My First Gamejam

At the end of the previous block, I signed up for a game jam. A fellow programmer had asked around who was interested to join his team, and on a whim I joined. I didn't know anyone in my team except for him before the game jam itself started.

We were able to stay at the BUAS for the full 3 days of the gamejam, and we got an opening presentation, labs to work in, and food throughout.

After the opening presentation, I met my team, and we started brainstorming immediately, coming up with several ideas on a whiteboard. This was my first experience building a game as a team and I had a lot of fun.

I was worried at first, given my relative lack of experience in Unreal, and wondered how I could best contribute as a programmer. It turned out more than okay in the end, though. With my (admittedly limited) existing experience with blueprints, and some initial pointers from our lead designer, I was able to whip out feature after feature in gameplay and physics: the bubble popping, water bobbing, and launches out of water columns were a lot of fun to work on and tweak.

I'm sure if an experienced Unreal programmer would look upon my work, they would squeal in anguish at my blueprint amalgamations, but we only had 3 days, and I had to make do with what I already knew. In the end, I'm very happy with the result. It's also so much fun to see features come together from the different programming, design, and art disciplines, and see what the others in my team were working on.

This definitely bears repeating. Onto the next game jam!