48hr Game Making Challenge

Archived page of those magnificent games makers

Who will return in 2010?

2009 team photos set on flickr

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Registered Pro-league Teams

Registered Teams

NEWS: we have three (3) pro-league teams this year and SEVENTEEN ‘ordinary’ teams – who are you going to barrack for? Support your favorite team here and by watching them compete and sending encouraging comments, extra noodle power ….

We have a special pro-league this year – they will also be competing for fame and our special pro-league fabulous 48hr mugs

Monkey Something
Engine: Proce55 / Unity

• Matt Ditton: Artist and coder
• Kieran Lord:  Coder
• Kevin Mcgrath:  Art and shaders
• Joel Bird:  Music, FX and Keytar
• Mike Sharpe: Art and Code

Quote : “He’s a genetically engineered crooked Green Beret plagued by the memory of his family’s brutal murder. She’s a violent red-headed mermaid from the wrong side of the tracks. They fight crime!”

Monkey Something bring a wealth of experience to the table. Matt has worked on a number of titles at Krome and Pandemic. He now teaches at Griffith QCA and his beauty touch with processing is about to be unveiled in the form of an iphone game. Kieran has also worked on titles at Krome and Pandemic – one to watch, Kieran is the founder of our own Fight Club! Kevin works at Krome, Mike Sharpe has experience at Ratbag, Pandemic and Krome and Joel Bird brings the seasoned indie touch to the team – Monkey Something didn’t write this blurb – heh heh … they might get a team logo and something better organised now!

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Curious Bear – Team Website:  CuriousBearProductions.com
Engine: Curiosity engine

• Gordon Moyes
• Morgan Jaffit
• Shawn Eustace
• and others …. TBA

Curious Bear consists of a core group of serious players!  Gordon Moyes has been a part of Brisbane’s biggest AAA game productions over 10 years, having programmed AI and graphics for Auran’s “Dark Reign” and produced Pandemic’s “Destroy All Humans!” and it’s sequel.  In between, he spent several years working for Activision LA on titles such as “Star Trek: Armada”.  These days, he’s an indie developer celebrating the recent launch of Cluck It!, a Curious Bear Production, in collaboration with Shawn Eustace and Morgan Jaffit.

Morgan Jaffit is the head of The Impossible Changing Brain Foundation, an independent game developer focused on creating  innovative titles and addressing users outside the classic market. He has been designing games all his life. Morgan’s first computer game design was an  educationally focused biology challenge for the Atari ST at the age of 13. He has been working as a professional game designer for the  last nine years and has shipped a wide variety of games for a broad spectrum of audiences including: Happy Feet, Freedom Force and Homeworld 2. Most recently Morgan was Assoc. Creative Director for Pandemic Studios developing new I.P. with a strong social and online focus.  He is convinced that the game industry is the most exciting place in the world to be, at least partially because it’s filled with crazy people on the frontier of creativity.  Morgan has lectured internationally on topics such as the game design process and creative team leadership. The Impossible Changing Brain Foundation is avaliable to assist with a wide variety of projects – feel free to get in touch!

Shawn Eustace – With over 12 years games industry experience, Shawn Eustace has worked on some of Australia’s most successful original games such as Dark Reign and the Destroy All Humans series. Most recently Shawn was Art Director for Pandemic Studios developing a distinctive new game on the Wii for EA games. Currently, Shawn is lecturing at Griffith University on Computer Animation and Game engine technolgy, Unity, and making kick ass art for iPhone games like Cluck It!

And some new team members for Curious Bear:  Scott Taylor, Brendan Watts and Dan Treble – no information on them yet but watch this space!

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SIF90 – website: http://team.sif90.com/
Engine:

And our honoured SIF lords are gamely returning this year to defend their crown – in spite of team members being down in melbourne, overseas or generally busy … brave souls – who will come and fight at their side for honour?

Currently signed up:

• Jonathan McEwan
• Joe Gatling
• Michael Szewczyk – definately a programmer!
• Steve Last
• Al Seel
• and possibly our Simon Joslin

Update – 3 new members for this brave team …

Non professionals compete against each other – now with “winning categories” – art, innovation and “who dares …” … no, we don’t know what will win this latter prize – this will be up to the judges!

Milk & Pickles
Engine: Unity 3D

• Tyson Foster – CG & tech artist fueled by caffeine, and able to reproduce classical art in the 4th dimension.
• Nic Gomez – Designer and code monkey, conqueror of the meat circus and survives on beer and mi goreng.
• James Cunningham – Programmer and tech artist able to traverse world 1-1 without the use of his hands.
• Grant Davidson – The witty 2d & 3d artist with more sass than a streetwise pole dancer.
• Angie Horsford – 2d artist with her entire life in one bag, who’s addicted to pocky and hello panda.
• Dominicus Lindquist – Coder who would not have disputed convolution of necessary organs forthwith.

New to the competition, Milk & Pickles was formed during a once in a millennium planetary alignment.  Six QCA students who share the desire for the delicious flavour and fun of happy hour have banded together to form the magical team of talented and attractive people you see before you.  Equipped with the Unity engine and driven by the desire for purple, Milk & Pickles art and design skills will be put to the test in their first ever 48hr game comp. Are you ready for us?

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Team Kidbrain
Engine: Unity 3D

• Jonathan Kennedy – Has been programming since high school as a hobby, excellent technical view on the subject at hand.
• Evan Seedhouse – Is eating a sandwhich, smarter than the average bear, Invented Kidbrain.
• Jaymie Gaffel - Creating games since 2006, third year games student.
• Brenden Egan – Excellent team leader skills, has a passion for games design, also proefficient in 3D modelling.
• Joel Spencer – Beginner programmer, has come a long way since TAFE, learns quite fast.
• Brett Mcauliffe – Talented artist, loves his wacom.

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Lurker’s Craft – website:  http://www.lurkerscraft.com/
Engine: Unity 3D

Back again for another bout of mayhem, Lurker’s Craft have done most honourably in previous years …  their designer is flying up from Canberra .. a team to watch!

• Paul Cameron – Game Designer
• Adam Corbally -  Tech Artist (aka TArt)
• Alex Strait -  Coder
• Kim Bugess – Audiophile (TBC)
• Emmanuel Brucy -  Coder (TBC)

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Mudkips do it better
Engine: Unity

Another group of newcomers to the competition – do they know what they are letting themselves in for?

• Huynh Nguyen – Self Proclaimed Team Leader/Artist/Pokemon Fanatic – “They say I look like Robert Downey Jr when he was seventeen”
• Calvin Kowald – Level Designer/Modeler/Super Smash Brawl Expert – “Pure awesome is what conceived me”
• Matt Remi – Modeler / Nathan replacement
• Jason Schneck – Programmer – “Sex Appeal”
• Patrick Elumba – Ludo Programmer/Greater Brawl Expert – “I can make Marth seem like a man”
• Tim Roberts – Sound/Music Fanatic – “The quintessential sound guy”

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Team Atramentarious
Engine: C++ with HGE (HAAF’s GAME ENGINE)

Another group of first timers – we might all go bonkers trying to say their name

• Paul Fox - Programmer – Liaison – Software Major @ QUT. (1st Year) – Only migrated to C++ for this (1 Month to teach myself C++ L), my background is in PHP and Flash
• William Goddard – Lead Programmer – Software Major & Management Major @ QUT (1st Year) – Started with GP32 and C. Big fan of open, multiplatform libraries e.g. SDL, OpenGL
• Krystle Condren – Artist – Animation Major @ QUT (1st Year) – “She has opposing tastes in styles… Hello Kitty..? Silent Hill..?” – Paul.
• Ying Luo – Artist – Animation Major @ QUT (1st Year) – Haha Nathan, my name is first.
• Nathan Perry – Artist – Animation Major and Advertising Major @ QUT (1st Year) – I use Photoshop and do magic because I like illusions, tricks and sleights.
• Angie Wood – Day time Rookie & Technical Artist – “I am a lame girl who can’t write my own bio so I get awesome spectacular men to do it” – Nathan.

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Immigration Office
Engine: Unity 3D

Another group of new comers although we suspect that the Sally-Anne in the list might be our own adored Sally-Anne of Audio Panel fame and we do suspect that this is the team that stole Henrik off Milk & Pickles  … more details coming soon …

• Zac Duff – An artist, sometime coder, and general jack-of-all trades. Loves to make things pretty, and can trigger slightly O.C.D. texturing behaviour if pressed. Sometimes sober.
• Sally-Anne - A certified Music Technologist with a knack for sound design and dynamic music composition.  Capable of shocking your socks off one second and putting you to sleep the next, her arsenal of recording equipment will invade the premises and anyone who dare makes a strange noise will likely find themselves with a microphone in their face.
• Henrik – Has taken a pregnancy test once a week since he watched Alien, just to be sure. He fears the slimy aliens and babies alike. When he’s not peeing on a stick, he makes pretty things from code.
• Delia – Can’t sing, can’t dance, can handle a sword a little. Jack-of-all-trades who likes to interfere and do a little bit of everything, from art to design to code. Fortunately, things usually get taken off her before she manages to explode them. Team organisator, stress bunny and general wibbler. Has been known to put on chainmail and swing reproduction medieval pole weapons around, although never in the context of game development. Still, there’s a first time for everything…
• Anya – Like to draw, knows enough about Photoshop to draw what she needs, likes to imagine random things.
• Michael – currently at a swordplay conference in America, so Delia gets to write his bio! C# programmer and fastidious problem-solver who’s never made a video game in his life, though he plays them a lot. Spends his day job designing and developing software that performs mineral analysis on electron microscope samples. Talks frequently about how he always has these great game ideas but no time to make them. Well, now he’s got 48 hours.

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team Equidna – they’re back!
Engine: DexPP (made by Kyall)

• Abbey Miranda – Art & Animation – “I bring puppets to life”
• Kyall Henricksen – Programming – “My ever present goal is functionality – functionality that can draw the player in, then punish them. I hate the player.”
• Anthony Wood – Programming
• Alex Anguix – Programming
• Ben Clock – Design & Art
• Clyde Smets – Art & Animation – “Believes that every vertex counts”

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Overflow
Engine: TBA

Nestled in the shade of the great trees of Re’thultik lies a small town. It is in this town a great fate awaited a small group of  students, who had banded together to face the dark overlord’s minions to return the sacred ruby of fun to the village … oh whats the point … you have heard it all before. 6 under/overweight geeks trying to make their team sound grandiose by using eloquent words and a Tolkien-esque setting. Why, well the truth is far more mystifying and … well weird. All you need to know is this. They number 6 and they can sit at a keyboard for a long time. If there was ever a montage that needed to be made it would be about these guys sitting around, clicking at a mouse. (see I told you, weird huh).They love what they do and they do what they love. Now they just need to start taking showers and then they might actually fit into society. Not that they would want to.

Well thats it, Overflow has one mission statement. To have fun and force overs to have fun in a glorious sticky orange mess. See you on the day and good luck.

Pixel – Designer – What can I say that has not been said a hundred times before. Oh I know. I hate games, with a passion unmatched by the very gods themselves. But even those aforementioned gods could not stop me from designing them. I love making games, no matter what the size and or shape, but when I come to play them I suck so much that it brings me to a rage. I can barely lay claim to the title of designer for I lack the courage to do so,but I will take the title student. For that is what I am, a student of game design. My area of focus, player motivation and interface design. Not that I won’t do the other stuff but this i what I find the most fascinating in a profession that is filled with wonder. My experience is lacking but I am not afraid of the work, I am not afraid of making mistakes so whatever it is that bursts forth from the ol’ noggin it shall be …a … thing. But most of all I want to see how 3 words can be twisted into so many different ideas and shapes that it can make your head spin. The very thought gives me goosebumps.

Skylark – Programmer – One fateful day I woke up, did things, gave hygiene a miss, and then went to bed. It’s been the general trend ever since. I discovered Programming in grade 10, and hated it. I discovered Chemistry in grade 11, and hated it. Subsequently, I rediscovered Programming in grade 11. The reality of it is, I’m a programmer now because I drew elephants all over my first Chemistry exam and felt I had to respond to the “FAIL” stamped against my artwork by swapping into another subject. But the truth of it is, I rather enjoy programming. I don’t really know why, and I can’t offer you any pseudo-philosophical guff that will justify my heart’s contentedness with my work; all I can say is I’m just a guy who likes to make stuff happen. I’ve worked on one major game project before, a University assignment for which we delivered far more than was solicited and worked much harder than was necessary. It is essentially the only experience I’ve ever had to this day working on a game, and I worked in a below-average-sized group of three {one designer, one artist, one programmer}. Over 9000 lines of uncommented code in 3 months. That’s right. Over 9000. *cue face palm*. I learnt a few valuable lessons from that project. I’m a designer at heart but a coder at my finger-tips. I’d love to be the guy scribbling characters and weapons or profoundly spitting out game design philosophies and ideas, but I will never escape my true destiny unless I can override it.

Anthony Dyer – Programmer – Anthony Dyer is a student studying the Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment at the Queensland University of Technology. He focuses his studies around programming and software development, and aims to be an engine programmer in the games industry. need moar? send me a complaint!

Toby Hewitt – Artist – I have always had a passion for drawing, especially from my imagination. I was not born with any natural talent, but have been shoving pencil lead over paper for long enough now to actually fool most people. As I continued to draw I discovered the world of concept art. It all started when my mum bought me the ‘Making of Jurassic Park’ waaaaaay back when. I became a huge fan of concept artists within the entertainment industry, be it film, animation and games. I have often whored myself out to mods all over the internet offering my artistic skills and vision. I truly love doing it. Frankly I don’t care that people think I am silly to chase this goal of being an entertainment industry artist, it gives me more satisfaction than anything else I do and I am determined to push as hard as possible to achieve my dream by constantly challenging myself as an artist. The last person to give up is the first person to succeed. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day!

Jace Davis – Artist – Game student at QUT, majors in Animation. Most interested in games/ animation with good story and character development.

Daniel Luckhurst – Having a background in I.T and finding myself incompatible with the average desk job, I started IT04 last year with dreams and visions of glory in working in a young and exciting industry. My original intentions were in the field of programming but, realizing my distinct lack of ability towards the end of semester 2 (and in conjunction with the last 48), decided to focus on my true passion, music and audio.

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Pre-emptive Revenge – and they are back!
Engine: Dark Basic Pro

After coming so close to victory last year, Preemptive Revenge will take the competition once again. Made from mostly QANTM students studying Games Design, the team plans to use everything they have learnt over the last year to improve on what they did

Update on Pre-Emtive Revenge: The team with the fabulous name have had some member drop outs – fortunately one has been replaced – down to five members, how will they do?

• Tim Campbell – Design / Coder
• Max Vasey – Design / Coder / Sound
• Andy Hannam – Last minute team member to save the day!
• Ashley Marschke – Designer / Coder / Sound
• Jay Neilson – 3D Artist / Coder

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Anger Issues
Engine: Dark Basic Pro

Anger Issues is a team of five extremely talented young individuals, who, when not spending time being awesome, study at QANTM Brisbane. They are:

• Claire Banks – is said to be the Boobs of the operation. She is a current Games Design student who specialises in Yelling Until Things Get Done. She also has secondary skills in 3D Art, Programming and Glaring.
• Zak Ahchay – started life as Programmer and is currenly moonlighting as a Game Design student. He is rumored to be the progeny of a Japanese Tyrant and a Demon. Zak spends his free time being better at games than you, and attempting to rid the world of save points.
• Josh Bishop – is a qualified 3D Artist and a current Games Design student. His interests include plotting/researching the end of the world, and not sleeping for weeks just to see what happens.
• Dan Cowell – is a multi-talented 3D Artist, Programmer and Website Designer and is a current student of Games Design. He spends his free time making more money than a man his age should have, and rumors abound that it is mainly spent on underground slot car racing tournaments.
• Simon Freeman – Simon is a promising Games Design student who also has talents in 3D Art and music. He is notable due to his permanently bald head. The brave amongst us should ask him where else he is hairless. He likes hats and wishes he could have been a lumberjack.

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Play
Engine: Unity 3D

And back again with a new lineup, team Play actually made two (or was it 3?) games last year …

• Ashley Guy – Art, Coder, Team Coordinator
• Jon DeAraujo – Art, Code
• Andrew O’Neill – Music, Code
• Stephen Reville – Art, Music
• Richard Mcconnachie – Coder
• Gabe Couper – Coder

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Feisty Studios
Engine: XNA, .NET, Ruby, C#, HLSL

• Nicholas Kinsey – Lately, Nick has been busy developing a cross-platform game engine and editor with specialisations for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Apple’s compact (iPhone) and desktop OSX platforms. Like the majority of the team, he studies games at QUT as well as physics and sound. His future aspirations are to get into interactive installations and augmented reality.
• Douglas Cook – From an early beginning, ug has always been interested in games and leapt at the chance to create them for a living. Now undertaking the final year of QUT’s bachelor of games, his range of skills is growing as he finds new areas to experiment with. Always up for a challenge, he is interested to see what this competition will bring.
• Nathan Rashleigh – Another of the team in QUT’s games course, Nathan majors in games design and can’t play a game without breaking it down and analysing it. In the near future he hopes to get some industry foundations designing with local studios.
• Nicholas Dancer – “Dancer” is Feisty’s second programmer and approaches “coding” with grave amounts of passion and energy. As well as his coding ability, Dancer brings years of industry experience to the team and has been closely with Nick to develop Conductor and Harmony; the editor and engine components of Feisty’s suite of game development tools.
• Jacob Evans – Jacob took an interest in video games at a young age and so is studying IT majoring Games Development and Software Architecture at QUT. Recently, Jake has been dabbling in C#/XNA and as such will function as an all-rounder at the comp, focusing on the engine and its IO capabilities.
• Kyle Castley – Kyle is also studying games and interactive entertainment at QUT, and is majoring in Animation. He has experience in 2D animation and traditional art, as well as Flash. He aims to complete work experience with a games company soon and move into the Queensland games industry, doing level, environment and character design.

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Black Wolf Games
Engine: XNA

Travelling up from Wollongong again for the competition – are they mad? Special thanks go to Willy Susilo – Head of School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (SCSSE) and Casey Chow – Lecturer University of Wollongong. These two people supported the team and found some small funding to get them up here – thanks to you both!

• Andrew Papadopoulos – Team Lead/Programmer
• Rebecca Fernandez – Programmer
• Stephen Barnes – Programmer
• James Elphick – Programmer
• Scott O’Brien – Artist/Programmer
• Jorden Trudgett – Artist

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Sick Fish
Engine: Processing

Another group of brave newcomers to the competition – travelling over from Southbank and QCA but still brave!

• Amjad – Im a second year game student and i like anything 3d and i hate coding its my enemy.
• Jasmine – HAI, IM JASMiNE!!!11!!1! I thirst year Griffith Uni student. I liek makking gamez and am really cearious about stuff. U should come talk 2 me and b impressed bai how serzious I am. I Can HAS cake support now???
• James – I love games and have been playing games for many years now. My first computer was a Commodore 64 with tape deck. This computer rocked! I remember playing Rampage and Chomp, ohh! Those were the days. I moved from the trusty 64 to the big brother Commodore, the Amiga 500. Not the 1000 but the 500, just so we are clear. This thing was amazing, with 8bit stereo sound and mind blowing graphics. Not to mention Workbench… Y