Thanks for the response. Funny enough, I actually worked with @Creative630 and @BenJets on Star Crossed Lovers - our entry for Ludum Dare #30. He mentioned he hosts sound challenges on here, and Im very keen to give the most recent one a shot! I stay in Cape Town, so Im hoping to make it to the next meet up. At least made it to post meet up drinks at Perseverance last week and met a few people, which was cool.
My friends call me Joe and I have a dream. ;). While I know nothing of game design or coding, I am planning to make a GREAT GAME. Sound familiar? I want your best and proudest - but hey, I have no money. That sound familiar also? HA!
Jokes aside. While quite intimidated by the whole process I want to develop a game and with that end in mind I have been lurking around the forum for a few months hoping to learn and I am simply in awe of what you are capable of doing.
As I am not involved in the industry, except for being around since the birth of 'electronic' gaming, and I was overjoyed to find this forum, learn that there are so many South African developers and actually bowled over when I found out that we have several successful studios in "goeie ou' SA. Reading what I am typing makes me feel stupid and naive. After all why would we not have a strong game dev community?
Moving forward, I know nothing about nothing and until I have something concrete to show I will slip back into the shadows. What I do have is a "script" (I know you guys don't call them scripts) which is currently well over 60 000 words, (the document will probably double in size by the time I finish writing some time in late 2015 , early '16.) and is written with a heavily scripted, 3D adventure game in mind.
In closing, just a short thank you for sharing knowledge the way you guys do.
I'm Carl. I'm currently in gr.12 and I am going to study Computer Science at NMMU PE next year. I aspire to become an Indie game developer an maybe even have my own company one day. I've tinkered a bit with a few game engines and most recently got into Unity but sadly all experimenting and game creation is on hold since I'm writing record and final exams.
So far I have 2 years of experience with Java (I have IT in school). I going to.learn C# next year. I've really become fond of Unity and plan on using it for future gameing projects. I still a total beginner when ia comes to making games. I was following Brackeys' tutorials on www.brackeys.com.
I'm glad I stumbled apon this forum. I hope to share many more discussions with fellow gaming and game development enthusiasts! Let the learning begin!
I'm Kobus Kleynhans. Indie developer and creator of Lab Panic, new classic arcade game on android. Owner of www.raremeatgames.co.za. Looking forward to learning from other's experiences and sharing my own.
Welcome, and I must say I love your PlayItForward widget concept to promote indie games new to market locally!
I've been something of a lurker here for about a year now, finally started taking this game dev stuff seriously last month when I formed a company with an old friend of mine. We're working on our first game - a hacking simulator RTS, using Unity. I'm definitely a better coder than artist :)
I'm Jessica I started making games in 1998 at Sierra Online on the Gabriel Knight team. I was a programmer for many years in the core games industry and now I am at the Casual Games Association.
I'm Jessica I started making games in 1998 at Sierra Online on the Gabriel Knight team. I was a programmer for many years in the core games industry and now I am at the Casual Games Association.
Hi Jessica!
I'm super curious, what brings you to our tiny development community here in South Africa? Nevertheless, you're more than welcome - you're definitely our heaviest hitting member so far ;)
Hi Jessica! (I'm guessing thats your name) :) What do you mean by outreach? Video-game related workshops/presentations? Would like to hear more of your experiences at Sierra!
Just checking out what is going on. I think South Africa is the furthest place from my home :) LOL
I have done quite a bit of outreach into other regions, but (embarrassingly) neglected Africa. I'm trying to make things right :)
We have a dedicated staff member to help Indies. I'm going to have her join the group too!
Yup, SA is practically antipodean compared to the US. San Fran is almost exactly on the other side of the world from us here in Cape Town.
I wish you'd signed up a couple of months ago, we'd have invited you to the AMAZE festival in JHB. Even though this year's dev representation from other African countries was smaller than last year's I think it would have been a good place to start and get introduced to a lot of what's going on in terms of game development in SA and Africa as a whole.
Have you made contact with any of the Nigerian and Kenyan developers yet?
One of our staff was actually in South Africa a year ago - on his way to visit his Uncle's friend in Namibia. I should have joined a long long time ago then he could have visited you all!!
I found a Facebook group with quite a few Nigerians. Not any Kenyans yet though.
Sierra was so long ago! I worked at lots of other cool places over the years too - I have been in the games industry for my entire career so I am really lucky to be able to work in such an awesome industry :)
Im Greg and I'm a sound designer/music composer based in Durban.
I'm currently trying to get to grips with Wwise and FMOD so if anyone is working on a project that needs audio implementation through either of those, please give me a shout!
Im Sebastian, I'm a Mobile Applications developer.
I'm working on HTML5 apps full-time. But am planning on releasing a Game or two on the side. The concepts are currently just clones of other games, just to get some things out there and build on my Game Engine. With a little more time and some solid concepts, I can release a fresh game.
I'm interested in 2d game libraries such as LibGDX, Cocos2d-x and SpriteKit. I will be releasing my first top-down shooter by the end of the year using LibGDX.
Hmmm can't remember if I have introduced myself but here goes.
hi my name is Richard. Joined this site a while back and have been lurking ever since. Recently started learning more about coding (than what i knew before, which wasn't a lot but hey) and have interesets in Game Dev. Have I created any? No. Will I in near future? Probably not. But I am still interested so here I am.
I am very enthralled with mobile apps and games so if I ever do create something it would be for the andriod platform.
I have written for some gaming sites in the past (reviews and such things) and most recently for Zombiegamer. But it has been taking a back seat due to my studies/work/personal life taking up much more of my time than usual.
Outside of gaming or IT related things I like beer and brazilian jiu jitsu.
hope to see the CPT crew at a meet up some time soon.
My name is Petr (yes 1 e) I'm a software dev for about 13 years. I love programming, and games. I've been playing around with unity for the last couple of of months building my first game (I'll make a new discussion to get some feedback). I also have some experience in cocos2d-x and AGK.
Name is Jean-Pierre, I'm working with @Wogan at Redcroft Studios. I come from a business / finance background but am a lifelong gamer. I'm currently climbing the (steep) learning curve into game development but Unity is making it a lot easier.
Great to see there's a vibrant community here and looking forward to interacting with you all.
My name is Tshidiso, live in soshanguve, make mobile games fulltime, yet to ship, but will eventually when I stop trying to have perfect physics in my games, or my benefactors try to break down my door, whichever comes first. Can do Java and some C/C+ +. Now back to those GL routines ...
My name is Etienne de Villiers, I've just returned to SA after having lived in the UK for 8 years. I used to work at I-Imagine with Matt Benic, Luke Lamothe, etc. and then went to go work in the UK console games industry. I now work for Fuzzy Logic doing mobile games and augmented reality apps. You can find out a bit more here.
I'll be moving to the George area soon, but for the time being I'm in Johannesburg, so I look forward to meeting some of you at Tuesday's meetup!
Hi , my name is Bradley Hean, I`ve been lurking around here for a while and thought I`d best introduce myself before I reach stalker level :P. I live In Durbs by the sea and have been modding / game developing for 5 years now. I am lead game developer with an international team called "Dezowave". We created a new game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series called "Lost Alpha" which can be seen here : http://www.moddb.com/mods/lost-alpha. It had a good possibility of becoming a commercial venture, but alas many things went wrong and so we released it for free. We are currently working on a new FPS in Unity. Glad to be aboard!
Hey, go by the name of Uni. Work hours are spent mostly developing in Flash for clients that still use Flash for presentation layer on their systems. Need to expand my portfolio and have started delving more into Unity3D and GameMaker - lurked a while on the meetup site but since that's closed down - here I am.
Hello world! Got into development because I wanted to make games, but since there was no courses and a market in RSA (thank you WITs and UCT along with steam for having this now), when I had to make the move to get out there and earn my living. Opted for robotics at Stellies, but I did not make the cut. So completed a development course and started with C#. This year after working mostly for corporate's in the past, I opted for work at a start up, and wanted to get back to my first love... wanted to try my luck at social impact games. After lurking around meetup's Games For Change section, found this wonderful and vibrant community. Been to one or two meetings in CT, and the drive can be far, but it's definitely worth it; when I can make it. Cheers!
Hey @electrov Glad to see you will be bringing some of that AAA knowledge to the SA community. Wish I could take Doc's DeLorean and go relive some of my best development memories we had while crunching at I-Imagine. Also remember we played a ton of C&C Generals as well as Warcraft 3 Tower Defence :-)
Ever since I can remember I've loved video games. At school I never really had the programming prowess to create games of my own, but I was always drawing game ideas and characters on paper.
So naturally after school I went and studied civil engineering. It was only 8 years into my working career that I realised: "Heeeeeey, this isn't game design!". So I quit my job and started making games from home, and have been doing so for a year now.
Even though art is my primary skill, I've picked up and become quite proficient with using Game Maker Studio.
I've worked on Chronoblast (XBox) and Seedscape (PC). I'm currently working on my own little title, a demo of which should drop on these very forums within the next two weeks.
I really look forward to becoming part of and contributing to this wonderful community. I currently stay in Somerset West, and would love to meet any other game developers in the area (Cape Town, Stellies etc.) for a coffee or a beer.
I really look forward to becoming part of and contributing to this wonderful community. I currently stay in Somerset West, and would love to meet any other game developers in the area (Cape Town, Stellies etc.) for a coffee or a beer.
This happened - I think there are plans for another boland meetup in December some time... Ask @francoisvn?
@pieter: Hey there. I believe we met at the last CT meetup. Glad to see you here. As @dislekcia mentioned, there are plans to have another Boland Meetup in December. My current plan is to organise something for next week Thursday (11th), I just need to get the details posted. Watch the forums for more details soon :)
I'm Clive (which may be hinted at in my user name). I've been developing games since, well let's not give away my age too much, but it's about 25 years now since I first submitted a game anywhere.
I didn't know this community even existed until a tweet came across my feed a couple of weeks ago about the Humble breakfast in Cape Town, at which point I joined this forum and went and met a few of the guys from Cape Town.
I wear two hats in the game world:
I own and run Linux Game Publishing. My taking over is fairly recent it used to be owned and run from the UK and I work(ed) as a senior developer for about 8-9 years prior to taking over the company myself. LGP's own website is down at the moment, sadly there have been some teething issues moving a UK firm to South Africa - but that's not a story for these boards ;)
I also run my own game and game-dev-related company DarkArts Studios and that's basically my pet projects and what I do for fun outside of "normal work hours". That's also been running for many years and has several games all over the place. I currently have 2 games that have completed the greenlight process on Steam, one of which will be going live within the next two weeks, the other probably only a couple of months after that (really didn't expect valve to greenlight them both at the same time). Aside from that I also create Unity editor extensions, mostly based on my own needs when prototyping or creating games.
Great to meet you all, looking forward to the next CPT meet.
Hey, I'm Matt. I'm a wannabe game dev. I am working at Plex and running my company, RogueCode, making mobile stuff.We're working on tracKtion currently.@roguecodewebsite
Seeing tracKtion looking so good and only in its early stage, I'd say you have surpassed " wannabe" already
Good day everyone! I'm new to this forum/community. I have one more exam left on the 21st of January, then I am no longer a student :) The way I found out about this community was through last year's Multimedia Expo at Tuks (where we had to present our final year game project), where someone from this community told me about MGSA.
I'm looking forward to meeting most of you at the JHB meetups and the Global Game Jam
Salute everyone my name is kerwin kin. Im your average gamer. Good to see a huge network of gamers. Im sure there is alot of talented individuals out there
I'm Sunrise. My main occupation is playing video games, although I sometimes stray from this life purpose by doing some research at uct. My main interests in gamedev are engine development and game ai.
Hi i am Bing and i just finally did the global game jam and it was awesome, I am 2D artist and animator and i dabble in Game Development, cant wait for the next one...
Comments
Thanks for the response. Funny enough, I actually worked with @Creative630 and @BenJets on Star Crossed Lovers - our entry for Ludum Dare #30. He mentioned he hosts sound challenges on here, and Im very keen to give the most recent one a shot! I stay in Cape Town, so Im hoping to make it to the next meet up. At least made it to post meet up drinks at Perseverance last week and met a few people, which was cool.
My friends call me Joe and I have a dream. ;). While I know nothing of game design or coding, I am planning to make a GREAT GAME. Sound familiar? I want your best and proudest - but hey, I have no money. That sound familiar also? HA!
Jokes aside. While quite intimidated by the whole process I want to develop a game and with that end in mind I have been lurking around the forum for a few months hoping to learn and I am simply in awe of what you are capable of doing.
As I am not involved in the industry, except for being around since the birth of 'electronic' gaming, and I was overjoyed to find this forum, learn that there are so many South African developers and actually bowled over when I found out that we have several successful studios in "goeie ou' SA. Reading what I am typing makes me feel stupid and naive. After all why would we not have a strong game dev community?
Moving forward, I know nothing about nothing and until I have something concrete to show I will slip back into the shadows. What I do have is a "script" (I know you guys don't call them scripts) which is currently well over 60 000 words, (the document will probably double in size by the time I finish writing some time in late 2015 , early '16.) and is written with a heavily scripted, 3D adventure game in mind.
In closing, just a short thank you for sharing knowledge the way you guys do.
Regards
Joe
My name is Shera i am sound designer :)
I'm Carl. I'm currently in gr.12 and I am going to study Computer Science at NMMU PE next year. I aspire to become an Indie game developer an maybe even have my own company one day. I've tinkered a bit with a few game engines and most recently got into Unity but sadly all experimenting and game creation is on hold since I'm writing record and final exams.
So far I have 2 years of experience with Java (I have IT in school). I going to.learn C# next year. I've really become fond of Unity and plan on using it for future gameing projects. I still a total beginner when ia comes to making games. I was following Brackeys' tutorials on www.brackeys.com.
I'm glad I stumbled apon this forum. I hope to share many more discussions with fellow gaming and game development enthusiasts! Let the learning begin!
I've been something of a lurker here for about a year now, finally started taking this game dev stuff seriously last month when I formed a company with an old friend of mine. We're working on our first game - a hacking simulator RTS, using Unity. I'm definitely a better coder than artist :)
what is your company / website / game name?
and where abouts in SA you
welcome
I'm Jessica I started making games in 1998 at Sierra Online on the Gabriel Knight team. I was a programmer for many years in the core games industry and now I am at the Casual Games Association.
I'm super curious, what brings you to our tiny development community here in South Africa? Nevertheless, you're more than welcome - you're definitely our heaviest hitting member so far ;)
I have done quite a bit of outreach into other regions, but (embarrassingly) neglected Africa. I'm trying to make things right :)
We have a dedicated staff member to help Indies. I'm going to have her join the group too!
What do you mean by outreach? Video-game related workshops/presentations?
Would like to hear more of your experiences at Sierra!
I wish you'd signed up a couple of months ago, we'd have invited you to the AMAZE festival in JHB. Even though this year's dev representation from other African countries was smaller than last year's I think it would have been a good place to start and get introduced to a lot of what's going on in terms of game development in SA and Africa as a whole.
Have you made contact with any of the Nigerian and Kenyan developers yet?
I found a Facebook group with quite a few Nigerians. Not any Kenyans yet though.
Sierra was so long ago! I worked at lots of other cool places over the years too - I have been in the games industry for my entire career so I am really lucky to be able to work in such an awesome industry :)
We're still undecided on the name of our first game, for now we've simply taken to calling it 'Terminal'.
Im Greg and I'm a sound designer/music composer based in Durban.
I'm currently trying to get to grips with Wwise and FMOD so if anyone is working on a project that needs audio implementation through either of those, please give me a shout!
Im Sebastian, I'm a Mobile Applications developer.
I'm working on HTML5 apps full-time. But am planning on releasing a Game or two on the side. The concepts are currently just clones of other games, just to get some things out there and build on my Game Engine. With a little more time and some solid concepts, I can release a fresh game.
I'm interested in 2d game libraries such as LibGDX, Cocos2d-x and SpriteKit. I will be releasing my first top-down shooter by the end of the year using LibGDX.
hi my name is Richard. Joined this site a while back and have been lurking ever since. Recently started learning more about coding (than what i knew before, which wasn't a lot but hey) and have interesets in Game Dev. Have I created any? No. Will I in near future? Probably not. But I am still interested so here I am.
I am very enthralled with mobile apps and games so if I ever do create something it would be for the andriod platform.
I have written for some gaming sites in the past (reviews and such things) and most recently for Zombiegamer. But it has been taking a back seat due to my studies/work/personal life taking up much more of my time than usual.
Outside of gaming or IT related things I like beer and brazilian jiu jitsu.
hope to see the CPT crew at a meet up some time soon.
My name is Petr (yes 1 e) I'm a software dev for about 13 years. I love programming, and games. I've been playing around with unity for the last couple of of months building my first game (I'll make a new discussion to get some feedback). I also have some experience in cocos2d-x and AGK.
Name is Jean-Pierre, I'm working with @Wogan at Redcroft Studios. I come from a business / finance background but am a lifelong gamer. I'm currently climbing the (steep) learning curve into game development but Unity is making it a lot easier.
Great to see there's a vibrant community here and looking forward to interacting with you all.
My name is Etienne de Villiers, I've just returned to SA after having lived in the UK for 8 years. I used to work at I-Imagine with Matt Benic, Luke Lamothe, etc. and then went to go work in the UK console games industry. I now work for Fuzzy Logic doing mobile games and augmented reality apps. You can find out a bit more here.
I'll be moving to the George area soon, but for the time being I'm in Johannesburg, so I look forward to meeting some of you at Tuesday's meetup!
I live In Durbs by the sea and have been modding / game developing for 5 years now. I am lead game developer with an international team called "Dezowave". We created a new game in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series called "Lost Alpha" which can be seen here : http://www.moddb.com/mods/lost-alpha. It had a good possibility of becoming a commercial venture, but alas many things went wrong and so we released it for free. We are currently working on a new FPS in Unity.
Glad to be aboard!
Currently working as a web developer. Been a game dev hobbyist for the past 2yrs, worked with unity, maya, zbrush,blender.
Ever since I can remember I've loved video games. At school I never really had the programming prowess to create games of my own, but I was always drawing game ideas and characters on paper.
So naturally after school I went and studied civil engineering. It was only 8 years into my working career that I realised: "Heeeeeey, this isn't game design!". So I quit my job and started making games from home, and have been doing so for a year now.
Even though art is my primary skill, I've picked up and become quite proficient with using Game Maker Studio.
I've worked on Chronoblast (XBox) and Seedscape (PC). I'm currently working on my own little title, a demo of which should drop on these very forums within the next two weeks.
I really look forward to becoming part of and contributing to this wonderful community. I currently stay in Somerset West, and would love to meet any other game developers in the area (Cape Town, Stellies etc.) for a coffee or a beer.
A probable well overdue greeting ;)
I'm Clive (which may be hinted at in my user name). I've been developing games since, well let's not give away my age too much, but it's about 25 years now since I first submitted a game anywhere.
I didn't know this community even existed until a tweet came across my feed a couple of weeks ago about the Humble breakfast in Cape Town, at which point I joined this forum and went and met a few of the guys from Cape Town.
I wear two hats in the game world:
I own and run Linux Game Publishing. My taking over is fairly recent it used to be owned and run from the UK and I work(ed) as a senior developer for about 8-9 years prior to taking over the company myself. LGP's own website is down at the moment, sadly there have been some teething issues moving a UK firm to South Africa - but that's not a story for these boards ;)
I also run my own game and game-dev-related company DarkArts Studios and that's basically my pet projects and what I do for fun outside of "normal work hours". That's also been running for many years and has several games all over the place. I currently have 2 games that have completed the greenlight process on Steam, one of which will be going live within the next two weeks, the other probably only a couple of months after that (really didn't expect valve to greenlight them both at the same time). Aside from that I also create Unity editor extensions, mostly based on my own needs when prototyping or creating games.
Great to meet you all, looking forward to the next CPT meet.
Clive
I'm new to this forum/community. I have one more exam left on the 21st of January, then I am no longer a student :) The way I found out about this community was through last year's Multimedia Expo at Tuks (where we had to present our final year game project), where someone from this community told me about MGSA.
I'm looking forward to meeting most of you at the JHB meetups and the Global Game Jam
I'm Charlie, just a hobbyist programmer living in Durban, trying to learn how to make games, currently focusing on 2d platformers in Java.
Welcome to the forums !
I'm Sunrise. My main occupation is playing video games, although I sometimes stray from this life purpose by doing some research at uct. My main interests in gamedev are engine development and game ai.
Nice Nickname
Im cyboerg an aspiring game developer and hardcore gamer since Mario times.
My profession is 3D arts but am also a novice at programming C#.
I hope to meet and maybe work with all you good folk one day.
See you on the forum!
oomjan, experienced c# developer, playing around with Unity