Archive for ‘Game Development’

ACU and the DET department will be hosting teams for the GGJ 2013!

The excitement begins Friday, January 25 at 5PM for the keynote and revealing of the theme.

Then the selection of teams and fun of game development begins, to conclude at 3PM on Sunday, January 27.

Corona Labs has graciously agreed to supply pizza, soda, snacks, and SWAG during the event, so that you can focus on making great games!

We are limiting our teams to ACU students.  We will work out of the Mabee Business Building (primarily on the 2nd & 3rd floor, centered around the 214 lab).  You can register for the event at http://globalgamejam.org/sites/2013/abilene-christian-university

When I was first starting out with Photoshop, I spent a lot of time trying to figure things out for myself. That’s all well and good, but because the learning curve is so large, it helps to have some resources to turn to. So, after a few years of creating my own textures and images using Photoshop, I’ve amassed quite a few quality tutorials that I’ll share.

If you’re wanting some interesting text effects, check out:  http://www.webdesignbooth.com/40-really-useful-photoshop-text-effect-tutorials/

Or, if you’re wanting some photo realistic textures: http://beeex.net/photoshop/tutorials-photoshop/77-essential-photoshop-techniques-for-photo-realistic-textures

My personal favorite for all of the above is: http://planetphotoshop.com/category/tutorials . Most of these are high quality video tutorials explaining in detail everything to need to know and guide you through the process.

I hope these help. I’ll be posting more of my resources on different mediums here in the next few weeks. Feel free to comment if you have a request.

Regularly we are asked which engines are used to teach game development as part of the Digital Entertainment major and minor.

While we use a host of products to create the content for the games (Photoshop, Gimp, Illustrator, Flash, Premier Pro, etc) we primarily use two engines for our classes:

For 2D/mobile projects the SDK of choice is Corona by Corona Labs.  We have found it easy to learn but powerful enough to handle the most intricate of projects.

For 3D projects we use Unity3D.  Again, easy to learn, wonderful pricing structure for the indie developer, and powerful enough to make the most intricate multi-player games, Unity was a natural choice for the DET program.

Digital Entertainment Technology
Software used in Major/Minor
Spring/Fall 2012

 In most situations you are able to select the software that you find most comfortable to use (or can afford).  There are times when we use several pieces of software from one category during a course so that students are able to become familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Modeling

Google Sketch-up (free)       PC/Mac
*3DS Max  (student edition is free http://students.autodesk.com)       PC
Maya (student edition is free http://students.autodesk.com)                PC/Mac
MudBox (student edition is free http://students.autodesk.com)          PC/Mac

 Texturing

*Adobe Photoshop    PC/Mac
*Adobe Flash                        PC/Mac
GIMP (free)               PC/Mac

Engines

*Corona SDK (unlimited trial is free http://www.CoronaLabs.com)        PC/Mac
*Unity3D (basic version is free http://www.unity3d.com)               PC/Mac
*UDK – Unreal Developers Kit (free http://www.udk.com)                    PC

Sound

Adobe Soundbooth  PC/Mac
Audacity  (free)         PC/Mac
Sony Acid Pro                        PC
GarageBand               Mac

Film

*Adobe Premier Pro       PC/Mac
*Final Cut                            Mac

Compiler

*Visual Studio            PC
*Eclipse IDE               PC/Mac
GCC (free)                  PC/Mac
*Java Developers Kit (JDK) free    PC/Mac
*Apple xCode                         Mac
Python IDLE  (free) PC/Mac

• *- Industry standard
• Bold – required software in one or more DET courses.