Global Game Jam 2013

It's the second time I participated in Global Game Jam. I was excited to participate again and I couldn't wait to work with new people. I was nervous, though, because I wanted to work in a group with a tool I didn't know. Specifically, I wanted to use Unity.

My interest in Unity was first spiked when I saw the game Unity3D since, but I never really had much time to get into it. So, I looked for a team that was using it and willing to teach me some of their super awesome Unity skills.

It was a bit weird, trying to get into a team willing to teach me Unity at the Jam, given I had no experience with Unity before. Understandably, most people would want to work without the initial overhead of learning a tool, which is reasonable. I would want the same in my team. Luckily, after shuffling around teams for a bit, I finally teamed up with five other pretty awesome people. Two other programmers, Norman and Matt; two artists, Rob and Heidi; and one audio guy, Jim, whose ability to compose in many different genres and styles I'll always be jealous of.

Norman taught me how to use Unity for a good hour or so, then I made a crude version of Pong to get used to the engine. Unity is an interesting engine because pretty much everything is a component, which is awesome. I've been experimenting with component-based architecture in a few other projects, but being able to see what it could really do in Unity was amazing. One particular instance of the flexibility of the component based architecture in Unity that was interesting was when I made a script to make the Cupid and the hearts surrounding him float up and down on the title screen. This script was then also applied to the Cupid in the actual game and to the ghosts, making them also hover up and down. The fact that I could take a behaviour originally written for a UI component and apply it to parts in the actual game to juicify things is very cool.

I stayed up for most of the night messing around with Unity because it was a lot of fun, then slept for about an hour. Next time, I should definitely get more sleep on Friday. Sleep is important.

While I was awake though, it was fun to hang out with my friends from EGaDS and see some use Slick2D and libGDX, which I got some of them into. There were also a lot of people making games in Unity and a surprising number of people making multiplayer networked games. My experience of network programming involves a lot of time, so I was surprised that the groups that added these features even finished. I also got to check out a game one of my teammates had previously made and learn a little more about them.

The second night, we went to HEB and got some food to make ramen with eggs and such. I found out then that HEB soda from the vending machine is only 25 cents.

At the end of the event, there were door prizes from EA, everyone presented their game for about 5 minutes on a livestream to 3 judges from the industry, the judges and event organizer gave their closing remarks, and I got to catch up with some of my friends from the previous game jam.

Unity is a pretty awesome tool and I may make something with it in the future. My only gripe with it is that I can't use it in Linux. Hopefully they'll implement Linux compatibility into their program some day. Anyway, this year at Global Game Jam was a great learning experience for me and you can check out what we made in 48 hours here, at the Global Game Jam site.