We held First Tuesday on the Second Tuesday this month; not to confuse everyone but because Easter meant there was a bank holiday at the beginning of the month and we try and avoid bank holidays.
So there were a couple of new faces, which is always nice, and we went round for a catch up to see who is up to what then came up with a list of possible workshops we’d like this year ~ I am on the case…
Our skillsets covered photography, filmaking, manga, games writing, software development, 3D & 2D art, so between us we could create a game or two! One thing that came out of the conversation was that a lot of us are trying to teach ourselves Unity and it would be good to have a focused working group to suport each other. It is always a bit of a problem finding a time to suit everyone, but Saturday daytimes seemed like a popular idea for occasional workshops. Watch this space for a Unity workshop on 2D games for beginners, which will include a troubleshooting session for those of us who are a bit stuck on our projects. It’d be great to see all our Fuse Jam & Spring Jam games polished and published.
Plans
Our next First Tuesday is May 1st and we have Ben Pitt from Unity coming to talk through using GitHub & Unity Collaborate. Sign up on our meetup here
June 5th ~ we’ll be back at the VR lab. Hazel Grian is presenting her VR Opera project, and we will also get a chance to test out some more VR games.
July 3rd ~ Claire Morley introduces us to making games with Bitsy. She’s written a tutorial HERE if you want to swot up first. Bring a laptop if you can!
Workshop ideas
So from everyone’s interests came up with list of workshops for an evening (E) or weekend daytime (W)
- tips for going freelance (E)
- AR – getting started (W) eg using ARCore with Unity
- Working with 360 film (E)
- Using Tilt Brush (E)
- Unity workshops (W) eg 2D platformers
- writing for games (E) ~ check out this Games Industry article on making Narrative Games
- pitching projects to publishers (E)
nb If anyone wants to get together on Tuesday mornings to work alongside me on their games in a cosy cafe somewhere then get in touch.
News
We also talked about what other game-related events are on locally and further afield, and I am making a note of them here to try and remember to follow up with reports back from people who go to them, myself included, and also to keep an eye on deadlines to sign up as volunteers for events, or submit games to showcases eg Big Indie Pitch at Develop
- The Bristol VR lab has regular lunchtime talks – this week it was on AR and had a line-up of three talks
- EGX Rezzed London 13-15th April
- UKIE event at Games Hub 19th April
- Unity Developers Meetup 25th April
- gameshub antisocial 26th April
- Gameshub pitching event 23rd May
- Feral Vector, Hebden Bridge May 41st – June 2nd
- Develop/Big Indie Pitch Brighton 10-13th July
- EGX Birmingham 20-23rd Sept – need to keep an eye out for when they are taking leftfield submissions
