Hallow Games

West Virginia video game development

Academic

WVU Game Developers Club Presidential Farewell

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Below is the last email I sent out to the club list – I mean everything I said in this email.  I’m glad I had the honor of leading the club the past two years, just recording this here for historical purposes.

WVU Game Developers Club Student Showcase

Presidential Farewell

Fellow club members,

It has been my honor to serve as your President the last two years.  It’s exciting to look back and truly see how far we have come as a club.

As I stated at the student showcase, we have achieved many great things.  We have become an official IGDA student chapter, connecting us in the past year to many other universities with similar clubs.  We have been a host site for the Global Game Jam, the largest game jam in the world.  A group of us got to travel to Texas last fall to participate in Chillenium, the largest student game jam.  We have had countless club game jams in between those.

We have had game developers and alumni come to speak or Skype in, to give their advice to us on various topics.  We have raised over $2,000 for Extra Life, which went directly to help the WVU Medicine Childrens hospital!  We built our own tabletop arcade cabinet using a Raspberry Pi and programmed our own games for it!

All of our success would not be possible without everyone’s individual support of this club!  So thank you all for the last two years!  

I want to especially thank all of my officers the past two years who have helped make us a success as well – Kati Baker, Destiny Dunn, Veronica Blackshire, Ryan Kubik, Connor Haynes, and Ahmed Mian.

I have full faith in the newly elected administration led by Tristan Snyder and I wish them the best of luck this coming year.

Don’t be a stranger, you all are welcome to reach out to me anytime!  Follow me on Twitter @JordanHallow or add me on LinkedIn to stay connected!

I wish you all success in all your future careers and game development projects!

Best,
—
Jordan Hallow 
President , WVU Game Developers Club
May 2015 – April 2017

Book Publication

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I got my essay published about the creation of the WVU Game Developers Club in “Life-Changing Student Organizations” and it is on Amazon!!  You can check it out here.  I attached a description about the book below.

Life-Changing Student Organizations is intended to give university students an inside look at the many unique opportunities that are currently available to them at their given college or institution. It also gives high school students a view behind the veil at what it’s like to live an active university life. From Quidditch to rugby, religious groups to Greek Life, woodworking to video game design, and much in between, Life-Changing Student Organizations contains something for people of all interests. Comprised of over forty essays—contributed entirely by current and former leaders of major student organizations from five separate Division 1 universities—the book is a kaleidoscope of distinct voices, beliefs, and backgrounds. All, however, seem to arrive at the same conclusion: With a little on-campus initiative, anything is possible.

Link to Amazon Store

WVU Game Developers Club Podcast Appearances

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This semester, our club secretary Ahmed Mian started a podcast talking about various game design and industry topics.  I made a guest appearance in a few episodes, the ones I am in are embeded below.

Gametalk is a weekly podcast show discussing games and the gaming industry. New episodes are uploaded every Wednesday @ 9 AM EST on SoundCloud and iTunes.

In this episode, we talk about The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, physical vs digital storefronts, and the games we are currently playing (Kerbal Space Program, Snipperclips, and Horizon: Zero Dawn).

In this episode, we talk about Nintendo Switch, virtual reality, and achievements.

(We recorded future episodes I will be appearing in as well, this post will be updated once those podcasts are available!)

 

Leading Unity Workshop Spring 2017

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I got to lead a Unity Workshop for the club again this semester.  I got feedback at the end of the previous workshop and worked most of that into improvements for this version.

As before, the library has been super supportive of the event and Unity was still on the Mac books from last semester.  I noticed that we had several people that didn’t install the engine before the workshop last time, so to help make sure everyone was on the same page and using the same version of Unity, I required the group to use the library Mac books, which solved that problem.

A huge challenge I had with the previous one as well was people working at different paces.  To help solve this more, once we walked through all the basic Unity controls, I told everyone that if I was going too slow they were welcome to work ahead on the downloaded PowerPoint.

It seemed to me like people worked together more on this one, when one person had a question, if they couldn’t ask me they could ask someone next to them or I had enough help from my fellow officers to help everyone with their questions.  I think everyone got something out of it just based on the positive conversation afterwards and the more positive feedback on our forms this time.  We also got more people working in Unity after the workshop either in the club’s Fixer Upper Jam or in the Unity Jam.

Image may contain: 4 people, people standing

Lobsterbotomy – Ludum Dare 37 – WVU Game Developers Club

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Lobsterbotomy is a game entry that several members of the WVU Game Developers Club made for Ludum Dare 37 over the weekend of December 9-11, 2016.  The theme was “One Room”.  In the game, you play as a lobster in someone’s head, who is on a date.  You control that lobster who picks the dialogue options to continue on the date.  As you are playing, there are also other controls/parts of the body that you have to keep in check including butterflies from the stomach, frogs from your throat, and a beating heart, that beats faster when you are nervous.

We brainstormed the first night when the theme was announced and after talking for several hours through several ideas, when we were going through a favorite idea round of discussion, I came up with the idea of gamifying the Disney Pixar film “Inside Out”.  From there, it was turned into a game and we spent a good amount of time drawing out possible dialogue trees to see if we could even make it work.

Besides the initial idea, I helped out with determining some of the actions, and writing a bit of the dialogue.  Over the weekend I had several other things happening, so I would say this is the least that I put into a game jam but I think the rest of the team pulled together very well and were able to make an excellent game in such a short amount of time.

External Links:

Ludum Dare Entry Page

Online game on WVU Game Developers Itch.io

Elementary Math Test App Launch

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Elementary Math Test is now available on Google Play for free!  It works on both phones and tablets above Android version 2.3.3!

Check it out on the Google Play Store by clicking the badge below:

Get it on Google Play

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