Gamebridge Unityversity

Game Developer Skill Specializations

There are 8 main skill specializations involved in game development, each with sub-skills, and you will learn a bit of each before discovering which you’re best at. Game production Game writing Game design Game programming Game art Game audio Game playtesting Discover your specialties Do you know what skill set you want to specialize in?…

Solar Powered Studio Buying Guide

Solar power cost is now cheaper than grid power and it can power your studio in an RV or through power outages. The complete solar power kit ingredients list Deep cycle battery stores the power Solar panel collects the power Solar charge controller distributes power from panel to battery to inverter AC Power inverter turns…

Volumetric Light

Volumetric light is a beautiful effect you can add to Unity to enhance the realism of lighting. Real light reflects from air particles to cast glowing cones between the source and the surfaces of objects. Unity doesn’t have this built in yet, but there are several packages that can help you add it. SlightlyMad Volumetric Light by…

Art Tablet Buying Guide

Artists need tablets to draw and sculpt. Tablet choice depends on what you have, need to do and can afford. What do you need a tablet to do? To choose a tablet, first consider which apps you want to use with stylus input. 2D Drawing, storyboarding & concept art If 2D drawing is the only thing you…

Rolling Adjustable Desks

Rolling adjustable desks make it easy to organize and collaborate. Why should teams use rolling desks? AAA studios like Valve, Bungie and Blizzard use rolling desks to help teams organize. Teams can self-organize next to the people they need to work with. IT setups are manageable units with cables accessible without crawling. Electrical gear and data is safer off of the ground…

Game Programming

Game programming makes you a wizard who can create universes with your mind. Start making games with Unity in C# When people recommend a first language to begin learning to code, C# and Unity is one of the best first languages because making games can be more fun than playing them. Or make games with flowcharts before learning…

Unityversity Bootcamp 2

Bootcamp 2 is opening up to new participants doing the alpha phase and previous participants with games to refine and market into beta phase. Bootcamp 1 is complete Bootcamp 1 was a success with many teams demoing games they built in six weeks at our first demo night Oct 29 ’16. Check out the games…

Game Writing

Game writing starts at the beginning of a game’s concept: Who are the player and characters, where are they, what is happening and why are they motivated to do something about it? Explore the writing category to learn more about writing. How to get started at game writing Start by writing some non-linear game stories in…

Playtesting

Playtesting isn’t the same as bug testing. Playtesting is about getting quality feedback to make a game more fun as well as more reliable. How to get good feedback on games Watch James Portnow’s Extra Credits episode: To summarize: Overcome pride and don’t get defensive Don’t reject feedback about things you intend to fix Playtest…

Make game, become developer

Make a game, become a developer, learn as you go, discover your specialties. Some people believe you have to learn how to be a developer before you can make games. Make a game The first step towards becoming a game developer is to make a first game. Don’t worry that you don’t have experience yet, you will…

VR Game Dev Hardware Buying Guide

What to buy and why for differet game dev budgets. You may not be doing VR yet but you will want to get hardware that can handle it and it may make a believer out of you. The basic checklist depends on what kind of games you want to develop but here’s the basic checklist…

Indie Games PR

Indie Games PR Indie games need public relations to succeed. Start by watching Thomas Reisenegger’s GDC 2016 talk, The 5 Pillars & Pitfalls of Indie Games PR: Thomas breaks down the most important things to get right as follows (along with our own commentary): Get Competitive There’s a lot of competition. Don’t let it discourage you…

Game Production

Learning about game production is the starting point of becoming a game developer and managing your career as a developer and your company in the industry. Start by thinking like a game producer A game producer is a person who leads a game development team and manages the business aspects of the project in addition to…

Game Demo Night 2016: Noisebridge Unityversity Bootcampers present their games

Meet Gamebridge Unityversity’s first ever cohort of Noisebridge Bootcampers and play their games! WHAT: Gamebridge Unityversity Bootcamp Demo Night: Play our games! PARTY: Laserbridge: Noisebridge Hackerspace’s lasery Halloween costume benefit! WHO: Do you like games, costumes, hackerspaces, and LASERS? WHEN: Saturday Oct 29 7PM-11PM during the Laserbridge party at Noisebridge WHERE: Noisebridge.net Hackerspace at 2169 Mission St. San Francisco CA 94110 GAMES: Itch.io…

Game Design

Game design expands a game concept into a set of interesting mechanics for players to master and make choices with that give rise to dynamics that make the game more than the sum of its parts and aesthetics that make the experience memorable and emotional. Becoming a game designer Most aspiring game developers start out…

Gamebridge Unityversity Press Kit

Gamebridge Unityversity is a global game school teaching game development with self-paced tutorials, weekly classes and quarterly bootcamps at hackerspaces, high schools and colleges. Founded in the Bay Area at Noisebridge and Hacker Dojo hackerspaces, Gamebridge curriculum bootstraps beginners to learn the diversity of game dev skills including production, writing, design, programming, art, audio, testing, learning and marketing….

Simbridge Hackerspace Simulator

Simbridge is an FPS/VR simulation of Noisebridge Hackerspace. It exists to share what hackerspaces are about with those who haven’t been to one like Noisebridge yet and to showcase creative projects. UPDATED: Now with Matterport scanned 3D model mode Simulated Stations The simulation of learning activity stations within the space such as 3D printers, soldering…

Fungus FPS

Download from FungusFPS Git Repository Fungus FPS Integrates Fungus free flowchart-based visual novel storytelling with an FPS or other mouselook controller so you can see messages as you explore a world and Cardboard VR support by making the dialogue render in world space. Next step is to package this for submission to the Fungus open-source project.

Unity tricks and tips

There are many tricks and tips that Unity developers pick up through experience that you can pick up faster by learning and sharing what you know. If you have tips of your own, write them in as comments below. Editor Layout Two Project Panels You can have two Project tabs, one in vertical one column…

Game Marketing

Game marketing is crucial to making your game known and getting people to play and pay for it. Game industry bizdev experts to follow and read articles by: Ryan Clark

Unityversity Faculty

Mentor Faculty Gamebridge is taught by a cadre of dedicated mentors. Alex Peake Alex is the founder of Gamebridge Unityversity and developer of Code Hero. Alex also built the SDK at Meta. Michael Vaganov Michael taught the game development curriculum for Devry University and teaches a game development program at Sacred Heart School. Michael has…

Visual Novels

Visual novels are a hugely creative genre of game that is beginner and writer friendly to make. You can learn about how to make visual novels in our guide to making different game types. Creative example visual novels Digital: A Hate Story Digital is a dialup modem BBS computer mystery/romance set five minutes into the…

Game Writing & Design Tools

Writing and designing games with non-linear branching narratives, player choices and event-driven dynamic dialogue require a new general of writing tools. Articy Draft Articy Draft is a flowchart of flowcharts with relational data fields, queries, lua scripting and location mapping all tied together. In our humble opinion, it is the holy grail of game writing and…

Making different game types

Once you grasp the basics of Unity, you’ll want to consider what kind of game you want to make and what tutorials and assets to start using to learn how to build what you want. Some major game types Here’s a broad overview of some types of games that you could try to make. 2D: Simpler than…

Version control

Version control is a service that syncs up your projects online so that you can restore and branch your projects and collaborate with other developers. Here’s a high-level description of how version control works. Creating Unity Project First You first make a Unity project before preparing to move it to version control. Creating Repositories You begin…

Level of detail optimization with LOD Groups

The two biggest drains on your game’s frame rate are script execution and geometry, and you can save a ton of geometry by using LOD groups to make your objects swap to simpler versions or cull (hide) when you get far away. Here’s how I applied this to the numerous red chairs in the ITU…

Audio Gear Buying Guide

The right audio gear can help you get started without spending much till you get more experienced and serious about upgrading for live performance. Mac Only Music Software Apple makes two superb music programs that are Mac only, so if you have a Mac use them! Garage Band (Free) This is probably bundled with your Mac already. It…

Noisebridge 2/6 Camp Live Twitch Stream Notes Design Week

We are streaming at https://www.twitch.tv/primerist the second week of Gamebridge Unityversity’s Noisebridge bootcamp group. This week is going to be all about game design!

Codebridge

Codebridge is the programming class of Gamebridge Unityversity every Tuesday from 8-11PM at Noisebridge Hackerspace. Codebridge focuses on learning C# programming with Unity, but is open to people learning other game engines and programming langauges. While most of our participants are learning C# programming, we have people using Arcadia Clojure (scheme/lisp for Unity), some using Unreal…