Pitch Process: Spring 2010 Meeting Scheduled

Greetings to all, I hope you had a relaxing holiday.

The Student Game Developers will meet next Tuesday, January 26, for the formal pitch proposal meeting for the Spring 2010 semester. The meeting will take place in OLS005 at 6:00 PM. If you plan on pitching a project for this semester, you are expected to present your proposal to the SGD body proper at this meeting. In addition, you need to submit a formal design document to our officers regarding your proposal prior to that date; information on the design doc format and pitch process can once again be found by clicking here.

Announcement: Skies of Fury development resumes

Foremost, Happy New Year compliments of Student Game Developers! We hope you are having a safe and fun holiday.

With that, the Student Game Developers have an exciting announcement to kick off 2010: development of Skies of Fury, one of the clubs many successful projects from the Spring 2009 semester, is resuming! Teaming up with local video game development company SRRN Games, SGD members and previous SoF development team members Charles Gibson, Chris Hooe, Nick Wasilewski, and John Will will work to expand the game in every regard: there will be more levels to play, more enemies to fight, more weapons at your disposal, more bosses to take down, and more ways to play the game.

Work has already commenced on the project, which is expected to be completed by the end of the Spring 2010 semester. Once complete, the team plans to release the game to XBOX Live Arcade.

As a bonus to go along with this exciting announcement, you can find work-in-progress screenshots of the new Skies of Fury by clicking here, here, and here. Screens captued on December 17, 2009.

Expo Recap

I just want to take the time to thank everyone who came out to the expo today. It was a lot of fun to see everyone's full games in all their glory for the first time. Congratulations to all the team members who have spent their sweat and tears working on these projects over the entire semester! Ace your finals, take a break, and come back ready to work on a new batch of projects next semester.

We'll be posting the games here in the coming weeks (most likely once finals are done), so everyone who couldn't make it out can have a go.

Reminders: End-of-Semester Expo, Smash For Cash

The Student Game Developers and the UVa chapter of the Association of Computer Machinery will be co-hosting Smash For Cash, a tournament in the hit Nintendo Wii video game "Super Smash Bros. Brawl", this Saturday, December 5, in the basement of Olsson Hall. The tournament starts at 2 PM and is expected to last until 5 PM. Entry fee for the tournament is $10, and prizes will be awarded. Registration for the tournament ends at 2:15 PM on the 5th, and the earliest registered participants will receive first-round byes, so be sure to be among the first to show up!

Raffle prizes will also be awarded, with raffle tickets available for $1 apiece. All money raised by the tournament and raffle will be donated to the Child's Play charity, which directly benefits children at the UVa Children's Hospital.

On the following day (Sunday the 6th), SGD will host its Fall 2009 End-of-Semester Expo. This event starts at 1 PM and will be held in Thornton E303. All projects that SGD has pursued this semester - Empyreal, Gladiators, Laser Lockdown, Recursion, T-Cubed, and Yggdrasil - will be on display, so come out and have some fun before exams start! Light snacks will be provided.

Fall 2009 End Of Semester Expo, Smash For Cash Announcements

The Student Game Developers' End Of Semester Expo has been scheduled for Sunday, December 6 at 2:00 PM. The Expo is currently scheduled to take place in Thornton E303. All SGD projects will be on public display at this Expo.

In addition, SGD and The University's chapter of the Association of Computer Machinery (ACM) are coscheduling the Fall 2009 "Smash For Cash". The event, which is scheduled for December 5 in the basement of Olsson Hall, is a fundraiser for the Child's Play charity, and is comprised of a tournament in the blockbuster Wii video game "Super Smash Bros. Brawl". The tournament requires a $10 entry, of which all proceeds go towards Child's Play. Prizes will be awarded to top finishers!

SRRN Games Talk

On Thursday, October 22 at 6 PM in OLS 005, SGD will be hosting a presentation by SRRN Games. SRRN Games was founded by two Darden school students, Aujang Abadi and Tyler Carbone. They'll be talking about who they are, their current projects, and a potential collaboration in the Spring. Make sure you come on out to hear them this Thursday!

SGD Resumé Panel

On Thursday, October 15th at 6pm in Olsson 001, SGD will be holding it's first Resumé Panel. This will be a panel of SGDers who all have had some form of experience tailoring their resumé's for the games industry, ready to answer questions you have for them about the best way to format your letters, stuff about cover letters, and how to make yourself stand out. This panel will be held exactly one week before the SRRN Games Talk, so if you want to make sure your resumé is top-notch so you can ever-so-casually hand it to them the week after, this is the perfect opportunity!

Of course, before we can hold this panel, we need some members to be ON the panel! Therefore, SGD, it is up to you all to nominate the panel members. If you have a nomination in mind, write back to me at dnm5z@virginia.edu (with [Nomination] as the first thing in the subject line, followed by the nominee's name) and tell me why your nomination is fit to be on this panel.

You can nominate yourself too, I guess, but that would kind of be a dick move.

I look forward to hearing your nominations, and we will announce the panel at LEAST by a week before-hand.

Pitch Process: Pitch Meetings Scheduled

In addition to the previously-announced club meeting this Thursday, the Student Game Developers will meet the following two Thursdays (September 3 2009 and September 10 2009) in OLS 005 at 6:00 PM for the formal pitch proposal meetings for the semester. If you plan on pitching a project for this semester, you are expected to present your proposal to the SGD body proper at one of these two meetings.

Pitch Process: Fall 09 Deadline

To add to the general project pitch process guidelines seen here, all pitch proposals are due to SGD officers no later than Tuesday, September 1 2009. You can submit a proposal by following the guidelines at the link above and sending the required design document at that link to the contact email address provided at the top of our home page (all email to this address gets forwarded to all SGD officers).

Finally, if you plan on pitching a project, you should attend the first director's meeting of the semester, which will occur on Thursday, August 27 2009, in MEC 216. This meeting will commence immediately following the more general SGD club meeting announced previously on the same day at 5 PM.

Fall 2009 First Meeting

Hey gamedevs! I hope all of you had a great summer.

The Student Game Developers at The University of Virginia are holding our opening meeting for the 2009-10 academic year on Thursday, August 27 from 5-6 PM in MEC 216. Please stop by if you're interested! Also, feel free to check out our booths at the Student Activities Fair this upcoming week.

Matthew Yu receives 2009 SGD Exemplary Contribution Award

Student Game Developers' member Matthew Yu was awarded with a Jefferson Cup for his work with Student Game Developers during the 2008-09 school year.  Matt put a great deal of his personal time into the success of many projects developed over the course of the year, including Recursion (developed in Fall 2008), RGB-DS (developed in Spring 2009), and Skies of Fury (also developed in Spring 2009).  Matt is currently enrolled in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at The University of Virginia. 

The Student Game Developers Exemplary Contribution Award, fondly dubbed by some members of SGD as the "I Am A Beast" Award, was created by the presiding SGD officers during the Spring 2009 semester to acknowledge the contributions a non-director member who went beyond the call of duty for his or her team and also demostrated exceptional motivation towards the success of multiple projects developed by SGD members and ergo the success of SGD as a whole.  The accolade is awarded on yearly and takes into account the contributions of the candidates to Student Game Developers over the course of the entire academic year.

Expo Trailer

Well I figured it should be posted here at some point, so here is our expo trailer in all of its glory.