4th Annual IGDA Global Game Jam: Affiliations

During the month of January there has been a bit of a lull in our production schedule for Tumbleweed Express as the team prepared to take part in the 4th Annual IGDA Global Game Jam. The Global Game Jam, as we know it today, started in 2009 and brought together 1650 participants whom created 370 games in 53 different global locations. Since then the number of participants, sites, and games produced has nearly doubled with each and every year. Our team traveled to the George Mason University Site in Virginia, which was chosen by our IGDA Chapter, to participate. This year's theme was:

Ouroboros Snake: Go!

In the spirit of the event, our team divided up to work with other jammers and is affiliated with the following titles:

Pandora's Blocks

Bo Banducci and IGDA DC member Nathan Maton, along with their very excellent team members created a Minecraft and Go inspired turn-based game. Their approach was extremely interesting in that they were able to practice iterative design, construct a paper prototype, and evolve their game through play testing in under 48 hours. Their title won the Audience's Choice Award and was a runner up for the Judge's Choice Award. Check this game out at: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/pandoras-blocks

Pandora's Blocks Title Screen

Eurydice

Sam Levine, Mike Willis, IGDA DC members Zaal Tonia and "Evil" Dan, and the rest of their team went after the "Eyes Wide Shut" diversifier and created a game without any graphics. The story is based on the classic Greek mythology of Orpheus' journey to and from the underworld to bring back his dead wife, Eurydice. As a complement to the awesome job they did in design and execution, their game took second place in the Audiance's Choice Award. Check this game out at: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/eurydice

Through The Hoop

David To and IGDA DC  member George Dounkov, along with their team of George Mason students were able to create a physics puzzle game that won the Judge's Choice Award! The game played on the cyclic nature of the event theme and masked it by using simulated objects and airflows to get a basketball "through the hoop". Check this game out at: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/through-hoop

Through The Hoop: Level 1

Susie's Summer Home

Matthew Mauriello assisted in the development of a psychological puzzle game featuring a young girl trapped in a maze like house. The team was composed of students from George Mason and IGDA members: Taro Omiya, Josh Bock, Chris Totten, and David Newcomb. The title earned third place in Audience's Choice Award. Check this game out at: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/susies-summer-home

Susie & The Monster Door

Snake Escape

David Weiss, Jacob Clayman and Andy Varshin joined up with a George Mason student programmer to create a traditional survival sprinting game with an ouroboros twist. The game features the music of Kevin MacLeod. Check this game out at: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/snake-escape

Snake Escape Title Screen

Ultimately the 2012 Global Game Jam was a huge success! We were very glad to have this opportunity to network and develop projects with our local gaming community. We're really anxious to get back to working on Tumbleweed Express and our next jam session is scheduled for later this month. Special thanks to George Mason University, Trey Reyher, and the IGDA for this very awesome event. See you next year at Global Game Jam 2013!

Second Jam Session: Postmortem

What Went Right

First and foremost, the team successfully integrated David To into the programming unit and would like to extend a warm welcome to him. The team would also like to thank him for his superior work and dedication over his first jam session with us.

In lieu of a master schedule for the project, the team set a reasonable goal of expending effort during the session to complete the first act of the game. To complete this goal, the team focused extensively on developing all the of the system components (crew, crew management, robbing bandits, etc.) that are necessary for the act. Additionally, one team member on the programming team served primarily as the integrator and debugger of the master build - this greatly increased overall programming productivity. Modeling and level design continues to make solid progress and has been able to use the design document to focus their efforts. Communication between the team and amongst the programming and art units was very fluid, which can be attributed to the close proximity of the team in the work space. Finally, as our sessions are opt-in, team participation continues to remain high; jam sessions really seem to work for us.

What Went Wrong

The team struggles to define what went wrong: clarity of goals is going to become increasingly important as the recent session involved "completing act 1" and resulted in "completing the systems necessary for act 1 (and all subsequent acts)", which may have been a more reasonable goal for this particular session. Moving forward, clarity of goals in the long run is something the team needs to develop a bit more as we really have no project schedule, target completion date, or any real goals beyond "completing the game". Additionally, the user-interface and controller-interface is developing very organically with very little design backing up the decisions being made and the current implementation. Finally, there has been no progress in the "audio engineering" department for the game and effectively there has been no efforts expended to correct this.

What Can Be Improved

The narrative elements of the game need to start making a bigger appearance in the current prototype and more effort needs to be expended on dealing with the bugs that prevent integration between the the two working units (i.e. completing the spline code that the train uses across larger maps). Additionally, there is a lot of low hanging fruit on the issues list that could be resolved and more effort could expended on closing out these issues rather than adding more of them. There has been discussion on using some external software (XGUI, Bugzilla, Unity with Xbox Live, etc.) and more evaluation effort can be expended. Developing a production schedule could go a long way towards directing the efforts of the team. Finally, there is a lot of down time in between jam sessions that could be used in a more productive manner; however, it is hard because we do not have a great solution for integration between units and individuals despite using our SVN repository - it seems to introduce some errors that later have to be debugged on both ends.

What Is Next

We are currently planning our next jam session for February 10th or 24th, we're looking at potential funding options, and we're looking at game competitions like the 15th Annual Independent Games Festival (or similar opportunities) as a way to get Tumbleweed Express out the door, exposed, and in the hands of the players! Additionally, many of us are gearing up for Global Game Jam 2012 at George Mason University on January 27th where we will be networking and contributing to a few quick projects unrelated to our efforts with Tumbleweed Express.

Code View

It's fun to post art work and game animation; however, we had a successful jam session this past weekend and this is the other side of the magic: a random error during execution caught this pretty scene of kamikaze dirigibles attacking the player's train! The postmortem from this weekend will be coming along in the next few days, but we're all a little wiped out from the weekend and we have the holiday breaks to get ready for. That being said, happy holidays!

Holiday Jam Session

Team Dirigiballers has been spent the better part of the last month working on the design document for Tumbleweed Express. Our deadline to *complete the document was last night, which we were able to do. The entire team has been contributing to fleshing out the design and it really is nice to make the deadline for the first major milestone. As many of us our students and many of us our traveling for the holiday season, we are pretty excited to be having our second major production jam session this weekend. This evening we will be outlining what we hope to accomplish this weekend on what is a fairly ambitious indie project. With a little luck we will complete all our initial goals by Sunday before we all go our separate ways for the rest of the month. We may or may not be able to post over the weekend, but definitely look forward to a postmortem of the event sometime on Monday.

*A design document, in our view, is really a "living" document. While we have finished the majority of it, there are a few sections that we have intentionally left empty and of course things are likely to get edited along the way as production moves forward. We're primarily using the document as a method of controlling scope and keeping us focused as we are a team composed of disjoint members separated by distance, scheduling conflicts, and everything else that makes life interesting.

[VIDEO] Tesla Coil Concept: Model + Animation

Tesla Coil turret concept, Model + Animation WIP

Prototypes, Presentations, and Coffee Shops

A small crowd gathered this past Thursday, in the wonderful DC establishment that is Bravo! Bravo!, to view a prototype of Tumbleweed Express. The team conducted a brief post mortem of the recent game jam event that produced the prototype, discussed where the project was going in the future, and allowed everyone to get hands on experience playing through the first couple levels. During the Q&A section of the presentation there were a number of questions surrounding the process and the tools the team used. In short, the process was very organic and the tools used were spontaneously chosen based on collective past experience.

To develop the idea behind the Tumbleweed Express, the team was adhering to the theme of the event: “Tram Combat”. Following typical game jam format, the favored game pitch of those presented was selected. The pitch immediately underwent rapid prototyping, which consisted of: designing enemies, building trains, playing with weapons, sculpting maps, and generally fleshing out the idea in a little more detail. The last post shows a few pictures of ideas scrawled on whiteboards and conversations being held in the thick of it all, which pretty much summarizes how the first two days were conducted.

As far as the tools used, the team relied heavily on: Dropbox for file sharing, Wikispaces for remote coordination, Facebook for event management, email, and Google Docs to track issues with the prototype. For the actual prototype development, the team used: Unity, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Visual Studio and Vim depending on preference. Additionally, a reference library of images and theme related assests was compiled to get everyone thinking along similar lines. Organization and coordination was heavily dependent on everyone taking on a leadership or intermediary communication role from time to time. Ultimately these tools, and the processes that evolved around them, were successful at managing the development process over the weekend.

As the project continues, the tools and processes will continue to expanded. Thus far the team has: polished the prototype, moved to an SVN system, developed an active Wiki discussion, hosted some Gchat sessions, and taken over a Chinatown Starbucks to further define the scope of the project. This last step was very important for the team to do because it makes it possible to come to a consensus on where the project is going and what level of effort is going to be necessary. Additionally, it was necessary to reign in the sheer volume of ideas that were being generated and that could only be done together.

Ultimately, Tumbleweed Express is taking a short reprieve, of sorts, from production work on the prototype and is instead taking a reflective look at what the game is about. The current major push is to have a solidified design document prior to the next big team work session in mid-December. Individuals are also working on various programming issues and continuing to develop the artistic style of the game in the meantime, but production is slowing down for a time (there is also the Thanksgiving Holiday to consider). If you happen to catch us at our next Starbucks meeting, feel free to lend us your support... we're only half kidding about this: free coffee will always be accepted!

As a final note, the DC Chapter of the IGDA is a really great venue for feedback on game projects. Not only can you network with like minded individuals, but you can present your game projects in just about any state and expect to receive solid feedback. If you are interested in joining the chapter or presenting a game, you should definitely checkout the chapter’s Facebook page.

So here's where all the magic began, the white board pitch.    

With the team mobilized around a clear common goal, they set forth on their 48 hour quest!

The whiteboard riddled with use.

The team approaching the finish line.