Suz@nna IDK05 Malmö Högskola

Here is the link to our game and presentation from Game Jam. If you want to look at all the games you can do it here.

P i c t u r e s  from the p r o c e s s :
Day 1 - The beginning
Day 2 - Hard at work
The Reckoning

Enjoy

The Team
(2 is missing though)

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!

This is a model for the preditor in the game

- Catch me -

Concept:
Our thought about theme old games vs. new, ended up in an idea about how to take the puzzle-game genre further, examples: Tetris, Dr. Mario. We want to go outside the usual playing phenomena were you are sitting playing for hours and hours. The platform that we are going to use is like an aquarium with magnetic Tetris-shaped blocks inside. The material might be Plexiglas; it’s supposed to be a player versus player game where you compete under time pressure and the stress factor from your opposing player. The users of the game are universal. Not only is this game a perfect way to get your body going, you also really need to use your brain to get the different parts together.

Our idea developed into a flash based game where you can play one player vs. the computer or two players against each other. The idea and the design are based on dr. Mario in some ways. Player one is a figure that has to avoid the blocks that is coming down, and has to try to climb up, to get out of the bottle. Player two is arranging the blocks, trying to hit player one and at the same time try to put the blocks right. So with other words, player one wins if he climbs out of the bottle without getting hit by player two. Player two wins if he hits player one and can arrange the blocks as well. The target group is universal.

Features:
Stealing the opponents figures
Move your body
You can be really mean to one another
Improve your stress limit
Player vs. player
Medium for interaction
Two games in one

Conclusion after critic session:

Maybe to make the first two levels in flash with the ”bottles”. The third level could be in the watertank as we discussed in the beginning. In this way it will be sort of a transmedial game.

Jag har anmält mig….så nervigt..Jag gjorde det för att få bättre kunskap om Gamedesign och för att det är intressant. Men jag visste inte det var så här tufft Men det ska bli riktigt roligt!!!! Verkligen en utmaning och I like

 Nordic Game Jam is a weekend workshop in February 2-4th 2007 at the IT University in Copenhagen, Denmark. The workshop is about “making a game in a weekend”, dealing with game design and technical issues, as well as meeting other people working with game design and development.

Who?
• Experienced developers (designers, musicians, artists, programmers, etc.) who want to work in a smaller format and try out new gameplay ideas.
• Self-taught game developers who want to test their skills and expand their professional network in the industry.
• Students who attend a game education (IT University / DADIU in Denmark/ K3 and SOFE in Sweden etc.), as well as other students with an interest in computer games.

What and how?
The workshop is technologically agnostic, but all the games created must follow three of the following five themes, which three themes is up to the group:

1. Must contain a reference to Nordic culture ( eg. stories/art/design/music).
2. Must have more than one way to complete the game (eg. negotiations / kill all).
3. Must contain H2O in some form (water/ice/steam).
4. Must have a time limit.
5. Must be playable with one hand.

Program

Friday
15:30-20. Setup of Equipment

14: Introduction to XNA Studio by Microsoft – for those who are interested.
16: Introduction to UNITY by OTEE – for those who are interested.
18: Introduction to Hammer by Palle Ehms from DADIU – for those who are interested.
18: Check in and mingling.
20: Welcome talk: Introduction to the task and participant introduction.
22: 3, 2, 1, Go…..

Saturday
9-10: Breakfast.
10-11: Status: Presentation by groups: The ideas of each group and how the groups will try to solve them.
13-14: Working Lunch.
19-20: Dinner.

Sunday
9-10: Breakfast.
10-11: Status by groups: Issues / successes in the groups, and what it takes to finish on time.
13-14: Working Lunch.
16-19: Presentation of games and feed-back from a panel of experts and co-participants:
19: Selection of winners by the panel and ”participant’s choice”.
20: Over and out for Nordic Game Jam – see you next year!