Date: October 11, 2007, 6:00

Location: Old Chicago, 144th and Center

Attendees:

• Dave Mark
• Shane Farris
• Jared Mark

This was the initial, organizational meeting of the OGDA. Since we had only formed the group about a week before and only sent out announcements to the local people on GameDev.net earlier that week, we didn't expect any more than the three of us.

This was the first time that Shane had met either Dave or Jared in person, so introductions and backgrounds were the primary issue.

Each person took a while to cover their experience with game technology - which naturally led to comments about the holes in their knowledge as well. A recurring theme was lamenting how it is impossible to "do it all yourself" and how our respective projects suffer for lack of someone to fill a particular role. This, of course, is something that all three of us hoped to accomplish by forming the OGDA. (Note, we could all really stand to have some graphic artists and modelers!) Shane spoke of his (unfinished) web project specifically designed with this issue in mind. (The details will have to wait... "top secret" and all that jazz!) (Or you could come to the next meeting and he will tell you...)

Shane described his creation of a custom 3D engine that is a mash-up of Irrlicht and his own work.

Jared spoke of his own history in working with various engines such as Ogre3D and how he settled on TrueVision 3D. He also explained his custom GUI system that he has written for TrueVision 3D.

This led to a discussion of programming languages for games - specifically between C++ and .NET. Advantages and disadvantages to both were tossed about. This is likely a topic that will come up in the future, especially as people who are relatively new to development ask the inevitable question, "what language should I learn to make games?"

Jared gave a very detailed overview of his game concept (Vermund). This reopened the issue of how frustrating it is to find and work with people in a hobbyist-style, distributed environment.

There was an extended explanation of Dave's topic that he presented as a lecture proposal for the upcoming Game Developer's Conference. There was much scribbling on paper (someone please remember to always bring some to future meetings) and coming up with hypothetical examples on the fly. Unfortunately, Dave tried to condense a one hour lecture into 10 minutes (without proper visual aids). Given that there were already a few empty beers on the table, the excess brain work of trying to digest Dave's presentation was threatening to set off the smoke detectors in the restaurant. Not wanting to disrupt the other guests, we moved on to other topics before any damage could ensue. (Now imagine what a whole week of lectures and roundtables at GDC is like!)

Dave spoke of the concept of his company's game, "Airline Traffic Manager" and how it compared to the other entries in that genre. He even whipped out the laptop for a brief demo. (Future note: Old Chicago doesn't have free wireless. -5 points)

All attendees touched briefly on the benefits of a design document - even when you are working alone. The consensus was that it helps to solidify not only what you are doing for any given facet of your game, but why you are doing it.

On the way out the door, plans were tentatively made to look into approaching the various educational institutions in the area to see how to spread word of the OGDA to students of graphic arts and programming. Dave said that he would look into it in more detail.

Shane spoke of approaching the local .NET users group in order to "recruit" more members. He will contact Dave and Jared to attend the next meeting.

We also decided that we would come up with a new date for the next meeting very soon. However, until there are more people in the group, the meeting dates would revolve around our schedules rather than scheduling a regular monthly date and adjusting our schedules to fit. Eventually we do plan on having a fixed day of the month on which to meet.

All in all, it was an interesting get-together. In the future, since the introductions are out of the way, we hope to focus on more specific topics. All of us were very pleased to be able to speak about game development to other live human beings. The prospect of finding not only common knowledge but complimentary skill sets amongst group members is something we all are excited about.