I recently had the pleasure of being invited to speak to the students of the CECON game development course.
In the one hour I had to speak, we discussed the constant market growth to professionals who work with Unity, the main challenges of developing for mobile, optimization techniques and useful tools in the process of creating games for mobile devices.
It was a very good experience and I hope to have that opportunity again. A special thanks to Lucas Criscoullo, course coordinator, for inviting me.
As soon as I have some time I intend to improve and translate the material and maybe post it here.
Some time after (a few hours to be more precise) my last post, I embarked on a three hour journey to the countryside of Minas Gerais to participate on an experience I can only describe as incredible.
To the ones uninformed and the ones who are not familiar with the game development field, last weekend took place the 5th Global Game Jam, an international game development event. In 270 localizations in 58 different countries, programmers, artists, designers, musicians and writers got together with a single objective: to create a game in 48 hours.
With my notebook on my back and sleeping bag on my hand, me and three friends drove down to Rio Pomba, one of the host towns of the event. We were extremely well received and the structure, although it wasn't perfect, proved itself to be more than enough for a stable Jam (which was a relief considering my last experience with such event). There were two days of a lot of work, dialogue, a few disappointments and a lot of new friendships - most of them extremely talented developers.
As usual the theme was announced by the beginning of the Jam and as usual the theme was surprising:
The ones who follow me in the social networks were, sometime ago, witnesses of a short storm of "unusual" posts (I fear the less patient ones may have blocked me :P). One of my most recent activities at Gaz Games was the study of plugin by Prime 31 (company specialized in developing plugins for Unity), the iOS Social Networking Plugin, responsible to connect Unity iOS apps with Facebook, preventing the developer of having to deal with Objective-C to do so. The plugin allows you to publish images, status, links, photo albums and retrieve user information such as email, name and age. The so called storm of posts was part of a series of tests regarding the settings and functionalities of the plugin, resulting in the publication of many "Awesome iPad + Unity Integration test!" and prototype interfaces in my timeline (all of them deleted shortly after being posted). Ironically, the plugin, which was acquired with the intention to avoid the direct use of Objective-C, was exactly the cause of a fast study about the language and its integration with Unity.
Calm down ladies and gentlemen! The blog's hiatus (which was essential for me to close the semester with a golden key) is happily over!
According to the post I wrote here, my free time is a geometric progression of negative common ratio directly proportional to the moment of the semester, therefore, the closer to the end, less free time I have. As a consequence of that, some of my most beloved activities had to be left behind so I could ensure the stability of my academic life, resulting in the abadon of the blog (but still being responsable for the joy of being approved in all the subjects).
But, as I am finally free of my responsabilities with college, I can return to the writing and research. And I have a lot to post about the projects and studies I participated on during my time of absence here. Starting with graphs.
As a college task I developed along with the great Nosirrahh and other two colleagues the base for the creation of an artificial intelligence in a tactical RPG battle system (like the awesome Shining Force II :D).
To be clearer, our objective was to create the root of something like that:
As previously said on this post, I was from October 11th till the 14th on Brasil Game Show, the biggest videogame fair of the country, participating on the third national Game Jam. For two days, our team developed a game based on the theme presented to us on the beginning of the Jam. Those were two days filled with problems, ideas, learning and lots, LOTS of work. Everything you hope for from a first game jam.
And even though we didn't take the trophy home, it was an amazing experience, as fun and fulfilling as it was stressful. The kind that remembers me why I chose to work with game development.
But even with my feeling of self realization it is impossible to deny that the event was in many different points badly planned and structured. From the availability of internet and water to the preparation of the support team.
I mentioned, a few weeks ago on my semester's preview, my participation on a UFMG (a brazilian University) project for the development of an ecologic educational game about Mangabeiras Park. And as promised, here's a post with a little more about the game.
Formed by an ICB (Instituto de Ciências Biológicas, Biological Sciences Institute in english) studies group from UFMG, the project's main objective is to teach the population about the variety and fragility of the species that live in Mangabeiras Park, a natural park with a green area of approximately 337 hectares. Through events, long range campaigns and research about the behavior of the creatures that inhabit the park, the group has acted to educate and guarantee the balance of the huge ecosystem that is the park.
First of all I would like to appologize about the recent irregularity on the posts of the blog. The last weeks were extremely busy, with results that will echo through many of my upcoming posts.
This text will be a little more personal than usual, serving as a summary, preview and reason for the events that will occur on the next weeks.
