Cheeseness @Cheeseness@mastodon.social

This was a crotch punch.

It's a bit less useful without me talking over the top, but I also made this slideshow, which contains a list of stuff I've learned from jams I've participated in (including #7DFPS) and might help newcomers think about what to take away from their experiences
http://cheesetalks.net/game-jam-learnings/

With #7DFPS now in full swing, here's a game jam survival guide I wrote a while back. Look after yourselves and make awesome stuff :D
http://cheesetalks.net/surviving-adventure-jam/

I'm going to be on .XPanguan with @HexDSL in a little while (about 10 minutes or so). Drop by, say hi, enjoy my new haircut https://www.twitch.tv/hexdsl/

Some days I feel like I write good words. Other days I feel like I have some kind of turd cannon grafted to my fingers.

Also, finding appropriate quotes that are short enough, where the words and contextual meaning of the quoted passage feel resonant with the concepts the achievements represent, and where the source work itself isn't at odds with the quote's context in-game is a lot of work \o/

All #TheAwayTeam's achievements are quotes from noteworthy literature. The base ones are very good (@ninjaburger is evidently well read), but I made Lost Exodus' a little more accessible, hoping to lead more players to make the connection/read up on ones they're not familiar with.

All up, I had about 2 hours to prepare 7 games and 5 machines before leaving. I hit some bumps, but far fewer than I would have if I hadn't done the planning/prep that I did. I'm feeling pretty good about how it went :)

In spite of the prep I did, I still found myself short a mouse, a keyboard, hadn't done a good job of matching up screens with machines (ended up having to show one game on a laptop screen), and had a displayPort/HDMI adapter break. I ended up falling back to showing one game on a laptop screen, and the helpful people at the event venue were able to find cables/adapters to fill in the other blanks. Ideally I should have been more thorough & identified that while testing!

There are also an embarrassing number of typos in those. A spellchecker is probably worth spending time on if you have that time, but also probably less critical than it feels. I'm embarrassed that I overlooked them, but I also know that it didn't stop the flyers doing their job.

In hindsight, I should have put URLs on them-something I'm always forgetting. I would have liked to have stuck more screenshots in (maybe QR codes too), but that's extra time and these were last minute things.

In this case, there was value in the flyers giving some consistent presence to the diverse range of stuff I was showing off. Flyers are also accessible to those who're uncomfortable saying hi and might be the only way that you can communicate with some people!

While waiting for stuff to copy across to machines during testing, I slapped together some quick A4 flyers for each game. These introduced the games themselves and described some of my work. You'll always have more people looking at stuff than you can talk to personally.

I tried to go with a minimal syle and avoid having extra graphic design overhead. If I hadn't had time for printing, a set of hand written ones with a cute drawing for each game would have done the job.

On labelling, if you can get colour coded labels for cables and machine ports, it can be easier to accept help from others when setting up. I wasn't prepared enough for that yesterday, and I ended up having to fix up/change gear connected that other people helped set up.

An old machine I'd wanted to run DotT or FT on wasn't up to the task, so I decided that I could condense things down by showing similar games on the same hardware (eg: FT/DotT, Winter's Wake/Spicy Meatball).

As I unpacked machines and got them ready to transport, I tested each one. I had a monitor which had gone pink, and I was able to use that as the not-really-seen monitor on my VR rig. Labelling that meant setting up was faster (always label your stuff!).

First up, testing. It's super important to check your gear as early as possible, so that you have fewer surprises during setup and have more time to make contingency plans/seek alternatives when stuff doesn't work.

Typically most devs who're exhibiting at an event are focusing on one or two projects, which makes it a little easier to wrangle. I was planning to exhibit 5 - 8 games, so I needed to make a list and match the reqs for each game against the hardware I had.

Yesterday, I exhibited some of the games I've worked on (both my own stuff and contract work) at a local event. It was super hard to make the time I needed to do this properly, so I'm going to talk a little about how I worked to make the best of what I had.