MN VR and HCI July 2014: FutureKave and VidTiger
Wednesday, July 23, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (CDT)
Please Register on Eventbrite
FutureKave is an interactive 3D game experience that transports you to a realm of social play and possibility. Your body movement paints and sculpts the spinning moon beneath your avatar. What begins as a desolate moonscape is brought to colorful life as you move and interact with other players. FutureKave is a grand experiment at the intersection of art and technology, the real and the virtual.
VidTiger has shown FutureKave at several venues and events, and recently as a part of Northern Spark. Chuck Olsen, Maxwell Hoaglund and co. will give a broad presentation on the FutureKave project. Expect to hear about:
- Concept and iterations
- Tech prototypes for character control
- Integrating Kinect into Unity
- How we track more than 2 people on Kinect 1
- Lessons learned about setup, logistics and the audience
…and of couse, live demos!
Schedule:
6:00 Social, Setup Soda – Thanks to the Nerdery for hosting!
6:30 FutureKave by VidTiger
After, we’ll head to Joe Sensers in Bloomington.
About MN VR and HCI
MN VR and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) welcomes developers and tinkerers working with all variety of VR, HCI, hardware hacking, creative coding and interactive art. Members are working projects with light field displays, mocap, tiny computers, servos and sensors, interactive statues and a variety of VR, motion and computer vision games.
If you’ve only been to our parent group IGDATC meetings, MN VR and HCI is a different format: We aim for group discussions and lots of specific details, have smaller meetings in the well-lit Nerdery classroom (off of the cafeteria), no pizza, but lots of soda.
July 2014 – Multiplayer Mixer
Wednesday, July 16th, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM.
Buffalo Wild Wings (U of M)
2001 SE University Avenue Suite 100
Multiplayer Mixer!
IGDA Twin Cities and Glitch are excited to co-host another Multiplayer Mixer.
The Multiplayer Mixer** is an ongoing series of monthly events where our community gets together to play games and share gaming experiences. The games we play and discuss include a rotating collection of favorites suggested by the community as well as locally made games that local game makers bring to the events. Come share your passion for games, or sign up to show your own game to get feedback and encouragement, or simply join us to find your place in the gaming world.
We’re coordinating with a number of local game developers and will have an awesome selection of local games to play!
Looking forward to seeing you there!
All of our events are open to the public.
Note that BWW has a small attached parking lot, and street/ramp parking near by. Happy hour is until 6:30.
** formerly Multiplayer Extravaganza, we’ve decided to change the name of these events.
Local Developers Interviewed by RadioK
During the IGDATC E3 social a local reporter from RadioK interviewed a few local developers for a story about the Minnesota game development scene.
You can listen to the show online at RadioK’s website. The story starts at around 13 minutes.
From RadioK’s website
Every June, game developers from around the globe gather at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, more commonly known as E3, to show off their latest games to a world-wide audience. But while the biggest names in video games took the E3 stage by storm, Producer Parker Lemke talked to video game creators closer to home to find out what makes the Minnesota game development scene tick.
IGDATC July 9th, 2014 – Bringing Imagine Me to the world
Wednesday, July 9, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (CDT)
Bringing Imagine Me to the world – Chris Figueroa
This is a full story of how a game called Imagine Me went from a piece of paper, to getting on Steam and shown to thousands of people around the world. Expect stories of failed timelines, success at PAX East, online community successes/failures, and how networking can give you a boost to that next step in making a commercial video game.
The talk will focus on lessons learned about the parts of game making beyond just creating the software, and also cover a timeline of fortunate events starting at Steam Dev Days and Ending at a career with Unity 3D.
Member Project:
Random Generation of Platformer Levels - Hollie Figueroa
Plug My Thing!
In addition to informal verbal plugs, we’ll also show your trailer, user group, recruitment page, promo video, demo reel, etc. Grab the appropriate ticket - first come, first served.
Video guidelines:
- Short and sweet. 3 minutes max.
- 1 short URL, Zero setup (Media is streamable from fast/reliable site like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
- Your Contact info is on page or in video.
- You were a part of this project, are attending the meeting, and will introduce it.
- Meet us in the back of the auditorium at least 5-10 minutes early, so we can load your page.
MN VR and HCI June 2014: Recap of Eyeo, E3, SVVR, and more
Wednesday, June 25, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Please Register on Eventbrite
Recap of VR/HCI at recent conferences – various
June (and May) had a huge number of conferences with VR/HCI content. We’ll devote 10-20 minutes to discussing news and highlights from each conference. For each conference, a MC (who hopefully attended) will seed the discussion with 3-5 of their favorite web pages or short videos.
Preliminary agenda:
E3
Oculus Rift
DK2 shipping update, prototypes, Alien Isolation, other demos/news
Sony Morpheus demos
Survios (Project Holodeck) demos
GameFace Mark 5 – demos, specs, news
Control VR demos at E3, kickstarter
Eyeo
Digital Emulsion workshop – Gray Code 3D scanning, per-pixel projection mapping
Cod.Act – insane kinectic sculpture / music
Ardent Mobile Digital Cloud Platform
SVVR (Silicon Valley VR Conference)
…
Computex / misc
(not steam) boxes
Alienware Alpha
Cyberpower Syber
Kindle Fire phone – face tracking tech
AWE (Augmented World Expo)
…
NeruoGaming
…
Schedule:
6:00 Social, Setup Soda – Thanks to the Nerdery for hosting!
6:30 Recap of VR/HCI from recent conferences
After, we’ll head to Joe Sensers in Bloomington.
IGDATC June 18, 2014 – Light Grey Art Lab & MathTap
Wednesday, June 18, 2014 from 6 to 8:30 PM
Please register at Eventbrite
Light Grey Art Lab – Lindsay Nohl, Chris Hajny and Jenny Bookler
Light Grey Art Lab is a collaborative gallery in Minneapolis. Their newest exhibition series has introduced a more interactive, game-centric approach to the gallery format. The first set of projects, Great Personality, is a series of dating sims based on the Meyers-Briggs Personality types. Their upcoming project is Dream Arcade, for which 30 artists are crafting assets for their own ideal platformer level. These levels will be implemented into a larger game and released with an overarching narrative alongside the exhibition opening in September.
Light Grey Art Lab will be sharing the backstory of the new exhibitions, the process of working with artists from all industries to create projects like these, and how this new approach challenges the current “gallery format.”
Member Project: MathTap - Brett Nelson
Brett Nelson will share his results from the Day of Unity event, and his current project called MathTap.
Plug My Thing!
In addition to informal verbal plugs, we’ll also show your trailer, user group, recruitment page, promo video, demo reel, etc. Grab the appropriate ticket - first come, first served.
Video guidelines:
- Short and sweet. 3 minutes max.
- 1 short URL, Zero setup (Media is streamable from fast/reliable site like YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)
- Your Contact info is on page or in video.
- You were a part of this project, are attending the meeting, and will introduce it.
- Meet us in the back of the auditorium at least 5-10 minutes early, so we can load your page.
Agenda:
6:00 Pizza and Soda thanks to the Nerdery!
6:30 Plug My Thing!
6:45 Brett Nelson
7:15 Light Grey Art Lab
We’ll be heading to Joe Sensers in Bloomington after the event.
Many, many thanks to the Nerdery for hosting IGDATC events over the years.
June 9th, 2014 — E3 2014 Keynotes and All Day Social
Monday, June 9th, 2014 from 11:00 AM to 10:00 PM (CDT)
Note: This social event is Mon 6/9, and the regular IGDATC meeting is moved to Wed 6/18.
IGDA Twin Cities is hosting the 3rd annual All Day E3 Social at the Chatterbox Pub. We’ll have streaming and satellite video all day long, and an assortment of multiplayer games. Stop by any time for lunch, dinner, or drinks. Or, hang out all day and “work”, run some playtests, etc.
Bring fun card games, 3DS or whatever, and an extension cord if you’re serious about the laptop/work. We’ll be in the banquet room from 11am – 10pm, and maybe later. Guests and strangers encouraged!.
Happy hour is 2-5pm.
E3 2014 Keynote Schedule for Mon 6/9 (central time):
11am – 1pm Microsoft (11:30 keynote start)
3pm – 4pm Electronic Arts
5pm – 6pm Ubisoft
8pm – 10pm Sony (8pm keynote start)
Nintendo will have an online event Tue 6/10 at 11am here: http://e3.nintendo.com/
This Indie Life Presentation Slides
Thank you to everyone who came out to the IGDATC meeting last week! It was great to have such an amazing audience and hear all of the wonderful feedback. I’ve published the slide deck along with talk notes.
A few notes about the Kickstarter portion, as I think that was one of the most well-liked topics. The campaign page is still up on Kickstarter. It looked quite a bit different at the end compared to the beginning. For those interested in the stats, Kicktraq is up as well.
Drop me a line with any questions or comments you may have.
Kris
kris@thoughtshelter.com
MN VR and HCI: VR Adventure Game Design
Wednesday, May 28, 2014 from 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM (CDT)
(Note: Bring a laptop with Nvidia/ATI graphics for Rift latency testing 6 – 6:30.)
VR Adventure Game Design – Chris Johnson
Chris Johnson (aka Coda Frost) – a ‘One-Man-Army’ (Programmer/Artist/Producer) Indie Developer
will be discussing the the joys and pains of creating adventure games for virtual reality. This talk will be a breakdown of the design and development process of Technobabylon VR
- Story / inspiration behind the game (Cyberpunk FPE)
- Conceptualizing for practical VR design
- General Development workflow (Engine & Tools etc)
- Verb-Coin Mechanics in VR (Lessons from the Sierra/Lucas Arts days)
- Evolution of text/inventory/UI design
- Art / animation workflow
- Character design, Audio & that amazing voice synthesis
- Developing for Rift DK2/CV1 & Where are we now?
- Exciting news! Other projects? Future releases?? SNEAK PREVIEWS?!?
Agenda:
Games Played at May Multiplayer Extravaganza
Huge thanks to all the Glitch, IGDATC, and greater community folks who came out to yet another fun Multiplayer Extravaganza! Once again we had a mix of great games going on several screens, with big crowds gathered around each one. There was some tabletop gaming going on as well, and local game makers doing some play testing on their laptops.
Towerfall saw a lot of action throughout the night. We got to test another build of Lovers in Dangerous Spacetime. Big thanks to Asteroid Base for sharing! Nidhogg was a new game at our event, and was a total blast. Also new to this event were Goat Simulator and Octodad. The necessary sacrifices were made to the goat gods and Demon Goat appeared in Goat Simulator, along with brief but hilarious appearances of Tall Goat and Feather Goat. Watching four players control limbs on an Octopus performing self checkout at a grocery store in Octodad was a sight to be seen.
At this Extravaganza we introduced the Local Game Screen. All night long we had a big screen dedicated to locally made games. The Local Game Screen is an awesome opportunity for us to share feedback and encouragement with our fellow game makers. We hope you’ll bring your own game, too!
We had nine games shared by seven local game makers, with most featured on the Local Game Screen itself and with additional mobile games being showcased nearby.
- A Druid’s Duel by Kris Szafranski — This gorgeous looking multiplayer strategy game really pulled us in. Next time I’m going to not forget about the attacking eagles.
- Action Go by Martin Grider — This iOS game is a really interesting mix of Go and Tetris mechanics! It is also coming to desktop soon.
- Astral Breaker by Intropy Games — A great Head-to-Head arcade puzzler for establishing your astrological superiority. Virgos vs Sagittariuses (Sagittari?)… doesn’t matter, Aquarius is best.
- Catchup by Martin Grider — Martin was also play-testing this colorful hexagonal strategy puzzle game for iOS.
- Chimera by Shanti Pothapragada — We highly encourage you to bring your works-in-progress and we can’t wait to play the next version of Shanti’s multiplayer Metroid-like game. He had his notebook at-the-ready for feedback. Smart.
- Destroy The Invincible by Aaron Olson — We had some insane laser blasting fun with this new take on the Tower Defense genre. Thanks to Aaron for being another person willing to showcase a game still in the development phase!
- Dethdate 2000 by Corey Bertelsen — Navigating a death metal concert in Dethdate 2000 was so Metal… and so wonderfully weird. The dialogue in this game had the crowd laughing pretty hard.
- Eye Cycle by Zachary Johnson — This asymmetric three-player game with a giant eyeball is still in progress. Thanks for the folks who tried it and gave feedback!
- Protoboros by Zachary Johnson — Intense two-player dogfighting battles with snakes (snakefighting?) left more than one person with sore thumbs. Pressing harder doesn’t make you go faster, but we all tried!
Thanks again to Glitch and IGDATC organizers for putting the event together. Thanks to everyone who showed up and played the games. Big thanks to the local game makers who shared their work! Let us know in the comments if we missed mentioning any games that were played.
