MolyJam2013
Game jams are something I have been aware of since I high school. I was always really jealous of people who lived in bigger cities (New York, places in Canada, places in Europe) because they had game jams and there is not that big of a game making community in Dayton. Now that I have finished college I saw this game jam as a chance to meet people in the game making community, and get experience making a finished game. What we made was "Molyneaux Slope" from a team of programmers, Clint Levijoki and Mark Michaels.
What Happened?
The team changed a few time during production which was difficult. We first started out with Clint, Mark, and I and then three others joined our team. Working with six people seemed to be far too complicated at the start because everyone wanted to design the game. We did a lot of back and forth and just settled on Clint's idea to make a dog park simulator. We settled on his idea because he was the most persistent and had the most tangible idea. Before we settled on his idea we had basically two really solid ideas that we were fighting against. We broke for the day and met the next morning.
By then two of the members from Columbia University had dropped out and we were left with four people. I was on the art direction and left all of the code to the other members. All of the other members of the group work professionally as programmers and none of them had made games on their own (outside of a company) before as I recall. There was a bit of a struggle between what language was going to be used but they all just followed what Clint was doing because during the night Clint had set up a framework for the game. The rest of the day was mostly Clint trying to set up multiplayer and the others trying to learn the language that he was using. I got a bit nervous because our game did not look like much. I had made the character and dog animations as well as some of the background assets but not much was implemented.
The final day was trying to wrap up text commands. Everything became implemented and we finished a little early. In the end we just made a bunch of extra character sprite sheets so not all of the players would look the same.
Game jams are something I have been aware of since I high school. I was always really jealous of people who lived in bigger cities (New York, places in Canada, places in Europe) because they had game jams and there is not that big of a game making community in Dayton. Now that I have finished college I saw this game jam as a chance to meet people in the game making community, and get experience making a finished game. What we made was "Molyneaux Slope" from a team of programmers, Clint Levijoki and Mark Michaels.
What Happened?
The team changed a few time during production which was difficult. We first started out with Clint, Mark, and I and then three others joined our team. Working with six people seemed to be far too complicated at the start because everyone wanted to design the game. We did a lot of back and forth and just settled on Clint's idea to make a dog park simulator. We settled on his idea because he was the most persistent and had the most tangible idea. Before we settled on his idea we had basically two really solid ideas that we were fighting against. We broke for the day and met the next morning.
By then two of the members from Columbia University had dropped out and we were left with four people. I was on the art direction and left all of the code to the other members. All of the other members of the group work professionally as programmers and none of them had made games on their own (outside of a company) before as I recall. There was a bit of a struggle between what language was going to be used but they all just followed what Clint was doing because during the night Clint had set up a framework for the game. The rest of the day was mostly Clint trying to set up multiplayer and the others trying to learn the language that he was using. I got a bit nervous because our game did not look like much. I had made the character and dog animations as well as some of the background assets but not much was implemented.
The final day was trying to wrap up text commands. Everything became implemented and we finished a little early. In the end we just made a bunch of extra character sprite sheets so not all of the players would look the same.
Tomorrow I will write about some of the games I played at The New School's hosting of MolyJamDeux and what I thought.
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