Thinking about going to GDC? Interested in saving money? Not scared of sharing a room with your fellow Omaha game developers? Sign up on this thread in the forums so that you can make arrangements with someone. And yes, you need to think about booking now.
Even if you are planning on going it alone, check out the GDC travel page
for better rates.
This is the video post-mortem of the original version of Blockmonster created by Ryan Versaw, Bryce Kahle and Andrew Dakin. It was created in under 12 hours at the Games++ game jam in November of 2011. The post-mortem was presented at the November meeting 2 weeks later.
Take a moment to play this version of Facepong.
This is the video post-mortem of the original version of Blockmonster created by Tyler White and Lucas Hartman. It was created in under 12 hours at the Games++ game jam in November of 2011. The post-mortem was presented at the November meeting 2 weeks later.
Blockmonster was created in Unity 3D.
You can play this version of Blockmonster here.
You can keep up with KillSmile on the web at http://killsmilestudios.tumblr.com/.
Just a quick note that KillSmile Studios is now on the web!
KillSmile is Lead 3D Artist & Programmer, Lucas Hartman and Lead Designer & Artist, Tyler White.
Lucas and Tyler were the creators of the Games++ entry, Blockmonster. They are currently working on a new, real version of the game that they plan on releasing under the Kill Smile banner.
Make sure you keep an eye on these guys and give them as much support as the OGDA can!
Last night’s meeting was a great hit! Not only did we have a great guest in Ian Schreiber, we got to test-drive a great new venue! Suffice to say that the meeting that we had would not have been possible at Scooter’s! We all want to extend a great deal of thanks to Dave Homan and CAMP for hosting us. I think it is a consensus that we will be back soon!
There were a total of 15 people there (16 if you count Ian’s visage on the monitor). We were a little concerned that some people didn’t know how to get to the new venue or were turned away by the automatic gates that were acting up a little bit.
There will be plenty of video coming out of the meeting. All of the game design workshop with Ian was recorded. That will take quite a bit of editing to put together in a digestible fashion. Additionally, the post-mortems of Games++ entires Blockmonster and Facepong will be up as separate videos. There was also a fantastic presentation of Resonance by XII Games. Those are shorter and will be posted in the next few days. We also saw a great live demo of the new Battle Bears Royale by SkyVu. (This was not recorded.)
In the meantime, here are some pictures from last night.
Remember, our November meeting is tonight at 6PM. Please note that you can certainly show up before 6 as the facility will be open.
We are really looking forward to hanging in our new pad, CAMP Coworking. We will have plenty of space to spread out… and from the sounds of it, we’ll need it. From the sounds of it, we could see a dozen new people at this meeting!
As per a different thread, please bring your own drinks or snacks. Yes, you can bring alcohol (just dont’ be dumb). Also, out of thanks to our hosts, it would be nice if we could take up a collection ($5 per person?) to pay for use of the facilities. CAMP makes it money on being used in this way… we should show our appreciation to Dave Homan and his wife for letting us use it for the OGDA.
CAMP is downtown in the Mastercraft building at 1111 N 13th Street, Suite #119, (about 3 blocks north of TD Ameritrade park).
As a reminder, tonight’s agenda includes:
If you are interested in Ian’s books that he wrote with industry veteran Brenda Brathwaite, you can find them here:
This is probably going to be one of our most exciting meetings yet! See you tonight!
It turns out that there has been another studio flying under the radar in Omaha… this one for many years! We would like to welcome Vince Wesselmann’s XII Games (“Twelve Games”). Vince is a solo developer who has a number of intriguing titles displayed on his site including his current multi-year project, Resonance.
He has been writing a developer diary of his progress on Resonance including videos. It’s nice to see a labor of love so meticulously documented.
Vince is going to try to start coming to meetings. I have assured him that he will find scads of talent looking to collaborate. (That’s true, right?)
Anyway, please welcome Vince and XII Games to the OGDA fold. For those that are on Twitter, you can find him as @VinceTwelve.
Ok… after the Scooter’s at 180th decided to schedule a piano recital of some sort without asking us (not like they care), we scrambled for another meeting location. Thankfully, Dave Homan (President of Slouch Couch studios) suggested we look into CAMP Coworking to host this week’s meeting. CAMP is a space designed for collaborative work. People can rent space by day, month, etc.
They have pretty much everything we need… WiFi, plenty of power, desks, chairs (some of them are even squishy ones!), and — most importantly — there will be no other people to worry about bothering. This comes in handy considering we are doing another Skype guest this month.
CAMP Coworking is a little out of our normal territory. It’s in the NoDo (North of Dodge) neighborhood — specifically just a few blocks north of TD Ameritrade park and the Qwest Century Link Center. The actual address is 1111 N 13th Street in the Mastercraft building.
Please note that 13th street does not really go through from the baseball field north. You end up in the Hampton Inn parking lot. While you can certainly manage to get out the other side of that lot, it is a little awkward. The best bet is to go around the hotels by a block or so.
I really want to thank Dave and his wife for helping out with this. While he pretty much soft-pedaled the idea of paying for the use of the space, I think it would be appropriate if we were to chip in a few bucks each for their generosity.
Stop by the forums and look at what OGDA artist, Ben Pogge, is putting together for our OGDA logo and to replace the banner at the top of the page!
Just a note… I found out that the Scooter’s at 180th and Q has some sort of piano recital on Saturday evening during our meeting time. I am in the process of looking for another venue right now and will update the blog when I decide on one. Tentative location is Scooter’s 156th and Pacific, but I need to check with them first.
Aren’t we all glad that we will soon have a new home for these meetings? (Thanks SkyVu!)
