Game Jam Documentation

 

NM Game Jam

For the weekend of week 4, I took part in the TU Game Jam. I chose to take part in the game jam as I felt it would help clear my worry about making a game entirely solo, as well as managing other modules projects.

Introduction:

The night before it began we were sent emails about who our team was and our team name. Fitted in the email was also a start time, 10am. Friday 25th April, we woke up for 10am and joined a teams call with lecturers from both Blanch campus and City campus. The lecturers would give us a general introduction to a game jam, told us some of the rules, and gave us some tips to help. We were told it's more important to talk first and figure stuff out about your team and their schedule before beginning. We then split off into our teams.

Team:

We entered a teams chat set up by the college for each individual team. I got to meet my other team members, none of which I knew, they all came from City campus. The first one of them to speak was Conor Mulgrew, I didn't know much about him besides the basics, he was a fourth year who has been specialising in game design. He mentioned he took part in three other game jams over the years. He said he'd handle the actual game coding, this gave me some relief as I felt the game coding was my weakest aspect. The next member was Dylan Higgins Elliot, a Journalist student who is also learning German alongside it. The last member was Daria Fraczek, she was in the same course as Dylan. We all discussed our schedules and what we're good at. We thought our best option for a game that utilised all our skills would be a language based game that involves teaching you basic German tense. We assigned Daria and Dylan to gather some sentences for some easy German tense. Then there was me, everyone else was assigned a task so I took on probably the longest task, art and music. I like drawing and would consider myself fairly average at it. I could pass for something alright though. As for the music, I have been playing instruments for nearly 5 years so I thought it made sense to take that job. We then set up a Discord server so we could easily contact each other and send our parts in. 

Organisation:

Before we got started on our tasks, we set up a Game Design Document, to help us filter out what parts of the game was finalised to be a part of it. We'd then discuss in the Discord which parts shall we add into the game doc such as which German sentences. Maybe some extra parts we could implement if we had time, one of which I suggested was another game mode.

Me suggesting a boss mode in our Discord

Process/Production:

My first priority was getting the music for the game done, because I feel music is a more picky subject for the team than the art. I asked my team what kind of music they wanted, they gave me the aim of making a fast paced, happy sounding song that loops seamlessly in the background while people play the game. I tried some music making programs to help make the song, I felt that 8-Bit type music would be a catchy way of going about making the song. After awhile of messing around on my programs, I felt like I wasn't making much progress, so I asked Kyle, friend of mine in our course, to help me in making the song. Little after an hour of working together, we made a catchy song that worked well for the game that we both felt proud to make. I showed it to the team and they liked it. Conor's only gripe was making it loop. After a day I finally figured out a way to make it loop much better, and finally gave the final version to them. 

My final combined edit of the song

My next and final task was the art, and I won't lie, this took a whole day and a half to do. My first drawing was the the text box. After the music, I felt like I should just commit and follow through with some pixel art. I took inspiration for the text box from some German wood carving I found online, most of which incorporated nature into it.

Text box I made for game

The next piece I worked on was the button prompts with the tense in them.

Button prompts with the tense in them

Then the drawing that took the longest was the background, of which I asked my team what kind of background they wanted. They originally wanted a background for each question which I said was unrealistic and take longer than the time we had left, so we decided on a single one with nature and a city incorporated in it. This was the result.

Background I made for the game

And then my final part, and the most tedious part was enter the text into the text box with both the German and English translation.

Example of one of the questions

That was it. That was everything done, I felt relieved. Conor finished adding in the art to the game and then he uploaded it.

Lessons Learned:

After it all, I'm happy I took part in the Game Jam. It was a new experience and it felt nice not having to worry about getting the whole game done by yourself, but instead focusing on getting one section done to the best of your ability. I was definitely better off than most with my team members, and for that I'm grateful. I'm really proud with how our game turned out, and it felt rewarding hearing that my teammates actually liked what I made. It really comforted me and was nice hearing them be so willing to offer help if needed. From college it always feels like group work is the worst thing cause you got to really rely on others to help get you through it, but this game jam let me realise with the right people, team projects can be fun and rewarding and a lot easier than doing it alone. I would consider doing one again.

Also here's a link to our game, Ich habe getauscht (I have swapped), if you want to play it.

Thanks, that's everything.