I organized the annual Game Making Deathmatch competition - a three week game making competition for the U of T Game Design and Development Club (utGDDC) for this year. It was a lot of work to organize but I’m glad everything worked out in the end. You can check out the results and the games of this year’s competition here: http://gmd.utgddc.com/2008.
I made the following commentary at the utGDDC forums on my experience of organizing the competition:
Unfortunately we didn’t get as many entries compared to previous years but we did have some quality games this time. Not only that, the rules have changed. One positive comments I got about GMD this year was that there was no “anonymous” rule — he said that it made the competition feel more laid back and not so strict. It’s nice to be able to put your name on something you’ve made and have others know about it. In the end, it didn’t have any major affect on the results of judging.
Other than with the people I’ve discussed during planning regarding the use of categories as opposed to ranks from 1 to N, I didn’t get any feedback regarding this change. But there didn’t seem to be any complaints at all either. I would think it’s better to know a team didn’t made it to the top rather than finding themselves at rank 18 (or 17, but it doesn’t make that much of a difference does it?).
The turn around time for getting the results in took a lot longer than I had hoped. I didn’t foresee this during planning but since the majority of the judges were from outside the club with very busy schedules, the results kept getting delayed. I had originally wanted to have the awards ceremony during the CSSU Game Night so that even bystanders who do not the club exists can see what we’ve been up to and possibly check out the games. I have to admit I did lose a lot of motivation for running the competition because of the delay, but in the end it seemed to have worked out. 4 out of the 5 judges I had contacted in the beginning were able to judge. If external judging is going to be done again in the future (and I personally hope it does since it gives GMD some more credibility), then this is something to keep in mind.
I don’t know what the budget was for previous GMDs, but I have to say that we had $0 to begin with. (In fact, the whole club this year ran on virtually $0!). We ended up raising $155 from registration, and $230 was pitched in by the CSSU. About $45 was spent on pizza, and if you were there during the games showcase, now you know why we had so little pizza. The prizes were kindly given by Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft, so I have to give my thanks to them. And of course CSSU for the majority of the funding. In the end we’ve broken even, so I’m happy about that.
Having two themes provided some variety in the games we got to see, even though 7 out of 10 games choose the Frogs, Planet Earth, and Potato theme. I also hope to see more selection of themes in future GMDs.
I’ve also relaxed the rule and allowed the use of game making tools (but still no MODs). Only Wheel of Space took advantage of this, and I think a lot of people liked the results. I decided to do this so that it would be more accessible to non-programmers. Besides, the focus is on creating playable games, not tech demos.
I think that’s about it. If I get some time, I *might* put together a video of all the games - just depends on how much time I get after studying for exams.
I hope GMD 2008 was a pleasant experience for the first timers. As the old timers, a renewed experience for what GMD means to them.
It’s been a long while since I’ve posted because I’ve been busy trying to finish my last term of undergraduate studies at U of T. Today was the last day I submitted a course work before starting to study for my exams.
I’m taking another CSC490 capstone project course and this time I’m am (or rather, was) working on a project to simulate fluid dynamics using the Lattice Boltzmann Method on a Nvidia 8000 series GPU. This project was done for PhD student Scott Briggs, and I also worked with James Vaughan. Here’s a video of the project:
Over the holidays and during this past fall, I noticed something different about the local EB Games as I walked in at Dufferin Mall and the Eaton Centre - they hired some female staff! I think this was the first time ever, out of the many times I’ve been to EB Games, seeing females working in the front lines of the video game retailer. I don’t know if EB Games has (intentionally or not) discriminated against hiring females or that there are now a greater number of females willing to work for EB Games, but I think it’s a good sign of changes that are happening in the games industry.
I played Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band for the first time last night and I was blown away. The Guitar Hero franchise has come a long way and Rock Band is setting the bar even higher. I wanted to check out the current prices of the Xbox360 at FutureShop because I’m thinking of getting it just for Guitar Hero 3 and Rock Band but then I saw this sentence in the product description:
Bring on the PWN4G3 with a free one-month subscription to XBOX Live Gold.
I don’t know why but I always get a chuckle when 1337 speak and/or 1337 slang is used in marketing and is done outside of it’s original context. Here’s my message to the marketing department: cut the crap. IMO, trying to advertise your products using 1337 slang is totally n00bish. Then again, 1337 speak is starting to get really annoying…
One of my teammates for Snap!, Jeff Wong, showed me this link where someone was able to simulate a multi touch display like that from Minority Report. He wrote a small demo app where he was able to interact with his fingers and use it like the touch screen gestures on an iPhone. It’s pretty cool and nifty — some interesting ideas can probably come out of it…
This past Thursday all of the teams for the 490 project course had a chance to present their work-in-progress games for the first time. Unfortunately I had a family issue to deal with so I missed the first hour of presentations. But at least I was able to make it on time to give our Snap! demo. Without giving too much away, the games which the other teams are developing are:
A rhythm fighting game
A Frisbee throwing game utilizing the Wiimote
A game about squirrels and nuts
A fantasy/adventure/puzzle game based on Harry Potter
The only game I have seen was the fourth one; I would have loved to see what the other games looked like so far.
When we gave our presentation on Snap!, we talked about our progress with the game, what has been done and what needs to be done for the next couple of weeks. Originally we wanted to use an open source 3D engine called Irrlict but later made an executive decision not to because there were too many unanswered questions about how to do some common game elements with just that engine (e.g. collision detection, scripting, event triggers, GUIs and HUDs, etc.). We ended up using 3DGameStudio, which was what Steve Engels suggested everyone in the class to use to quickly develop their games. 3DGameStudio is a “game authoring tool” that costs about $200 USD for the commercial version and the consensus among us students is that it isn’t the greatest tool to use, but it gets the job done and fairly quickly. Here are some in-game screen shots of Snap! so far:
The first alpha-release demo happens in two weeks, and I believe the lead designer of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed will be coming to our class to see what we have been up to!. So I can’t wait for that. A couple of students from the other teams came and told me that they thought Snap! was the most impressive demo of all games that day, so we’re doing something right. Yay us!
Thing’s have been really busy and hectic that I haven’t had time to stop and think about what to write. Actually that’s not true — a lot of things has happened but I haven’t had time to chill and write about them.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet but this term I’m taking a Computer Science Project Course (CSC490) at school focusing on game design. The course is being taught by Steve Engels and the course homepage is here for those who are interested. Content is somewhat lacking but after all this is a new course and in the past few weeks he has made his slides along the way during course meeting times. He also asks us to do some research on various game topics like what makes a bad game, what makes games fun, psychology of games, and character design. Inspired by Jen’s blog, Girls in Gaming, the theme for the game design course this year is “women in gaming”. There are roughly 20 students in the course and we have been put into teams up to four. By the end of the course, each team is to produce a working prototype of an original game that would appeal to women and girls. I was pretty happy about the topic when I first found out about it.
My team has come up with a game with the working title Snap! where the gameplay is a mix of Metal Gear Solid and Beyond Good & Evil. Not to give away too much in its early stages, the player would play as a paparazzi who goes around shooting photographs of celebrities in the city and sells the photos for money. There are assignments the player would have to do in order to progress through the game. One of the things we’ll be doing for our game, which I’ll be responsible for, is using the Wii Remote as the controller input for the game. I’ll talk more about the game once we really get a working prototype.
So back to the course: just last week Steve announced to us that the game design course is now available as a regular course offering by the Computer Science Department! The new course designation is CSC404 - and it’s kind of fitting IMO. Actually, the department up until now has been quite reluctant to offer any game related course because they considered it as “non-educational” or something of that nature. But the demand IMO is quite high for game courses as it’s being asked every year by prospective U of T students only to be disappointed that there wasn’t any, which was too bad since it’s a good motivator for getting into Computer Science (like myself — I went specifically into it because I wanted to get into game development). But anyway, it’s now being offered, so yay for the future students who’ll be taking it.
Not exactly gamedev related buuut… I was about to unsubscribe from BestBuy’s email ads until I noticed this at the very bottom of the email:
I think it’ll be a good chance for me to take a look and try out the latest games for this year without having to spend too much time hunting them down. I’m pretty excited about Guitar Hero 3 as they were finally able to get the rights to use one of Metallica’s songs, One.
After speaking to a particular interesting student at the club fair, a light bulb went up in my head. Playing video games is one thing. Making them is another. Some are just hardcore game players. Some are craftsmen who rarely play any video games. I realize that I fall into the latter category, which explains why I have a backlog of unopened and yet-to-be played games I’ve collected over the years. And I thought I was a sad case of someone who likes to make video games but don’t play them (that often at least…). I’ve become a casual gamer.
This blog is mainly focused on my main interest and passion: video games, game development & programming, the gamedev scene and community in Toronto, Canada.
The prizes were kindly given by Microsoft, EA, and Ubisoft, so I have to give my thanks to them. And of course CSSU for the majority of the funding. In the end we’ve broken even, so I’m happy about that.
