Meet Sushi - mascot and part-inspiration for davecheesefish Games!

What’s wrong with a cheesy Wotsits-coloured goldfish with Ronnie Barker’s glasses and a miniature bobble hat from a smoothie bottle to keep warm? I AM NOT INSANE

Game-modding community site Mod DB has just launched its new indie game site Indie DB! From today I’ll be uploading selected games, screenshots and tutorials to both dcf Games and Indie DB at my account, davecheesefish. If you have an Indie DB or Mod DB account, you can “watch” me via the eye button on the right-hand side of my profile page. You’ll also be able to track the development progress of individual new games by going to their respective pages and “tracking” them too!

2009 Global Game Jam game Lag is now available via Indie DB and (less than 48 hours after uploading it there), has reached rank 18 out of 1782 games on the site overall!

I look forward to participating in the lively community, and hope to see you there soon!

The first X48 GameCamp of 2010 was last weekend at Birmingham City University, and Mat Simmons, Jason Thomas, Martyn Poole and I were there competing against 15 other teams from around the UK to produce a game in just 27 hours!

Our Friday started off with a 4-hour journey to get to the venue itself. Once we’d finally ventured over the English-Welsh border and up to wild and wintery Birmingham, it was simply a matter of finding the right campus of the university (no small feat as every second building we’d passed on our way in seemed to have the university logo on the side). After a little confusion, we were informed by a friendly lady behind an information desk that actually the science museum/IMAX cinema we were in was indeed the right place (why don’t we have one of those?).

This year’s theme for Birmingham was “Discovery”, quite an open-ended theme leaving plenty of opportunities for some interesting game concepts. We started off with a 1-hour session coming up with any game idea we could get our hands on, no matter how stupid or difficult-to-build they sounded. From previous experience, the best ideas normally come from something completely ridiculous and immensely over-ambitious, scaled down accordingly.

Working through the night (only broken by the now-familiar experience of 2 hours sleep on industrial computer-lab carpet), we came to day two when everyone decided it would probably be a good idea to let those of us not doing anything at a particular time to get some more rest before the final push (that and the fact that our bus home wasn’t due to leave Birmingham until 8pm, still a full 12 hours away).

At the end of the day we didn’t win any prizes, but it was still a thoroughly enjoyable two days and I know I’ll certainly be back next year to try again! You can download and play our entry for free from dcfgames.co.uk/games/drainbamage. As for the future, the team is going forward to compete in the Imagine Cup and we’re looking into entering Dream-Build-Play and Dare to be Digital 2010 so watch this space for further updates!

The Global Game Jam has passed into the realms of history, and the crash from the 48-hour caffeine buzz has just about worn off. It was a brilliant weekend, even better than 2009 if I may say so!

This year I teamed up with Matthew Simmons, Chris O’Donovan and Martyn Poole in Team FAIL HARDER (Team FAIL from last year, plus two) to produce the Global Game Jam Game Jam Boat Game. I spent my weekend up to my eyeballs in PHP, C# and pizza and made it through training alive.

Training for what, you say?

The X48 Microsoft XNA GameCamp will be at Birmingham City University next Friday-Saturday (19th-20th Feb) and Matthew Simmons, Martyn Poole, Jason Thomas and I will be there!

Over the weekend, we will have roughly 24 hours to produce a game using Microsoft’s XNA Framework, so it’s all the work in about half the time! Last year in Derby, my team produced Bellis Perennis which made 3rd place, so we have something to live up to this time!

Some interesting stats from last year’s X48 event - in 48 hours, we went through:

• 264 chocolate bars,
• 90 pints of milk,
• 80 Freddo bars,
• 100 assorted pizzas, and
• 315 assorted cans of energy drink

(More stats available at daytum.com/x48)

I’ll be tweeting from the event (as usual) via my Twitter page, and if you’re going I’ll see you there! The Inside Xbox video from last year’s event can be found below if you’re still wondering what it’s all about (look out for me at the back of my team at 1:35):

Developing a game in less than 48 hours is hard. It’s hard to stop your brain from melting, and hard to produce anything near useable code when you’re blood is 98% supermarket own-brand carbonated caffiene drink substitute at 4 in the morning. With less than a week to go until Global Game Jam 2010, I thought I’d share my top tips for surviving a quick-fire game development event…

1. Don’t limit your ideas

Given such a short time, you may be panicking about just what is possible in the time. Don’t. At least, don’t in the ideas stage. Take 15 minutes at the start for everyone in your team to come up with ideas, no matter how ambitious or stupid-sounding. Discuss them together - someone’s failed idea could spark the next big thing from someone else’s brain!

2. Don’t try to be a robot

You’ll perform much better if you take time out to sleep. Ok, you’ll lose a few hours of development time, but the vastly increased productivity of a fresh team will more than make up for it. Don’t rely on energy drinks to get you through.

3. K.I.S.S.

Keep It Simple (and) Stupid. If there’s an easy way of doing something, do it! You don’t have time to reinvent the wheel. Just be wary of any copyright or rules restrictions on the competition you’re in.

4. A good mix

There’s no point in having a team of 8 people, entirely made up of programmers who’ve only ever made one game in their life between them. Get a mixture of game artists and programmers and don’t make the team too large - Otherwise it’ll be a nightmare at the end when you’ve got to tie everyone’s stuff together and find half of it doesn’t work. In my experience, 2 artists and 2 programmers are plenty without going over-the-top.

5. Play to your strengths

Don’t make your amazing 2D artist struggle around with 3D modelling software; likewise don’t throw a Source engine specialist in at the deep end with the Unreal Development Kit. It’ll end up like porridge in a blender - a big sticky mess spread all over the kitchen.

6. An army marches on it’s stomach

Gummy bears and an IV drip of cheap syrup-y supermarket own-brand caffeine drinks should be supplied and refilled as required.

7. Don’t get tied to the computer

If you get bored, do something else for a while. Play a game, take a walk, talk to fellow developers, eat, sleep, do a handstand, learn to drive… oops, too far. Just do something away from the computer for a while to recharge.

8. Watch this video!

Last year’s Global Game Jam keynote video should be your first port of call… well, after this blog entry now I suppose… Anyway, it provides 8 tips for making the actual game itself, rather than simply staying alive through the event!

(Kyle Gabler’s tips section starts at 1:36 if you want to skip ahead)

9. Don’t be afraid for it to blow up in your face

Yes this is just a repeat of Mr Gabler’s last tip, but it bears repeating. The less you care about your game, the less it’ll suck. You’ll be more open to input from other people and be in less of a frantic rush to fix every little thing right at the end.

So have fun, and try not to pass out from exhaustion. If you’re doing the Global Game Jam next week, keep an eye on the webcams and I shall see you then!

I’ve seen my fair share of game studio recruitment sites, but most have yet to realise that the only real way to really speak to me is through the medium of catchy song lyrics.

Even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play, even play with our pinballlllllllllllllllllllz…

dcfgames.co.uk will be changing web hosts from this Friday onwards to allow for new website features to come in the future.

Address servers have to be changed over and content moved to the new servers, which could result in a small amount of downtime over the next few days. This is likely to affect both the main site and the dcf Games Blog until everything is updated fully.

Because the blog is likely to go down, updates will be posted on my Twitter account if the work is likely to take longer than expected. Sorry for any inconvenience the disruption may cause.