The Mailowl Scrolls

And here I would write interesting content

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It’s been almost 2 years to the day since I last posted on my blog but I’m back and with an exciting game development project I’ve been working on for the last couple of months.  The challenge Game.Dev Competition 22 “Genre Benders” was to recreate a game for another genre (find out more on the forum post) and I recreated Valve Software’s Left 4 Dead as a card game.
My entry won 1st place amongst some other amazing entries and so I decided to use it in the next Game.Dev completion, Competition 23 “Get the Word Out!”.  This competition challenges entrants to publicize a game they’ve previously created in the community and get as much feedback, reviews and commentary on their game as possible; ultimately challenges the community members to “step outside the forum” and get recognised as indie game developers.
For my entry, I started by emailing Gabe Newell, Managing Director of Valve Software, to see if he was interested in the game and for permission to use the intellectual property of the game.  So far I haven’t received a response so I’m going to mail some of the other people involved in Left 4 Dead and see if they can pick up on it.
I’ve also now added a new page to my website with all the details of the game including: links, screenshots and reviews.  I want to buy a webcam at the end of the month and record a play through of the game to share.
With a central point for the game (rather than using the Game.Dev forum) I’m going to start posting about my game on the boardgame design website and on the steam forums.  To follow the progress of my entry for Comp 23 read the first post on the Game.Dev forum or go to the L4D Card Game project page.

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This month we’re very fortunate to have organized 3 presentations for the community as well as 2 dinners with leads from the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal chapters.

Brady Kelly, a SA Developer .NET moderator, will be replacing this month’s TechReel session with a talk on using Windows Powershell; Simon Stewart and Tristan Bergh will be introducing db4o, a database engine for mobile and real-time control systems and lastly Angus Logan, Senior Product Manager for Windows Live, will be given us the inside track on what his team is doing.

Then we have 2 dinners organized. One with Angela Gerber from the Western Cape chapter and the other with Willie Roberts from KwaZulu-Natal. Unfortunately their schedules don’t match so we can’t have one big party with the both of them, but this is an opportunity to find out what other people are doing in development circles across the country.

Overall a packed month, not forgetting there’s TechEd 2007 as well. All the times and directions are in this month’s newsletter as well as the Events forum on the SA Developer .NET website.

Hope to see you there!

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