This month’s topic will be led by Dylan Wolf of FuncWorks, and cover his experience using the in-app purchase framework OpenIAB in Unity:
Setting up in-app payments in Unity can be confusing if you’re new to mobile app stores, even with a cross-platform, open-source plugin like OpenIAB. We’ll cover the basic concepts of in-app payments on Android and iOS, an example of configuring apps and products in an app store, and setting up OpenIAB in Unity.
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.
Next month our normal meetup will be replaced by the game jam, scheduled for the weekend of April 25th – 28th. More details to come!
Our next meetup will be a roundtable discussion on creating audio (sound and music) for video games and also touch on video production for game trailers.
Levi D. Smith will share his knowledge and experience in Garage Band, PxTone, Bxfr, and Audacity. Michael C. Neel will cover Reaper, FL Studio, Levelator, Audacity, and also bring some gear to show and discuss from microphones to video capture hardware.
Everyone is encouraged to participate and if there is a tool or device you find helpful please bring it or bring it up in the discussion!
The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative located 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.
Be sure to stop by your favorite coffee shop this week and grab the January 23rd, 2014 issue of the Knoxville Metropulse, with cover story featuring the Knoxville Game Design meetup and the game jam. If you can’t wait, you can also read the story online or download a PDF version that includes photos. (In case these link no longer work in the future we’ve made an archive copy of the story here). A big thanks to Mike Gibson (author) and David Luttrell (photographer) for their work covering the group and our participation in the game jam.
Our next meetup is February 9th and the topic is tentatively “music”. I’ve reached out to local musician Zack Parrish and he will be coming to the group for a indie game music Q&A but his schedule is packed so it won’t be for a few months. If anyone has a topic they would like to share for February let me know, if not we’ll go forward with “music” in a round table discussion style.
The first meetup of the year will be lead by Michael C. Neel covering extending Unity with custom editors and file format support:
Over the holiday break I worked on a TMX map importer for Unity, called UTiled. This session will cover the basics of extending Unity to add support for a custom file format, creating specialized editors for native and custom components, and some general tips on dealing with serialization issues in Unity.
I’ll also go into UTiled and the basics of rendering a tile map in Unity, both as a collection of 2D sprites and as a 3D mesh, and the pros / cons of each approach.
UTiled is available as an open source project, and can be downloaded from the Bitbucket UTiled Project page. There isn’t much documentation yet, but Mike and Dylan created an overview video on using UTiled with Unity:
The meetup will be held at the Technology Cooperative located 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.
This past weekend 3 developers plus 2 teams from Knoxville Game Design took part in the game jam for a total of five entries! The theme was “You Only Get One” and it was up to each developer and team how they incorporated the theme. Here are the five entries:
Jacob age 9 is the team leader (Lead Designer, Lead artist, Lead programmer). Dad and Uncle Jon provided technical assistance. Game done in GameMaker Studio 1.2. Tile Studio used for sprites. Audacity used for sounds. Game play with Arrow Keys, A = attack. Weird quirky glitches are by design. The final boss can be tricky to kill. You only get one life, one weapon, one boss fight.
You play as One Gunman, who must gather the rewards for shooting the bandits (Evens, Odds, Fibonaccis, Squares). Each bandit has a numerical value associated to it, which determines if it is one that can be shot for a reward. The reward will change periodically to a new set of bandits. Shooting an incorrect bandit will result in One Gunman losing a life. When all of his lives are gone, the game is over.
It’s your first day at YoGo Burger, and management has said it needs to make some cuts. Effectively immediately all customers can have only one item on a burger. Marketing suggests we do not tell customers of this new policy, and research shows people only care about one topping anyway so there should be no complaints.
Also, new policy for new hires: get one complaint and you’re fired!
Collect the coins! Avoid the enemies! Score the points!
Power-up your robotic avatar by playing cards–but you can only hold one card at a time (that is, “you only get one”).
You are are a skilled treasure hunter, exploring various areas in search of gold.
Collect at least 50 gold to pay for travel to the next area, but you only get one minute!
Time-lapse Development Videos
It’s common for participates in the game jam to live stream their process, and then crunch the whole weekend down to a three minute video. This time, both Mike and Levi made time-lapse videos:
The response was very good this time, even with it being in the middle of the holidays, and we’ll likely do another in April. Be sure to sign up on the mailing list for future meetup and game jam announcements.
Congratulations to everyone who entered the game jam!
Tomorrow we will meetup at the TechCo starting at 7PM and the Game Jam officially kicks off at 9PM. I’ve moved things up an hour as we may have a few guests from the press in attendance checking out the group and jam, plus I’ll also be bringing a laptop loaded with indie games to play and get the ideas rolling.
Let me stress again 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. The game jam was started because “for many people, it can be difficult to find or make the time create a game or prototype for yourself. We’re here to be your excuse.” If you’ve been lurking in the mailing list or thinking about making a game but don’t know where to start this jam is for you! Come out, ask some questions, and the other members will help you get started.
Knoxville, TN – November 2013 – Levi D. Smith presents TTY GFX ADVNTR, his second game published on the XBox Live Indie Game marketplace. TTY GFX ADVNTR puts the player in the role of a hero who must defeat the dragon to save the princess.
The idea for the game was originally conceived through the game jam competition, where the theme was to create a game using a low level programming language in 48 hours. The game was inspired by BBS DOOR games of the mid-90’s, and it uses a graphical style of games that were played through a computer terminal (TTY). After receiving positive feedback from the Indie developer community, Levi decided to port the original game to the Xbox Live Indie Game platform so that it could be enjoyed by a wider audience.
As the hero, the player must battle monsters across five different lands to gain the experience needed to conquer the dragon. Long time RPG fans will find the battle system and mechanics very familiar. While on the adventure, the player will meet various allies who will assist the player in progressing through the story. Weapons and armor crafted by the blacksmith will give the player the needed power to complete the adventure.
Second, Chaosoft Games will be bringing EvilQuest to Steam! As part of the December 4th batch, EvilQuest was greenlit to be on Steam, the largest digital distribution site for games (it’s estimated that 75% of all digital games purchased for the PC are through Steam). I hear that Josh Ferguson has already commissioned a gold plated version of G1 Megatron appropriate to his new status in society.
Attention Knox Game Designers, based on our discussions last month our December 15th Meetup will be a bit different – it will be a Game Jam! Here is what we’ll be doing, and what you need to know about the weekend:
We will meet Friday December 13th @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 15th @7PM at the Technology Cooperative – The game jam “compo” ends at 9PM and you game must be submitted by then. If you need to skip / come late to finish your game, by all means do. Know however that 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.
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:
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.
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!
