SIP Jam round-up
Hey! My name is Jordan Kegler, I’m a VFX and environment artist here at SIP – and a Becker College student! This year we tried something a little different from what normally happens in the off time during SIP, we decided to have a game jam!
Game jams are basically quick little spans when you make a game, either as a team or as an individual! My friends and I from Becker constantly participate and plan different game jams, but we thought it would be a cool idea to do one with all of the people in SIP, too! I even started programming my first game during this jam which was a wild experience! Altogether, 7 games were launched after SIP Jam, all made in 24 hours, and updated slightly afterwards!
Here are links to all of the games! Overall, we’re really happy with how everything came out, and hope this can be a tradition going forward!!
Siren Serenade (Mobile) – https://jasoonmargoon.itch.io/siren-serenade
SQUIFA 2019 (PC) – https://gavin-camlin.itch.io/squifa
Bird Go Up (PC) – https://dialupnoises.itch.io/bird-go-up
Bullethell (PC) – https://tbmarcus.itch.io/bullethell
Crab Smash (PC) – https://dnos.itch.io/crabsmash2
Blame the Controller (PC) – https://demmydev.itch.io/btc
Love Hunt (PC) – https://elijahcobb.itch.io/love-hunt
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Creating a consistent art style
Hi, I’m Julia Krawiec, an Electronic Arts and Games Simulation Arts and Sciences major attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as well as the lead artist on Team Blueberry.
We’re already past the halfway point of SIP and all the teams have made significant progress on their projects! Team Blueberry is making a “Match 3 Game” (similar to games like Candy Crush, Bejeweled, and Juice Jam) where you play as Cyp, a cat selling plants from their plant van all over the world.
One of the biggest challenges Team Blueberry encountered was how to keep our art style consistent. Blueberry’s art team is pretty large, having 4 artists to 2 programmers, each with a unique art style, so we wanted to make sure everyone’s art looked cohesive. On top of that, each of our artists had different strengths, ranging from animation, to 3D modeling, to 2D illustration, and we wanted our game to make the most out of everyone’s area of expertise while also making room to pick up new skills.
We tackled this problem by drawing a couple iterations of our main character, Cyp. Then, we decided which version worked the best, fit the feel we intended, and was in a style that others could easily replicate. This image became our reference from there on so everyone could stay consistent and have a visual to look at when creating any assets for the game. We also went through similar processes for other game components like icons and game boards. After we had an art style set, we looked through all the assets we needed to create and decided what could be created in 2D and what could be 3D.
These early concepts and planning were essential for us. It has given all the members of Blueberry a solid idea of what the feel of our game is and how to create cohesive looking art assets. We’re over 7 weeks in and our unified vision of what we’d like our end product to look like has made the process go rather smoothly.
SIP has been a blast for Team Blueberry so far and ourselves and all the other teams are working hard to produce some awesome games this summer! I’ve learned so much from my fellow teammates and all the other SIP members and can’t wait to get even more out of it!
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Watch MassDiGI Executive Director Tim Loew discussing the business of video games and esports along with SIP19 Intern Valeria Yang and Becker Studio Intern Justin Duclos on NECN’s CEO Corner. The show aired on June 23, 2019.
Click here to view Part 1 and Part 2.
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Watch MassDiGI Executive Director Tim Loew discussing the business of video games and esports along with SIP19 Intern Valeria Yang and Becker Studio Intern Justin Duclos on NECN’s CEO Corner. The show aired on June 23, 2019.
Click here to view Part 1 and Part 2.
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Playtesting, playtesting, playtesting
Hello, I’m Dana Hsiao, a Masters of Engineering in Computer Science student at Cornell University – and a Wellesley College alumna. All our SIP teams have been hard at work in the early production stage of our games.
I am the producer of Team Apple, and we’re making a “merge game,” a game is where you take two like things and combine them into one better thing (eg 2048, Cat Condo, Merge Tower Bots). In our game, you are in command of a legion of cute critters as they battle back an invasion of demons from hell.
One of the most interesting things we have done at SIP was to show our whiteboxes and early production builds to both young kids and professional game developers. This has given us a variety of feedback on our game to inform our decisions moving forward.
Earlier this month during TouchTomorrow, an event to introduce STEM to young kids, we showed our whiteboxes to a bunch of kids. While they couldn’t give us technical game development advice, we could observe their behavior to infer how good our game was. For Team Apple’s game in particular, we noticed that kids would play the game for long periods of time and actually had to be dragged away by their parents!
Recently, we got to tour WB Games Boston, the Indie Game Collective, and Demiurge Studios. In addition to looking around their studios, we were able to playtest our current production builds alongside our whitebox with the developers working there. We got a wide range on input on our art style and how to make our game better. It was interesting to see the range of suggestions, from making our game simpler, to keeping it like it was, to making it more strategic. We deliberated over our notes the next day and decided on a slight change in how our game will work, which we are busy working on right now.
I’m honored to work with the great artists and programmers on my team and in SIP. It’s been a blast working with them, and I’m looking forward to seeing how everyone’s games come out!
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MassDiGI is pleased to be a sponsor of Boston GameLoop. For more information, click here.
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Join us on August 8 from 1-4p at the Barrett Center for our annual Open House! Free, fun and open to all. RSVP here.
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Play our games at Playcrafting Boston’s Summer Play Expo. RSVP here.
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MassDiGI is pleased to be a sponsor of NarraScope. For more information, click here.
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Beginnings
By Griffin Beels, Brown University ’21
Hi! I am a rising junior at Brown University, participating in SIP, MassDiGI’s Summer Innovation Program. We’ve been in session since the middle of May, so we’re starting to get into the meat of game production!
Within these last three weeks, we’ve been moving very fast-paced (while having ample opportunities to ask questions), and truly have accomplished a lot already.
Griffin Beels celebrating National Donut Day during SIP19.
First, we split off into groups — all of the developers were placed on teams for the rest of the summer. I’m on Team Cherry, and am actually the producer! This means that I seek to coordinate within our team to determine how we want to progress. That is, asking questions about our goals or knowledge, and using that to recognize an ideal path. I have an extraordinary amount to learn, and I hope to improve as much as I possibly can as a producer this summer, to make sure my teammates and I are working together with synergistic efficiency.
Next, we determined as a group what type of game we wanted to pursue. Our group chose to look at “endless runners,” or games wherein you keep playing forever until you hit an obstacle (e.g., Jetpack Joyride, Temple Run, Subway Surfers). We conducted market research to construct a taxonomy of endless runners, which was in essence a massive guideline of what goes into an endless runner.
After we constructed our taxonomy, we constructed 3 “white boxes,” or essentially rough drafts of a few ideas that we had — and got to present our white boxes to elementary school students in the Worcester area, which was an awesome experience. One student in particular made me smile extremely hard when he celebrated after making it to the next platform in one of our white boxes.
Finally, we have officially moved onto production; as such, we are refining our code bases, art styles, and designs to start building an awesome game from the ground up.
Everyone’s incredible, and I am super excited to not only work with such talented artists and programmers, but also get to know everyone and learn from them! I hope the summer keeps being great!
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