Summer STL Game Jam 2011 – Day 3

I arrived at Simutronics at 10 am on the 3rd day of the GameJam, which gave us around 6 hours to get as far as we could. I worked on a few little things and when the rest of the team arrived I called a meeting at one of the giant white boards to see if they were interested in making some big changes to the core design of the game.

The main element that makes our game interesting is that the threat (the princess) follows your exact path. Ideally, this fact should force you to keep moving forward while being mindful of what you’re doing because you’ll have to deal with the results later. Neither of these design goals were being hit in the levels as they stood, so the game design would have to change to encourage level design that emphasizes those goals.

The first idea I had was to shorten the timer greatly. This would guarantee that you try to move forward as quickly as possible, putting the princess right on your heels the whole time.

I noticed that many of the levels being created had a circular structure and this seemed to work well. The idea of reaching the exit and then returning home had been dictated by the theme, but it seemed like having multiple objectives would encourage the player to take on the level as a whole rather than put all of the emphasis on the area that contains the exit. The goal of multiple objectives took the form of crowns that must be collected to win the stage.

Finally, to tie those two ideas together and put a bit more urgency, structure, and potential for puzzles into the mix I had the idea of making those crowns into time extensions which could be used to dictate the path you take. The crowns would have numbers on them that extend your time by anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds.

I estimated that it would take a few hours to get these ideas implemented, after which we could spend the rest of the time working on levels and polish, and getting rid of placeholder art.

The plan worked out surprisingly well. By lunch time we had implemented basically all of the changes, and were working on polish.

IDC Projects threw down to sponsor lunch, and bought a ton of lunch meat, cheeses, bread, and condiments to make sandwiches. This was perfect for the third day, when people want to focus on finishing up without having to rush over and get food before it’s all gobbled up.

I had a surprise for our team that I took the time to put together after lunch. Because we were using XNA we have the ability to output our game to an Xbox 360 and play it on a TV, but I don’t think any of them had actually seen this before, and it feels neat to see something you’ve worked on being played on a game console.

By pure coincidence, our team had taken a spot immediately next to Simutronics’ giant rear projection TV that has their Xbox hooked up to it. To deploy your games to an Xbox you need a Creator’s Club account, an Internet connection, and a computer on the same network as the Xbox. The first two were covered, and thanks to Simutronics’ network administrator Liz we were able to get the third.

By this time, many people had finished their own games and were walking around. By virtue of being on the giant TV set with a controller to pass around we had lots of people to try our game out and provide feedback. A lot of bugs were found that might have slipped through the cracks otherwise, but more importantly we got to see people playing the game and having fun, which validated that the design and the work we’d put in had been worthwhile.

We worked out all of the bugs, put in a bunch of last-minute art, and Dan Eichling helped us tweak the levels to make them really difficult and awesome. Before we knew it, we were the last team without our game turned in. We sent the game and team info off to Elonka and went into the conference room.

David had gone out and bought a really nice LCD monitor to show off our games on, and Lanturn, the game I thought looked furthest along the day before, was up on display.

As emcee for the event I should have been more prepared, but Elonka had taken care of everything. She even took the time to create all of the game pages and upload them to http://www.stlgamejam.com.

It’s a good thing she did this too, as I had totally missed one of the teams during my rounds the day before.

I’m not even sure where he was sitting, but lurking somewhere in the building Daniel Leahey had been single-handedly making a game in Unity.

Everyone’s game demoed superbly, and I think it’s safe to say that there was more innovation and creativity in any of these games than most of what hits Best Buy’s shelves every Tuesday. Don’t take my word for it though, the games are all available for download on this very site.

The GameJam had been a success. There’s a ton of talent in St. Louis, and this community is still just getting started. I predict that the next GameJam (on January 27th to the 29th 2012 at Webster University) will have over 100 people, and by the one after that we’ll start seeing more game companies showing up around town, either born as a result of these events, or simply to find out what all of the fuss is about.

I’m moving to California next month for a job in the game industry, but this proved that I really didn’t have to go that far to get involved in game development. I’m going to miss everyone who’s been helping out with these things, most notably Dan, Nick, Elonka, Jesse, Michael, Scott, Dave, and Amanda. You’ve all been awesome, and this scene wouldn’t be what it is without you. If you’re not already, I encourage you to start going to the meetups and getting involved. All it takes is a desire to make games, and if you’re reading this I’m going to assume you’ve got that.

Have fun, and I’ll come back to see you guys soon! Keep on creating!

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