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>> Today, we're going to be covering,
preparing for Global Game Jam with Microsoft Game Stack.
It takes place over a weekend where people make
games from start to finish during that time,
and then at the end people submit their games and you can
play each other's games from their website where they're listed.
If you guys don't know what Game Stack is,
it's a collection of tools from
Microsoft that are really useful for making games.
The first tip to preparing for
Global Game Jam is becoming familiar with the event.
Make sure you have the dates,
start time and end time
because you want to make sure you block that time off.
Make sure you know the rules of the events.
Can you use pre-made assets?
Can you work with premium libraries?
Do those need to be publicly available?
Do they need to be free?
You also want to know how to submit your game.
If there's a Submit button on the Game Jam event page,
I always recommend clicking that button just
to see what information needs to be sent with it.
The next thing you're going to want to do, know your tools.
It's a good idea to know the game engine if
you're going to be using a modeling software
for remodeling, you probably want to know how to use it.
I do not recommend learning tools during a Game Jam.
It seems like a few days, seems like a lot of time.
When you're actually putting together a project,
it doesn't feel like a long time at all.
PlayFab is a really handy tool for games.
You can use it to do leaderboards.
You can have people make accounts and login,
they can save through their account which means you
can make a game on any platform.
It also has multiplayer.
It has analytics if you want to
see how people are playing your game.
While those may seem complex for a Game Jam,
it's good to know that they exist
because as you're designing your game you may think,
here's what I'd like to do during a Jam.
Later, I have the option of putting in in-game
purchases if I like it and want to continue working on it.
So you can factor in some of these tools into
your game design and then keep it
very small during the Jam itself.
Here's the website for Microsoft Game Stack.
This has some really neat tools for machine learning.
It can be used to set up virtual machines,
so you can even play some of the games through that.
It's so complex you can do
so many things with Azure that I've barely scratched the surface.
Xbox services is part of Game Stack which
allows you to build your games for Xbox.
If you're making a game for the Game Jam, you never know,
it might become something bigger than you expected,
and you might want to make it for Xbox.
Analytics would be really cool especially if you
know that your game's going to be a prototype,
and Game Jam's a great way to get eyes on
it and testers for your prototype.
If you put in analytics,
you can get really qualitative feedback
on how people are playing your game.
Visual Studio is an IDE,
integrated development environment,
which means it's really great for coding, debugging, testing.
This has a lot of tools to help you
solve any issues you have with your code along the way.
Lastly, Havok.
Havok is a physics engine which is used in most AAA games.
This can actually be integrated into Unity or other game engines,
if you want to have something a little bit more complex.
The next tip for preparing for Global Game Jam
with Microsoft Game Stack is to form a team.
You can work solo, absolutely,
but if you want to work with other people,
if you want to focus on just development
or you want to focus on just art,
these are great scenarios to find people to work with,
so you can make something really cool and have fun.
If you're going to form a team,
it's great to form it ahead of time,
get to know each other a little bit,
get to know each other's skills,
so that you can have a vision together,
definitely build up a plan before the Jam even starts.
The next step is to know your resources.
This is not just your tools but your learning resources.
If you can use free assets, for example,
there's lots of websites online
that provide free assets for game development,
photos, illustrations,
vectors, 3D assets.
It's great to have a list handy
before you start the Jam so that you can not have to
go searching for it you already know what's there and
somewhat familiar with the resources available to you.
Of course, knowing where to ask for help is
really handy because when you're stressed
out and you really need an answer to
a specific question that you can't find the answer to,
knowing what communities you can go
to to ask for help is really important.
Second last, keep the scope small.
It's so easy for the scope to get out of hand.
For every feature that you add,
there are potential problems that can come up.
You may need to consider optimization,
you may need to consider how it
integrates with your other systems,
you may need to consider testing.
Is it understandable to the user?
You need to explain it to the user.
There's so many different parts to
every mechanic that you add that the smaller you make it,
the more achievable it is especially on
a short timeline like during a Game Jam.
Go through games that are made in the same period of time
and it's made by a similar team than what I'm
going to be doing with similar experience.
Look at what the mechanics are.
Maybe that gives you an idea of what's achievable.
The more you make games,
the more you know what it takes to do a different task.
You can confidently predict how
long it's going to take to do that task,
especially if you're not doing it in a different way.
You've done it dozens of times,
it's exactly the same,
you could probably get a very accurate time frame for that.
The last tip is to continue creating.
If you didn't finish your game, you're going to learn from this.
Every time you take part in a Game Jam,
you are getting better and better at so many things,
whether it's your skills with game development, time management,
working with others,
and all these types of things that go into it.
I highly recommend participating in Game Jams regularly
to build up those skills and you
can really enjoy it and make some cool stuff from it.
I highly encourage if you have a game that you
really enjoyed making and you want to add to it, go for it.
Why not? Why stop at the end of the Game Jam?
There's tons of games that have been made from Game Jams.
In fact, I want to look at them with you; Baba Is You,
The Binding of Isaac,
Celeste, Don't Starve. Keep that in mind.
Maybe this is just a test period for a game that could be bigger.
Those are the tips for preparing for
Global Game Jam with Microsoft Game Stack.
I definitely encourage you to check out Game Stack and see what's
available to use before the Game Jam,
so if there's something that catches your eye,
you can start to dig in a little,
understand how it works,
and see if it would work well with the game
you're going to make during the Jam.
Good luck. I hope you have lots of fun and learn
a lot while you participate. We'll see later.
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