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.

This month’s topic will be led by Dylan Wolf on his analysis of tabletop game mechanics:

What can a video game designer learn from tabletop games? This talk will discuss the overlap between analog and digital game mechanics. For those new to board gaming, I’ll cover some of the categories and genres of modern board and card games. I’ll also highlight particular games that are good examples of these genres or have interesting implementations of certain mechanics.

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.

PS. Last month was the game jam and you can check out all the KGD entries here.

Zack Parrish Video Game Composer

Our next meetup will be led by guest speaker Zack Parrish, a video game music composer with a strong focus on producing music for independent video games.  Long time members will know his work from XBLIG games such as Antipole and Cute Things Dying Violently as well as the Indie Games Uprising.   Recently he worked on the soundtrack for Valdis Story: Abyssal City and won an Outstanding Contribution – Independent Composer award by the Annual Game Music Awards 2013.  Come with your questions on creating music for videos games and working with a professional composer.  You can check out Zack’s work on Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

Knoxville Hearthstone Group

A while back I announced a Hearthstone Open tournament and we’ve now held a second and plan to hold them monthly.  If you are interested in  announcements of future tournaments or to just hang out with some local Hearthstone players check out the KnoxHS facebook group.  Unless it’s some really big news, there won’t be anymore Hearthstone announcements to this list.

Summer ’14 Game Jam – August 22nd – 25th, 2014

We will again take part in the game jam this month.  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 22nd @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 will be using the space Saturday morning).

We will meet again Sunday August 24th @7PM at the Technology Cooperative – The game jam “compo” ends at 9PM on Sunday, and the “jam” at 9PM on Monday.  Your game must be submitted by then, so if you need to skip / come late to finish your game, by all means do.  The game jam servers are notorious for being overloaded in the last moments so do not wait too long to submit your game.  We’ll meetup to share our games, war stories of success and failure, and check out other entries.

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 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
• 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.

Our next meetup will feature guest speaker Christopher Rathgeb:

Christopher Rathgeb is a software developer and serial entrepreneur.  He spent 3 years with Oak Ridge National Laboratory before leaving to focus on developing mobile apps.  He has developed games with: UIKit, Cocos2D, and LibGDX.  For the past year, he has been working for Radio Systems Corporation developing web and mobile applications.

Christopher will also be presenting at CodeStock the same weekend on The Trials, Tribulations, and Triumphs of an Indie App Developer.  Because our meetup is right on the heals of CodeStock, the topic is TBD.

Speaking of CodeStock, several KDG members will be presenting game related topics:

• Game Development with Unity by Michael C. Neel
• Building a 2D Tile Engine in Unity by Michael C. Neel
• Accepting in-app payments in Unity mobile games with OpenIAB by Dylan Wolf
• Programming the Nintendo Entertainment System by Levi D. Smith (Lightning Talk – Time TBA)

Last, a reminder that the Hearthstone Open is this coming weekend.  The event is free, for charity (so donations welcome) and setup for players at all skill levels so don’t worry if you are still learning – come out and have fun!  Details on the Hearthstone Open here.

At our next meetup we’ll talk about two simple yet powerful frameworks you can use to make games.  Both of these are great options for your first game, or useful as a rapid prototyping tool for experienced developers.

Levi D. Smith will share his knowledge and experience in Project Spark.  Project Spark is a “game maker video game” for Microsoft Windows 8.1 and Xbox One, with Xbox 360 support planned.  All game building is done while playing the game, and creations can be shared online.  Levi will demo Project Spark on an Xbox One.

Michael C. Neel will introduce the basics of App Inventor.   App Inventor for Android is an open-source web application originally provided by Google, and now maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  It uses a graphical interface and system of blocks, very similar to Scratch, which let’s users drag-and-drop to games and applications that run on Android devices.  Michael will demo App Inventor on an Android tablet.

Spring ’14 Game Jam – April 25th – 28th, 2014

We will again take part in the game jam this month.  We’ll do this very similar to the game jam in December.  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 April 25th @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 will be using the space Saturday morning).

We will meet again Sunday 27th @7PM at the Technology Cooperative – The game jam “compo” ends at 9PM on Sunday, and the “jam” at 9PM on Monday.  Your game must be submitted by then, so if you need to skip / come late to finish your game, by all means do.  The game jam servers are notorious for being overloaded in the last moments so do not wait too long to submit your game.  We’ll meetup to share our games, war stories of success and failure, and check out other entries.

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
• 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.