Hi everyone
I'm Dave, the deviser of SpeccyJam; it was great to hear a discussion about the event on the RCR podcast episode 81
There seemed to be a bit of a confusion as to what the event is, and the reasoning behind it, so I thought I'd pop on here and try and explain it a little further.
First, for those who aren't aware of what a game jam is, I took this from Wikipedia:
A game jam is a gathering of game developers for the purpose of planning, designing, and creating one or more games within a short span of time, usually ranging between 24 and 48 hours. Game developers are generally made up of programmers, game designers, artists, and others in game development-related fields.
So what is the event? It's something for game developers to come together (online) over 1 week (I thought 1 week was better than 24-48 hours just so more people could get involved, but also so they could use some of the time to educate themselves about ZX Spectrum style games) using the development tools and programming languages they're comfortable with and create a Spectrum flavoured game, for the platform theyre comfortable with. By all means, developers can create games for the actual ZX Spectrum hardware using Machine Code or BASIC and such languages, but I doubt they would even have Spectrum or even a blank cassette handy to load it on to. Also, 1 week would never be enough time and I'm sure the momentum of the event would fizzle out...
I'm a hobbiest indie game developer, and wanted to revisit my first love of gaming, the ZX Spectrum. These days games aren't incredibly difficult to create, as long as you have the right software / engine (such as Game Maker or Construct 2), and the right software for creating your graphics such as Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks or something like that. There are practically no limitations or restrictions to think about! Something quite graphically stunning and impressive can be made over a short time of dabbling with your software.
This got me wondering, how many indie game developers out there are even aware of hardware limitations? How many of them were even born when then the ZX Spectrum was around? With SpeccyJam I wanted to bring together game developers of all ages, firstly to educate young game developers of the awesomeness of the ZX Spectrum and secondly to take older developers who were around at the time on a nostalgia trip. We had a sublime situation where young and older developers of different gaming and programming backgrounds were coming together to create something from the past, but using modern day technologies not only to create it but also to share their creation as it was being created!
We are now on the second year; the first year produced 22 games, some were very very authentic looking Spectrum games (implementing attribute colour clash for instance) and some not so authentic but still good games. I think the most interesting part of this was the updates from the developers during the week. On twitter (using the hashtag #speccyjam) participants posted their progress in the way of screenshots, animated gifs of their latest characters, posts to soundcloud previewing their chiptune style music, and so on. It was a great to see the development of each game as it happened. Two young teenagers even live streamed their development and people were able to comment and make suggestions to the direction of how their game was going. It was an absolutely brilliant community lead interactive experience for those involved and for those who were spectating.
I'm here to answer any questions anybody may have about the event, and I hope you will either get involved at http://www.speccyjam.com or follow the progress on the #SpeccyJam hashtag on twitter.
Cheers all
Dave
I'm Dave, the deviser of SpeccyJam; it was great to hear a discussion about the event on the RCR podcast episode 81
There seemed to be a bit of a confusion as to what the event is, and the reasoning behind it, so I thought I'd pop on here and try and explain it a little further.
First, for those who aren't aware of what a game jam is, I took this from Wikipedia:
A game jam is a gathering of game developers for the purpose of planning, designing, and creating one or more games within a short span of time, usually ranging between 24 and 48 hours. Game developers are generally made up of programmers, game designers, artists, and others in game development-related fields.
So what is the event? It's something for game developers to come together (online) over 1 week (I thought 1 week was better than 24-48 hours just so more people could get involved, but also so they could use some of the time to educate themselves about ZX Spectrum style games) using the development tools and programming languages they're comfortable with and create a Spectrum flavoured game, for the platform theyre comfortable with. By all means, developers can create games for the actual ZX Spectrum hardware using Machine Code or BASIC and such languages, but I doubt they would even have Spectrum or even a blank cassette handy to load it on to. Also, 1 week would never be enough time and I'm sure the momentum of the event would fizzle out...
I'm a hobbiest indie game developer, and wanted to revisit my first love of gaming, the ZX Spectrum. These days games aren't incredibly difficult to create, as long as you have the right software / engine (such as Game Maker or Construct 2), and the right software for creating your graphics such as Photoshop or Adobe Fireworks or something like that. There are practically no limitations or restrictions to think about! Something quite graphically stunning and impressive can be made over a short time of dabbling with your software.
This got me wondering, how many indie game developers out there are even aware of hardware limitations? How many of them were even born when then the ZX Spectrum was around? With SpeccyJam I wanted to bring together game developers of all ages, firstly to educate young game developers of the awesomeness of the ZX Spectrum and secondly to take older developers who were around at the time on a nostalgia trip. We had a sublime situation where young and older developers of different gaming and programming backgrounds were coming together to create something from the past, but using modern day technologies not only to create it but also to share their creation as it was being created!
We are now on the second year; the first year produced 22 games, some were very very authentic looking Spectrum games (implementing attribute colour clash for instance) and some not so authentic but still good games. I think the most interesting part of this was the updates from the developers during the week. On twitter (using the hashtag #speccyjam) participants posted their progress in the way of screenshots, animated gifs of their latest characters, posts to soundcloud previewing their chiptune style music, and so on. It was a great to see the development of each game as it happened. Two young teenagers even live streamed their development and people were able to comment and make suggestions to the direction of how their game was going. It was an absolutely brilliant community lead interactive experience for those involved and for those who were spectating.
I'm here to answer any questions anybody may have about the event, and I hope you will either get involved at http://www.speccyjam.com or follow the progress on the #SpeccyJam hashtag on twitter.
Cheers all
Dave
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