game-development

Project name: Fungi Garden Release: (development on hiatus) Genre: 2d, puzzle, adventure Role: Lead Programmer Made with: GameMaker Studio Company: Portal Punch Ltd.

I was recently asked to provide a blurb about the event, which lead me to write a bit too much. So, I thought I would drop my thoughts on game jams here on my blog in case anyone else was interested. Galway Game Jam 19 - “Wild” / “Wild Galway” - hybrid jam At Galway Game Jam 19, we ran a hybrid game-making event - the first time we’ve had one since January 2020....

Meet people! Ireland The Games Co-Op Meetup - https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/The-Games-Co-Op/ Imirt - https://imirt.ie Galway Game Jam - https://galwaygamejam.com https://gamedevelopers.ie NI GameDev Network - https://nigame.dev/ Conferences Gamescom (Koln, Germany) Develop: Brighton (Brighton, UK) Learn stuff! Business Books: The game dev business handbook. https://gamedevbizbook.com You might know about running other businesses already. This book is aimed at game developers / makers who don’t know about business but want to set up their own game development business/studio....

Hi folks, I have recently returned from my trip to Game Developers Conference (GDC). The Global Game Jam’s scholarship program was instrumental in my ability to attend this industry event. More details here. I’m currently self-isolating at home feeling very fatigued as I recover from Covid-19, which I seem to have contracted during my visit to the states. In brief… I learned a great deal, and my personal scholarship mission was to be taken in two parts....

After trialing a few different visual novel builders, my team and I settled on Renpy for this game. Using Renpy as our game engine provides most everything we would want to make a visual game very quickly. Speed is a huge plus for us because our team of two artists, our writer and our programmer (me!) are all working on this project in our spare time. Having multiple people working on game assets can cause conflicts....

The Galway Game Jam 17 virtual jam had a lovely energy about it. The theme was selected from a process of rounds of suggestions and voting by the community. Quite a fitting theme! You can play the games made at the jam here: https://itch.io/jam/galway-game-jam-17 We also ran a livestream with mentors giving presentations on topics, or just chatting about gamedev. Some familiar faces returned for that, and we hosted some new mentors which is always fun....

Ludography

This event went surprisingly well. While it was organised in haste, in a bit of a last-minute bid to get a gamejam done in 2020, the community really came together around this one to make it a worthwhile endeavor. Want to see the games made at this event? Check out itch.io/jam/galway-game-jam-16/entries Want to check out the livestream and clips? See our Galway Game Jam twitch and youtube channels in the references section below....

As you might know from following me elsewhere online, I have been designing a new adventure game with some light puzzle and resource management mechanics. The working title for the project is “Fungi Garden”, and you can learn more about it on my website here: https://mindcauldron.com/fungi-garden The game is inspired by the fascinating interactions that occur in nature between mycelium, mycorrhiza and tree root systems. Currently, I have many ideas for the game....

This is the ending post about my Ludum Dare 46 entry. To start at the beginning, go to Day 1 here: https://darrenk.net/ludum-dare-46/ Ludum Dare 46 was an interesting challenge. There are many things I would change if I were to do it again. That said, I am quiet happy to have finished something - even if it is a sparse experience for the player. You can play the game here: https://darrenkearney....

I’m streaming development on https://twitch.tv/mindcauldrongames. Head over there and give me a follow! Here’s some progress and process in images. Random sketches during idea generation last night…ye ¯\_(ツ)_/ #ldjam46 Possible title for the game. I like the colours. Concept art in MS Paint with breakdown of areas for figuring out rooms layout and connections. #ldjam46 Screenshot of agri dome area. #ldjam46 Screen of elevator controls in agri dome #ldjam46 Screen of sub level 1 #ldjam46...

In the past few days I’ve been streaming a game dev series on my Mind Cauldron twitch account as I learn Unity in real time. You can follow along here: https://twitch.tv/mindcauldrongames The stream is a straight-forward live stream of my game development. If watching and chatting with someone while they work on their passion projects sounds like fun to you then your in for a treat. Otherwise it is suspiciously like you are watching a reality show of someone working from their home-office....

I made a game called DeathCatcher on a team with some lovely folks at the GameJamPlus 2019 48 hour game jam in Dublin. Our team name was MetalAsFolk. If you have a Quest VR headset, you can get the build here: https://gamejolt.com/games/deathcatcher/430699 Lessons I learned How to make a shader! What a shader is. What a vertex shader does. What a fragment shader does. Things that could have made our pitch better More art assets in the slides, more theming in the slides in general Video clips of gameplay Video clips of someone playing the VR game, with a screen of what is happening in-game in the video, to show off the and fun of interacting with the game world in real life....

Originally posted on the itch.io OBSTACLES Devlog. Yesterday I brought OBSTACLES to a local meetup that I run called 1GAM Galway. You can read about that meetup here. 1GAM Galway is a game dev meetup I run that follows the onegameamonth.com challenge and a serves as a time and place for game developers and hobbyists to play each others game projects, give feedback and chat. Today I’ve been addressing a few things about the game that were discovered or suggested at 1GAM Galway....

OBSTACLES is a top-down 2d driving game that started life as an entry for the UL Gamejam held on November 3rd 2018. It’s available as a browser game playable with a keyboard or controller on itch.io. The gamejam theme was “Obstacles”, hence the game name. Designing the Game I sketched a few ideas for games and settled on an idea that became this game. The idea was that the computer plays as the car and you play as a monster/wizard that is throwing heavy objects on the road to cause the robot car to crash....

Last week I was asked to run a PICO-8 workshop in Limerick. This week I ran it. I continued to work on the tiny prototype-game from the workshop. It’s not much even for a crappy Pacman clone, but it was made in about half a day. You can: play the game that came out of the workshop on itch.io, and/or read the notes from the workshop on github. Anyway, the workshop was a nice surprise!...

Galway Game Jam 10 offered either “extinction” or “insomnia” as a theme. Which would you choose? I chose “extinction”. I made a broken game, designed to make you feel horrible and think about extinction. A terrible game about being a cat in 1894. These themes were oddly miserable in tone. Using such a theme adds an extra challenge and makes you get a little philosophical! Such gamejam themes can make really interesting games that would never otherwise exist....

About a week after UL’s Game Dev Soc Game Jam, I had some free time to revisit the collaboration tool I made for the gamejam team. It was nothing special, but I was hit by a mini-epiphany of turning it into a super-simple web app that would aim to make it as easy as possible to use. A fun little side-project, why not? Generally when solving any problem I have to ask myself “Has this been solved before?...

Here I write about my second day of the gamejam weekend. Part 1 is here. Happy Accidents On the second day of the gamejam, I had a scheduling mishap. I had convinced myself that I had band practice and took some notes for the game in the morning. After I went into town and learned of my mistake I decided to use it as an opportunity for learning. Knowing practically nothing about how a café or tea room actually works I reckoned it would be a good first step to organize a short meeting with some people who run such a business....

This theme is fantastic - it drives creativity. Simply by getting you to juxtapose genres in a particular way to see what doesn’t fit! Then think of idea’s that are achievable in the given time. Repeat until you land on something you think might be fun and wow, it’s already going to be fun simply on the merit of it’s wacky genre combination. I’ve started to work on a Turn-Based Strategy Game that is actually a Text Adventure made using Twine....

For UL Gamejam 2 I joined a team with Dave Ryley and two of his brothers, Brian and Jono Ryley. Dave is a veteran game jam enthusiast, but this was both Brian and Jono’s first experience of a gamejam. Luckily we got a great theme for the first-timers; “Simplicity”. Together we made Jam, The Game. Naturally, a game about jam is the simplest gamejam game you could make. Our game won the popular vote at the end of the jam, which was a wonderful achievement for our team!...

Getting started is very daunting in any creative endeavour. Games, being both very technical and creative, can be even more terrifying for beginners to consider starting. So far in my blog, I’ve mostly written sprawling heaps of words on my own gamejam experience, expounding the benefits of gamejams and my own takeaways. But that is of little use to people in a gamejam. What would be useful? Links. Links to practical, useful resources....

I am beginning to get used to writing these blog posts, but honestly, I cringe at myself every time. Hopefully, this practice will improve my writing and the cringe will lessen with time. It’s the 5th anniversary of Galway Game Jam. I had a different approach to this one so there are some new takeaways to mention. The Gamejam Plan - Using the gamejam to work on other things. Sometimes people work on their own projects at gamejams....

In my previous post, written before the 10th annual Global Game Jam, I mentioned my aims, expectations and excitement about the jam. In this post, I’ve written about the game I worked on at the jam as well as the main struggles faced by the team. More great lessons from just one single weekend! Assembling a team I aimed to make something very small in scope and simple to make. Making things with friends is more fun so I wanted to get a team together....