Mid-Semester Expo: Success!

This year's Mid-Semester Expo was a raging success!

SC2: Currently have finished our Micro Map, called "The Last Remnants of Char". To find it on Battle.net, search for just "Remnant" as if you add "Char" other maps show up. Also, it was baller.

Galaxy Raider: Galaxy Raider currently has a nearly (80-90%) complete map editor, and a core game engine, which so far supports a player and movement. (barrel rolls!)

Monolithic: has a lot of disjoint pieces that need to be integrated. We have cool art assets, some cards in the database, and lots of graphical elements.

Colors - The game is coming along. Not much has happened on the surface since the Microsoft meeting, but lots of content is ready to be loaded. The game should definitely be ready by the end of semester. Thankfully it was still playable even know the team suffered some build problems right before the meeting. The team seems enthusiastic and the game should be fun to play when it is done.


All in all, it was pretty baller.

This Friday - The Industry Comes to US

So the subject of this post may be a little dramatic, however it rings true - this Friday at 6pm you will have an opportunity to meet and shmooz with Tyler Carbone, one of the founding members of SRRN Games, a local startup here in Charlottesville! Tyler will be here to talk about SRRN's progress ( a few of us from SGD have been working with them this summer), and to present some opportunities for internships during the semester. If you want more information about SRRN you can check out their website at www.srrngames.com.

For those of you who are interested in potentially doing some part-time work on the side this semester, or for those just curious about how a game company gets started and moves forward, I recommend you swing on by and check it out.

Where: Olsson 005

When: Friday, Sept. 10th 6pm

What: SRRN Games Talk

I'm looking forward to seeing you all there.

Pitch Meeting, Fall 2010

For those who just met us at the Engineering Expo and Activities Fair, welcome to the Gamedevs Website! Here we'll be announcing all of our upcoming events, such as speakers, expos, and career related talks. But for now, we're announcing the SGD Fall Pitch Meeting!

The Pitch Meeting generally serves as our first ever meeting of the semester, and at this pitch meeting all of those previously mentioned aspiring Directors proceed to pitch their game concepts and ideas to the club in a presentation-style format. After all of the pitches have been completed (10-15 minutes each), everyone in the club fills out a form indicating which games they'd like to work on and what positions on those games they would like to fill, and then everyone is matched best according to their wishes combined with the needs of each team. Of course if you have any questions during the meeting about how we work or anything like that, feel free to ask, or e-mail me back directly with your query.

Our pitch meeting this semester is:

When: Thursday, September 2nd 7:30PM

Where: Olsson Hall 005

Please swing on by if you are interested in joining us in our endeavors to make cool games! IIf any of the games being pitched appeal to you, then all you'll have to do is indicate on a little form we hand out that you are interested in working on that game and you and the Director and all of your new teammates will hook up and spend the rest of the Semester making awesome games! If you can't make it to the meeting then don't worry! A post will be posted here detailing all of the pitches and positions and how to apply as if you had been there anyway! More details about speakers, workshops and expos will be coming soon!

I'm looking forward to seeing you all soon.

~Dan Magnusson

End of Semester Expo

The end of the Semester is upon us! The time has come for the Student Game Developers' annual End of Semester Expo, where all the games we've worked on throught the semester will be on showcase. Come for the games, come for the (free) snacks, this Saturday (5/1) in Thn E303.

There will be 4 SGD games on showcase, along with several games from the Game Design class (CS 4501).

Games:

-Dual

-Impact

-Laser Lockdown

-Recursion

SGD Featured in Cavalier Daily

We are featured today in the Cavalier Daily, UVA's student newspaper. The article discusses iPhone development and the opportunities many of us have had with SRRN Games.

From the article:
Clearly, he added, when Carbone and Abadi offered jobs to members of SGD, the mutual benefits were readily apparent.

“Things have worked out great for us because SGD works really hard to get opportunities for its members, but it’s also been great for SRRN because they have access to really talented people who are passionate about making video games,”

You can read the full article here: http://www.cavalierdaily.com/2010/04/29/app-madness/

Recursion update

Recursion has been moving along slowly this semester, but we new art, levels, and a new powerup to show for it. The art style is now significantly more "electronic", with the main character now being a blue computer. The terrain for some of the earlier levels has also been updated to match these changes, which result in the screenshots attached.

The powerup that we added this semester was the parachute, which slows your rate of falling after a jump. This allows you to reach new areas and make jumps that wouldn't be possible before. We've been working on adding some more difficult levels, and we have now removed all RGBDS levels because we have enough to merit a complete game.

Laser Lockdown Project Update

The vision of Laser Lockdown was to create a laser tag simulation in the UDK. I'm proud to say that we're most of the way there.




As you can see from the screenshots, Andrew put together a new model for the laser gun that looks sweet. The screenshots were taken in the old level from the mid-semester expo; Michael and Andrew have both been working hard on getting a new one put together. It's looking great so far; it'll be done in time for the end-of-semester expo in two weeks.

The game mechanics have been implemented for the most part. Most laser tag games "stun" a person when they've been shot for a few seconds; this is one of the mechanics that we've added to Laser Lockdown. This stun time gives the player a chance to react to being shot and also discourages focusing on one target alone. We're also working on the scoring system which will decrease the points per tag when the same target is hit in succession.

If you're going to be in Charlottesville in the next few weeks, make sure to come out to the end of semester expo! It'll be your only chance to play a Wiimote version (with headtracking) version of Laser Lockdown!