Category Games | Philo Stuff

March 19, 2015 by Philo

Gamedev Meetup at EPFL

My morning was spent preparing presentations. SO MANY presentations. The first one for the talk session at EPFL, which you will hear about in a sec. The second one for a marketing & communication workshop at the Inkubator on Friday. And then a third for the Zoomz festival we’ll be attending next week.
I also signed up Niche and Tower Offense for the Quo Vadis pitching session and the PolyLan exhibition (to sign up, send a mail to Niels) happening in April. Such business.

In the afternoon, Markus and me headed to Lausanne to attend the EPFL Gamedev meetup. Over 150 students came to listen to the various talks. This was the schedule:
– How to build your own Game Engine, Florian Brönniman
– Introduction to Unity 3D, Mikhail Chatillon
– Introduction to Unreal, Frederic Dubouchet
– Discover Game Jams, a fun Hackathon, David Roulin
– Swiss games, what’s happening in Switzerland?, Dominik Marosi
– Swiss game developer showcased:
Witchlake, Asylamba, Digital Kingdom, Playful Oasis, Tchagata Games, Sunnyside Games

I thought that by now I should have some routine when it comes to presentations. But damn, I was sooo nervous at the start. I rushed through my slides and skipped half of the content. Well, guess I need some more practice

After the presentations, the EPFL offered us a tasty apéro. Had a great time and will join the meetup again for sure! My only criticism would be to hold all the presentations in English, but I want to improve my French anyways so it was ok. I really hope more people from Zurich will join us next time
Thanks everyone for having me and keep up the great work!

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March 13, 2015 by Philo

Grafik15

Theory lesson again in the morning…
I’d REALLY prefer to just work on my project. I mean input is good and all, but it’s too much. The good side: I got the idea to shape my master thesis into an interactive pdf instead of a printed booklet today. The longer I think about it, the more I get to the conclusion that my product needs to be completely digital.

After lunch we headed over the Maag Halle to setup our booths for the Grafik15. Niche, Tower Offense, Koboldgames and many many other Swiss games are exhibiting their games there (13. – 15.3). LOTS of visitors attended the Vernissage

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March 7, 2015 by Philo

Tower Offense Tournament!

The printers shop seems to become my second home. Went there in the morning to fetch some Tower Offense material.

After a quick lunch I headed over to the Inkubator to discuss my goals and milestones for the coming semester. Here they are:

01.05: Research Swiss Game Industry – list of studios, individuals, activists, possible investores, sales numbers…
01.06: Research German & Austrian games industry – possible learnings
01.08: Analyse successful games and develop marketing startegies for Niche, Tower Offense and Koboldgames

Back the the ZHdK we had a meeting and long discussion about the future of the gameZfestival and possible cooperations. The meeting was so long I actually was late for our exhibition at the Spielhalle Oslo in Basel. Luckily, Robin went ahead and prepared everything. Thanks Robin
Our friends from Team Schlicht were also presenting their game, Schlicht.

Actually, we weren’t just exhibiting, we also hosted a Tower Offense Tournament! The first and second place received a card, signed by our team and a gift coupon for a game shop. Watching the tournament was great fun. Even completely new players can have very exiting matches, as long as they’re leveled evenly. We definetly have to do this again soon!

The Spielhalle Oslo will be open from March – May, everyday from 14:00 – 19:00.
Every Friday they host an event. Here are the next ones:

Fr. 14. March: Webilea@Spielhalle Oslo
Game Design Workshop. Sign up on webilea.ch

Fr. 20. March: Winters letzte Tage, interactive concert with Dragica Kahlina (Eigenharp / Livecoding)

Fr. 27. March: Bring and play your own video games / consoles

And! You can also host your own events there! So let them know if you have any ideas

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March 5, 2015 by Philo

My first 3D print

After todays workshop introduction our class is now officially allowed to use the Low-Tec machines. This includes the Laser Cutter and the awesome 3D printers!

My first 3D print ever! Tools used: Tinkercad, Cura

Also, I’m very pleased to announce that our game Niche was chosen to be exhibited at the Norwich Gaming Festvial next month! I’ve never been to the UK before. A dear friend of mine, Tom Kail who is also part of the Playful Oasis team, invited to stay at his place

in Master Theory Lesson / Niche - a genetics survival game 0 comments

March 4, 2015 by Philo

Arcade Fun!

My morning was spent mostly organizing stuff and answering mails while sitting on our balcony and enjoying the beautiful, sunny weather. In the afternoon, the game design master student met up to play a board game about “programming your robot and reach the goal” in the ETH cafeteria.
We didn’t finish the round because we had to leave early to go toooooooo….

the Outlane! Check out all these cool pinball and arcade mashines
After a brief history and technical insight we were free to play all the games. Fun fun fun!

A nice surprise was waiting for me back home. Unity 5 has been released! I downloaded it right away and tried to update Niche. It worked without any issues. Unfortunately the feature I was looking forward to the most (the HTML5 export with WebGL) didn’t work for me. Have to investigate the issue!
Also, I bought a plugin called Shader Forge and will play around with it soon.

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February 27, 2015 by Philo

Kobold visit & Happy hunting

I’m not a mornings person. Seriously, I’m not.
When I was a kid, getting up early for school was horrible. Some things never change.
On my way to visit Koboldgames in Olten this morning, I feel asleep in the train and woke up just in time to get out. Luckily, after arriving at the office my mood cleared very fast. Well, how could it not if you talk about funny story twists and discuss beautiful mockups for a brandnew game project? We also set up all my accounts and logins for the collaboration.

Back in Zurich we had visitors from Samsung Switzerland. They gave us an insight of their current working fields and we discussed possible cooperations. Let’s hope some of them come true
A bit later another visitor joined us at the ZHdK, Filip Kostovic. He’s currently working on an app for ice hockey coaches. So if YOU are an ice hockey coach, contact him right away!
René treated us to dinner (as he always does, he’s way too generous).

And after that… oh man, I haven’t been to the Real Life for ages. Last year, we often ran playtesting for several games at this location. So if YOU are a game designer who wants to have a playtesting session for his/her game, let me know. At the Real Life, there are plenty of people interested in games, so playtesters are just flying by one after another
We played some rounds of Monster Hunter together and after that it was time to go home.

PS:
If YOU are an ice hockey coach AND a game designer, you won.

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February 26, 2015 by Philo

Workshop Chocolate Tower Llama day??

After a quick trip to the printer’s shop (you’ll see the result a bit later) I joined Gian and Robin at the Capsule Games office. It was a very entertaining morning with lots of joking and fun. Gian took care of the background music, mixing dupstep with funny goat sounds and Beethoven. My time was mostly spent building up the playtester group for Tower Offense.

In the afternoon, we (the game design master & 4. semester bachelor students) had a workshop together with the SRF. In a short session we had to develop a concept for a planned format. The first round was completely open in terms of projects size and cost. In the second round, we had to take financial restrictions into account.

Heading back to Capsule Games, I picked up the finished materials from the printer’s shop on the way. And here you see the result: Chocolate paper for the SGDA. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out and hope it will be a helpful goodie at the GDC.
Before heading home, Robin gave me a quick program structure crash course to help me with my refactoring problems. Thanks Robin ^^

My life is crazy…
I was peacefully reworking the Niche code, applying the structures Robin taugth me earlier. Suddenly Patrick, the guy from Indiegames.ch told me about a “llama Jam” which seemed to be happening on Twitter. The whole ruckus was started by two Llamas that went loose in Arizona. We agreed that we should host the Jam on Playful Oasis. Let’s see how many people will participate
Do YOU like Game Jams and Llamas?

in Master Theory Lesson / Playful Oasis / SGDA / Tower Offense 0 comments

February 24, 2015 by Philo

ETH “Party Evolution” & Cadence Marketing

After a short intro to blogging this morning, we headed over to the ETH again.
As you already know, the ZHdK Game Design Master student are collaborating with the ETH GameLab.
During the weekend, our group prepared a rough concept.
Our plan is to make a multiplayer party game about four animals that need to survive together.
The environment is constantly changing and confronts you with new dangers. Hmmm, sound kinda….familiar….
But but but! It’s all physics-based now! You can climb on top of each other and stuff. You’ll see!

Today, we had to pitch our ideas to the other teams and teachers.
Here we see team Andi / Diego / Manuel <- he worked on Overcoat
Please pay close attention to Andis faboulous presentation pose.

When I got home and started up my computer to play a relaxing round of Binding of Isacc, I suddenly became aware of something.
Cadence, a beautiful music puzzle game two friends of mine are making, went live on Kickstarter today!
After throwing in all my remaining money for this month, I started to write mails. Lots of mails. And tried to figure out different sites and people I could reach out to. Our teacher René Bauer was a great help, answering my spontaneous questions in the middle of the night! Thanks René.
Well now, if you’ve got an idea how to promote/push the game, please let me know
Please spread the word and if you have a cent to spare, please back their Kickstarter!

in ETH GameLab Collaboration / Games / Marketing 1 comments

February 23, 2015 by Philo

Pro Helvetia Business Workshop

Today, the Niche and Tower Offense Team (and all the other Call for projects finalists) gathered in Bern to attend the Pro Helvetia Business Workshop.
The day started of nerdy, as we played Tower Offense in the train.

After a small breakfast we split up into different groups, all attending the following lectures by turns:

Accounting & Finance (Dr. Alexander Fust)
Business Model (Jasmin Mastnak & Marco Busse)
How to generate users (Erinrose Sullivan)
Market Analysis (André Bernhardt)
Pitch Training (Jan Fülscher)

I want to thank our teachers for their interesting insights and inputs!
Really enjoyed listening to the different perspectives on business models and strategies.
Especially interesting for me was the business André Bernhardt is running.
He would be a great fit to mentor my master thesis. *Getting in contact*

And THIS is were we had our Apéro.
Super fancy location and even fancier food.

Thanks a lot Pro Helvetia and Tech Bridge (hope I’m not forgetting anyone!) for today

in Marketing / Niche - a genetics survival game / Tower Offense 0 comments

February 20, 2015 by Philo

Sunny Sunny Kobold Friday

Haaa, today was such a nice, sunny day. I spend most of it working on our balcony. And later headed out with my laptop, typing eagerly on a park bench.
Friday is now the official Kobold Games day. Every Friday I’m helping the team (which are very very lovely people btw) to prepare for their first self-published release. They already released a big game, called Journey of a Roach. Daedalic published the game and took care of the marketing/PR. Now they want to try it themselves
It will be very interesting for me to see if we can reactivate the community altough the new game will have a new genre.

Also: During my lunch break an article about the “Call for projects: Swiss Games” finalists was posted on 20 Minuten Online. I’m very happy to announce that both Niche and Tower Offense made it into the finale! On Monday Andi, Robin and me will join the business training for the finalists

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