And we are back from our N Design duties as the event comes to an end and everyone from around Brazil returns home after a rainy and chilly week in Curitiba. As mentioned on an earlier post, we went to N Design as supporters of the event, with two adugans working on the organization itself (on management), by organizing an art-games (or expressive games) exhibition and with a series of 5 workshops about indie game development that was named MegaMergulho.

The exhibition was about expressive games, games that through game-only means (mostly their rules and mechanics) can express an idea or make some kind of commentary, in the vein of what Ian Bogost calls procedural rhetoric. Short on budget, we had to chose only 7 games to expose, and 6 of them couldn’t be demanding since they would run on relatively weak hardware. We tried to chose diverse kinds of games, but all of them were indie in the end. The exhibited games were: Michael “Father” Kasprzak and co. Towlr (and other puzzles), Jason Rohrer’s Gravitation, David Shute’s Small Worlds, La Molleindustria’s Everyday the Same Dream, Jason Nelson’s Game game game and again game,  Terry Cavanagh’s Don’t Look Back and Jonathan Blow’s (and David Hellman’s) Braid.

The purpose of the exhibition was to promote games as a creative and expressive medium and also purge the common misconception, one that is rampant in Brazil, that the game industry and games as a medium can be summarized only by the mainstream AAA games. You can see some photos of the exhibition below (click to enlarge).

An overview of the exhibition space.

Visitors enjoying the games.

Guilherme Xavier from Donsoft chatting with the guys from Ratel Studio.

The minimalist Small Worlds.

The thought-provoking Everyday the Same Dream.

The frustrating experience of Towlr.

The eccentric Game, game, game and again game.

The metaphorical Gravitation.

The difficult, but rewarding, Don’t look back.

And last, but not the least, the time bending action of Braid.

About the MegaMergulho, it was a series of 5 workshops about some (but not all) game development topics: Conceptualization, Game Design, Visual Development, Sound Design and Project Management. The first one, conceptualization, was basically a workshop about going indie, about coming up with a vision and conceptualizing a game that follows that vision. We asked our participants to create a game vision about the theme “Desert”.  The second one, about game design, we showed our own conceptual framework about games and made a comprehensive overview about the game designer and his job. The third one was about visual development, showing our own case on Tsar. The fourth workshop was about sound design with some theory over sound design and then practice by composing sound effects. The last workshop was about project management, we showed our management processes and also we made our own take on Chris Hecker’s finish your game rant from the last GDC, by encouraging everyone to organize, develop and finish their games.  All in all, the workshops were a resounding success and we’d like to thank everyone that participated and contributed to it.

So now that we are relieved of our side questing, we will return to the development of Tsar Project. Expect a Tsar Update soon!

Yesterday was Aduge’s 3rd birthday!!!

After a long era of post starve, we have fresh news that just came out of the oven! And smells like cherry!
We are eager to say that Aduge is now an official supporter of N Design 2010, the National Conference of Design Students from Brazil, which will happen from 11 to 18 july in Curitiba, Paraná.

N Design is an event that brings together design students from all over Brazil to discuss topics related to design, generally speaking. This year the event’s theme will be “Immersion”, proposing to have more in depth discussions as well as the participants enjoyment of the event, caring about the continuity of the activities after it. The main activity format will be the “Divings”, workshops from students for students about something related to design (or not).

You may ask yourself what does it have to do with us, huh? We’re doing some interesting things for this event. It’s a very special package filled with:

· The MegaDiving, that is a series of divings with the theme “game developing”. It’ll be five days with activities about concepting, game design, graphics, audio and project management focused on small team game development. Our intention is to spread the indie word, looking forward to stimulate people to take part of the indie movement.

· An exposition about Art Games on which we’ll expose ten games that can convey the concept of games as an art form, so that more people can get to know about it. We had not yet decided what games will be there, but we’ll have a post about it later on.

· The organization of a gaming space on the Event’s Living Center. Thanks to the coordinator of the Positivo University’s Game Course, Rafael Dubiela, who is also assisting 4 adugans with their graduation projects and helping us make the exposition possible.

· Run the project management system of the event. This item may seem kindda funny and needs a further explanation. Two adugans (Ingrid and Marcel) and Florzinha (which helped Aduge on the Global Game Jam) joined CONDe (N Design Organization Committee) to manage the N 2010 project. They became part of CONDe family, ended up proposing the exposition and the MegaDiving, to then make this support formal so that all of Aduge’s effort towards N could be grouped in one place. Apparently with only an indirect link with a game developer, Project Management is a well esteemed area of Marcel, one of Aduge’s business differentiation and a subject that we put a lot of effort on our graduation.

We at Aduge are very pleased with the opportunities that are arousing through N Design! If you are a Brazilian design student don’t miss this event! (and if you are not, you should consider tenderly visiting us for this nice conference =)

If you want to know more about N Design, access ndesign.org.br (portuguese only).

More info about our work coming soon!

So, working a lot?
Here is a mess, all week long, and even in weekends, do you believe?
Oh, sure, it’s worth the pain. The results are so great lately, makes me very happy!
Uh… Yes, yes, I’m kinda different indeed. Have been planing this for a while, make some changes.
Srsly? Nice that you’ve liked! It was hard to choose, you see? But ended up being a good deal to wait, right?
How have I done? Eh, another day I’ll tell you, it’s a little  complicated, all this choosing-colors stuff.
Yes! I went through making all the project before, it’s awesome!
And else? Nice, all right, we appeared in some neat blogs these days, and are due to end one more big step in the works.
Yes, time goes by! Soon it will be three years…
Remember the last time we’ve talked? I had just moved…
Right! Show up there some day, then I tell you all about the colors and else!
Sure, we can have an espresso, then!

We are finally back from the Global Game Jam and we’d like to produdly present the result of our 48 hour effort: Semblante.

Before I start, a brief clarification. “Semblante” is a portuguese word that means “visage”. A good reason for the choice of this particular name was because it is a phonetically pleasing word (when spoken in native portuguese at least) the other reasons are pretty much subjective and we leave to each one his own to think about it or not.

The game is still a little incomplete as of now, even if it has a beginning and an end, as we need to work out some of the mechanics, asset implementations and general level design. Semblante is also quite simple, you control Jung inside its own mind as it searches for its own identity (represented as a mask) while avoiding the shadows that lurks within. The metaphor is obvious and I will not linger on it anymore.

The mechanics are pretty simple. Jung has 4 mechanics. It can move, jump, shine and scream. To shine, the character needs to stay in light spots to charge its body. Jung glows for a limited amount of time and while it is glowing, shadows are repelled by it. Jung can also use its remaining glow to scream and attract shadows to itself. We have a lot of bugs to work out still but the core mechanics are all there.

The guys at PUCPR jam site (we are at the right, with “uniforms”)

Aside from the game itself and talking about the Jam itself. It was a pleasing (and exhausting) experience to participate on a Global Game Jam. The extra hands were crucial for the game to come into fruition. In the name of the team I’d like to thank, Flor, Santo, Paulo and Rossato for their effort and dedication during the Jam. We also want to thank Bruno Campagnolo for organizing the Jam Site and the free sodas and sfihas. We’d like to do it again next year!

So, Global Game Jam is this weekend and Aduge will this time join the party! We are very excited about it, specially because Curitiba is as of right now the biggest Jam Site on the southern hemisphere and we’d like to meet and exchange experiences with all the people that will be there.

Also this weekend Aduge will be a bigger and baddier team as we will be adding muscle to our team. Adding to our usual lineup of six developers we will have the collaboration of other 5 people:

Daniel Rossato

A friend of Vermonde and fellow programmer. A graduated Electric Engineer, Rossato has also some hidden skills that are revealed when he sits in front of a piano. Rossato already helped us on Tsar Project with some nifty pathfinder algorithms and now will return working with Aduge at the Global Game Jam.

Gabriel “Florzinha” Jacobi

Our fellow ex-junior entrepreneur and colleague at the Graphic Design course at Federal University of Parana. Flor, as we call him, is a comic book and cinema aficionado, that enjoy his games from time to time. He will lend his skills in scriptwriting and graphic design. He will also be an asset with his more-critical-than-the-norm approach to things.

Paulo “Lies” Faria
http://www.myspace.com/andalucia

An ex-Adugan, Paulo Lies left Aduge to fully dedicate himself to his band, Andalucia. A skilled musician and composer, Lies will be a great asset to creating great music to accompany our game. He is also a competent programmer and knows a thing or two about game design.

EDIT: Paulo had another things to do on the weekend and didn’t attended the event.

Paulo “Pixel” Reinehr

http://www.pixeljoint.com/p/3182.htm

We call him Pixel because he is very good at pixel art, but it doesn’t stop here. Paulo is a jack-of-all trades, knowing his way into various other aspects of game development. He will help us at the GGJ with his expertise in the art department mostly. Paulo is another fellow student at UFPR and already worked with Aduge before on a old project, being a great help with his pixel art.

Pedro “Santo” Medeiros
http://thelectricafe.blogspot.com

A ex-colleague of Pirin at Melies‘s traditional character sculpture course in Sao Paulo. Santo is a prodigal illustrator and a graduate in Digital Design at Anhembi Morumbi. He is leaving Brazil soon to attend at Gnomon school to further improve his already impressive skills as an artist.

With these additions we will be going full speed ahead to the Jam. Expect updates during the weekend and the results next week! See ya guys!