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This weekend me and a few other from school traveled to Stockholm to attend the Swedish game awards conference in Stockholm. The conference was two days long. On the first day I went to two of talks.
The first talk where by Sjoerd De Jong, from Teotl Studios. He talked about Unreal engine 4 and a new feature or called Blueprint. Blueprint is a Visual programming tool that is a mix between kismet from UDK/Unreal engine3 and with some features from matinee. Some of the new features, blue print is context sensitive so you are shown what you can use at the moment, instead of a lot of different things like in kismet UDK/Unreal engine 3. Another change is that unreal script is removed. He showed of an early demo of Solus a game they are working on. We were shown a level where everything had been made through Blueprint, not a single line of code written.
When it comes to debugging in blueprint, you see exactly what nodes get activated in real time, which will make it quite easy for someone with little to no programming skills to make things In Unreal engine 4. A programmer can later go in and write custom nodes in C++, allowing the programmers to work more on optimization and more advanced things.
The second talk I went to was by Johan Pilestedt from Arrowhead
He talked about general things when it comes to manage a game project and the pitfalls. He started off by saying “A game for everyone is a game for no one”.
What to keep in mind when making or pitching a concept. Was to pitch often not but not to publishers but instead to friends and family members as it helps you explain your idea in a way that others can understand, Referring to common things people know. Pitching your concept also help you build more confidence in your concept. He also talked said that you should not be afraid of talking about your ideas to other people, they cannot steal your concept only an interpretation of your concept. But it won’t be the same game. People tend to think of the high-level features first, but forget what the game is. Instead keep the concept simple, think of the most basic game play you want people to experience when they play your game. Limit your concept in the beginning as a project will grow naturally on its own throughout the development. Start with a good art style. Try to figure out the core of the game. The goal isn’t clear because you don’t want to step on others feet. When making the vertical slice remember that you only need one level, people should be able to understand the game after 5min.
When managing a team you have to know where you’re going if you want your team to follow. Do not underestimate the time will take to make it, instead overestimate a bit.
When making a game motivation is important, a way to keep the motivation is to create something that is playable as early as possible, then start playing it with the whole team and give feedback to each other , as it is wha
t the player experience that is important. Another way to keep motivation is to instead of having a long handing out tasks to everyone, tell the team what needs to be done and allow them to choose what to work on.
Once the production reaches Alfa it’s the point of no return, now everything should be in the game and beyond this point there’s only testing, tweaking and putting finishing touches to the game.
Pilestedt ended this talk by quoting Sir Isaac Newton” If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” People should not be afraid to borrow ideas from things that come before. There’s no reason to reinvent the universe.
That was the end of the first day of SGA conference for me.
 
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