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HGGJ - Day 2 - Dinner TIme Sponsored by Unity!

Thanks Unity for sponsoring our dinner this evening.  The crowd was hungry and the pizza went fast!  We are certainly thankful that Unity has taken an interest in what we are creating here in Houston.

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HGGJ - Day 2

We have three teams building games at the Houston Global Game Jam, and all three teams chose Unity as their game engine of choice.  Why is that?

The teams are mostly composed of students, at various levels of education.  Interestingly enough, most had not been introduced to Unity in their educational program just yet.  When we started out the Game Jam, everyone was asked to introduce themselves and let everyone know there interests, whether they were an artist, programmer or designer.  All of the students had taken an introductory game design course where they used Game Maker.  So, almost all were familiar with its usage.

The teams are able to select whatever engine they wished and we even provided several suggested options.

However, the decision point to use Unity over Game Maker for instance was the capability of the engine to work with 3D in a much easier way.  Plus, I think the Houston Global Game Jam leadership had a bit of bias towards Unity as well.  Larry Hendrix, the coordinator for the jam, is also a very active member of the Houston Unity Group.  So, the usage of a tool such as Unity, enables each team member to exercise the level of effort they wish to contribute.  Some of the other options limited them, especially the artists.

So the games are coming along nicely.  All teams are at the stage where they are able to play test their games.  Looking back at my previous post, the team which appears to be the farthest along is the one which spent more time initially with their game design.  Which supports my previous comments about taking the time to plan out the design.

No team melt downs, yet . Looking to Sunday afternoon, the teams should all have a game to submit.