Monday, January 29, 2018

Global Game Jam January 2018


Global Game Jam is an annual event held at approximately 700 sites simultaneously across the world in which participants join teams to create a video game in 48 hours. I participated this year at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment, Sydney site: was awesome. This year's theme was "Transmission" and I worked in a team with two programmers/developers and two 3D artists to create our game "Sonav" in which you control a boat navigating through a minefield under heavy fog. You need to use your transmitting sonar pulse to clear the fog and see obstacles while trying to move between objectives under a time limit. I worked on music, sound and UI graphics which was good fun (a nice change from programming).


I had chunks of free time during the weekend which I used to work on my own side project game (called "Transmission: defence") using a custom-built alternative bluetooth video game controller (called "Turny") that I had designed and built in the weeks leading up to the jam (see previous post on the development of Turny). You control four defence platforms using transmitted energy pulses to defend against incoming missiles. The frequency and range of the pulses are controlled by the four colour-coded knobs on Turny. The game was written in python and pygame.



Both games are available to download and play at:

https://globalgamejam.org/2018/games/sonav
https://globalgamejam.org/2018/games/transmission-defence

"Transmission: Defence" and "Turny" have also featured on "Shake That Button", a website that curates alternative controllers and games. There are some super cool projects listed there, check them out!


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