The biggest Global Game Jam ever took place over the weekend, and as with last year I headed to the Scottish Game Jam venue in Glasgow to take part. With almost 100 developers attending, this was one of the largest sites in the world.

Teaming up with Andrew Glass (part of my team when developing Panda Dragoon last year) along with artist Craig Mooney and designer Daniel Cleaton (two fellow Abertay grads who I hadn’t worked with before), we had 48 hours to develop a game on the theme of “extinction”. Our idea of choice was Chinthrilla, a fast-paced platformer featuring a jealous Chinchilla set on causing the extinction of tortoises everywhere who must race against intergalactic conversationalists trying to save them while dodging the hammer-head land shark.

Overall we created a fairly complete game (given the timespan) with relatively few difficulties compared to the pipeline and source control issues we worked through last year, with an astounding amount of textured 3D artwork given that it was created by a single artist. However, the gameplay style we attempted was far from ground-breaking and we could definitely have had a deeper look at the theme. I think when faced with 48 hours, especially during an event which only takes place annually, it’s tempting to choose a project you’re confident can work. Next year though I’d like to try something more experimental, even if it doesn’t result in something playable.

This years event involved fantastic feedback from mentors for improving the game, great coverage of the entire event from Square Go, and free pizza provided by sponsor Nokia. The highlight for me though was seeing all of the games at the end of the event, and in particular the entire audience screaming at a dying polar bear to go on and keep swimming. It was a great weekend and I look forward to the next.

All Scottish Game Jam games on the GGJ site
Summary from Square Go
My Flickr Stream
Video of Chinthrilla
Chinthrilla on the GGJ site, where you can download it or play online
Chinthrilla on the SGJ site

Having freshly installed Windows 7 on my laptop (I usually run Linux) I’ve had to get hold of all the editors, tools and libraries I need again, and figured I would share here. Everything here is open source, free for non-commercial use or has a free trial version.

Programming

• Visual Studio 2010 for C, C# and C++ programming. If you’re a student you can get the professional edition from Dreamspark.
• XNA – nice to work with but distributing the game is awkward.
• Python 2.6 because I’m living (happily) in the past, along with Pyglet and PyGame (I haven’t actually used PyGame yet so will be avoiding it if possible).
• LÖVE, a multiplatform 2d game engine written in Lua.
• Unity. I really like the Unity engine and used it last year, but limitations in using source control and sharing projects with the free version are a massive hinderance.
• Flash in Flashdevelop with Flixel. I’ve only worked with flixel over the past couple of days but overall was really impressed.
• Notepad++, a great little text editor.

Art

I’m not an artist but it’s useful to be able to re-export a model, make your own cubes and create some disgusting coder art. Don’t forget: the more hideous you make your coder art, the faster the artist will replace it. Unless they stop to strangle you first. Sorry artists.

• Paint.Net, a huge step up from Paint.
• The Gimp, for the scary times when I need to do something more complicated than can be achieved in Paint.Net.
• Blender, for messing with the 3rd dimension and converting models.

Audio

• LMMS, an easy to use application for composition if we get so desperate I need to do that. Cover your ears if that actually happens.
• SFXR, a sound effect generator, and the online AS version.
• Audacity, for tampering or recording audio files.

Storage and Sharing

• Tortoise SVN and Tortoise Git – easy to use shell integration for source control.
• Dropbox – quick and easy backups and a simple way to transfer assets.

Recording

• Chronolaspe – a tool to record timelapses videos from screenshots or webcam captures.
• Fraps for recording the game itself.

I’ve probably forgotten a few things here, leave your own suggestions in the comments.

Scottish Game Jam, the branch of the event in which I participated, was hosted at Glasgow Caledonian University, organised by the fantastic Romana Khan. Nine teams took part in the Saltire Centre, an impressive (though bright) space, loading up on caffeine and sleeping on couches (if at all).

My team “Frat Boys from the Hood” consisted of Abi, Jess, Andrew and myself from Abertay joined by Alex, a third year student from Glasgow Calendonian. Working on a theme of deception and constraints mandating that we must include “a sink, a wink or a rink”, we built the 2d side-scroller “Panda Dragoon: Bees on Ice” with the aid of the Unity engine.

The game places our panda protagonist in a black and white world, fighting deceptive and equally monochrome foes. Gliding through an ice rink, the player must switch between black and white in order to see enemies of the opposite colour. However, switching also empowers these enemies—the player must be cautious—causing them to change form and cause increasing damage. Luckily, the player is equipped to defeat these creatures by firing bees from its mouth. The aim is to progress as far as possible as the game increases in speed, achieving a maximum score.

Although the event overall was non-competitive in nature, Scottish Game Jam welcomed judges from Denki and Real Time Worlds to critique the resulting applications and to decide on a winning game.

Much to our surprise We Won!

It was really reassuring to make such a self indulgent game, for ourselves and not for a nominated target audience, and yet have four out of five judges award it their highest score. Obviously the game has flaws, we made it in 48 hours, but with another week of tweaking at some point hopefully we can create something compelling and genuinely fun.

Overall, I had a fantastic time and would encourage any developer, especially artists, to take part next year. It’s amazing how much you can learn and achieve in just two days.

Download and play The Game.
Global Game Jam
Scottish Game Jam