It’s been a bit over a week since TOJam happened, and therefore I’m overdue on blogging about my experience there this year. My friend Karl and I participated as “Team Water-Rock”, putting together a game that was originally supposed to be about getting people to work together but ended up simply being an escort mission. The end result? Still something fun, but with a feeling that we could have done better. And I’ll explain why, Game Developer postmortem style. Read more »
TOJam 2013 and Happy Island
May 13, 2013 Coding, Events, Game Dev, Projects
Tags: game design, Happy Island, postmortem, TOJam, XNA
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District 60 Toastmasters post-conference report
This weekend just past was the annual spring conference for District 60 Toastmasters. I was on the conference committee with the responsibility of organizing the workshops part of the conference programme, and on top of that ran a workshop myself on the subject of creative Table Topics. As someone who had responsibility for how the conference turned out, I feel that I should write up a post-mortem of my part of the work, in order to better evaluate how well I did and where I have room for improvement. Read more »
Ad Astra 2013 post-convention report
Ah, I promised on Twitter I’d have this up last week, didn’t I? Well, finalizing things for the District 60 spring conference got in the way, sorry. Anyway, here we go with my postmortem on the games department for this year’s Ad Astra convention.
Haters Gonna Eight
There once was a little event where people from around Toronto came together to make games. It was called TOJam, and much fun was had by the participants. Years and years later, TOJam has become one of Toronto’s big, annual game development events! 2013 marks the eighth TOJam, and the third time that I’ll be attending.
I was at the first two events, back in 2006 and 2007. That first amazing year saw me complete a game called Alien Abduction! (now renamed UFO Panic), a game where you flew around another planet abducting aliens. Unfortunately, the second year saw my computer blow up on me, which resulted in much sad, and so I didn’t get anything completed. However, this year I don’t have to transport an entire desktop system from Pickering to downtown Toronto; all I need is my trusty laptop, and if I’m crazy enough I might also bring along my CRT monitor so I can rely on my usual two-monitor setup.
Almost every TOJam has had a theme, and this year is no different. The theme is “uncooperative”, and I already have a game idea for it. With any luck, I’ll be able to put together a simple tactical socialization game on a deserted island within the three days of the jam, with the help of my friend and fellow Cold Acid Entertainment developer Karl.
I’m really looking forward to it, and so are many others in the city! For the four hundred seats available, over three hundred registrations have already been sent in since the registration form opened up this morning. Goes to show you just how popular this game jam can be. I certainly hope that Karl and I will be among the lucky folks selected to attend!
Ad Astra 2013
It’s Ad Astra this weekend, so I’ll be fairly busy. This is my sixth year of running gaming for the convention.
I have a lot of fun here, even though I’ve had my fair share of troubles managing my department. This year has been no different in that regard, but the problems I’ve faced this time around have been in the planning and preparation stages, rather than execution (so far). It boils down to two issues that should be of concern for any group project: personnel and communication.
I’ll not name names or anything, partially because I am one of the people at fault for this (not just in a “buck stops here” way either). But yeah, it is incredibly important to know who you’ll be working with and what they will be responsible for from the get-go. Even more importantly, it is necessary that team members keep multiple lines of communication open at all times, and that they communicate early and often.
For future years and future projects, I hope that I will be able to maintain this knowledge.
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