Thursday, February 10, 2011. The last day of Casual Connect Europe 2011 and the day Brain and I will be presenting The Ultimate Celebration in front of industry veterans. Our presentation was not till 12:00 pm so I had some time to attend the “HTML5 for Game Developers” lecture. HTML 5 is now in all major web browsers. It supports Canvas 3D (WebGL) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). This can allow new styling options. Video now have api access to hardware features. Sound can be in one file and supports surround sound 7.1. At the moment, audio is not fully implemented and sound generation can only be done in Mac OS with a hack. There is a generic library and one can create a game engine in it. The Web will be the distribution like Facebook or Chrome web store. This new standard allows for GPU acceleration for CSS3, Canvas and WebGL. At the moment is is going through some feature testing. Other HTML 5 features include web socket so there could be network games within this standard. I was very interested in this talk as has HTML5 can be the future platforms in which games will exist on. After that I went to the foyer to find Brain so we can practice up our presentation.
Vlad Micu, one of the organizers, asked for all our powerpoints to be place on his computer so they had ready to go. I basically had our presentation memorized slide by slide but I was still extremely nervous. When I was networking, I asked a representative from King.com to come see the games at the presentation. I also saw the other Game Jam winners preparing their presentations. Everyone was a little on edge but still in a happy mood. Before we knew it 12 o’clock rolled around and we all headed to Hall E, the place where the presentation was going to take place. Vald Micu is from Gamesauce.org and will be the MC for the presentation. We did not know what order we where going to be presenting in. When Vald had his slides up, it was in alphabetical order based on the first name of the game. Our game was last because it was listed as Ultimate Celebration. I’m not a big fan of going last as I would like to get it done with. After sitting through 9 of our colleagues games, the spot light was now on us. Our presentation was set up like a back and forth. So I will talk about one topic and then Brian will be the next to talk. We volleyed between us. I thought our presentation went very well and we even ended below the 3 minutes time limit! The only part that I thought I stumbled on was at the end when I thanked everyone but overall thought it was strong.
After the presentations, each team took out their laptops to demonstrate their games to the audience. We had quite a few people interested in our game. People from small indie teams to large companies. We even found a musician that can create custom music for the game. Music is a huge emotion driver for our game so it is good to know we may have found someone to make our game better. Another person also commented how our game reminded him of Blueberry Garden. I have heard much about that game and hope to play it once I get back home. This was also the perfect opportunity for me to try out the other Game Jam winner games as the Game Jam just happened 2 Saturdays ago. They were definitely fun and creative. I also got the opportunity to play Vald’s team game. Their game was a platformer but the high of each platform represented a topic that may be the cause for human extinction like population growth to pollution. The height is manipulated based on the player actions like sort of weapon they use. A very interesting use of the topic extinction. After most people left all the Game Jammers packed up and met outside the room. There we all exchanged business cards. Some people left and went to the hotel. Brain and I went to a cafe under the Metro Station with Javier, from Gamesauce, Randall, from team Ned and the Team from Brazil. Some had coffee and others had to really delicious looking Apple Strudel. After we finished our little eats, Brain and I took the metro back to our hotel to freshen up. Tonight will be our last night and we wanted to go to at least one museum before we left.
The museum we went to is the Hamburg Kunsthalle Art Museum. It was a really big museum and apparently they had some sort of event going on as there were a lot of people seated by the entrance way in front of a podium. They had artwork from the 13th century all they way to modern times. We worked our way through the museum in a chronicle order. We had to pass through a cafe before we could get started with the 13th century. We had entered in a large hall with a huge marble stair case. The room made my jaw drop to the floor at just how beautiful it was. The walls had really ornate designs and there were beautiful painting renders that tiled the walls. It really felt like we went back in time. As we walked through the different halls I saw how the paintings progress through the years. There is even a dedicated section to Picaso. Just like the entrance way to the old art, modern art also had a cool beginning. There is this long thin, lcd display starting from the top of the stairs that went all they way to the bottom. Sentences were being displayed in English from the bottom going all the way up. It felt weird walking down the stairs with bright works going pasted you and up. Once we finished up the museum, we went to a German restaurant by the Metro station near our hotel. Pork seems to be the main specialty of Germany. I had pork with mushrooms and onions. I was so good! The meat was tender and the mushrooms were sauteed well. We went back to the hotel after our delicious meal and began packing. Our flight back to the states was going to be early in the morning so we had to wake up by 4 am. I have gotten so much swag from the conference I had trouble packing it in my luggage but eventually I was able to bring everything. I also had a huge back of chocolate for my professors and friends who are helping a lot for missing week nine of school. I am glad that I have been given the opportunity to attend Causal Connect Germany and hope I will be able to go again next year. The bar has been set high so next year’s Game Jam I will have to be even more creative! : )
Lawrence Jung 