Game Jam in Copenhagen 2-4 february

februari 5, 2007, 1:59 e m
Postat i: Game Design

Ok, back home again. Now I will tell you all about it.. Where to start? It was fantastic, i feel that it gave me a hole new perspective on things. It was a real challenge and I don´t regret it for a second. Would I do it again? Yes, I will be back next year!

We arrived to the IT-university in Copenhagen 2 pm on friday. It started out with a seminar about XNA, a gamedesign engine for windows, developed by Microsoft. Really interesting. Afterwards it was a seminar about another gameengine called Unity for Macintosh. Then it was the last seminar about the engine Hammer. Hammer is the tool you use by steam to create Counterstrike levels or Half life.

The we mingled a bit. They had their faculty party their, so we were drinking beers and talking. It was really fun. About 8pm we all met up in the auditorium where we played some games to learn to know eachother, brainstormed game ideas and so on. Then we created groups.

My group had 3 programmers (proffessionals), 4 gamedesigners, 2 graphics, 1 soundguy and me. If it should been right, I should have been with the gamedesigners but i chose to be with the graphic guys so I should learn something as well. Also because 1 graphic guy didnt show up until 3 pm on saturday so I helped the other one out. Anyway, we are still on what happened on friday. We brainstormed until 1 am in the night, then we had the concept ready for saturday to start.

I went to the bar by one, dancing, mingled and had a great time. I met lots of nice people. By 3 am we checked in on the youthhostel. Woke up 7 am. Went to the university by 8.30 am. They served breakfast and coffee and then we started. I started to learn 3D max, a 3D program. It was fun but hard. We worked all day and 12 pm me and my friend from school took the train home to Lund. I was home around 2 am, fell asleep then I took the train back 8 am on sunday. Lots of work that day, because the deadline was 3pm. 12 games were finished by then and we played eachothers game.

Around 6pm we presented our work and 8 pm I was on the train back home, when I came home by 10 pm I was exausted… I fell asleep as soon as I put my head on my pillow.

Our game – O2
So our game was about a creature in the sea. He needed to go up tp the surface to fill himself with oxygen, then he had to go down to his offspring on the bottom at the sea and give the offspring oxygen as well. It is some preditors that hunts you and steal oxygen. You loose oxygen when you swim and meet a preditor. You get thinner and thinner. And if you are out of oxygen you die and so do your offspring. The game became very nice and the sound was fantastic. As soon as it is uploaded on internet I will give you the adress.

It was really nice working in a real project with people that actually do this for a living. It gave me so much that will help me in my education. One day I will work like this as well. But probably not in gamedevelopment. But it was so fun!

So 12 computer games in 36 hours. Not bad at all!