But before the actual Nordic Game Jam itself, it’s important to mention the SpilBar and the Pre-Party which occurred on the 26th of January. SpilBar 8 featured the favourite gaming moments of several people involved in games, such as several people from Danish indie companies, as well as the Dutch indie company Vlambeer.

Friday, 27th of January was the official day of the Nordic Game Jam, and it started out with several talks from both professional developers as well as indie developers. There were a total of 11 talks, where 6 of them were in the Main track, and the rest were in the Indie track. The talks from both tracks occurred at the same time however, so I had to jump around from one track to another in order to get the most out of the speakers’ talks. There were some interesting topics raised, such as the ability to work around constraints when making games, rapid game development in Unity, as well as the concept of intellectual property in games.

Eventually, it was time to form groups and get to work to make games. I decided to make a board game, so I headed down to the DesignLab and eventually ended up in a team of around 10 people, all of them pitching ideas that they encountered from the group forming process. Eventually, one of the group brought over a board game from the resource pile that contained hexagonal tiles, and these were quickly used  as our constraint to make a game. We then split up into two smaller groups when it became fairly clear which people wanted to work with which ideas.

The idea we formed around was one where there could only be 3 hexagonal tiles in play, and once one was placed, another was removed. We quickly jumped to the idea of having smaller hexagonal tiles inside the large hexagonal tile, and after some discussions, the game slowly started taking shape.

An early prototype of our game

Above, you can see the first prototype of our game, where players had to draw cards and move their characters through hexagonal grid. Dice were used to hold the paper prototype down, since it was small and fiddly. After going through several iterations of our cards, and realizing what worked and what didn’t, we realized that our room tiles were too small to be usable and too unwieldy to comfortably playtest, so we created larger versions of the room tiles. We also found better pieces that could reliably represent players in the game.

The second prototype of our game.

The second prototype also allowed us to avoid half-hexagonal tiles, since we cut those out. This allowed us to  connect the rooms in various interesting ways. However, playtesting showed that the first player was being removed from the game fairly quickly, but the rest of the game dragged on indefinitely. The longest play session we encountered so far was at 45 minutes! We realized that due to feature creep, we needed to rethink the cards as well as the movement system. By allowing cards to double both as movement cards and as special action cards,  games started to become much quicker. Another feature we added was the idea that the game would end when the 7th tile was picked up, which we dubbed the final tile. This would stop players from going through the same tiles and thus go on forever. We also realized that once a player was out of the game, he did not have any interaction with the rest of the players still in the game. To counter this, we added what we called Guilty Conscience cards. These cards allow players that have left the game to have an influence on the players that are still in the game.

The third prototype of our game.

We eventually settled on an Arabian theme for the game and explained to players that they were a group of bandits that were running through the palace to escape after a foiled robbery of the Caliph’s palace. The artwork of the game was therefore Arabian inspired, as can be seen in the picture above. This eventually led to us deciding on the name Mussades as the name of our submission, as well as Sugarush as the name of our team, since we were operating on very little sleep.

After a long Saturday night, where I slept for 1 hour in an auditorium (usually used to give lectures), and 2 hours on a sofa in ITU’s DesignLab, we had the rest of Sunday morning to polish up our third prototype as well as hastily create and submit a trailer for the game before the deadline, as required for the Global Game Jam submissions.

The contestants were split up into 3 different auditoriums and had to give presentations of the games they had created over the course of the Nordic Game Jam. 3 different games were voted as the best from the audience each auditorium, as well as 1 game selected by the jury, meaning that 12 games were chosen as finalists. These were:

• AAAAAAAARRRGGHHH!!!!! – Tim (Youtube link) (New Gameplay video)
• Boing Wauw (Youtube link)
• Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
• Eskil’s Adventure – [Placeholder] Studios (Youtube link)
• Infinite Swat – Infinite SWAG (Youtube link)
• Mein Panzer – Robocat (Youtube link)
• Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
• Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
• Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
• Spläsh Dämäge - Team Mothership  (Youtube link)
• Switch Naga Go! – Adorable Nagablob (Youtube link)
• Who Took The Apple – Laus Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

Eventually, the award ceremony began, where the team behind each game had to first give a presentation in front of all 300 of the participants. The first awards to be given out were the awards for the separately running board game competition:

1. Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
2. Blue Print – Hexagonians (Youtube link)
3. Ring the Gong – The Brotherhood – Part1, Part2 (Youtube link)
4. Who Took The Apple – Lau’s Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

The winner of the Nordic Food game competition was also presented:

• Jumping Suzy (YouTube link)

After that, the jury (made up of 4 different people) chose one game each as their favourite, as well as giving an explanation of why they had chosen that particular game. These games were:

• David McCarthy from GREE: Mussades – Sugarush (Youtube link)
• Jeppe Carlsen from Playdead: Blind Monk – IOU Games (Youtube link)
• Manveer Heir from Bioware: Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
• Ole Teglbjærg from Press Play: Boing Wow (Youtube link)

And finally, we progressed to the Audience’s Choice awards, where the audience could vote for their favourite game from the finalists presented. These were:

1. Simon Gustafsson Two And A Fjers Men [Haha] – Redgrim (Youtube link)
2. Spelunca – Spelunca Habitante (Youtube link)
3. Who Took The Apple – Lau’s Fantastic Team (Youtube link)

Sugarush, the team that created Mussades during the Nordic Game Jam 2012

All in all, I felt that attending the Nordic Game Jam was a fantastic experience, and any budding games designer or developer should consider attending a similar game jam, as you get the chance to meet new people, as well as work in completely different environments.

(Thanks to Anders Lystad Brevik for the run-down of all the winners in the awards ceremony.)

Among all the parties and celebrations that inevitably occur along the way during the semester, there were some interesting and exciting events that occured, as well as lots of work to do.

Game Design

As well as all the reading we had to do for Games Design, we also had to form groups and work on a small game. Although I had the initial idea of leading my own team, I quickly scrapped that idea since there was another team that was lacking programmers, and I joined them.

This meant that I had the opportunity to work with Thomas and others to work on Sun Valve, a narrative game where you play the role of a lighthouse keeper living on an island. I was the lead programmer on the team and I worked with the Unreal Development Kit, using several languages at once.

On top of that, us Games Technology students also had to write a review for Jesper Juul’s book Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, with references to the literature we discussed in class. (This may be found in the Academic Writing section of my website if you are interested in reading it.)

Something else that I had to get used to is the fact that the examinations here are mainly oral exams. In the case of Games design, I had 2 oral exams, where the first one was a 5 minute oral exam where I was asked a question about one of the many academic papers we read over the course. The second oral exam was a 1 minute presentation of yourself and your role in the development of the group game.

Game Engines

This course involved getting together as a group of 5 people (which later dropped to 4) and programming a game engine together in C++ and OpenGL. We decided to create a 3D platformer game engine, in the style of Crash Bandicoot or Spyro, and the oral exam involved 20 minutes of preparation where one could gather one’s thoughts about the questions presented to him, and then another 20 minutes explaining the chosen question, as well as answering questions about the game engine and your role in development.

Demo Night at PROSA, and other events

Something I love about living in Copenhagen as a student games designer and development is the fact that there is a very vibrant indie scene here (whereas Malta’s game development scene is non-existent, let alone its indie scene). Thanks to the Special Interest Group meetings held by the Danish chapter of IGDA, as well as the extra-curricular Game Lectures held by the Center for Computer Games Research at the IT University, students like myself are able to get a glimpse on the inner workings of the local games industry, as well as consider interesting topics that are connected to games, however loosely. Such topics include sound design in games, the portrayal of avatars in games and other media, as well as algorithms used in Korean robots.

One particular example is the Indie Demo Night held at PROSA. The intention of this event is to get indie developers together in order to network, as well as to show off current works-in-progress.

Another event that has occurred here that is of interest to game developers is SpilBar. This consists of short talks by developers (both indie and established) who talk about their experiences when releasing games, among other topics. There is also time allocates to ask questions, as well as the opportunity to mingle with the rest of the attendees.

Other events include the game jams. The biggest game jam in Copenhagen is undoubtedly the Nordic Game Jam, but there are other, smaller jams such as the Exile Game Jam which takes place at the Vallekilde Højskole in Hørve. Developers are also encouraged to take part in small, global jams; examples include the 0-hour game jam, as well as the Stop SOPA game jam.

Living in Denmark

One thing I’ve noticed is that unless you have a CPR number, you won’t be able to open a bank account and get a mobile phone number, amongst other things. (I know that Lebara allow you to obtain a Danish mobile phone number for quite a low price, but due to mixed reviews from my friends, I didn’t consider them.)

My experience with obtaining this number is that it is a lengthy process, partly due to the fact that September is particularly busy due to all the new students that arrive in Copenhagen. Before applying for a CPR number however, one must first obtain a residence permit. This took around a week for me. The CPR number took around 2 weeks to arrive for me, but on arrival, I noticed that they had made a mistake with my birthdate, rendering the number invalid, and so had to wait another 2 weeks for them to correct it. It finally arrived however, and I could go about applying for a Danish mobile number and a Danish bank account. Online only mobile providers (such as Oister), help keep expenses down, and I consulted with my home bank to see which bank they recommended I deal with while in Denmark.

Looking at the timetable, and coming from a background where I had loads of lectures at the University, you wouldn’t have thought that it could possibly get this busy. Just 20 hours of lectures a week, that doesn’t sound too bad.

Game Design however, thought otherwise. Apart from assignments that are given every lecture (usually for the next corresponding lecture), we also had to prepare reading as a background to the following lecture. And don’t think that the reading consisted of reviews for upcoming games, oh no. Engaging academic papers, sometimes naming loads of philosophers, psychologists and sociologists that all discussed games from an academic perspective, as well as several books. The average is around 3 papers and a book chapter for the following lecture, and the content isn’t an easy read either.

Game Engines is also not the easiest of courses. Most of the lectures consist of how different components of an actual game engine work, going through several historical algorithms and explaining their shortcomings. However, we also have to program an actual 3D game engine using C++ and OpenGL.

Although there’s a massive workload to be covered, that doesn’t stop students from enjoying the facilities present at the University. After hearing about an arcade machine that stopped working in ScrollBar, and a ping pong table that mysteriously broke down, a group of 3 students decided to have a go at bringing them back.

I teamed up with Jonathan and Tommy as we came up with new ideas as to how we could bring back the arcade machine, with a twist of course. Then it hit us, why not introduce the Winntron to ITU? If the university emphasized indie games so much, then why wasn’t it a part of this untapped indie game network?

Testing out the arcade controls

Our exploits in building the Winnitron for ITU are detailed in a separate blog.

Meanwhile, I’m going to get back to my reading!

Foam Dice

This week was the introduction week at the IT University of Copenhagen. I was a little nervous, since not only was it a new experience and a new setting in a completely different country, but also because I knew absolutely no-one.

Tuesday was an introductory day dedicated to all international students. Although I didn’t know anybody, I felt that it was easy to just sit down and talk to people. After an introduction to studying in Denmark and the way the system is organized, we were taken by boat to Nyhavn, and then walked to a restaurant in the Kongens Nytorv area, where we had dinner generously paid for by the university. Here, I spent the rest of the evening talking to 3 Italians, a Spaniard, several Romanians, and an Icelandic girl. I also met a German guy who I had been speaking to, since we had been trying to look for an apartment together, and I met a Belgian guy whose blog I had also been following.

Wednesday was the official start to Introduction Days, as it also included the Danish students who were starting their studies at the university. After a talk by the Study Advisory, and an interesting talk by the vice-chancellor, the Games students were officially welcomed to their course. We were introduced to the facilities that the university had to offer (and I was particularly impressed with the fact that it was open 24/7 if you had a student card, unlike the University of Malta, where campus life died after 6), and we were also introduced to the different student organizations that were available.

We also had our first ice-breaker, where we were divided into groups and after talking a bit about ourselves, each person had to present another person in the group to the rest of the class.

We were then introduced to our introductory project. Basically, we were divided into fresh groups and each group given a random object, and the aim was to create an analog game with the object given as a core concept in the game.

Our group (consisting of 3 Danes, a German, a Pole and myself) were given 6 large foam dice, where each die had a different colour. We didn’t want to use the dice in a standard way by rolling them, and in fact cycled through various different game ideas, from a memory game, to a elemental battle system, to a strange 3D snake game, until on Friday, we finally settled on a “race-to-the-finish” idea using the dice as player representations. We named our game Dice Dash.

Dice Dash - Work in progress

On Thursday, we were formally introduced to the Games programming by Miguel Sicart, the head of the games programme. He explained each tracks in detail and what we were meant to expect out of them, as well as the possible jobs we could expect to obtain in the future. I found his talk very motivational and inspiring, and I can’t wait to officially start lectures with him, since he teaches Game Design.

Finally, on Friday, we had to present our completed introduction project, along with the rest of the groups. Below, you can see 11 of the 12 groups who presented their games, and the names of their games.

The other groups

The results were voted on by having the groups decide on their favourite, second favourite and third favourite games, with 3, 2 and 1 point given for each respective choice. Groups could not vote for themselves (obviously). Below, you can see the results.

Group Points

We won! It was great working with you all, Carsten, Casper, Ulrik, Alex and Joanna, and I hope I get the opportunity to work with you again in future projects!

Here’s my story of how I, as a Masters student, found lodging in Copenhagen. Your mileage may vary, of course.

As soon as I got my acceptance letter from the IT University of Copenhagen, I instantly decided to start looking for lodging, since I had heard how difficult it is to find.

Initially, I browsed Craigslist in the hopes of finding a suitable apartment or a room that could be rented. However, the only replies I got back were scams (usually from a Nigerian missionary who could not show me the apartment, but was willing to send me the keys to a very cheap flat in the city centre, if only I could send him some money as a deposit to prove that I was not wasting his time). I was later informed that the Danes do not usually use Craigslist anyway.

I then registered at the KKIK, who assign dorm rooms to students. The waiting lists were extremely high though (from 2000 to around 4000), so I left a few applications while continuing to look elsewhere.

I signed up to two sites (boligportal.dk and boligbasen.dk) that were recommended to me as being helpful for me to find a place to stay in Copenhagen. However, to access the complete listings, I needed to pay an amount of money (365DKK and 599DKK respectively). In hindsight, boligbasen.dk was definitely not worth it, and I’ve also heard several complaints from people about it.

I also signed up to findroomate.dk, which assured me that I was able to find a room-mate to stay with while in Copenhagen. However, I also had to pay an amount to be able to send messages to people. Ultimately, nobody ever answered my queries, so I don’t think it was worth it.

I looked around at dba.dk, which I was told was a site commonly used by Danes to buy and sell stuff. I only got one answer from it, which never materialized anything.

Ultimately, the main problem I found while trying to search for lodging is the fact that nobody seemed to answer any of my queries and emails. I would only get an answer a week later, telling me that the apartment had been rented. This made my experience very frustrating.

My girlfriend approached me with an apartment which seemed realistic enough, since communication was from a person who appeared to be a student. However, the more the person spoke to us, asking us to fill in forms and more detail, we became suspicious and I suspected some form of identity theft. The identity card she provided us with had expired (and to make matters worse, the format on the card was no longer used). Therefore, we quickly abandoned that apartment and reported the person to the relevant authorities.

On the 8th of August, I arrived in Copenhagen with my girlfriend and checked in to the Generator Hostel, located very near to Kongens Nytorv. I was determined to make the most of my time there and try to find a place to stay. After looking through the classifieds in the Copenhagen Post (a local newspaper written in English), I managed to find a room to rent in Brønshøj, where the landlord actually answered my e-mails. I did not feel comfortable in the area though, and was even more worried to see an apartment catch fire when we arrived.

Meanwhile, some other international students who would be studying at the University were also having problems trying to find lodging. We decided to find an apartment to rent out between 2 people by using the Danish Homes agency. We found ourselves an apartment in København SV, and after I viewed the apartment, we were asked to send in some information so that the owner would be able to decide who to rent out the apartment too. This however, was only available from the 1st of September, and so I still had the problem of finding lodging for the rest of August.

My time at the hostel was up, so we decided to move from Generator Hostel to Cabinn Metro, a small hotel in Amager very close to the IT University. Our stay was for the weekend. However, we received a message on Saturday afternoon telling us that the apartment we had found through the agency had been rented out successfully, leaving us with nothing again.

It was here that I began to panic, since I was effectively homeless and hadn’t found a place to stay yet. I sent several emails to people that I believed would be able to help (such as the Jesuits in Denmark), but no such luck. Finally, my girlfriend messaged a guy who happened to be the friend of her cousin, and he was willing to provide us with temporary lodging, as well as try to find people who were interested in renting out their room. In the mean time, I continued to send emails to interesting apartments on the websites mentioned about, switching the written language from English to Danish (assuming that I would have the upper hand).

Eventually, I did manage to find a room to rent in Vanløse and I moved in 2 days ago to settle down and finally get ready to start my Masters degree.

Some helpful advice: When looking for a place to stay in Copenhagen, do not just look for lodging inside the city centre! Look also for lodging just outside it, such as in Vanløse, Valby and other similar areas.

Tomorrow, I’ll be leaving for Copenhagen in order to prepare for my Masters in Media Technology and Games at the IT University of Copenhagen. The course officially starts on the 29th of August, but I decided to arrive a little earlier in order to settle lodging.

Lodging was one of my main concerns during the summer. When they said it was very difficult to find proper accommodation in Copenhagen, they weren’t lying. Out of the e-mails I sent, nobody ever answered me. I only heard from them some two weeks later to inform me that the place had successfully been rented out. I’m hoping that if I’m physically in Copenhagen, I should stand a better chance at finding suitable lodging.

I still feel a little queasy and anxious, since this is something totally new for me, but at the same time, I can’t wait!

ITU Copenhagen acceptance envelope

I’ve just been accepted for a Masters degree in Media Technology in Games at ITU Copenhagen, Denmark!

The deadline for the application was the 1st of April, 2011, while the acceptance letter was posted from Denmark on the 31st of May, 2011. It arrived in Malta on the 3rd of June, 2011 (quite quick, I must say). The university had informed potential candidates that they should expect to receive an answer by the 15th of June, 2011.

In particular, I chose the Technology stream, which allows me to learn more about the more technical areas of games, such as game engines and AI. I’m also interested in topics such as procedural content generation and games design.

Now it looks like I need to search for suitable housing in order to spend the next two years in Copenhagen! Craigslist is unfortunately full of scams. If you use Google Translate, you might be able to find a good deal at some of the Danish rental sites. In my case, by sending in an accommodation application before the 1st of June, ITU Copenhagen will try help find suitable accommodation.

Also, I found sites such as thegradcafe.com useful in finding out whether other people have been accepted.

All in all, the IT University of Copenhagen looks like a great place to study, and I currently want August to arrive as soon as possible!

We approached the problem in a number of different ways, such as optimization algorithms and evolutionary algorithms (including genetic algorithms, harmony search, simulated annealing and others). We also considered decision trees, mimicking the way IBM’s Deep Blue played chess, by looking forward and considering each step. Other algorithms that we considered included Bresenham’s Line Algorithm and Bresenham’s Circle Algorithm (for the photography range and the line of sight algorithm), as well as the use of quadtrees.

Designing a circle algorithm

We decided on the fact that due to the constraints of the problem (such as energy requirements), we couldn’t necessarily generate a random path and evolve it, since the chosen path might not be valid. Generating a valid path on the fly seemed a much better way to handle the problem.

The first step we took was to determine statistics of the map while parsing the map file. This would allow us to determine which altitudes were more common on the map. The statistics were stored in a SortedDictionary.

The second step we took was dividing the map into quarters. We then divided these sections into quarters, and then repeated this step a third time. This allowed us to consider map segments instead of the whole map. Each segment, which we called clusters, had their own form of statistics. We then used these statistics to decide which segment the robot should visit first.

From the robot’s point of view, the procedure was as follows:

1. Determine the area that has been successfully photographed.
   • This was done by using a variant of Bresenham’s Circle Algorithm, and a variant of Bresenham’s Line Algorithm.
2. Determine which cluster the robot is located in.
   • This was done easily by comparing the robot’s location to the limits of the cluster.
3. Determine which clusters are nearby.
   • This was done by recursively travelling through the nodes in the quadtree to find the adjacent clusters (to the north, south, west or east of the robot’s current cluster).
4. Take a decision on which cluster to travel to.
   • Since we had access to certain statistics for each cluster (such as average altitude, minimum altitude, maximum altitude and area already photographed), we could calculate which cluster was the best cluster to travel to.
5. Try out 5 moves in the chosen direction
   • If for example, the chosen cluster was the cluster to the North, the robot would try out NNNNN as its chosen path string. The energy requirement to calculate this test string would be considered, and if the energy requirement was too high, the first character in the string would be replaced with an X (a rest and gain energy command) and the process repeated. If however, the whole test string would result in 5 Xs, the robot would take the next best direction.
6. Add the moves to the total command list, move the robot and repeat the procedure

There are several other things I learnt from this competition:

• Get a working version up and running as soon as possible
  • We only started coding on Sunday morning, as we spent more time designing the solution to the problem and considering different approaches. After talking to several other competitors after the end of the competition, I realized that some had working versions by Saturday morning! That meant that they had an advantage of a whole day.
• Avoid optimizing too early
  • Again, we spent more time considering how to optimize our program, rather than trying to pump out a working solution as soon as possible. We should have spent Sunday optimizing an already existing program, not beginning to write our code.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in this competition, and would gladly accept more challenges.

My chosen title is Information Extraction Over the Internet for a Dynamic Game, which involves heavy reading about the semantic web and about content generation in games. However, there are very few papers that combine both topics. One of the main problems I’ve found with the literature review is that I keep finding more and more papers that seem relevant, however, there’s no chance in hell that I’ll have to read and properly understand all of them, especially with more lecturers giving us assignments.

So I’ve decided that I’ll keep around 20 relevant papers in a particular field, and set aside the rest. That should leave me with around 40 papers to read and analyze. I’ve already started taking notes from the papers too, so that the actual writing of the literature review shouldn’t take too long.

Meanwhile, the assignments keep pouring in…

As a side note, I’ve managed to make my website somewhat semantically enabled. If you use a plugin on your browser that allows you to view microformats, you should be able to download an hCard from my website with my contact information. Neat, no?

Welcome to the blog section of my website! Although the rest of the website is dedicated to showcasing portfolio material, this section serves to demonstrate my thoughts and ideas, the inner workings of a Maltese student.

Although my past blogging attempts have failed miserably, I hope that I can at least keep this blog updated on a semi-regular basis, just to keep things fresh.