Rollcats
So, instead of being a good little workaholic on Labor Day Weekend, I went to Physics Jam 2008 Boston and it was totally awesome. It was held in the OLPC office near the MIT Media Lab. And, it was such a rush!
For those that don't know, here is a description from the website "The Physics Game Jam is an OLPC Jam devoted towards producing physics-based games, levels and demos for the XO." - where Jams are events where you get together in teams to build things in an extremely limited amount of time. In our case, we had about 48 hours to build a physics-based game... from scratch... for a 400mhz laptop O_O. The grand prize was one of the OLPC XO laptops & various promotional items (not to mention all the free food that was provided). Not a lot of people showed up, yet it was such an amazing and worthwhile experience.
Before the event, I didn't really know what to expect. I had never been to anything like this before. Having just moved here from Delaware, I don't have that many friends in this area. So I really just hoped to find a group that could use another person, assuming I don't scare them off or something >_>. I arrived a good two hours before the event kicked off and I almost chickened out completely to go home. I am so glad I stayed!
Most of the others had teams already. But, there was one other arrival, F, who came in with pretty much the same plan as me. We were paired up and an experienced programmer, E, would provide support*. After introductions and a few demonstrations, we all went home for a good night before the main event.
For the following 48 hours, we ran through plentiful variations of game ideas and prototypes. We settled on a concept that F had randomly come up with on Friday - "attach wheels to kitties". Oh and how we ran with that!
F did almost all of the graphics, E did pretty much all of the programming, and I did story & level design. Many others in the office contributed (prototype graphics, sound effects, gameplay ideas), it was a very stimulating, creative environment. Teams were working diligently, sharing laughs and hilarious moments, and just having a good time for hours on end.
You can check out the fruits of our labor at Rollcats.com (N rushed in and snatched the domain with amazing speed). It is a cute, physics-based, cooperative puzzle game from a side-scroller perspective. Everything was done on a achingly fast timescale - sound effects were finished up literally seconds before the final demonstrations. After the demos, a crowd of people was allowed to play test each of the games. A few of whom were appointed as competition judges. We were kept in suspense as the event overseers tallied up the scores.
Then, in a surprising turn of events, our rag-tag team ended up winning!! We received two medals (coffee mugs printed by XOExplosion.com): Gold for level design & Silver for game development. We also won the grand prize (OOOH THE XO LAPTOP!). But in an anti-climactic finish, I was actually left feeling disappointed.
So many features were left out including text bubbles that propelled the plot, more physics and puzzle elements, and many other subtle touches. There just wasn't enough time. We had levels in the demo that were not even finished. It wasn't properly packaged for the XO. There was still so much to do.
We're going to continue working on our baby. It was such a random idea that ended up being so creative and unique, we just had to make that game. Now, we just have to finish it.