Global Game Jam 2013 - San Francisco

[chazus]

I'll be attending the Global Game Jam in SF at the end of this week. I was wondering if anyone else is going to be there from MMOC, or at any of the other locations.

It'll be my first real game jam, so certainly interesting. I'll be putting my current project on hold for a couple weeks before and after to get ready. Anyone have any suggestions on how to prepare, if they've been to a game jam before?

[Drunkenvalley]

1. Don't expect any results. Most people in gamejams have a nasty tendency of either being unproductive, whether because they're lazy or because they haven't used the tools before.

2. Unite and plan with similar premises. It's better that someone doesn't know the same tools as you do if they can contribute otherwise. What's more important is that they understand the project, and know what is required to advance it.

3. Figure out and plan how to arrange the environment. We had a nasty problem when working with Unity; it used absolute paths to file locations. We got around this by having a 'master' who we pushed our stuff to, and he'd adapt it to fit (if that makes sense), but that's in retrospect quite terrible and inefficient.

4. While you're onsite the entire day, don't forget to eat and sleep normally. Being well-fed and in decent form is a huge boost to productivity. You're not gonna get more than a bunch of shitty code if the only thing nursing you is Red Bull.

[chazus]

Yeah, our main programmer (I handle artwork and level design) is just learning Unity, however we're working with Construct 2 and a few other tools at the moment. He lives near there so we have a place to stay. It's meant to be (for us) just fun and a learning experience. We aren't planning to make anything breakthrough in a couple days.