Game Jam – RITs International Game Industry Course for 2023

day eight: gameJAM pt. ii and osaka

the end of the gamejam was a mad dash of last minute additions and changes that i can’t even remember everything. kiri and takato were stressed until the very end, and honestly me, cam, and jas, were just happy that we finished. i was a bit disappointed that my ui didn’t look as good as i wanted it to, and i could tell that cam wasn’t necessarily all that happy either, though jas seemed to be having a good time. takato and kiri were clearly unhappy at how it turned out, but i’m glad we got to spend that time with them.

we got to see everyone’s games and they were all so cool and unique. i really liked group one’s where you had to beat a fusion of godzilla and big foot using one player that could switch between eastern and western superhero identities. i also really liked group five’s (i think? it might have been group three) game where you had to take the customer’s order in your native language, but had to actually make their order in the language you were trying to learn. everyone had such different ideas that tackled the them of bridging the gaps of culture.

once we took our pictures and said our goodbye’s, a large group of us headed off to osaka. it was a thirty minute shinkansen ride, so before we knew it we were there! we immediately embarked on our quest to this mall, because it had several shops all on one floor for all of us to weeb out at. for me, that was the one piece store.

i went in all starry-eyed and amazed as if i was in heaven, similar to a toddler in toys r us (rip ✊?) around christmas time. it was magical. needless to say i spent several thousand yen here, and i hadn’t even been to the other stores yet. next up was the nintendo store where i exhibited some restraint and didn’t buy anything. however that restraint was all but thrown out the window when i got to the pokemon center. what? i bought a chouchou plushy from the one piece store and he was lonely, so i bought a ditto plushy as a friend. i had to.

me, belle, skyler, and jess got dinner at an italian place, and their four cheese pasta was alright. like it definitely could have been worse, but it also wouldn’t have been that hard to make it better either. after that though we headed to the shinkansen station so we could take the train back to kyoto.

deciding to not let the party end there when we got back to the hotel most of us decided to hang out and play some jackbox, while also sipping on some beverages(those of us that were legal, that is). it’s hard to say which i preferred between friday and today, but they both definitely give the other a run for its money.

i look forward to tomorrow because i actually get to sleep in oh my GOD. it’ll be a travel day, so not too much on the agenda, and after the brutal nonstop pace of kyoto i can’t wait to have more breathing room in akihabara.

day seven: gameJAM

i feel like i don’t have that much to write about today, hahaha. it was a pretty long day, not necessarily boring but not exactly fun either? basically, we were at kcg by 9 am so that we could begin promptly.

takato and kiri had a very loose idea for a game, and basically all they told me, cam, and jas was that it was a cutesy spooky game. and cam, thank god he’s such a good artist, absolutely CARRIED the art direction. he decided to make a cool ghost guy animation, a background, a second player animation, and i’m sure other things that i’m forgetting.

i was tasked with the user interface of the game, so that basically had me working on a game start screen, game over screen, game clear screen, and pause menu. i couldn’t do much since i needed the background cam was working on, so me and jas tried to do our second character since he was pretty busy.

our first attempt at a walk cycle was definitely… something. at this point it had been about eight hours so we were pretty tired and since neither of us had ever tried to animate before, the end result was pretty bad. but it’s okay, because cam stepped in and saved us.

kiri and takato didn’t really interact with us all that often, but honestly they looked so stressed with the code that we couldn’t blame them. at one point kiri’s friends —on other teams mind you— had to sit down and try and figure out a bug they encountered. they also had to force kiri to eat and drink, which was hilarious by the way.

and then the day was over. just like that. tomorrow should be shorter, we’ll finish up our games and then present them. and after that i believe we’re free, so maybe we can get a big group of us together and do something.

day six: kimono’s and pizza

it’s here, it’s here! the day i’d been waiting for so long for, our (mostly) free day! the day started off bright and early with me, belle, and megan leaving the hotel at around 7 am. once we got to the kiyomizu dera area we arrived at the kimono rental place a bit early, so we just loitered outside until it was 8.

we easily chose our kimonos, belts, and accessories as they started to fit us and do our hair. i chose to do a fun braid that wrapped around the back of my head, since i didn’t want my hair to rest on my neck because i knew there would be a lot of layers for the kimono. once we were all dolled up, we hit the streets and began our day of photos and shopping.

we started by heading up to the beginning steps of the temple and took a bunch of photos of and with each other. we even had other foreigners asking to get photos with us??? but i digress. we meandered through shops, buying things that caught our fancy —i bought some raccoon themed cups, and belle bought a freaking SWORD— and i made sure to stop in a ring making shop, getting one custom made to fit my right index finger. and then they made it in front of me, it was sick.

eventually it got waaaaay too hot to keep the kimonos on, you would not believe the amount of sweat that had accrued on my midsection, we headed to the pokemon center in kyoto. this time i only bought some hand towels that had cute drawings of pikachu and food, and a pair of chopsticks with ghost and dark type pokemon. this was pretty close to nishiki market so we mostly just wandered around there until we had to head back to the hotel so we could have a pizza party with the kcg students. while there i discovered my new favorite snack, karamucho, that are these spicy potato fry chip things? idk, but they’re awesome.

it was a little awkward at first because of the language barrier, but we were able to get past it. kind of. there was lots of google translate involved, and a lot of double checking things with liam, but it was a good time. it was short, yet fun. today was definitely my favorite day so far.

Food in Day 7: Ending the Game Jam

We finished the game jam! Despite our very incomplete results, I am very proud of the amount of work we were able to complete in our limited time along with the language barrier. After a short recess, we went around and looked at everyone’s games, took a picture together, then headed back to the hotel. Vincent, Maddy, Brody, and I went back to UNIQLO to get a couple of more things before we went to the hotel again to rest up after a long couple of days.

For breakfast, I was given the special sandwich of the day once again. Honestly, I don’t remember what was in it, and I also don’t remember if I even ate it. What I do remember is that I was running late yet again, so I didn’t get to eat much before we had to go, so there is a pretty high chance I didn’t get to have a bite. However, I did get to enjoy yet another croissant, a fried egg, and some strips of chicken. The egg was a little too cold in my opinion, but everything else was great. I also had apple juice yet again. For some reason, apple juice is just better in Japan, so why not have it as many times as I can?

For lunch. we were given a choice between omurice and different types of lunchboxes. Because Toshi was unable to get the ingredients of the omurice to make sure I don’t die in Japan, I picked up the fish packed bento. It included rice, backed fish, some fresh veggies, some cooked veggies, pickled veggies, some kind of savory pancake, pasta salad, and a sui mai. Everything that I could eat was delicious, but the bones in the fish took me a bit off guard. Luckily, I didn’t ingest any, or else I could’ve died in a way Toshi was not accounting for.

For dinner, our small group that went to UNIQLO stopped at a restaurant in the same mall the UNIQLO was in, Aeon Mall, and had some ramen. The ramen there was delicious. I was a big fan of the combination of toppings on top of the ramen. The soft-boiled eggs, bamboo shoots, chives, and pork all went well with the salty but savory broth.

After dinner, it was time to say goodbye to Kyoto and return to Tokyo and visit Akihabara!

Food in Day 6: The Game Jam

Today was the official first day of the game jam! I was put in charge of designing and creating the art for the UI. For the concept behind our game, we decided to go with Belle’s idea, which was to create a game based off of moving to a foreign country and opening a bakery. The point is to get better and better at determining the orders of the customers, who are giving you their orders in their native language. This is pretty much the only thing we did today.

For food, I started out the day with the provided sandwich of the day, which was a fried chicken sandwich. Although I am unsure of all of the ingredients in the sandwich, it was good! I also picked out another croissant because I enjoyed all the other ones I’ve had so much, some penne pasta with ham and zucchini, and fried salmon. All of the food was super good, but I had to rush a bit because I went to breakfast late. I did have a cup of apple juice which was refreshing paired with all the fried foods I was eating and a cappuccino to help me power through the rest of the game jam.

For lunch, we were given a variety of rice balls and other snacks. I honestly forgot which rice balls I had chosen to eat, but I do remember that one of them had a very strong fishy taste, so I was unable to finish it. I do remember picking out an egg folded into an omelet, and it was sweeter than any egg I had ever had before. While the sweetness bothers my fellow RIT teammates, I quite liked the subtly sweet egg.

For dinner, we were given these bento boxes filled with an assortment of food. Included was rice, shrimp tempura, pickled veggies, salad, cooked veggies, fried chicken, a piece of waffle, and a hamburg steak. I enjoyed almost every aspect of this meal that I was able to eat. However, I did not like the hamburg steak. To me, it tasted like an unseasoned meatball with gravy on top. Everything else (except for the salad and pickled vegetables because I could not eat them) were delicious and a good source of fuel to help me power through the last hour or two that we had of the game jam for that day.

The next day marked our last day of the game jam and our last full day in Kyoto. Although I was excited to see how completed our project would be, it was a little bittersweet as I was not quite ready to say goodbye to the beautiful scenery in Kyoto.

Food in Day 5: Free Day and Meeting KCG

Today was our free day! A small group of us decided to go to TOEI Kyoto Studio Park to see the life-sized Eva-01 attraction. After that, Brody, Vincent, and I went to UNIQLO and did some shopping before we headed out to KCG to meet the students we would be having the game jam with. I was on team 3 with Bella and Liam from RIT and Naoki, Tamura, and Ryuki from KCG.

In terms of the important stuff, for breakfast, we had finally graduated from the boxed lunches and were free to pick out our own food! They gave us our sandwich of the day, which seemed to be prosciutto with onions, lettuce, tomatoes, and mustard. Sadly, I was not a fan of the sandwich, but that is because I am not a fan of mustard. I also had bok choy, a croissant, sausage, carrots, and fried fish. All of the things I had hand-picked for myself were delicious. I also had a latte to give me a jump start to the day.

For lunch at TOEI Studio Park, I ordered a meal off of the special Evangelion menu. The meal was based off of the character Mari Illustrious Makinami, and all of the other meals on that special menu were based off of different characters. It was some kind of soup along with a variety of pickled and steamed vegetables. Sadly, I had a rough time eating some of the vegetables due to my allergies, but the soup was nice and relaxing to have as a break from a day of walking.

For dinner, I had pizza and snack provided by KCG at the welcome event. I picked out seafood pizza, cheese pizza, chicken nuggets, potato sticks, and a bowl of a variety of snacky items. The seafood pizza was better than I was expecting. I have had seafood pizza in the U.S, and I remember it being too salty to enjoy. This pizza, however, was not too salty. It was actually quite good. The cheese pizza was cheese pizza: always a good and safe choice. The chicken nuggets were chicken nuggets: always a good and safe choice. By the time I got around to the potato sticks, they were cold, so I did not particularly enjoy them that much. This may be because they were sitting out for a bit before I ate them, but they were reminiscent of slightly soggy hashbrowns. However, the snacks were in fact snacking, so overall, it was a good way to end the day.

It was nice getting to know my teammates better before the game jam started! tomorrow would be the start of the game jam, so I headed to bed early(-ish) to be prepared for all the brain power I’d be using the next day.

Game Jam Day 2

Team 01 got off to a rocky start but by the time day 2 came around, we felt much more prepared and had a better understanding of what we needed to do to complete our project.

Our main task to finish up was to finish art and sound assets and put them into the unity project, and then implement player attacks. We were also able to implement some last minute boss attacks. Finally, we hooked everything up through make a semi-working prototype that simulates gameplay and game flow.

It was great seeing everyone’s projects during the showcase afterward. Some teams used Unreal Engine and had more of an emphasis on animation, models, and graphics, while other teams had simpler visuals with an emphasis on gameplay and interaction. Everyone took the theme of “collaborating across cultures” in a unique direction and overall it was a productive and inspiring weekend!

That night, we all celebrated at the hotel for a chill night :).

Evening Up the Score

The second day of the Game Jam started off with a bang as I was motivated to tie up with my arch-nemesis: Unreal Engine 5. As I worked on hitboxes, I found that my code was working, but not entirely. Hitboxes were spawning and de-spawning correctly, but just no in the place I wanted them to. However, before I could amend this problem, I had to fix some bugs with controls and animations, mainly that if an input was put in and held too long, the model would freeze. After an hour of messing around with Animation Notify events, I was able to fix it completely, and all by myself, no internet or anything, besides some documentation about Notify’s.

However, time was running short, so before I could work more on hitboxes, it was time to merge my team’s work. Because we didn’t use repos, I put my files onto a hard drive and gave it to my teammate Kento. After about 30 minutes, he told me I had to merge it on my computer because he lacked some external tools I installed to be able to link Visual Studio to my Unreal Engine. Thus begun the difficult process. I failed to merge multiple times because my C++ classes were not properly importing into the KCG project, so I had to manually re-create everything in record speed, having to ignore a good portion of our lunch break. After all was said and done, I had accomplished it, but not without a lot of stress.

Then we met the judges who went around to each group and gave feedback, and, despite having very little besides art and controls, we weren’t bashed too badly. After that, we cleaned up and thus ended the KCG Game Jam of 2023, with the score between me and Unreal Engine at a tie of 1-1. as I definitely took the win this time.

We got back on the bus and the evening was ours to do as we liked, so a lot of us got together and celebrated the Game Jam. However, Unreal Engine and I are still sitting at an unsatisfactory tie, and our match will be decided in the future. Of course, I will undoubtedly win.

Game Jam Wrap + Osaka trip

The day began the same way as the day before with buffet breakfast in tbe hotel lobby. We then returned to KCG at around 9 to our groups to make one last sprint towards the finish at around noon. Because I finished my portion of the art the day before, I spent the day doing minor tasks such as making our game logo. We also had delicious Omurice for lunch. It was my first time trying it and I found it quite delicious. Overall, while some things could have gone better within my group, the experience of participating in a game jam for the first time was a great experience and was very worthwhile.

After another great lunch, two professionals from the game industry came in to critique our games. Their feedback was very interesting to hear coming from 3d design since all our critiques are visually focused. However, all of their feedback revolved around the gameplay and mechanics which was very new to me.

After a brief stop at the hotel, we boarded a bullet train for Osaka. We went to a department store where on one floor there was a Pokémon Center, One Piece store, Nintendo Store, Capcom store, and other smaller stores. I spent a little bit of money at the One Piece Store…

We also had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the department store before taking the bullet train back. Later that night we had a short Jackbox meetup before heading to bed. Until next time!

To be continued…

Day 7/8

Day 7 was the remaining part of the game jam and I stuck with my new group. We worked on adding the audio, the art, and backgrounds, as well as bug fixing when we got lunch. During lunch, I wanted to try adding a boss attack. So within the last 30 minutes, I started and finished adding fireballs to our game so the boss can attack the player.

Then we had two industry professionals review our games. One had started his own studio, and the other worked in the education outreach division of Epic – the makers of Unreal Engine. They seemed to think our game Hero Duo was funny – which was the goal, but gave a critique on our lack of player feedback; particularly when the player gets hit.

The next day, we took the bullet train back to Tokyo. I still think the bullet train is so cool, how it uses magnets to make the train as frictionless as possible. Although I’m bummed I wasn’t able to see Mt. Fuji due to the clouds. We went shopping for a while at some second-hand stores (although I mostly remained in the video game sections) before getting ramen – for the first time – and heading back to the hotel.