Inter Uni Game Jam 2012

As you are all aware, last weekend was Uni Jam 2012, at Nottingham Trent University.

Presentation from the welcome keynote and announcement of the theme.

Setting up at Inter Uni Game Jam

Participation

Students from the following universities attended the event:

Nottingham Trent University

University of Nottingham

Kingston University

City University London

University of Derby

University of York

University of Warwick

Anglia Ruskin University

Highlights

It is clear from the video footage taken during the event that the general atmosphere was great. The attendees were upbeat and enthused about the opportunity with everyone smiling even in the middle of the night people. Even in cases where development was being halted by bugs and other issues, all the students managed to stay positive and enjoy themselves.

Another highlight was when a member of the team from Warwick University offered to help the 2 man team (from Kingston and London City University) with a maths problem. This goes a long way to showing that although it was a competition, the spirit of the event was friendly and students from different universities were able to work together to create brilliant games.

A quote from the DevSoc Facebook page following the event was "I came to Uni in October, hoping to be able to learn how to make games, and with DevSoc, I successfully made one after a month. Can't argue with that!!!" This is what the vision for the game jam was all about, so feedback like this has made all the work worthwhile.

Full videos of the event and interviews with the teams can be found at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCElCpSPU28MP_e3IhDerJ-A

Inter Uni Game Jam 2012 Winners

Prizes were awarded by the judges as follows:

Accessibility - NTU DevSoc (Patrick Merritt, Paul White, Eamonn Hayden, Charlotte Ash) Windows Phone 7/8, XNA MonoGame

Game Play - NTU DevSoc (Luke Shires, Alex Roberts, Nick Powell, Charlotte Neill, Russell Claxton) Windows 8 XNA MonoGame

Graphics - University of York (Samuel Twidale, Joe Williamson, Tom Rosling) Flash

Innovation - Anglia Ruskin University (Ed Horsey, James Roberts, Kieran Linnie, Owen Westfield Bell) Unity

Windows 8/Windows Phone - NTU DevSoc (Luke Shires, Alex Roberts, Nick Powell, Charlotte Neill, Russell Claxton) Windows 8

People’s Choice - NTU DevSoc (Luke Shires, Alex Roberts, Nick Powell, Charlotte Neill, Russell Claxton) Windows 8

Random Prize Draw for a Windows Nokia Lumia Phone - NTU DevSoc (Eamonn Hayden)

Acknowledgements

This event would not have been a success without all the support we have received from third parties. Our thanks go to:

Nottingham Trent University– Dev Soc’s Alex Close and his excellent organisation,  huge thanks to the Computer Science Department for providing on going support through the planning and running of the event and providing us with an excellent venue.

Stewards and Nottingham Trent DevSoc team– For volunteering their time to help run the jam. Some stayed awake for the whole 24 hours to make sure they could help if they were needed.

Sponsors

Microsoft - For sponsoring the Windows 8/Windows Phone category, Peoples choice category and random prize draw.

Pocketeers - For sponsoring for the Innovation prize category.

Marmalade - For sponsoring the Game Play prize category.

Desura + Indie Royale - For sponsoring the Innovation prize category.

Pololu– For sponsoring the Accessibility prize category.

Rebellion + 2000AD - For sponsoring the Graphics prize category.

Insane Dev (Steven Batchelor-Manning) - For sponsoring the Accessibility prize category and coming down to the venue to show support.

Dynamite Jack– For sponsoring the Graphics, Innovation, Accessibility and Game Play prize categories.

Wiseman Designs - For providing treats for all competitors in the form of Haribo and Freddos.

Fellow judges

Mode7 Games (Paul Taylor) - For judging the competition and providing a Frozen Synapse key to everyone who participated in the event.

David Smith - For judging the competition and providing ongoing support throughout the competition.

So get publishing apps and creating a portfolios here are some useful takeaways

Games are the #1 download and #1 money making app category so get developing!

Pick your niche, grow from there have a look at the excellent things www.devsoc.co.uk have achieved.

XNA and MonoGame provides a solution to get your existing XNA assets and games running as a Windows 8 Store App

MonoGame provides a cross platform solution so that you can leverage your existing XNA development effort, across multiple marketplaces to develop a portfolio of games across platforms

Follow the certification guidelines (WACK) to make your app Windows 8 Store ready and use your www.DreamSpark.com Free windows phone and Windows 8 developer accounts to publish your titles to store.

Enter as many competitions and Game Jams to grow your experiences also enter competitions such as www.imaginecup.com for teams and http://www.aswift.com/searchforastar for individuals.

Useful Resources and links

http://www.ubelly.com/gaming Building Windows 8 Games

http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/windows8/ Windows 8 UK Camps and Training Events

http://bit.ly/GJ_W8Samples Windows 8 Samples

http://dev.windows.com Windows 8 developer resources

http://dev.windowsphone.com Windows Phone 8 developer resources

http://www.monogame.net  MonoGame

http://monogame.codeplex.com MonoGame Installer for Windows

http://www.github.com/mono/MonoGame Git Resource