While growing up in Calgary, Toronto was affectionately known as “the center of the universe.” At least I think it was, but only in Toronto But I must be exhibiting a deep-seated resentment here. Seriously, though, Toronto has a fantastic Indie community, as witnessed by the Toronto Indie Game Jam.
I haven’t had the time yet to properly check the games out, but you can bet I will. Some great games have come out of this event in the past, it’s well worth keeping an eye on.
The press release from Rob Segal:
THE CHEESIEST GAMES JAM IN THE HISTORY OF FOREVER
34 executables of explosively cheesy indie games unleashed on the unsuspecting interweb
For Immediate Release
Contact: Robert Segal
Email : rob@tojam.ca
“Noooooooooorrrrrrrddiiiiiiiiiiiiic!!!!” The blood-curdling roar of TOJAM founder Jim McGinley signaled the end of the third annual Toronto Independent Game Development Jam; a valiant attempt to overthrow thee Nordic Games Jam as
the world’s largest games jam and to, of course, develop some of the most amazing cheese themed games ever created in 72 hours!
All 34 games produced at the jam are now available for download at TOJAM’s web site (http://www.tojam.ca), no spyware, adware, or strings attached! These creations will allow players to indulge in some of their deepest and darkest cheese and/or goat related fantasies and reveal the true meaning of “goatality”.
On the noon of May 9th, 30 righteous TOJAM warriors took their positions under the vicious heat of the un-air conditioned Innovation Toronto building. As day gave way to dusk, more code wizards, art masters, and audio gods arrived to join the game development frenzy.
While many TOJAMMERS sought rest after half a a day of intense game development, legendary TOJAM champions like Shawn McGrath battled onward and upward throughout all three days of the jam, “I had 17 energy drinks and three cups of coffee over the last two days and I’m surprisingly fine,” he said.
Even the mighty Microsoft empire was stirred by the fortitude of TOJAM game developers; “The games are really amazing for the span of time that people spent on them,” said Microsoft developer advisor and first-time participant, Jean-Luc David. “The variety out there and the creativity that people put into the games are impressive,” he added.
TOJAM is a non-profit organization created in 2006. TOJAM is dedicated to improving the game development capabilities of Toronto, and ultimately hope to make the city a hot-spot for the game development industry.
Visit tojam.ca today and discover the joy of dropping smashed up cheese carcasses onto crackers, excavating a moon made of cheese, beating down pirates with a fish and more!
Off for a few days up the coast. Very similar to this video, only it’ll be along the coast, we won’t tie a dog to the car, no dead grandma’s on the roof. Oh, and probably no Christie Brinkley either. Yes to the Family Truckster though.
An interesting discussion on Steam-type download managers broke out in the T.W.T.P.B. post below. I found myself disliking the Spell of PlayhUb server while trying to justify my own (as yet) un-named virtual console.
Oddbob gets straight to the heart of the matter, asking the perceptive questions:
What’s the *real* reason for developing a seperate application for the customer to use outside of the game? Is if for their benefit or for ours?
I asked myself these questions, regarding why I’m doing my own project, and I’m definitely doing it to benefit myself. In the end, the “customer” doesn’t care how something is implemented, they only care whether it works and does it satisfy their needs.
That said, I thought I would clarify exactly what it is I’m making. I think it’s fairly different from Steam and hUb, and I’d like the discussion to continue if people have something to say.
My project consists of one executable, the framework, that like MAME will present a menu/shell from which to launch a game. The framework provides a set of common resources to all the games, providing what might be the only benefit to users: smaller downloads. Eventually the menu will allow for managing updates and checking for new games (why does the idea of this bug me now?). It’s not a separate application, it would be the common front-end to all the games.
As a user, some of the things about this I like are: There is no “install”, as I don’t like installs. You unzip the files into any directory you want. A new game can be packaged as the whole framework, or a new .jar file to drop into the “roms” directory.
As a developer, things are even better: I got tired of copying common code around to different projects. Even with significant re-use of common libraries, I still had to copy the libraries and repeat some mundane tasks. I can now get a test idea up and running much faster than before. Things like default ships, keyboard controls, or mouse pointers can be added to the game loop in a couple lines of code.
From a user’s perspective, I don’t think this looks any different than a regular download of a game. But it may be the case that my ego and love of implementing geeky ideas has blinded me. I trust I’ll be put in my place should that be the case.
Here’s a boring screen shot, complete with some hints at secret projects
Tobias Olsson recently sent me a link to T.W.T.P.B., a new game from Spell of Play. Unfortunately it wouldn’t run on my older laptop due to Shader requirements but as you can see from the screen shots it’s a promising looking vertical shmup.
Not sure if I like the “Steam-esque” HUB loader, guess I just prefer straight downloads to installs. Though my own OSGi game platform will be able to check back here and download new games, too. I’m interested in comments on this whole install thing.
LittleBear
says: It's six-dozen of one, half the other.
But I must be exhibiting a deep-seated resentment here. Seriously, though, Toronto has a fantastic Indie community, as witnessed by the Toronto Indie Game Jam.
