Gamebridge

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Gamebridge Unityversity is a weekly Unity game development meetup and beginner-friendly class for anyone who wants to learn programming, game development and how to help teach others Unity as Unity mentors.

Though the Unity game engine is our focus, all kinds of game development are welcome including different engines, "non-technical" game artists, writers, programming styles and technologies.

UPDATE: As of April 21, Gamebridge Unityversity Unity Game Dev classes are now resuming Tuesday nights 7-10PM.

Participants are encouraged to observe and participate in Noisebridge meetings as well and to learn more about the hackerspace and how to take part in other classes and activities to utilize and improve the space.

To get into Noisebridge for a Gamebridge Unityversity class, ring the doorbell and you'll be buzzed in for your first time. Participants can get access codes to get into future classes without having to buzz in.

Instructors

Alex Peake, Game Developer Primer Labs [user:lxpk Alex Peake] at alex@primerlabs.com I live in Portola Valley and I am at Noisebridge on Tuesday nights.

Bud Leiser, Game Designer BudLeiser.com I am here quite often, just look for the orange jacket or ask any of the regulars.

The Unity 5 Game Engine

The Unity 5 game engine is industry standard and completely free. It can compile your games for HTML5 web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android, XBox One, PS4, Nintendo Wii U and many others. It is the industry standard for many reasons:

  • Support for making 3D and 2D games with ready-to-use 3D 1st person, 3D 3rd person, 2D sidescroller and 2D overhead rogue-like RPG characters as well as rolling balls, cars and aircraft.
  • Lots of documentation, tutorials and even online classes from schools to learn Unity.
  • The ability to build once and launch on multiple platforms.
  • Relatively easy coding framework to learn.
  • Also as a designer it cannot be understated the usefulness of being able to play the game at any moment without waiting for a build cycle, and the ability for developers to list important features as Public Var's which unity will automatically look for and generate slider scales that designers can modify without having to touch the code base.
  • Most importantly Unity has the largest user base. This is important because at some point you will need to work with others to make great games, and if everyone else is already using Unity they will not likely switch to your engine or preference....unless you pay them.
  • The Unity asset store is another way for developers, artists and musicians to make money by creating game tools/assets. But it's also a way to develop your own games much much faster.

Things To Bring

  • Laptops, especially ones with decent 3D graphics cards. To run Unity3D you'll need one running Mac or Windows.
  • Pre-install Unity and some of the Unity tutorials if you can so you can get started right away with Unityversity.
  • iPhones, Androids & other cool game hardware devices for building games on
  • Connectors to hook your laptop to the big projector screen to show off your games and development processes to the group

Inspiration

Game development is a lot of fun. Game development is an awesome way to learn computer programming. And games can inspire players to learn all kinds of things about the world.

A lot of us are into game development and a lot of us would like to learn how, so it makes sense to get together and share our interests and experience.

Contact

If you want to know more about Game Development Club, just come by some time or contact [lxpk Alex Peake] at alex@primerlabs.com.

Meetup Log / Class Curriculum Courseware

GameDevelopmentCourseware

Meetup History

We had our first meetup November 4th and it was a lot of fun. We made a game about evil companion cubes that want to give you a hug for very explosive definitions of hug.

Game Development Resources

Game Engines

Game engines make it pretty easy to develop games by giving you lots of development tools for world building and scripting.

We're interested in other kinds of game development too, including non-computer game designs like dice-based RPGs, board games and card games.

Unity

Unity is an awesome game development engine based on Mono that compiles for Mac, Windows, iPhone, Web and Wii with support coming soon for PS3 and XBox. Unity has just been made free for indy developers. Unity is an extremely easy to learn game development environment with a massively helpful developer community.

We are primarily teaching and collaborating with Unity in Game Club because it is incredibly awesome and easy to learn.

Unity On Ubuntu

Unity Tutorials

START HERE: Unity Tutorials are free to download and can be completed in a day or two! Do these before coming or do them with us to get help and support.

Other Game Engines

Unreal

Unreal Development Kit is also available for free now. We'll no doubt be playing with that as well. Unreal is some seriously advanced game dev technology. It's too heavy to run on an iPhone, but it is a good way to make high-end PC and console games.

Objective C

Some people are making iPhone games directly in Cocoa.

Blender Game Engine

Blender Game Engine is an open-source game engine integrated with the Blender 3D studio software. It has come a long way in recent versions and some of the games people have made with it are amazing.

OGRE Open Source 3D Engine

OGRE is not a full game engine but it does have Mac, Windows, Linux and iPhone support. It has recently been used to make a big hit called Torchlight.

SDL

SDL is a cross-platform open-source game development library that has been used to make Aleph One based on the Marathon series.

Game Development Tools

Game development involves lots of tools for modeling, sculpting, texturing, rigging and animating game environments.

Maya

Maya is the #1 3D content creation tool for games.

We're looking for people with Maya experience who can teach how to use Maya. Especially interested in learning about character rigging and animation.

Blender

Blender is an open-source 3D studio that can do mostly the same things as Maya for free. We're looking for people who want to teach Blender skills.

SketchUp

SketchUp is a surprisingly powerful and incredibly easy to use 3D modeling application for making basic 3D geometry to use in your game development.

Google 3D Warehouse

Google 3D Warehouse is a searchable library of free 3D models in SketchUp format that you can download freely and use in your games. You can also upload your own creations to 3D Warehouse.

FreeSound Project

FreeSound Project is a searchable library of free sound files that you can use in your games. You can also upload your sounds to FreeSound for others to use.

All CG Textures

All CG Textures has loads of quality free textures.

3D Character Rigs

Creative Crash has many free 3D character rigs in Maya format.