Book Image

The Game Jam Survival Guide

By : Christer Kaitila
Book Image

The Game Jam Survival Guide

By: Christer Kaitila

Overview of this book

<p>Game jams are fun. They are a creative, exciting, social experience. The goal of a game jam is to design a video game, either alone or in teams, as fast as is humanly possible; usually in a single weekend. <br /><br /><em>The Game Jam Survival Guide</em>, written to help you have more fun and achieve greater results at your next game jam by building a successful game without burning out, leads readers through each 12-hour phase of a 48-hour weekend game jam.</p> <p>Weekend warriors: dominate your next game jam! If you follow the system shared in this book, you will be able to build an amazing game that you're proud of and will entertain players, all in just one crazy 48-hour game jam weekend … and survive to tell the tale! <br /><br />Embrace the best practices and techniques of past game jam winners and avoid common pitfalls along the way to the finish line. You too can survive a 48-hour game development marathon with your mind intact and an amazing game to show off to friends and family!<br /><br />With <em>The Game Jam Survival Guide</em> you will learn the secret techniques that master game jammers use to create winning entries. It starts by showing you great ways to brainstorm and design a game based on a theme. It then moves on to highlight the best tools and techniques to finish a game in a weekend of coding. Anecdotes and advice from past winners and losers combined with humorous words of encouragement are sure to help you on your way. The author presents a list of game jams around the world, online communities worth checking out, fantastic game engines, and art resources. Finally, learn how to monetize your game by gaining sponsorship from big gaming websites. It's the fun way to make your own video game in one weekend!</p>
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
The Game Jam Survival Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Contributors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Reducing production time


Your game should, by now, be playable. Perhaps there is only a single, empty room to run around in. Maybe you've got a title screen and some movement code but there's nothing much to see or do.

Consider yourself in great stead if you've reached that point. The next step is to flesh out your game world—to add enemies or puzzles or levels, or to create "gameplay" that your basic engine is capable of supporting.

Hand-crafted versus computer-generated content

Up to this point you may have, for example, decided to create a platformer game such as Super Mario Brothers. If you were smart, all you worked on was running, jumping, and collision detection so you won't fall through the ground and can't run through walls.

The next step is to create a bunch of levels that are fun to explore. There are two approaches to doing so: hand-craft your levels (which will necessarily be few in number) or let your computer help you create more content.

To create levels for your game, you may...