Hallow Games

West Virginia video game development

WVU Game Developers Club

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

WVU Game Developers Club Student Showcase

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One of my ideas when the club started was that we have an event where the club can have setups of playable games for anyone interested at the university to play, similar to how other universities that have gaming programs require theirs students to show their projects.  I also thought it could be similar to the Computer Science senior design project fairs I have seen in past semesters here on campus.

Our club is really lucky to meet in the Reed College of Media Innovation Center. It has a lot going for it, being in one of the newest buildings on campus, it is located right next to the Evansdale PRT station and it has some great tech. They have screens in about every room there that can be connected to wirelessly with their software on anyone’s laptop or via HDMI connection. On top of that, they have four media carts with both of those connection options, which finally made this showcase idea a viable and doable event for us.  So we were able to set up five live games through connected laptops that each game’s developers brought to run their game on. They all used the HDMI since we wanted the input to not have any delays that the wireless would sometimes get.

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The actual event was two hours and split in half, with the first hour being club reflections, individual game presentations from club members that wanted to talk about their games to everyone in attendance, and club awards. In the second hour, we had the stations set up where attendees could play the individual games that we had setup.

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We gave club influencer awards to several WVU staff members that helped our club in the past year with our various events including the Global Game Jam and Unity Workshops.  Overall, everyone in attendance enjoyed themselves and everyone that wasn’t part of the club I think enjoyed talking to the individual teams about their games, in addition to playing them.

We filmed most of the event and I will be linking to that YouTube playlist once it is made below.

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.

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WVU Game Developers Club Highlight Reel

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When I was working on the YouTube channel for the club this semester uploading videos from the 2017 Global Game Jam, I realized we really didn’t have a channel trailer.  I’m not sure where the idea came, but I had seen several Unity game engine highlight reel videos and naturally thought it would be great for the club to have one.  So I made this video right after that game jam and it was up to date on all the games the club had made up to the point the video was created.  You can watch below, or follow the link to YouTube.  Below the video here is a list of all the games  and links to more info about them.

West Virginia University Game Developer Club Game Highlight Reel
August 2015 – January 2017

Music:
Chris Moore – Playground
https://soundcloud.com/chris-moore-fi…

WVU GDC Student Games Page:
http://gamedevclub.orgs.wvu.edu/stude…

Marble Maze – Jordan Hallow
http://www.hallowgames.com/portfolio/…

Giant Skies – Veronica Blackshire, James Cockburn, Destiny Dunn, Jordan Hallow, Keenan McClane
http://gamedevclub.orgs.wvu.edu/stude…

Homage – Kati Baker, Taylor Cutlip, Jason Huffman
http://gamedevclub.orgs.wvu.edu/stude…

A Day in the Life – James Cockburn,
Destiny Dunn, Keenan McClane, John Jacko
http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/d…

Blood Moon – Taylor Cutlip, Connor Haynes, Billy Marty
http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/b…

Keepers Fate – Jordan Hallow
http://globalgamejam.org/2016/games/p…

Hugs – Connor Haynes
https://proudmomgames.itch.io/hugs

Pom Pixels – Destiny Dunn

Quest to Find All – Destiny Dunn, Jordan Hallow, Connor Haynes, Ryan Kubik
https://wvugamedevelopers.itch.io/que…

Voxel Engine – Destiny Dunn, Connor Haynes, Ryan Kubik

Sweet and Spooky – Kati Baker, Gabby Dumire, Destiny Dunn, Ryan Kubik, Ahmed Mian, Tristan Snyder
http://www.gm48.net/game/?id=331

Pirates – Gabby Dumire, Ryan Kubik, Tristan Snyder
https://friendlyfrog.itch.io/pirates

Frog Clicker – Gabby Dumire

Lobsterbotomy – Gabby Dumire, Jordan Hallow, Connor Haynes, Ryan Kubik, Curtis Stapleton, Tristan Snyder
https://wvugamedevelopers.itch.io/lob…

Hank Heads Home – Connor Haynes, Elliot Imlay, James Jackman, Ahmed Mian, Ken Wu
http://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/h…

Microwave Master – Gabby Dumire, Michael Dumire, Destiny Dunn, Tristan Snyder
http://globalgamejam.org/2017/games/m…

VG Trivia Quiz App – Jordan Hallow
http://www.hallowgames.com/portfolio/…

Unstable – Ryan Kubik
https://law5guy.itch.io/unstable

Perspectrum – Connor Haynes, Jacob Stevens, Gabby Dumire

Watch on YouTube