Thursday’s meeting was fun and busy! Stuff we shared We welcomed a new face, Ryan Cook, who showcased his 3D art skills. Go check out his portfolio! Personally, I particularly enjoyed the video of his nonviolent WWII-aftermath game. I showed the latest development in my project, an inventory-tetris inspired puzzle game. It’s shaping up for release in Q1 2019, stay tuned (better yet, come to a meeting and check it out)! Noel demoed his GDL Jam entry, Unlucky, a platformer gauntlet where the goal is to amass misfortune. It’s inspired the other devs in his studio to turn it into...
July’s meeting was great! We welcomed some new faces and squeezed 10 people into my humble living room. Some highlights of the evening: I (Bobby) showed the first prototype for an RPG item-based puzzle game I’ve been working on Chris showed some Diablo III shaders he replicated, and we talked about Unity’s new shader graph system Brandon showed some early-phase projects including a rhythm game and stealth game, as well as his designs for a custom head-to-head arcade cabinet Andrew showed his progress on a Lua library he plans to use to make games with rich programming mechanics built into...
It’s been a quiet few months, but one of our members graciously broke the ice for us by hosting a successful little meetup at his house in Vail on June 7. Many thanks! Inspired by his success and willingness to share his home, I’ll be hosting our next meeting at my place, which is just a block south of UA campus. I’ll send an email out soon with the address and directions for parking. We’ll have room for our normal crowd plus some new faces, and a large enough TV to share projects, websites, videos, etc. Bring your work, questions,...
What was originally a short missive in response to a TGD member on our Discord channel turned into more of an introspective on teaching game development as a studio simulation. It’s not advice, but maybe prospective game dev teachers can spare themselves some wrong turns in the process because of it. Or maybe none of it will apply because they’re teaching high school and not college or have genius teaching methods or whatever. I’ve created seven different game design curricula, and one of them is structured as a studio simulation. Students do feel “all grown up” by taking on a...
Despite the previous post, we actually have an upcoming meeting planned at a residential location in the Vail area. Thursday June 7, 7pm. As usual, it’s a chance to share your work (via HDMI display) and see what others are up to. Maybe we can also brainstorm a bit about plans moving forward.
I apologize for the long pause since the last update. I have made the decision to no longer host monthly TGD meetings. When I initially took on the role of managing this group I had my doubts about whether I could keep this going. It is only with the passion of others who have participated that these meetings have kept going. I do not feel as though Tucson’s game developers are entirely ‘homeless’ tho. The PCC and U of A groups show such strength, and I’m glad to see them continuing to grow. Our Discord server will continue running, and...
We’re off to a great start this year! Our first meeting of 2018 saw a nice turnout of faces both old and new, we shared a good number of our personal projects covering a wide range of topics, and thanks to the generous folks at Xerocraft we have a new home to do it all in. Xerocraft Tucson’s local makerspace and hackerspace, Xerocraft, has graciously offered to host TGD’s monthly meetings with a sizeable space in their basement. There’s plenty of seating and table space, ample lighting, and a nice big projector for all of the sharing we do. And...
I’ve just met with the Xerocraft folks and checked out their space, and they are quite happy to allow us access to their room downstairs for our next meetup. So please come down and show your support! If you haven’t been to Xerocraft, you are in for one hell of a treat. As Tucson’s makerspace, it is jam packed full of so much equipment to make…pretty much anything! And now even video games! :O So come on down and check it out! Got something to show? Show it off. Got some questions? Come by and we’ll be happy to answer...
Is it already the end of January?! Unbelievable how time flies around the holidays. I have been very busy with stuff but I wanted to let people know that I’m actively looking for a meeting location that can suit our needs, and also a potential location for jammin’. We are hoping to return for a February meeting, and I hope everyone will have lots of really cool stuff to show since we’ve all had an extra whole month! Or perhaps you’re like me and you’ve been playing a lot of Eternal, Slay the Spire and Opus Magnum. 😛
Due to a scheduling conflict with Santa, this month’s TGD meeting has been moved to Dec. 19th! And if there is sufficient interest, we might have a festive GAME NIGHT! That’s right, we can sit back and play some fun games together! We are hosting this at CoLab, 7pm, Â at 17 e Pennington St in Downtown Tucson. Parking is free on the street after 5pm, and the garage is also a great place to park cheap. CoLab is Moving! I’d like to extend a HUGE thanks to Startup Tucson for hosting us for so long, but their lease is up,...
