St. Louis Game Jam 2012 Wrap-Up

I just came back from the St. Louis game jam and had such a blast. It was held this year at the University of Missouri - St. Louis campus by the airport. It started on Friday and ended on Sunday night. There was a great turnout with 70+ people. St. Louis was in the top 10% of participants worldwide this year, which made it even more fun to meet even more people and see more games!

Doing audio was probably one of the most enjoyable game jams I have been to in terms of the work. I put in a lot of hours in, but since I used my ears as much as I used my eyes, I didn’t have that blurry, disoriented feel when I was strolling out at the end of the night.

I recently purchased Pro-Tools MP9 a couple of weeks and have been fervently learning it to use. The hours spent paid off pretty well as I composed audio sounds and music for a few games. I felt some of the ways I did things were inefficient, but didn’t want to spend more time figuring out more buttons. Mixing and mastering was an area that I wish I was more familiar with. Recording sounds with differnet output levels and messing with automation and signal processing can adversly affect the song when it get longer. Certain parts end up being quieter than you want, while other parts are abnormally loud or out of place. Turning the mix setting on the interferce could have helped to really hear all of the abnormalities with the song.

I will probably do audio again for at least one more time. I will make an effort to be significantly better and more prepared for the next one.

If you haven’t heard of the Global Gam Jam, it is an event that is held every year that takes a whole weekend where you get together with a bunch of people and make games!!  Groups are best if there is only 3-5 people, but sometimes you can work on multiple groups depending on your skill set.

Audio and music is generally need of help, so I helped out with three games this year. Hear are a few songs that I composed this weekend.

Copperhead Jack and the Cave of Snakes

Game - http://globalgamejam.org/2012/copperhead-jack-and-cave-snakes

Towel Fight of the Gods

Game - http://globalgamejam.org/2012/towel-fight-gods

Ra: Eternal Fire

Game - http://globalgamejam.org/2012/ra-eternal-fire