zerofiftyone

Glad I'm not the only one who does this every time

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Thanks for organising this, Dino!

You're crazy if you think I'd be able to get my troll costume past the airport TSA.

I'm in favour of doing this on the Friday as I fly out the following day, but we should go with what's most convenient for the group.

Saturday night hang sounds good to me.

https://twitter.com/tinytires #tinytires

I get into SF on Saturday afternoon and my schedule is mostly free apart from Sunday and Wednesday evening. I'd also be up for having a lunch meetup with folks in addition to an evening thing!

I will be around for GDC this year and would love to meet y'all in person!

Thread stickied!

For this Wizard Jam, I'm doing something a bit different. As a kind of experiment I wanted to go back to the first solo game I ever made (well.. attempted, I didn't even get close to finishing it), and see if I could remake it in two weeks. I thought it'd be a neat way of measuring the personal progress I've made in the intervening years; and also, it would just be nice to get the game out there and playable after so much time inside my head and in long-abandoned Unity project files. When I think back on the early days of my game development career (then hobby), I think of this game and the various hurdles I had to overcome to get even the most basic stuff things running on-screen. Maybe getting this game done and finally putting it to bed will be cathartic. So this is Concentric. Back in 2014 I picked up a copy of Unity 4.3 with Playmaker and set out to make a tiny score-attack style game. The gameplay was something like a deconstructed Frogger. You control a small circle that can move along the ring you're occupying, or hop between rings. The objective is to collect pickups that spawn in the outer ring, and carry them back to the center of the screen. You had to do this whilst avoiding obstacles. The faster you were able to deliver the pickup back to the center, the more points you earned. Over time the game gets harder and harder until you die. I messed around with this in evenings and weekends for several months making not that much progress, in the way that you do when you're using a project to learn as a primary focus. I abandoned it in the summer of 2014, when Unreal Engine 4 became available and I jumped ship after learning about Blueprints. Below is the only footage I have of the old version. It was so far from being functional, let alone complete: there was no way to take damage or end the game, or progress through the level structure. I often wonder about how it would have played if it was more functional. I ask myself: would it even be fun? Would the controls get confusing when played in real-world circumstances? I hope to find out in the next fortnight. You guys can hang out on this thread and find out with me if you like. (Above: The only footage I have from the 2014 version of Concentric) For Wizard Jam, I'll probably end up making some minor design changes to the game; most notably I'm thinking of structuring the game around set pre-authored levels as opposed to an endless level that gets more difficult over time. I figure that it's an easier structure to get something playable and working early, which is going to be important given the short timeframe.

Hey all! It's nearly time for the Showcase Weekend. This is something we tried for WJ5 to encourage people to give each other more feedback after the jam, and decided to keep going for this jam. If you're streaming the games on Twitch this weekend, feel free to promote your channel and streaming schedule in this thread.

Very excited to see a bunch of cool people playing a bunch of cool games this weekend.

https://zerofiftyone.itch.io/concentric This is released!! Have a lot to say about this but it'll have to wait as the time is approaching 3am and I need to go to bed. I'm glad to finally release it though. Hope you enjoy it.

The name is pretty good and fitting imo

Hello everyone! There will be another Wizard Jam in December! If you're new to the community, Wizard Jam is the community-run game jam we host twice a year. Wizard Jam is not a contest; the main emphasis is to celebrate the Thumbs community through sharing and collaboration over the course of a fortnight. We write devlogs and post GIFs. We offer support and volunteer music, sounds and other assets. We play each other's games and stream them. It's a lot of fun. The other thing we try to emphasise is encouraging people to try making something new and unfamiliar; or to try game development for the first time entirely (quite a few of the entries we've had in the past are from complete first-timers to gamedev!). We run the jam over the course of two weeks to give people the room to try something weird and see how it turns out. Wizard Jam - Friday 15th December to Sunday 31st December Showcase Weekend - Saturday 6th January to Sunday 7th January Choose an episode title from any show on the Idle Thumbs podcast network and use it as a theme prompt for your game. Use this site to browse through show titles: http://randomthumbs.danjohnmoran.com/ (Thanks to Broxxar, Panzorfork & matt.ishii for providing the site) The diversifiers are an optional challenge for the jam. They're creative prompts, designed to help you design a game around a specific limitation (or set of limitations). You can choose as many (or as few) as you like and incorporate them into your game. Talk is cheap - Make a game which is designed around having no written or spoken words whatsoever Performative Development - Stream your development process live using a streaming service such as Twitch.tv "2D's company, 3D's a crowd" - Make a 3D game using only 2D graphics Simple Input - Make a game that can be entirely played with only two buttons Crowd-sourced - Make a game using input from other people. Take on lots of mini-contributions which will be used in the game (e.g. sound recordings or photos), or alternatively let the community vote and decide on creative decisions This jam is not a competition, and there is no minimum level of game development experience needed to join. People from all backgrounds are welcome to participate. If you're new to gamedev, let us know! Join us on the forums and on Slack; where you'll find help, advice and encouragement from the community. Entries containing any form of harassment or hate-speech are not permitted. Anything crossing into this territory will be removed. Use this subforum to make development log threads, recruit folks, and chat about development related stuff! There's also the game development subforum and the #wizardjam slack channel. If you aren't a already a member of the slack group and would like an invite, send me a private message at @zerofiftyone and I will make sure you get access. After the jam finishes, we'll be hosting Showcase Weekend; an opportunity for everybody to step back from the game making process and look at what everyone else has made; with an emphasis on giving feedback and comments to fellow creators. It's covered in the schedule below, and there'll be more details to follow. HERE'S THE PAGE WHERE YOU CAN SUBMIT YOUR GAME : [https://itch.io/jam/wizard-jam-6] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Browse Past Wizard Jams: Wizard Jam (Apr 2015) Subforum Link Itch.io Link Winter Wizard Jam (Nov/Dec 2015) Subforum Link Itch.io Link Wizard Jam 2016 (May 2016) Subforum Link Itch.io Link Wizard Jam 4 (Nov/Dec 2016) Subforum Link Itch.io Link Wizard Jam 5 (Jun 2017) Subforum Link Itch.io Link

Announcement: the jam will be extended for a bonus day; so the deadline has been extended from the 31st to the 1st. This is for two reasons: So that people can party on New Year's Eve and not feel bad about wasting jam time So that people can use their New Year's day holiday for jamming if they want

This is so relatable.

This is amazing and hilarious

This is looking incredible. I love the look of this so much. I'll think about possible advert ideas over Christmas and see if I can contribute something for this.

Ahhh! Been seeing GIFs of this in the slack and now I finally have context. I really enjoy the Myst look you've made for this. I can can send you a picture of my puppy if you want?

Thanks! I kind of happened upon the effect by accident when I was experimenting with ways to replicate the look of the old game in 3D. Because of that, I have no real idea as to how I would go about replicating it if I wanted to! Wah!!

I did some more mockups tonight. Planning out the UI screens on paper (figuratively speaking) before making them is pretty good since it gives me time to think about not just how they should look, but also the best way to implement them.

"Delivered" might be more appropriate in this case

Congratulations @gerbilsinspace! Hope you're both doing well