RAY Game Jam

From Saturday to Sunday (18.-20.11.) I participated in a 48h long game jam where our goal was to design and produce a video game in groups of 1 to 7. Since our group consisted mostly of our classmates there will be several posts of the same event. Oh well - enjoy all these aspects of it! :^D

At first I was hesitant to participate in the jam as my skills only consist of visual and design aspects and I can't code games for my life. Our "group" at that point (aka a random array of people interested in the event) was already quite heavy in visual side and a couple of weeks beforehand we weren't even sure if we'd get a programmer, but in the end I gave in and decided to join in. And I'm glad I did! Once we got our theme ("MERGE") and got down to forming the idea for our game we managed to find things to do for everyone in our group: Justin and his girlfriend Roosa handled the coding; Mitja helped with it and made designs for the bots and the main character as well as produced the video; Miska did bots and illustrations for the splash screen; Gerda and Manu both created bots and backgrounds and Gerda also handled the sound design; and I was in charge of the UI aka the buttons, status bars and both splash and death screen designs.

So what did we actually do? Besides the theme we were allowed to create any kind of a game that could be later on presented and that other people could try on their own. Sounds complicated? For me it sounded like Mission Impossible: Hervanta Edition! In the end we made a retro-looking pixel art game Collision Jam where you're a robot surviving in constantly changing conditions (different heat, pressure and moisture levels), and in order to survive you need to catch and merge with nanobots who carry different combinations of said conditions. Each level lasts only fifteen seconds but don't think it's too easy - you have a maximum of ten seconds to adapt to the condition changes and you need to really think which bots to catch! Here are some of the assets I made and also a video introduction of the gameplay.

Environment status & level change counter

Player status

Splash screen

Death screen

Gameplay video

All in all the event was a great deal of fun! Our team worked well together and people helped each other out with different tasks. After the jam experience I am notably more interested in the game industry (as a visual designer, of course) but I really gotta decide if I want to continue solely on the graphic designer path or change the course towards the game industry. It's a really, really tough choice.

Our super team! ☆

You can download the game file from here!

Just unzip the folder and run RUN ME.EXE and you'll get to it ☆ You control the robot with arrow keys and remember - collect the right stats and be quick or ur ded!

#gamejam #videogames #mediadiary

Let The Trump-ocalypse Begin

Oh boy, oh boy.

Last Wednesday sure was a blast with Donald Trump being elected as the next president of the United States. What the white cis male supremacy of the US considers their ultimate victory is threatening to literally everyone outside of that group - women, people of colour, ethnic and religious minorities, lgbtq+ people. Not one day passed after the election results and the internet was already filling up with posts and messages about racist attacks, public shaming and suicides, no matter where you looked. Once again my tumblr dash became unified in anti-Trump posting in the form of recounting over and over the immediate tragedies following the results, reminder posts of suicide hotlines and the statement "Never normalize Trump" - don't let him become just another president, keep reminding everyone of the horrors he is about to bring upon us.

In the midst of all the upsetting posting another trend rose: the "Joe Biden and Barack Obama's conversations when leaving the White House" memes. After the elections nobody wanted Obama to leave - not Obama himself, not his followers and least of all Joe Biden. So it was time for an older, already forgotten Twitter meme to resurrect and take over the whole internet. You must have seen one.

Since I'm not eligible to actually blog about politics and also since it would only turn into hateful spitting I'm just leaving the memes here for you to enjoy.

Oh boy.

#elections #USA #Trump #memes

GameXpo & the Finnish Cosplay Championships 2016

Hooray for a week late expo update! Oona also covered the same expo in her blog since we went there together but nevertheless - here's another look at the expo!

On Friday 4th I kinda ex tempore decided to order a ticket to GameXpo's (4.-6.11.) Saturday in Messukeskus, Helsinki (aka. the previous night before the actual expo. Yes, I do that a lot). My reasons? To be honest, my main push behind the decision was to see the second Finnish Cosplay Championships (FCC) live since after last year they decided to not stream it on TV anymore. Of course I was also interested to see what the expo and the other expos held at the same time -mainly DigiExpo- would offer me, but since I didn't really know what would be in there I didn't know...what to expect?

After confirming my ticket I spent a portion of the night trying to familiarize myself with the expos and their offerings, but interestingly enough they didn't have their own websites and what information was given through Messukeskus' website was the very minimum. Therefore after a couple of confused hours of scrolling through the Messukeskus website and their mobile application I managed to make a very basic battle plan for the day:

11:30 - Nintendo Show

16:00 - Creating game worlds and characters

17:00 - Finnish Cosplay Championships

Aside from the FCC competition which took one and a half hours, the rest of the presentations and panels took half an hour. See that huge gap over there in the very detailed schedule? That was threatening to become a very big question mark, especially since one day tickets didn't permit exit from the venue. Bummer.

And in the end due to complications with time management, I ended up only seeing 1/3 of the scheduled things. Even bigger bummer.

So, what DID I get from the expos?

Despite being slightly sceptical towards the offerings of the expo I did get to watch a couple of entertaining presentations and an insight to Microsoft HoloLens. I personally find the HoloLens technology intriguing and I've watched a good deal of videos of its usage, but seeing it being used live was naturally another thing. Sadly, and also very oddly given it was a TECHNOLOGY centered expo, the connections for HoloLens and also XBox One kept crashing every half a minute which didn't make following the programs the most fluent experience. Nevertheless, I did sit through and rather enjoy the HoloLens presentation and part of XBox Show, had a dance break with Just Dance, took selfies with Super Mario and snatched a free flying XBox t-shirt. Could have been worse.

HoloLens in action

"Not suitable for ages under 16" it says next to a screen literally anyone can see without entering the restricted area. Good planning right here.

Aside from that I also got to see, as you might have guessed, the main goal of the trip: the FCC competition. It took a lot of rather aimless wandering around the venue before we made it to 5pm since the expo didn't really have THAT much to offer, but boiiii was it worth the wait.

To anyone who still might be wondering what the heckie exactly is Finnish Cosplay Championships (also known as Cosplayn SM in Finnish): It's a competition where cosplayers (=people dressed up as comic/movie/tv-show/book characters) compete over their skills of costume making and skit performing either alone or in a group of max. 3 people. This year the stage was taken by eight solo contestants and six groups who all competed for the title and for a chance to represent Finland in the Cosplay World Masters & Nordic Cosplay Championships (the solo winner), or to win a trip to Paris and Japan Expo in 2017 (the group winner). Didn't think cosplay would be a serious sport? Better think again - we live in the era where professional cosplayers get paid a lot for making costumes and appearing in various conventions around the world!

But wait, the FCC isn't just about the competition: it's a full package of guest performances, good (and bad) jokes from the narrator and a whole lot of entertainment for the audience. This year the interval acts were performed by an odottemita dance group PUREmode (go check them out, they're amazing and very very cute) and the amazing, gorgeous, talented narrator Elina Cosplay who never ceases to entertain me (and hopefully an audience full of other people as well) with her stage presence.

And indeed, even if this year's FCC wasn't as big of a spectacle it was last year with broadcast TV streaming and all, it still was highly entertaining and a very good experience. The skill level of the competitors was generally high, skits and costumes were well thought out and the winners of both the solo competition and the group competition were amazing - special standing ovation to the solo winner and his Captain Barbossa skit that made me develop a perfect six pack with all the laughter it caused. Seriously, it was top notch entertainment filed to perfection and synced seamlessly between voice record and the action on stage. I wish I had a video of the performance to show but, alas, official recordings are not yet out and all I have is pictures. :'C

Pictures don't do justice to the epic winning performance

(It indeed is Barbossa commanding Gyarados from Pokémon.)

It's still unsure if SkateExpo was trying to sabotage the FCC by first blaring their music unnecessarily loud and then summoning a Finnish rapper to perform at the same time with the competition, to which the Cosvision team answered by turning up their volume - but despite all that the one and a half hours were worth the trip to Helsinki.

"We apologize for the volume. We are battling the rapper Aste. #CosplaynSM" tweeted the official FCC organizer Cosvision

Will I visit GameXpo/DigiExpo again next year? Probably not. Not unless they again make the decision to have the FCC in a cramped space between gamers, skater teens and skiing enthusiasts, which frankly speaking was not a very good choice to begin with. Hopefully they won't choose to do it again since the competition deserves a good stage with no unnecessary background noise.

#gamexpo #digiexpo #fcc #finnishcosplaychampionships #cosplay