Tucson Game Developers Blog

New Meeting Time and Location!

Tucson Game Developers is MOVING to our new location: Yes, our new meeting location will be the Midtown Bookman’s at 3330 Speedway. That’s Speedway and Country Club, by the Loft Cinema. And our new meeting day will be: WEDNESDAY! So come on out to Bookman’s to see our February speaker: Chris Zukowski talk about writing for games. Chris is the developer of 1 Screen Platformer and Return of the Zombie King, two fantastic platformers available on Steam and Mobile.

Announcing the TGD Patreon!

If you’ve been to a meeting, or been on our Discord recently, you may know that we’ve recently launched our Patreon! We are not a large group, but there have been costs involved for running events. This has been historically paid for by the organizers out of their pockets, and for some of these events, the costs can be significant. But ultimately we want to do more with TGD to increase our presence, and provide resources to the global game development community. Please help support us! For more info about our plans and to donate, please go to our Patreon...

A New Year, A New TGD!

As we come to the end of the year, its great to see the quality of our group improving on every level. The work people are presenting, our guest speakers, and the building of our community keep getting better. Our virtual presenter setup has worked out better than expected. We’ve had an oscar-winning presenter Don Daglow. We’ve had Dan Miller from Unity present on augmented reality. Our caliber of guests this year was fantastic! Our local community is building and presenting some great games. We’ve had some super fun game jams, and found a home with the U of A’s...

Next Meeting January 9th: Flurry!

PLEASE NOTE: Next meeting is not the first Thursday of the month due to the holidays! Our last meeting was ridiculously fun, playing the exciting Boss Battle from Matt & PJ from Phoenix. This month we will be presenting a game in progress from a group of developers here in Tucson codenamed: Flurry! They’ll be presenting their current prototype, concept art, and how they’re going about the process. The meeting is on Thursday January 9th and will start at 7pm sharp! Our meeting will be taking place at Tucson Games & Gadgets at the Tucson Mall. The JC Penney entrance is the best location to...

December 5th Meeting: Boss Battle Playtest!

This month our special guests will be the creators of Boss Battle! They will be driving down from Phoenix and we will take part in a playtest of their game. Boss Battle is a cooperative RPG card game where you work together to take down a ruthless boss! The meeting is on Thursday December 5th and will start at 7pm sharp! Our meeting will be taking place at Tucson Games & Gadgets at the Tucson Mall. The JC Penney entrance is the best location to park. Hope to see you then! Food and Drink Policy: No Outside Food and Drink. Our hosts at TG&G are...

Upcoming Events: Tucson Comic-Con and Sausage Sports Club!

But first…a Ludum Dare juiced competition update! Our first ever Ludum Dare competition had three fine entries: WPM Warrior, Building Keys, and Button Runner. We ended up having a 3-way TIE! So we decided instead that the final deciding vote will be decided by: the public! Yes, each contestant will get even more time to polish their entries for the Tucson Comic-Con. Players will get an opportunity to play then rate the game afterwards, and the highest rated game wins! The winner will receive cash prizes and one of these sweet trophies! Join us at the Tucson Comic-Con this weekend!...

Ludum Dare: Juiced! Competition

How it Works If you’ve created a game for Ludum Dare over the LD weekend, you have one week to further polish your game. Then next Sunday October 13th we will host a competition. We will play the entries, present them, and vote on the best ones. The winner will win $100 and the runner-up gets $50. You have to have submitted the game to Ludum Dare 45. It is free to enter and anyone can join. You have to physically be at the Juiced event to win (not all team members must be there). The game must be playable....

October 3rd: This Monthly Meeting is Augmented!

This Thursday our virtual speaker will be Dan Miller from Unity. Dan is an Augmented Reality specialist who is going to be presenting AR techniques in the Unity engine and how YOU can augment your game. The meeting is on Thursday October 3rd and will start at 7pm sharp! Our meeting will be taking place at Tucson Games & Gadgets at the Tucson Mall. The JC Penney entrance is the best location to park. Hope to see you then! We have a new policy: No Outside Food and Drink! Our hosts at TG&G are gracious enough to provide this space...

Ludum Dare 45, Tucson Comic-Con, and Augmented Reality!

Last month’s meeting with Blake was chock full of cool stuff! He showed us some great tips on rigging and animating characters in Unity. By setting up bones in Maya and animating in Unity he showed how you can get some great results and preview the work in-game, instead of going back and forth between the engine and Maya. Next Monthly Meeting: Augmented Reality with Dan Miller! Next month’s virtual speaker is direct from Unity themselves! Dan Miller, who is a Virtual and Augmented Reality evangelist at Unity will be speaking to the group about AR in games. Come by...

Next Game Jam: Ludum Dare 45, extended!

It’s time again for another game jam event! This time we’ll get together to participate in the 45th Ludum Dare, which runs from October 4-7. This will be a solid 48 hours of video game making, and it’s always better with friends and free food! Of course, anyone who’s participated in a weekend game jam can attest: 48 hours is never really enough. That’s why we’re going to change things up a bit, and extend this LDJam with our own local competition! We’re going to add the rest of the week to our local submission deadline, giving you an additional...