24 Hour Game Challenge | Ohio Game Jam
This was a very cool experience for me as a potential game developer. Last fall [2007], Dr. Harmeyer found out about a friendly competition called the “Ohio Game Jam”, she sent out an email to the SDE students to inform them of this event. Dakota LaMaster contacted me a week or so later, he said that he had two (2) game artists with him and needed another programmer to help even things out. I accepted the offer and before you know it we were all packed and ready for our gaming road trip.
Ohio Game Jam
This game jam isn’t about ‘playing’ a video game, its about ‘making’ one. As an SDE student at the University of Baltimore, I was very excited to put the skills I’ve been acquired to the test. So when this opportunity came knocking I anxiously opened the door.
The idea behind this game jam is as follows:
A theme will be revealed to the team of developers, then you have 24 hours to create a working, playable game. That’s it, plain but not so simple, as far as what program to use was up to the developers. Most of the students there were Ohio university students, naturally, we were the “outsiders”, the Baltimore Boys who drove up just to test their game creating skills.
The Challenge
The theme was ‘Science & Technology’, that was a pretty broad theme if you ask me, but never the less. First thing Team UB [TUB] did was sit in a circle and brainstormed, I started writing down the points that seemed to excite us the most, that of course fit into the theme of the challenge. After many friendly debates we came up with a funky idea, it involved rodents, robots, the undead and replanting a forest. That pretty much fit the theme and more. The name of this little game became “ZomBorgs”.
We divided the team into two (2) groups, artists [Ryan and Matt] and programmers [Dakota and Myself]. Amongst the two (2) groups we split again, Ryan and Matt divided the art work between them, one designed the interface and the other worked on the characters. The programming side wasn’t as fair, Dakota is a great flash programmer, and I only know how to spell it correctly. Most of my coding skills are in C++ and some vb.NET, so Dakota gave me a crash course on creating classes for our characters. So while he laid out the background and integrated the art coming in, I pseudo-coded the classes for him in notepad and past it on to him, that worked perfectly, because it was one less thing he didn’t have to worry about.
By us dividing the work load in this fashion, kept us focused and organized, and helped the developing of the game go much faster and smoother than ever.
ZomBorgs
It’s a real time strategy (RTS) game, it was the only RTS game to enter the Ohio Game Jam competition. The idea behind it is simple, you send out your cyber squirrels to plant trees to help clear the air, but there are other cyber genetic creatures that will try to destroy you. In that case you send out your cyber foxes and/or bears, to attach the enemy and protect your squirrels. If any of your squirrels is defeated, you send out your cyber possum to pick up the scraps and bring it back to headquarters to be “re-generated”, that way you can send it out again.
Your goal is to plant 50 trees before all your squirrels are killed, the farther you are from headquarters, the harder it gets to stay alive. It sounds simple, but we actually had a to hack our own game to win. How crazy is that, but we are very proud of it, considering the fact that it took us 24 hours to make ALL of it.
The Feel of ZomBorgs
We decided to go with a more retro Atari-like look to it. Since we were creating the game from scratch and were limited on time. Other groups used programs such as Game Maker, and one group actually made their entire game in C++, very impressive, but it didn’t have the “fun” factor, we decided to do ours entirely in flash.
After the game was done, we had less than an hour before time was up, we heard beeps and boops from the other areas. At that point we realized that we didn’t have any sound. I quickly logged into my SoundClick account and downloaded a few of my original compositions and used it to score the game, and it surprisingly fit the game really well.
The Game Results
ZomBorgs quickly became notice, we got interviewed both by local news papers and college T.V. channel. Many were actually amazed that we drove all the way from Baltimore for this, I guess that 1-UPed our game cred.
I honestly didn’t like the way they scored the games, after we all displayed our games for everyone, they just had the other developers go around the room and play everyone else’s game and then vote for their favorite one. I was actually hoping for a more analytical result. I wanted to know what we did right and what we did wrong, but never the less, we tied in 2nd place with two (2) other games. I still see it as a victory.
Ah! The Memories
I don’t think we’ll ever forget that road trip to Athens Ohio, we got to actually eat at a Sonic, which we have not seen here in Maryland. Then we got to proudly represent our college and the SDE program by successfully creating a playable flash game in 24 hours, from start to finish. All the games are posted and are free to play at the Ohio Game Jam website. I think this experience has defiantly affected our confidence, and maybe a bit our ego, in a healthy way. Not many people can say “I was part of a four (4) man group that created a game in 24 hours”, its actually pretty neat.
I’m actually collaborating with Matt again, he has been making a lot of home brews for the PSP, and asked me to provide him with some music to score his latest brew.
The 24Hr Dev. Team
Dakota LaMaster | TUB Programmer:
Flash extraordinaire, and the brave soul that drove us there and back.
Ryan Hall | TUB Artist:
Photoshop prince, and fellow city guy.
Matt Sache | TUB Artist:
PSP game developer in training, and home brew addict.
Ashraf Dawod | TUB Programmer:
C++ coder, and uprising game score composer.
Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.
-Ash
Ohio Game Jam
This game jam isn’t about ‘playing’ a video game, its about ‘making’ one. As an SDE student at the University of Baltimore, I was very excited to put the skills I’ve been acquired to the test. So when this opportunity came knocking I anxiously opened the door.
The idea behind this game jam is as follows:
A theme will be revealed to the team of developers, then you have 24 hours to create a working, playable game. That’s it, plain but not so simple, as far as what program to use was up to the developers. Most of the students there were Ohio university students, naturally, we were the “outsiders”, the Baltimore Boys who drove up just to test their game creating skills.
The Challenge
The theme was ‘Science & Technology’, that was a pretty broad theme if you ask me, but never the less. First thing Team UB [TUB] did was sit in a circle and brainstormed, I started writing down the points that seemed to excite us the most, that of course fit into the theme of the challenge. After many friendly debates we came up with a funky idea, it involved rodents, robots, the undead and replanting a forest. That pretty much fit the theme and more. The name of this little game became “ZomBorgs”.
We divided the team into two (2) groups, artists [Ryan and Matt] and programmers [Dakota and Myself]. Amongst the two (2) groups we split again, Ryan and Matt divided the art work between them, one designed the interface and the other worked on the characters. The programming side wasn’t as fair, Dakota is a great flash programmer, and I only know how to spell it correctly. Most of my coding skills are in C++ and some vb.NET, so Dakota gave me a crash course on creating classes for our characters. So while he laid out the background and integrated the art coming in, I pseudo-coded the classes for him in notepad and past it on to him, that worked perfectly, because it was one less thing he didn’t have to worry about.
By us dividing the work load in this fashion, kept us focused and organized, and helped the developing of the game go much faster and smoother than ever.
ZomBorgs
It’s a real time strategy (RTS) game, it was the only RTS game to enter the Ohio Game Jam competition. The idea behind it is simple, you send out your cyber squirrels to plant trees to help clear the air, but there are other cyber genetic creatures that will try to destroy you. In that case you send out your cyber foxes and/or bears, to attach the enemy and protect your squirrels. If any of your squirrels is defeated, you send out your cyber possum to pick up the scraps and bring it back to headquarters to be “re-generated”, that way you can send it out again.
Your goal is to plant 50 trees before all your squirrels are killed, the farther you are from headquarters, the harder it gets to stay alive. It sounds simple, but we actually had a to hack our own game to win. How crazy is that, but we are very proud of it, considering the fact that it took us 24 hours to make ALL of it.
The Feel of ZomBorgs
We decided to go with a more retro Atari-like look to it. Since we were creating the game from scratch and were limited on time. Other groups used programs such as Game Maker, and one group actually made their entire game in C++, very impressive, but it didn’t have the “fun” factor, we decided to do ours entirely in flash.
After the game was done, we had less than an hour before time was up, we heard beeps and boops from the other areas. At that point we realized that we didn’t have any sound. I quickly logged into my SoundClick account and downloaded a few of my original compositions and used it to score the game, and it surprisingly fit the game really well.
The Game Results
ZomBorgs quickly became notice, we got interviewed both by local news papers and college T.V. channel. Many were actually amazed that we drove all the way from Baltimore for this, I guess that 1-UPed our game cred.
I honestly didn’t like the way they scored the games, after we all displayed our games for everyone, they just had the other developers go around the room and play everyone else’s game and then vote for their favorite one. I was actually hoping for a more analytical result. I wanted to know what we did right and what we did wrong, but never the less, we tied in 2nd place with two (2) other games. I still see it as a victory.
Ah! The Memories
I don’t think we’ll ever forget that road trip to Athens Ohio, we got to actually eat at a Sonic, which we have not seen here in Maryland. Then we got to proudly represent our college and the SDE program by successfully creating a playable flash game in 24 hours, from start to finish. All the games are posted and are free to play at the Ohio Game Jam website. I think this experience has defiantly affected our confidence, and maybe a bit our ego, in a healthy way. Not many people can say “I was part of a four (4) man group that created a game in 24 hours”, its actually pretty neat.
I’m actually collaborating with Matt again, he has been making a lot of home brews for the PSP, and asked me to provide him with some music to score his latest brew.
The 24Hr Dev. Team
Dakota LaMaster | TUB Programmer:
Flash extraordinaire, and the brave soul that drove us there and back.
Ryan Hall | TUB Artist:
Photoshop prince, and fellow city guy.
Matt Sache | TUB Artist:
PSP game developer in training, and home brew addict.
Ashraf Dawod | TUB Programmer:
C++ coder, and uprising game score composer.
Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed it.
-Ash
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