WIZARD JAM 5 // Welcome Thread

[RubixsQube]

I'm in. This will be my fourth game for a Wizard Jam, and I'm really excited. I may even try my hand at learning another entire game creation engine, like an idiot. 

 

I really appreciate all of the work you all do (especially @zerofiftyone) in organizing this. It's been really wonderful making silly games.  

[nkornek]

On 5/22/2017 at 2:34 PM, RubixsQube said:

I'm in. This will be my fourth game for a Wizard Jam, and I'm really excited. I may even try my hand at learning another entire game creation engine, like an idiot. 

 

I really appreciate all of the work you all do (especially @zerofiftyone) in organizing this. It's been really wonderful making silly games.  

 

What engine are you planning on learning? If it's Unity I'm always down to help out and answer questions.

[RubixsQube]

 

1 hour ago, nkornek said:

What engine are you planning on learning? If it's Unity I'm always down to help out and answer questions.

 

I was considering Unity, although I primarily use a Mac and I don't know how well Unity development on a Mac is. I also have no idea how steep the learning curve is for someone who's never developed in 3D. My last games were strictly 2D affairs, the most recent in Pico-8, which may be the exact opposite of Unity. 

[Travis]

3 hours ago, RubixsQube said:

 

 

I was considering Unity, although I primarily use a Mac and I don't know how well Unity development on a Mac is. I also have no idea how steep the learning curve is for someone who's never developed in 3D. My last games were strictly 2D affairs, the most recent in Pico-8, which may be the exact opposite of Unity. 

My impression is that plenty of people use Unity on Mac and it is just as reliable as on PC. When I've used it on Mac, it was super duper. Also, you can make 2D games in Unity too if that helps you ease in. 

 

[Dinosaursssssss]

Fun fact, Unity was actually originally Mac only! Here's a forum thread from almost 10 years ago ('08) where someone makes an impassioned argument that Unity shouldn't be cross platform: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/keep-unity-mac-only.12065/

[Atlantic]

I'd like to get involved in the jam this year. I don't think I would be able to make a game, but I could definitely contribute some music/ambient tones to someone else's project(s).

[keibo]

I'm hoping to be able to be involved again this jam. I really enjoyed the experience last time and it was really fun working towards the looming deadline

[zerofiftyone]

16 hours ago, Dinosaursssssss said:

Fun fact, Unity was actually originally Mac only! Here's a forum thread from almost 10 years ago ('08) where someone makes an impassioned argument that Unity shouldn't be cross platform: https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/keep-unity-mac-only.12065/

This forum thread is wild. Reminds me of that old 2001 macrumors.com thread about the original iPod.

[pabosher]

I'm really excited because I would like to take part this time. I have no skills whatsoever, so Twine will be my thing I think. Is that okay/allowed?

[zerofiftyone]

1 hour ago, pabosher said:

I'm really excited because I would like to take part this time. I have no skills whatsoever, so Twine will be my thing I think. Is that okay/allowed?

 

Of course! We've had some great Twine entries in past jams.

[Ben X]

Twine often gets talked up as a super-easy, super-flexible engine, but I'll just give my standard warning that, the last time I used it (which was a few years ago), Twine was not that well supported and full of weird quirks. It may be better now, or easier if you know a bit of coding, but I always advise to have a play around with it first and prototype anything you're planning to implement that is more complex than 'click here to go to next passage' - e.g. using audio/pictures, or looping narratives, variables etc.

[Problem Machine]

I think I'd like to take more of a support role for this jam than to make my own project, so I'll be doing music for anyone who wants it, up to maybe 15 tracks total or so. Here's the track I did for myself last wizard jam:

I'm not very good at making classic video game sounds I think, my music tends to be a bit quirky in a way that might not work with all games. But you can listen to a bunch of it at my Soundcloud/Bandcamp and figure out for yourself if my approach will work well for your project

https://soundcloud.com/problem-machine/

https://problemmachine.bandcamp.com/

[Kyir]

Assuming my time doesn't mysteriously fill up, I'll be making an absurdist horror twine game titled Business Guys on Planes. Something about eldritch venture capitalists. 

[dafaulttidus]

Any idea how team building is going to work this time?

[Juggy B]

Hey guys!

 

I made a site for an easy redirect right to the itch.io page a while back, and I updated it now to direct to Wizard Jam 5! 

 

You can go here for an easy redirect right to the itch.io page: http://www.wizardjam.org/ 

And you can go here for an "archive" of all the past jams with easy to click links: http://www.wizardjam.org/archive/

[zerofiftyone]

On 2017-5-27 at 4:21 AM, dafaulttidus said:

Any idea how team building is going to work this time?

 

We now have some threads set up for this.  

 

[zerofiftyone]

On 2017-5-27 at 4:53 PM, Juggy B said:

Hey guys!

 

I made a site for an easy redirect right to the itch.io page a while back, and I updated it now to direct to Wizard Jam 5! 

 

You can go here for an easy redirect right to the itch.io page: http://www.wizardjam.org/ 

And you can go here for an "archive" of all the past jams with easy to click links: http://www.wizardjam.org/archive/

 

Ah, it's you! Thanks much for updating the site. I'm using it in the trailer as it's less of a mouthful than the full itch url.

[Spenny]

On 5/26/2017 at 11:21 PM, dafaulttidus said:

Any idea how team building is going to work this time?

 

I wanted to add here, the team building threads only work if you, and anyone else wanting to join a team, is willing to reach out and ask the others to be on a team. 

 

As organizers, and as a community, in the past we have tried to figure out if jammers would want the organizers to be "hands-on" with team building. We never really got the impression that a hands on method would be the correct approach to take, so for now it's hands off. We usually have some after jam threads to discuss changes to this approach, always looking to improve!

 

Thanks for setting up the threads Dino!

[Twig]

Hooray! This year I can't even pretend to try since my company won't let me do personal projects anymore, not even game jams!

 

:sob: :sob: :sob: 

 

Have fun everyone else!

[zerofiftyone]

In keeping with tradition, I made a trailer! 

 

 

[brendonsmall]

On 5/26/2017 at 7:56 AM, pabosher said:

I'm really excited because I would like to take part this time. I have no skills whatsoever, so Twine will be my thing I think. Is that okay/allowed?

 

Heck, you could even do a table top game. Watching the thumbs stream a printed out board game wizard jam game would be fun!

 

Also, can't wait to partake in this jam! I am going to be a bit jet laggy, but I want to try to resurrect my "Cruisin' For Somethin'" walking simulator follow up that I abandoned last for WJ4.

 

Wooo!

[Patrick R]

1 hour ago, zerofiftyone said:

In keeping with tradition, I made a trailer! 

 

 

 

!!!!!!!

 

This is the best.

[nkornek]

On 5/26/2017 at 7:56 AM, pabosher said:

I'm really excited because I would like to take part this time. I have no skills whatsoever, so Twine will be my thing I think. Is that okay/allowed?

 

Everything is allowed!

 

Twine can be really fun to work with. I used it for my Wizard Jam 4 game because I ended up not having a ton of time to work on my project and I loved the way it came out.

 

Important to note: Twine 2 is definitely easier to use if you don't have a lot of experience with game development but it doesn't support embedding images, music, etc like Twine 1 did.

[zerofiftyone]

40 minutes ago, Patrick R said:

 

!!!!!!!

 

This is the best.

 

Thanks! ☺️👍

[Jake]

2 hours ago, zerofiftyone said:

In keeping with tradition, I made a trailer! 

 

 

So so good. As usual I'm bowled over by the quality of the trailer itself and how overwhelmingly awesome the games featured are.