely available images for prototyping, principles of tilemapping, map design, basic animation, sprite (2D graphics) rendering will be covered.

The second part builds on the previous to provide a degree of limited Pathfinding AI for the creatures in your game by creating a system of waypoints they can use to navigate the terrain on your map.  Includes discussion of simple game AI and ways to use/tweak the waypoint system in your games.

This month we will follow our 3D design meetup with 3D programming:

You may have heard of and even checked out Microsoft’s XNA Framework, the managed game development framework built with .Net that let’s you write games for a Window PC, Windows Phone 7, and the Xbox 360.  Even for the experienced developer stepping into the world of 3D game development can be like Alice visiting Wonderland.  It can be hard to ask questions when you don’t even understand the terms used! This session focuses on fundamental 3D game programming concepts assuming one is new to game programming and XNA, but has a good background of general programming.

The talk is geared to C#/XNA developers, but also covers several base concepts in 3D programming.  As always we will start with a Show and Tell discussion.  Meeting starts at 2PM this Sunday at the Technology Cooperative.

Our next meeting will be held Sunday, Oct 14th from 2-5PM at the Technology Cooperative.  This is a week early due to a scheduling conflict.  In fact, given that we have Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, I’m going to move the group to the second Sunday of the month.

The topic this month is how to create 3D graphics and objects for your game:

Josh Ferguson, lead artist of local indie game studio Chaosoft Games and an instructor in graphic design, game design, and 3D animation, will be demonstrating the process of developing 3D game assets using Autodesk 3D Studio Max and Adobe Photoshop.  A complete overview of the 3D asset pipeline will be shown, including modeling, UV unwrapping, texture creation, and preparing a model for export to a 3D game engine.  The modeling portion of the demo will focus on simple, easy-to-create objects, while texture creation will cover tileable textures, painting textures, and supplementary textures to enhance the appearance of a model.  A brief intro of the necessary tools and software UI will preface the main demo.  Attendees who wish to follow along on their own computers are encouraged to install the free trial versions of the aforementioned software.  The demo is expected to last between 60-90 minutes.

Last month’s “Show and Tell” was a great success, and will be a regular part of the meetings.   Come ready to show a bit of your in progress game, a favorite tool, a mechanic you love in another game, or anything you find helpful and want to share with the group.  Its not required to bring something to Show and Tell, but it’s a great way to share with the group!

Our next meeting will be held Sunday, Sept 16th from 2-5PM at the Technology Cooperative.

The topic this month is a retrospective on the release of Resistor:

This presentation will cover the lessons learned from Levi Smith after publishing his first XBox Live Indie game.  Learn the pitfalls to avoid and how to more effectively market a game launch using press reviews and social media.  An analysis and discussion of launch sales data will provide insight into the successes and failures of the game launch.

Levi resides in the Knoxville, Tennessee area, where he develops games in his spare time.  He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Tennessee.

We will also try out a small change to our meeting format.  This month we will begin with a “Show and 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.  Its not required to bring something to Show and Tell, but it’s a great way to share with the group!

Last bit of news, EvilQuest is on Greenlight!  Greenlight is Valve’s new community site for helping indie games release on steam.  If a game gets enough fan support it will be considered for release.  Here’s wishing best of luck to one of Knoxville’s own game studios Chaosoft!