Global Game Jam - Costa Rica - The experienceFeb 18, 03:02 PM
It took a while to write this, since I have been catching up with work and sleep after the Game Jam. The whole experience was a blast and involved going 60 hours without sleep, including running some errands (since I knew I would be tied up the whole weekend), like going home to prepare the equipment and some snacks.
Ok a lot of snacks.
The jam was scheduled to start at 3pm on Friday, due to traffic jams a lot of the participants where late so it started at about 5pm. Between 3pm and 5pm the teams and work locations where assigned. While all the participants arrived I set up my Mac, and started mingling with the organizers and other teams. The atmosphere was electric everyone was very excited to get the jam on.
Enter Team Vara Blanca (the name was chosen in honor of those affected by the earthquake that struck the area on January 9th).
Rodolfo Dengo (that’s me.): Project Manager, Integrator.
Pablo Viquez: Programmer.
Johnathan Salas: Designer.*
Katherine Obando: Animator.
*Salas was a late addition to the team, since one of the designers/animators that was assigned to us called to inform that he would not be participating. Salas joined the Jam at around 10pm and was a real savior.
After a very entertaining keynote from the organizers we set out to brainstorming about the game concept, restrictions, and each ones personal strengths and limitations.
We decided to use Unity 2.5 Beta to develop the game. Other options included Flash, which Pablo and me had nearly to zero experience with, Blender Game Engine… let’s not get into that I might start ranting about the interface, Doom Engine, C4 and Torque.
I had experience with Unity mostly in the GUI area so I was going to be creating the UI, integrating the code from Pablo and helping with some scripting. Pablo is a PHP programmer but was very willing to learn Unity and apply his skills to scripting (he spent the first 14 hours learning Unity with the tutorials). Katherine is a Flash animator but had some experience with 3D so she would be taking care of the models and animation. Salas took over the look and feel of the game, designing the interface elements for me to integrate, the logo and the main audio loop.
Muu! (Spanish “speaking” cows go Muu instead of Moo)
We discussed a few ideas that some way or another hit a roadblock. By the deadline we had set to ourselves the only full concept we had was of a farmer that had to milk his cows in a race against time, lest their udders got too full of milk and they blew up. The player would be awarded points for the amount of milk that he was able to collect from the cows, with a minimum amount set to be able to advance to the next level. There is a bird that helps the farmer detect which cows are about to blow up as well as audio and animations from the cows as they start getting full. Once a cow blows up it will not be replaced which gives the farmer less chances of completing the level.
The concept allowed for a fast paced, fun game with competitive elements as well as a subject that allowed for very interesting graphics. Alas we where not all in love with the game, but the keynote had recommended not to take that as a negative.
The next 40 hours went by in a caffeine and chocolate blur. With members of all teams taking power naps, crashing, dancing in front of the live feed cam (yes I did dance), more caffeine and chocolate and lots of pizza.
By Sunday morning I was running purely on caffeine and adrenaline. The rush of the final hours was very intense, I was still missing some of the 3d Models, had to take care of the rest of the sounds and merging the code from Pablo’s PC to my Mac. It all came together in the last five minutes, with people counting down, screaming in frustration and in relief, very intense indeed.
It was over. So we jumped around celebrating the end of the jam, had some more pizza and talked to the other teams to relax a bit.
After we had presentations for all the games or game concepts by the different teams. Then the judges went into deliberation for what felt like another 48 hours and when they finally came out. We won! that was incredible, I’m really proud of what we accomplished with such a tight schedule and knowledge limitations. We where the only team using Unity, the ones with the most complete game, and according to the judges the most expandable and playable idea.
Muu!! still had a few bugs and missing animations, so I spoke with my team letting them know that I wished to finish the game, to which they all agreed and offered any help. The emotional and physical investment had been too big just to leave it at that.
I’m finally catching up with myself and will be working on finishing the game this coming week. I’ll be posting the new version in the GlobalGameJam site and also here on Arges as well as a web player version for all to enjoy.