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Beginners Game Development with PICO-8, April 2020

Beginners Game Development with PICO-8

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this three week evening course, you will make a tiny game using the PICO-8 “fantasy console” – a delightful game making tool for retro style games.

Over three weekly sessions, you will create your own retro arcade hi-score chaser. This course takes a hands-on approach – you will follow along the development of the game during the workshop.

This course presents a great opportunity to learn the basics of programming in a fun and friendly environment.

You will benefit from Darren’s experience running game making events over the past 5 years, and from his own game projects. Darren will highlight common pitfalls faced by beginners and provide useful strategies on how you can avoid them in your own games.

Details

  • When: 7pm-9pm on Wednesdays 1th, 8th & 15th April 2020.
  • Where: To Be Announced.
  • Price: €75 per person.
  • Register your interest: http://bit.ly/learntomakegames2020
  • Limited spaces available.
  • You will be provided with a copy of PICO-8.

The skills and knowledge gained in this course will help equip you to make your own PICO-8 games and share them with the world.

This course will touch on the following topics:

  • Game Design,
  • 2D Pixel Art,
  • Game Audio and Music,
  • Programming.

This course presents a great opportunity to learn the basics of programming. PICO-8 has a very short loop between writing code and testing it out, so is very well suited to giving you quick feedback on your first (or subsequent) attempts at programming. The skills you learn can potentially be used to develop games or give you confidence in your ability to pursue other projects.

Who is this course for?

This course is aimed at adults (18 years+) who are curious about games and how to make them.

You do not need to have any prior experience in any aspect of the game development to qualify for this course. If you are interested and willing to learn, then you are already prepared!

Outcomes

Here is what you will have achieved by the end of the course:

  • You will make your first game using PICO-8.
  • You will share your tiny creation with the world using PICO-8’s online platform.
  • You will also get to network with people who are interested in game development.

Requirements

Students are required to:

  • Bring their own laptop with cables.
  • Be familiar with using computers and browsing the internet.
  • Be willing to learn by making mistakes.
  • Supply a contact email address for course correspondence and registering their copy of PICO-8.
  • All participants are required to agree to the Code of Conduct.

A copy of PICO-8 is provided for this course. If you already own a copy of PICO-8 please contact us for a €15 discount.

What is PICO-8?

PICO-8 is a “fantasy console” created by Lexaloffle. A fantasy console is an application that emulates the restrictions of retro-era game consoles, mostly used by hobbyists.

PICO-8 also provides simple yet powerful tools to make and share your own retro style games. It is designed to make developing games a joy.

The artificial limitations built into PICO-8 serve as a walled sandbox that you can play with. It’s often easier for us humans to be creative within clear limitations. It is also very common that beginners over-scope their projects. PICO-8 solves some of the problems of over-scoping your project by virtue of these limitations. Many hobbyist game developers and educators use PICO-8 to make their first games and teach concepts of programming.

Regarding programming, PICO-8 uses it’s own subset of the Lua programming language. Lua is commonly used in the Game industry to allow people to develop their own custom game “mods” for their favourite games on Desktop platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux). If you are curious about the application of your programming skills after the course, your familiarity with PICO-8’s Lua can translate into Lua, which can be used to develope larger games. The approach to coding, testing and fixing your code will be applicable everywhere!

Link: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Course Goals

Here are the goals we hope to achieve with our course.

Teach beginners that they can make games

Give anyone who is curious about games a taste of game development.

Focus on skills and approach

Empower and encourage course participants to continue making their own games after the course has finished by applying a practical approach to classwork.

Provide a friendly, safe learning environment

We (Mind Cauldron and Just Art It, Galway) believe that you deserve to be comfortable and safe, to enjoy learning, and simply in general! We have a Code of Conduct that helps us to keep everything in order which every student and tutor must read, understand and agree to before they can attend or participate in the course.

About the Tutor

Darren Kearney (Mind Cauldron) is a game developer and game development community leader based in Galway, Ireland. Darren has been running game jams (game making events), workshops, courses and other game development related events in Galway and around Ireland since 2014.

Darren organises a lot of local game development related events. He’s an organiser behind Galway Game Jam events, organiser of monthly local game developer meetup group 1GAM Galway, a board member of Global GameCraft CLtG., and the site organiser for Global Game Jam ‘19 and Global Game Jam ’20 in Galway.

Organising and participating in game making events for over 5 years has given Darren valuable insight into the common pitfalls faced by people making games. Darren will guide you through making your own tiny game, highlighting these pitfalls so you can avoid them.

Darren is also super friendly guy who wants to bring the joy of gamedev! Darren also sports an impressive beard, which some suspect is a source of his wizardly knowledge.

Teaching Style

Darren uses a practical, workshop style approach. Which means, rather than listening to a lecture, you will be following along with step-by-step instruction with some space for your own creative flair.

Key concepts will be highlighted along the way. Notes will be provided.

You are welcome to ask questions (which is why we keep the class size small!). When faced with something you don’t understand, that’s totally normal and okay. Darren will offer an explanation if asked and wants you to feel comfortable making mistakes, playing around with the possibilities, both during and after the course.

All participants are required to agree to our Code of Conduct.

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Global Game Jam 2020 Galway Roundup

Hi folks,

Thanks to everyone for helping to make Global Game Jam ’20 another success, and especially to our great team of organisers and shed full of jammers at the Galway jam-site.

A very important message about taking breaks and taking care of yourself was at the heart of this jam. This is something I generally focus on with our Galway Game Jams, so we were delighted that this message was at the heart of the Global Game Jam 2020 Keynote.

You can check out the games made this year on the official page here: https://globalgamejam.org/2020/jam-sites/galway-ireland/games

If you have any questions give me a shout. For now I will be taking a day off to rest, and play some of these games again!

Big thanks to Galway Film Centre for supporting us, without their help we would not have been able to provide free entry!

Thanks to GamerFest for supplying prizes for our People’s Choice award and sharing our event on social media!

Thanks to Andrew in Seattle for assisting with the cross-site collaboration experiment, as well as the awesome team that made it work!

I’ll remember this one for a long time – really positive athmosphere with a bunch of chilled out people all foccussed on their projects with a drive to get things done.

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Global Game Jam ’20 Seattle-Galway Collaboration Experiment!

As Galway’s Site Organiser, I’ve joined the first ever Global Game Jam cross-site collaboration experiment with a small bunch of participating Site Organisers across the world. Our Galway site will be teaming up with Seattle, and we will have at least one team with members in both sides of the planet, jamming together. How exciting!

Galway and Seattle are also sister cities! This is news to me, though the Seattle-Galway sister city status was established in the 1980’s. In fact there is a monument in both cities, two rocks, which point to each other in a straight line through the Earth. A great photo-op, and sure jammers on both sides will likely have to deal with the rain!

Hopefully this collaboration experiment will be an interesting challenge and will provide a more “global” experience for the jammers who take part.

Unlike the regular Global Game Jam team formation’s, we will need to get our cross-site teams established before the event in order for the teams to fully participate across time-zones.

If you are interested in joining our jam-site and participating in the cross-site collaboration with Seattle, please get in touch as soon as possible.

I am excited!

You can read more about sister cities here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_and_politics_of_Seattle#Sister_cities

https://www.seattle.gov/oir/sister-cities/seattles-21-sister-cities/galway

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Site Approved for Global Game Jam ’20

Hi everyone! Great news. Our Galway jam-site has been approved!

Jammer registration will open on November 8th. You can check it out here: https://globalgamejam.org/2020/jam-sites/galway-ireland

At this early stage if you have any feedback or requests please get in touch at darren.ggj@mindcauldron.com.

The upcoming GGJ20 will be the 6th Global Game Jam event to take place in Galway, and the second of such events that I have lead as an organiser. I am looking forward to it and hope we can continue to have a great time with our lovely jam.

Our venue will be the PorterShed, Galway. They are simply incredible. Our game development community in Galway has always been given an awesome space for our game jams ever since the PorterShed was established, and it has been the home for our monthly 1GAM Galway meetups since late 2017. The natural choice for us for the next Global Game Jam.

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Gamescom 2019

Well that was intense!

I’m super busy for the next while but will catch up on doing a follow up to my little adventure to Köln, Germany for one of the largest game conferences on the planet.

In short, I went over without a plan and a desire to meet people and learn about the event. It was my first game convention outside of Ireland and I don’t really have any demo worth showing at the moment. I met a bunch of awesome people and have a much better idea about what I will do next year.

I’d recommend it, even though the whole thing is madness. Laters!

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Recently started streaming! Learn with me.

Mind Cauldron's Stream Starting scene on Twitch

I’ve recently started experimenting with streaming.

People have streamed for years, why now?

Streaming is still kind of a strange (and scary) new world for me. For the longest time I have generally been disinterested in streaming, choosing instead to view pre-recorded videos of my favourite game developers and interesting people doing their thing. I always felt streaming was kind of disingenuous and relied on cheap psychological tricks, sensationalism and controversy to get peoples attention. Much like modern advertising and sensationalist news headlines. However, I have slowly been discovering a more wholesome side of streaming on my personal side-quest to learn of wholesome things.

Wholesome streaming…

Have you ever watched the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross on twitch? I have, and I absolutely adore it. Ross delivers a tutorial, but he does so with an effortless skill, creating a calm and safe space simply bustling with creativity.

Clearly Bob Ross was very professional about the whole set up and he managed to create a wonderful atmosphere, where he put his viewers – who he would address as his students – at ease, and encourage them to make the best of their mistakes while they followed along at home.

One day, watching the stream, it sort of occurred to me that I wanted to do something like that, and that I could do that. I was already planning to get a computer for making games – now I wanted one to also stream!

Computer – check! Mic – not yet… (please wait, researching!)

Now I that I have my computer and I am working away at gamedev, I have finally put some time aside to learn more about streaming and find channels and streamers of people who are doing things I find interesting.

You can come across some lovely gems out there. There are quite a few streamers that have a great connection with their viewers and have a great time sharing what they love with everyone. Streamers such as the talented Johnathan Ong – who even inspired me to make art one day with his creative expression of a composition that I love.

It makes me think about the passion that is shown by the streamers I like. I wonder is that a key element? I guess we will find out!

I am interested in streaming to for a few reasons. Let’s be a little reductive and write them into a list:

  • I stream to share what I love doing.
  • I stream to reach more people with my projects who might actually want to support either me or the project.
  • I stream for the fun of it, because why not?

Building a community is probably the most difficult thing there. It takes time, and there needs to be a project to gather around. Currently there is not even much project to share, so my work is cut out for me!

Stream experiments and plans for future streams.

I am currently focusing on creating things and playing indie video games that I enjoy.

So far I have streamed:

  • experiments in game development with PICO-8
  • digital painting (fan art)
  • playing Risk of Rain2
  • playing Heat Signature

.This weekend I will be streaming my desktop for Game Jam +, because I love gamejams – and why not?

If you have any suggestions or feedback please let me know! You can scroll down on the twitch channel and fill out the suggestion box. I suppose I should probably link you to the stream after all of this!

Now I can finally add to the chorus of the internet: please follow and subscribe!

You can check out my experimental stream here: https://twitch.tv/mindcauldrongames

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Beginners Game Development with PICO-8

Beginners Game Development with PICO-8

COURSE DESCRIPTION

In this three week evening course Darren Kearney (Mind Cauldron) will teach you the basics of making tiny games using PICO-8 – a “fantasy console” and delightful game making tool.

This course takes a hands-on approach to learning. Each student will make a tiny retro arcade hi-score chaser from design to delivery in only 3 weeks.

This course presents a great opportunity to learn the basics of programming in a fun and friendly environment.

From his experience with running game making events over the past 4 years and from his own game projects, Darren will be able to flag common pitfalls faced by beginners and offer suggestions on how you can avoid them.

Details

  • When: 7pm-9pm on Wednesdays 5th, 12th & 19th June.
  • Where: Just Art It, 33 Dominick Street Lower, Galway, Ireland
  • Price: €75 per person.
  • Max capacity: 8 people.
  • Apply online: http://bit.ly/learntomakegames

You will be provided with your own copy of PICO-8. Please see requirements below.

The skills and knowledge gained in this course will help equip you to make your own PICO-8 games and share them with the world.

This course will touch on the following topics:

  • Game Design,
  • 2D Pixel Art,
  • Game Audio and Music,
  • Programming.

This course presents a great opportunity to learn the basics of programming. The skills you learn can be used to develop games or other projects.

Who is this course for?

This course is aimed at adults who are curious about games and how to make them. You do not need to have any prior experience in any aspect of the game development to qualify for this course. If you are interested and willing to learn, then you are already prepared!

Outcomes

Here is what you will have achieved by the end of the course:

  • You will have made your first tiny game – a retro arcade classic hi-score chaser – using PICO-8,
  • shared your tiny creation with the world using PICO-8’s online platform.

Requirements

Students are required to:

  • Bring their own laptop with cables.
  • Be familiar with using computers and browsing the internet.
  • Supply a contact email address for course correspondence and registering their copy of PICO-8.

A copy of PICO-8 is required for the course. This is included in the course price. If you already have your own copy of PICO-8 please contact us before the course begins.

What is PICO-8?

PICO-8 is a “fantasy console” created by Lexaloffle. A fantasy console is an application that emulates the restrictions of retro-era game consoles, mostly used by hobbyists.

PICO-8 also provides simple yet powerful tools to make and share your own retro style games. It is designed to make developing games a joy.

The artificial limitations built into PICO-8 serve as a walled sandbox that you can play with. It’s often easier for us humans to be creative within clear limitations. It is also very common that beginners over-scope their projects. PICO-8 solves some of the problems of over-scoping your project by virtue of these limitations. Many hobbyist game developers and educators use PICO-8 to make their first games and teach concepts of programming.

Regarding programming, PICO-8 uses it’s own subset of the Lua programming language. Lua is commonly used in the Game industry to allow people to develop their own custom game “mods” for their favourite games on Desktop platforms (Windows/Mac/Linux). If you are curious about the application of your programming skills after the course, your familiarity with PICO-8’s Lua can translate into Lua, which can be used to develope larger games. The approach to coding, testing and fixing your code will be applicable everywhere!

Link: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Course Goals

Here are the goals we hope to achieve with our course.

Teach beginners that they can make games

Give anyone who is curious about games a taste of game development.

Focus on skills and approach

Empower and encourage course participants to continue making their own games after the course has finished by applying a practical approach to classwork.

Provide a friendly, safe learning environment

We (Mind Cauldron and Just Art It, Galway) believe that you deserve to be comfortable and safe, to enjoy learning, and simply in general! We have a Code of Conduct that helps us to keep everything in order which every student and tutor must read, understand and agree to before they can attend or participate in the course.

About the Tutor

Darren Kearney (Mind Cauldron) is a game developer and game development community leader based in Galway, Ireland. Darren has been running game jams (game making events), workshops, courses and other game development related events in Galway and around Ireland since 2014.

Darren organises a lot of local game development related events. He’s an organiser behind Galway Game Jam, is a board member of Global GameCraft CLtG., organiser of monthly local game developer meetup group 1GAM Galway, and was the site organiser for Global Game Jam ‘19 at PorterShed, Galway.

Organising and participating in game making events for over 4 years has given Darren insight into the common pitfalls faced by people making games. Darren will guide you through making your own tiny game, highlighting these pitfalls so you can avoid them. Darren is also super friendly guy who wants to bring the joy and challenge of making games to anyone in Galway who has a notion of making games! Darren also sports an impressive beard, so we suspect he has hidden wizardly powers!

Teaching Style

Darren uses a practical, workshop style approach.

You will be following along with instruction rather than listening to a lecture. By going step by step through the process of making a tiny game, highlighting key concepts along the way, you will gain more confidence and remember the lesson better.

You are encouraged to focus as the time will be limited. You are welcome to ask questions (which is why we keep the class size small!). When faced with something you don’t understand, that’s totally normal and okay. Darren will offer an explanation if asked and wants you to feel comfortable making mistakes and playing around with the possibilities, both during and after the course.

All participants are required to agree to out Code of Conduct.

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Introduction to Game Development with Pico-8

This summer Mind Cauldron will be running a series of game development workshops for beginners.

Learn to code and make a tiny retro-style arcade game. Learn to make games for yourself, for your friends or your family.

This workshop aims to teach you basics of coding using PICO-8. The programming language used is a sub-set of of the Lua programming language. Lua is a tiny embedded language often used in video game modding.

PICO-8 itself is a tiny game engine and editor. You can export your games to be playable in a web browser, or on desktop (Windows, Mac, Linux).

The outcome from the course is an understanding of basic game development using PICO-8. The lessons learned here can help you understand retro games as well as give you a wider understanding of game development that you can apply to other game engines.

Details on the workshops: TBA

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Winding down Free-Hosting for WordPress plan – deadline 28th February 2019

I’ve been running a free hosting plan for over a year for my first WordPress development clients who opted in. Unfortunately it is time for the free plan to come to an end. Thank you to everyone who has participated in this fun and educational experiment.

If your website is currently on this hosting plan you must make arrangements to migrate your WordPress site before the deadline.

“When do I have to migrate my website?”

The Free WordPress Hosting servers will be taken offline at the start of next month. The deadline is Thursday 28th of February 2019 at 5pm.

“What do I have to do with my website?”

To keep your website online you must find another hosting arrangement. Here are your options:

I am grateful that you have chosen to stay with me on my web development journey by sticking with my web hosting to this point.

Current clients will be notified by email at the start of the sunset period at the beginning of February 2019.

On purchasing a Basic WordPress Hosting plan for your website we will discuss your requirements and assist in transferring your website at no additional cost.

“Can we still avail of Free Hosting if my website is for a charity or non-profit organization?”

Requests from charities and non-profits will be assessed on a case by case basis. Please send your queries to hosting@mindcauldron.com. Thank you!

“Why is the free hosting plan stopping?”

As a quick refresher, the free WordPress hosting was a project I was running for my very first web development clients. The free cost was due to the fact it was experimental and I was still learning a lot about web servers and hosting. I was able to build a lightning fast server that could serve basic WordPress sites from Dublin, Ireland to Vancouver, Canada, in under 3 seconds.

Over the past several months the cost of running the servers has increased and I am no longer able to sustain the increased cost and effort to maintain them.

To respond to the situation, I am bringing the free hosting offer to a close with a month’s notice as well as offering a new paid hosting plan for anyone who wishes to host with Mind Cauldron

During this sunset of the free hosting servers, I will be investing in a new infrastructure for Mind Cauldron’s paid WordPress hosting plan. This new set up aims to be more sustainable and easily maintained, providing a more robust hosting solution.

If you have any questions, please get in touch!

Thank you for choosing Mind Cauldron!

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Introduction to 3D Modelling with Blender

3d modelling with Blender workshops by MindCauldron

Learn the fundamentals of 3D modelling in this practical workshop series.

When:

  • Day 1 – Saturday 16th March, 2019
  • Day 2 – Saturday 23rd March, 2019

Where:

PorterShed,
Eyre Square,
Galway

https://portershed.com for detailed map.

Tickets:

€100 per person for the workshops. Book your place: https://mindcauldron.clr.events/event/127860

A Certificate of Completion will be presented by Mind Cauldron to each workshop participant on successful completion of the workshops.*

What the workshops will cover

We will cover the basics of these topics over the two workshops:

  • Blender’s Interface.
  • Box modelling.
  • UV unwrapping.
  • Rigging – make a basic 3D game character model with armature/skeleton for animation.

It’s a lot of material to cover. Thankfully we have an experienced 3D artist to guide us! There will also be homework between workshop days to help the new knowledge stick.

Our goal is to deliver a practical workshop that teaches you everything you need to know to leave the workshop with enough skills and confidence to create 3D art assets by yourself.

Our approach puts practicality first. Your instructor will guide you through the processes of 3D modelling in Blender. While you follow along, you are building up your ‘muscle memory’ of the skills. This approach will make 3D modeling become a more familiar, less daunting task.

Requirements

Please ensure you have the following at the workshop:

  • A laptop/computer with its cables.
  • A 3-button mouse (left-click, right-click and scroll-wheel)
  • A copy of Blender installed.

You must be aged 18 or over to participate in this workshop.

All participants must agree to our Code of Conduct to participate in the workshop.

About Your Instructor

Your instructor will be Trevor Burke, a 3D artist working in the games industry.

Trevor has years of 3D experience with Blender as his modelling tool of choice.

Trevor has previously delivered a more pared-back version of this workshop as part of a gamejam survival series. For this intensive workshop, we will cover even more ground.

Part of something larger, #MarchOfGameDev

During March 2019, I’m organising a series of game development workshops in which lead to the next Galway Game Jam!

A gamejam is a game making event. You can take the skills you learn at these workshops to the gamejam, to apply them in a real life project with a team and get a taste of what it’s like to make games.

If you’d like to get in touch with me about this 3d Modelling workshop series, or #MarchOfGameDev events, you can email info@mindcauldron.com.

—

* Please note this certificate is not accredited by any educational institution or authority, though it may still serve to demonstrate your learning commitments and acomplishments to employers or education institutions.