[gamedev] Game Developers Conference 2014 #gdlviv

I've attended  Game Developers Conference 2014 last Saturday. It's taken about 10 hours, so lots of impressions to share.

I liked not too many sessions. Too long, too self-promotional, already heard and so on. I promise to change the way I write and present my lectures from the next one :) There and a half of lectures were pretty nice. It's the first one about How Not To Be Hungry for a a game developer and true statement want to make games, make it even if don't know yet how, inspiring, thanks :)

A half of a sessions that I like was about Marmelade SDK. A half because I attending it at least for the 3rd time. Planning to try ... still :)

 

The most interesting part as for me: people presenting their games. It's my friend Danylo Syrotynskyy presenting their with Nick Urs game Tyran. It's RTS targeted on Tablets, made on Unity. I guess must be hardcore audience everywhere and this game going to be first and successful. Good old days, Warcraft style :)

 

Undead Carnage: Redemption the game is amazing, surprisingly for Windows Phone, extremely techy, won an award for this. Proper console hardcore experience, going to be a separate review, still playing :) Made with MonoGame.

 

One Fine Day it's proper #hardcore platformer with a flavour from Limbo and The world Hardest Game. It's just my association, the game is completely original with own dark atmosphere an humor. It's html5 on engine Construct 2. More about Construct 2 is next and on MonoGame later on in this article.

There was several more games:

• Козацька Слава - Amazing art a lot is needed to be added;
• Період Рептилій - Social, asynchronous, not PvP, not my cup of tea and well done and must be successful;
• Picross Mobile - wasn't presented somehow;
• Схватка - it's hard to imagine a game more distant from me %)
• Lightomania - good game from the large company, reminds me of Cut the Rope proper evolution. Funny and childish, I like it :)
• Give My Ball Back - It reminds me Shift, cute,  pretty fresh and of quality point and click puzzle for kinds and their parents, also from a large company;
• Tiles Break - simplicity in action: one of the most addicting and plain casual gameplays ever + Google Play UI guideline used properly = good and popular game :)

The second session that I liked is about Construct 2. The speaker Is the developer of One Fine Day. It's masterclass game constructor/editor/engine like a Flixel but for HTML5/JavaScript based games. Pretty large part of a platform game was made in a hour with existing asset through.

You can tell that good developer should keep his shuriken sharp and go all the way himself. I've already written everything from scratch with ActionScript 3 at least twice with platform games. I don't want to repeat it once again with JavaSript and new runtimes and I see a lot of people don't want to too.

I have an idea of old game remake/port and two variants of gameplay for mobile. I'll try to find some time and make at least ademo or even fast release on it :) Thanks for saving my time and inspiring too!

The third and the best as for me session was about MonoGame. Looks like we are already using it while working with Unity: The game engine's scripting is built on Mono, the open-source implementation of the .NET Framework. (According to Wikipedia).

The session was great. The speaker is developer the developer of Undead Carnage: Redemption. A lot about CG from ground up. Respect and Deja Vu from sessions of  Volkov when he was building Alternativa platform and Tanki Online on low level for Flash Player %) Old shaders, backing occlusions, Quake's BSP tree and tanks battle for sure :)

Another cross-platform solution, looks strong, samples of work are impressive, master class was packed with info, complex and fast.

Thanks it was positive, useful and inspiring. I'm going to attend next Year :)