IGDA informal meet April 25th 2008 report [April 28th, 2008 – 12:45 am]

This "informal" meet, we managed to get two things - a location to do the meet in, and speakers for the talk. The KL Sentral Incubator has a room that we got for free, and I was able to borrow a projector for the night. With the two speakers bringing their own PCs (one's a personal laptop, the other a personal desktop PC lugged on a train from Cyberjaya), we were all set for a speakers-based session.

This night's attendees were from GameBrains, John Galt Games, MMU's Software Engineering and Games Design students, the lecturers from APIIT's game dev course along with their students and a number of people from several companies doing multimedia development.

We managed to get some ppl in around 745pm. Hazmer was late, so Buzz set up to be the first speaker. While he was setting up, everyone who attended introduced themselves. I made an announcement, and Muhammad from APIIT made another announcement.

• I announced that Allan Simonsen, IGDA Chapter Coordinator from Singapore, intends to drop by Malaysia sometime to promote GCA2008 in Singapore, and to seek for speakers for the same event. He has yet to confirm the time, but once he does, I will announce the location and time of an open meeting for everyone to meet with him.
• Muhammad from APIIT announced that they're running an event called ICCG (Inter-College Cyber Games). They are seeking speakers to talk on game development topics at this event, thus once he has sent me the exact the details, I'll pass it around.

At 8pm, Buzz started his talk. His game, Vyrus, ran using the Ogre open-source 3D engine. Buzz spoke about how he tried several game engines, even to the point of purchasing one (and was disappointed with what he found) before settling on Ogre. An interesting point he mentioned was that if he started on Ogre at first, he would have rejected it as being too complicated; it was his time spent on other game engines that allowed him to understand Ogre.

Buzz showcased the gameplay in his game (with an unlimited lives cheat). The game is a top-down shooter Smash TV style, with 3D rooms that the player travelling between rooms. Buzz talked about the people he hired to create the game, how he tried to make sure he didn't have to code it himself as he already has a day job at the time and issues he faced in development.

Unfortunately at this, some construction started in a neighboring room and the whole talk (including Hazmer's) had to be conducted over annoying whacking and drilling sounds.

At 830pm, Hazmer started his talk. He spoke about how the history on EasyOnly! Games is literally a history of himself and how he got to where he is, while showing how winning the Jayis competitions made a difference for him.

Even though his ideals were modest, his work says otherwise. Hazmer showed the solid, simple principles that he outlined before creating each Jayis game. Ballistic Wars was an attempt to stay away from numbers, and to create a physics-based game by tying a unit's abilities with their physical apperances. He showed how he sourced three different Flash tutorials that became the game engine for Ballistic Wars, and how he put art and design together (while solving the issue of AI and bosses in a very cavalier fashion). He emphasized that he is not a great game designer; he simply focused on making the elements of the game fun.

His presentation on the Jayis Games No.1 Winner, The Last Canopy, again showcased his method of solid principles. Following the current competition's theme - 'Upgrade' - he decided on creating a top-down shooter. He deliberately made the upgrading method a choice with consequences: upgrading means more enemies will fill the screen, while shooting the enemies limits upgrading options. He chose remixes of a tune for a level so that the music selection creates a feel for the level, yet the variety would represent the changing scale of action.

At the end, he spoke about how winning the the Jayis competitions isn't the end for the games. A sequel to Ballistic Wars is in the works, and more importantly he is now negotiating offers to buy his games. He points out Flash Game Licence, a site where any Flash game developer could have their game brokered to sponsors by bidding.

at 9pm, we ended the meeting and those interested in continuing conversations gathered at Kenny Rogers/Starbucks KL Sentral. Discussions went on there until 1130pm.