iPad game LineBloom created at DinoJAM

This past Saturday and Sunday I had the fortune of attending the second ever DinoJAM. This event was co-hosted by Emily Daniels and Darren Torpey at the DINO/Sprout space in Davis Square. Right after wrapping up at 3d Stimulus Day, made my way up to Somerville to make some games.

This is what I came up with (made in Unity):

It definitely translates well to the iPad touch screen. Just draw lines and they appear. It feels pretty fluid, but the low framerate video capture doesn’t convey that very well.

Thanks to Lawrence Lee for the epic music – Berkeley musicians make some good stuff quick! Props to the game jam musicians out there.

Congrats to the other attendees for making some seriously cool stuff. Great games/projects all around , and thanks for live-tweeting (@demiurgestudios @acosmos @jdemond @emdaniels @darrentorpey @davidludwig @boodooperson)

3d Stimulus Day

I recently presented a talk at the second annual 3D Stimulus Day entitled “Problem Solving: A day in the life of a Technical Artist”. The session went very well and I received some great Q&A at the end. Thanks to Heidi and Brad for setting up the event, Eric Chadwick for editing and suggestions, and to the other presenters for making it a great day. Also thanks to Eric for working with me to rig the First Act guitar give-away. Kidding!

MIT BiG – Postmortem

Yesterday was quite a crazy and eventful day. As day one of my 4-day birthday weekend, I attended the MIT Business in Gaming Conference. That’s right, my idea of a fun and relaxing day off involves attending a business conference.

I signed up for BiG with moderate expectations. Having been an alum of last year’s event, I knew partially what to expect from this conference. MIT’s Sloan E51 building set a formal jacket and slacks mood, but the 2010 rendition gave a much better networking environment with it being hosted at the Microsoft NERD Center. Also, when compared to last year, the session content was much more varied and applicable to my own interests as a game developer and (future?) entrepreneur, though the value for me ended up being the time nestled between sessions and after the closing keynote. I’m pretty sure most long time conference goers would agree with me on that one in most cases.

A *LOT* of talk, both in-session and out, revolved around social games, Facebook, and free-to-play monetization. This isn’t surprising considering many people believe these trends are ‘the next big thing’ in gaming. I’ll leave my commentary on the social game phenomenon for another post.

The sessions were structured in four separate time blocks, with two concurrent sessions during each block, not including keynotes. I attended only 2.5 out of four session blocks, as I ended up in a circle of people chatting feverishly about Unity for the length of an entire session. We were getting so rowdy that we were asked to move out of the main booth area due to our disruption. Sorry guys! It is worth mentioning, however, that those glass-doored rooms could use better soundproofing. During one of the sessions, all I could hear was the repeating slide whistle sound effect from the robotic demonstration.

As far as session highlights, searching twitter for the #mitbig hashtag is the best way to soak up the quality one-liners from the conference. One quote that comes to mind was from local dev Eitan Glinert who, when asked about VC money, said to a panel of venture capitalists: “I wish I hadn’t wasted my time applying for VC funding. I could have watched a good movie. Chewing gum is a better use of your time than meeting with VC’s”. Alexander Sliwinski summed that session’s vibe with his tweet “MITBig’s How to Build & Launch a Gaming Startup is good, mostly ’cause Eitan Glinert (Fire Hose Games) isn’t afraid to drop truth hammers.” Well said, brother.

Between sessions, I talked with many old friends and met some interesting new ones. Strengthening loose contacts always feels great, especially when you remember arcane details of a previous conversation with said person (from the depths of your dusty mind) and surprise them with this knowledge, or vice-versa. Lots of talk about games, business, life, apartments… which reminds me: I invited so many people over to my new apartment in Watertown (once I’m completely moved in) that I almost don’t remember who I extended a dinner offer to! If you’re reading this, you’re officially invited over for a wonderful night of fine dining, games, and a heaping helping of hospitality. No really, creepy stalker dude, you’re invited too… just don’t get all handsy.

After the ending keynote by eastcoaster now westcoaster Steve Meretzky, the regular conference came to a close, after announcing the raffle winners. I was lucky enough to win a Roboni programmable robot in the BiG raffle and am still trying to figure out how to put this bad boy to use.

Roboni

From there, most of the attendees shot up to the 11th floor to attend the NE Games SIG’s conference reception (partay). Jon Radoff gave a well-presented speech / pep talk to the Boston game dev community to kick off the night. A bunch of non-conference attendees showed up to the after-party and great food was provided. Plus one for the NERD center for being one of the only venues where drink selection ranges from beer to chocolate milk. After a few hours, Scott started to rally a few people to head over to CBC to grab a drink. I’m not quite sure why, but whenever someone suggests heading to CBC I’m always initially reluctant but once I arrive and get into it, I have a great time.

Beer tower at CBC

Hats off to the BiG organizers and Microsoft for getting this thing off the ground. They put up some conference pics over on their Facebook page. I had a great time all around. Time to sort these business cards.

Unity experimentation – gravity, perspective, and teh Youtubez

Last night I began logging my development adventures by resurrecting my dusty unused Youtube channel. I uploaded around 7 videos, some of which were previously un-seen prototypes I’ve been messing around with recently.

Here are the new videos:

Please feel free to subscribe to my Youtube channel.