Category Archives: Featured Posts

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ROM Game Jam!

From the official ROMJam website:
“This August, come bring history to life at the Royal Ontario Museum!
In an exciting pilot project, the ROM, in partnership with Gamercamp and the University of Toronto, is opening its doors to game developers for a three-day game jam August 9-11, 2013 to create digital games to animate the exhibits in the museum.

The must-knows about the beta run of the ROM Game Jam:

Spend three days inside the ROM creating games that animate its exhibitions
Explore the museum’s 30-plus galleries containing millions of artifacts
Learn about the history of the artifacts directly from ROM experts
Nerd out with fellow game developers in one of the most awesome venues ever for a jam
Have the opportunity to showcase your game in a Toronto cultural institution with an audience of thousands

The theme for the 2013 ROM Game Jam will be “Foretelling the Past.”

For three days, participants will get special access to the museum to create a game based on its contents. Now, even for veteran game jam participants, there will be a few fresh surprises to the ROM Game Jam experience. Imagine yourself digging up ancient artifacts for inspiration, or immersing yourself in the rich history of the museum with ROM experts in archaeology, ancient cultures, and more.”

Visit the official website for more information and registration forms!

Indie Game Developer Panel

This week is going to be a big and awesome meeting! (Thursday January 17th, from 5pm – 7pm) We will be having a panel of four amazing Indie Developers, Daniel Steger, Damian Sommer, Cale Bradbury, and Alexander Martin.

The panel will be talking about some of their experiences, what they have been through and some of the do’s and don’ts of the industry, as well as talking about some of the current projects they are working on. They are also here to answer any and all questions you may have for them. The meeting place will be a bit different then usual and will take place in MC 252. (Mechanical Engineering Building, 5 King’s College Road).

Daniel Steger is a past member of UTGDDC and creator of Baby Maker Extreme. You can find this game and other awesome ones on his website: stegersaurus.com

Damian Sommer, who has created many games like A Friendship in 4 Colours, A Game About Game Literacy, and The Clown Who Wanted Everything. You can check out some of his stuff at his website: damiansgames.com

Cale Bradbury is known for Snakes on a Cartesian Plane which has gotten over a million downloads. This game can be found as well as many of his other stuff on his website: netgrindgames.com

Alexander Martin has released a set of games recently at droqen.com which includes his IGF finalist Starseed Pilgrim.

Damian Sommer, Cale Bradbury, and Alex Martin also have a podcast with Chris de Carteret called Secret Twins Club. (secrettwinsclub.tumblr.com)

This meeting is going to be awesome, and extremely fun to attend so remember to invite your friends!
All are welcome to come!

Hope to see you all come out!!

GMD 2012-2013 has begun!

Hey everyone!

Game-Making Deathmatch, or GMD for short, has kicked off for this year! The theme is….

If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

The comphrehensive rules and sign-up information, including the registration form, can be found here
We’re still accepting registrations for individuals and teams of two for another week, so if you’d like to sign-up, contact us at gmd@utgddc.com.
You can also contact us if you have any questions about the nature of the competition, or to check with us about using tools or resources that you’re not sure are allowed or not. Again, any questions you have go to gmd@utgddc.com!

We hope that lots of people will participate and make lots of awesome games! Good luck!

Open Frameworks Tutorial

GDDC Meeting ! Oct 25th, 5-6:30pm BA 4010 (+ Mega Mortem!)

This week we will be doing a tutorial on openFrameworks. oF is an open source toolkit developed for creative coding in C++. It is massively cross-compatible, supporting five operating systems: Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS, Android. It also works with four dev environments: XCode, Visual Studio, Code::Blocks, and Eclipse. If you want to follow along you can download it here with instructions: http://www.openframeworks.cc/download/

Following the tutorial, the meeting will end a little early so we can go as a group to the Mega Mortem event being held by IGDA Toronto (International Game Developer’s Association) at 7 pm, being held at Metro Hall at 55 John Street. This is a great opportunity to hear about the lessons learned by successful developers, and to get to know other people in the Toronto development community!

Hope to see you at the meeting!

Freeware Game of the Week: Return to Sector 9

Sorry guys! I know it’s been a while, and you’ve all been waiting urgently ON THE EGDE OF YOUR SEAT for the next game of the week. Also, sorry about the lack of announcements on the webpage in the last week; we’ve been using the Facebook page more often lately.

BUT THAT ENDS NOW.

Yes! More posts here now! Starting with freeware game of the week again…

So, Return to Sector 9– nothing really breakthrough about it. It’s a challenging space-shooter with a ton of secrets and bosses. It was also made in Game Maker. The point is- this game is a lot of fun. It’s simple, but it does what it does well.

If you’re interested in game design, but you’re not ready to launch your multi-dimensional motion-capture live-RPG sprawling epic, try making a game like this. It’s not extremely difficult, and it’s made fun by tight game-design and polish. If you’re looking for some game programming advice (in Game Maker or in any language in general), feel free to shoot us an email (or consult online sources too, there’s a ton of ’em!)

– Adam

Game Maker Tutorial on Thursday

Hey everyone!

This week, we’ll be doing a workshop with GameMaker!
GameMaker is a 2D game development tool that’s easy to approach from a non-coder background, but also very powerful and can make some really interesting games.
For the first hour we’ll be learning how to use GameMaker, and the second half is open to you to apply what you’ve learned and make your own game to put on the arcade cabinet!
Please download the free version in advance here , and bring in your laptop to follow along.

The dets: Oct 4th, 5 to 7 pm in BA 3116
Hope to see you at the meeting!

Freeware Game of the Week: Karioshi 2

Karioshi 2 might be the most bizarre game I have ever played. It’s a bit dark, a pinch creepy, with a dab of frustrating, but it’s filled with amazing HOLY CHEESEBURGER moments that, sometimes literally, make you think out of the box. It’s an experimental game that deliberately contradicts a gaming convention: stay alive. In most games, everything in the world is trying to kill you, but in Karioshi 2, dying is not only difficult, but it’s your goal.

If this game intrigues you, definitely give it a try. It blew my mind at least twice. A word of warning though- you will be trolled a bit.

PS: Plus, it was made with Game Maker! Keep your eyes banana-peeled for a Game Maker tutorial in the near future! (Next week maybe?)

– Adam

Unity Tutorial on Thursday

That’s right, you read the title correctly! This Thursday, the club is hosting a Unity tutorial. Unity is a popular video game development tool that can help you create impressive 3D games more easily. Also it’s FREE (unless you’re a pro and buy Unity Pro). Unity is very flexible- it has a nice graphical user interface with a wide set of tools, but also a deep scripting system. It can compile games for many different platforms. Veteran and beginner programmers alike should take a look at Unity, and come to the tutorial!

The details:
Show up at BA 7231, on Thursday (Sep 27th), at the usual 5-7 pm.
So be there or BE SQUARE! Or a circle, or a triangle… whatever you want really.

– Adam

The Great Canadian Appathon!

It’s almost time for this year’s Great Canadian Appathon! Run this year by the game company XMG Studios, the event spans the weekend of September 28th to 30th. It’s a game jam and contest that takes place simultaneously across every university campus in Canada, where students work in teams to create an app or game for a $25,000 prize.

Last year University of Toronto students participated in the Appathon, a huge and important event for student programmers and developers in the city. This year the university is aiming to make a bigger splash, by getting more involved and sending more participants to support the event!

To participate, you must be a student at a Canadian post-secondary institution, and cannot work from home but instead at the designated physical location for your school. The Teams can have a maximum of four members from any field; art, music, code, design, or any other. This is a great opportunity to get your feet wet in game development early in the school year, with incredible prizes on the line!

Check out the event’s website for all the details!
If you’re looking for a team, check out the official Appathon Facebook page, the utGDDC facebook page, or the utGDDC forums. Good luck everyone!

– Jessica

Freeware Game of the Week: Slender

This marks the beginning of our “Freeware Game of the Week” series. We’ll be featuring a free indie game each week throughout the year. This time, we’ll be starting off with a spooky game; so I don’t recommend trying this unless you like a good scare.

Slender has simple gameplay, but great atmosphere. You simply collect eight pages from different landmarks- but something is following you in the woods.

Also, Slender was created with Unity, which we will be covering in a future tutorial. This is a nice example of a game you could make with Unity.

I had a lot of fun with it, I screamed a few times. I find games like these are best when you try to immerse yourself in game- I always watched my back like I would in real life. If you go into this with a skeptical, pfft this ain’t gonna scare me attitude, you probably won’t have as much fun. So, turn off the lights, up the music, and enjoy!

PS: There are more download links here– the link was down at the official website last time I checked.
PSS: If you are looking for more scares, please try Amnesia, it’s also a favorite of mine.

-Adam