Get Your Game On: Troy’s TVCoG Hosts VR And Gaming Hackathon

April 6, 2016 by Dan Maloney 1 Comment

Troy New York’s Tech Valley Center of Gravity is following up their January IoT Hackathon with another installment. The April 16-17 event promises to be a doozy, and anyone close to the area with even a passing interest in gaming and AR/VR should really make an effort to be there.

Not content to just be a caffeine-fueled creative burst, TVCoG is raising the bar in a couple ways. First, they’re teaming up with some corporate sponsors with a strong presence in the VR and AR fields. Daydream.io, a new company based in the same building as the CoG, is contributing a bunch of its Daydream.VR smartphone headsets to hackathon attendees, as well as mentors to get your project up and running. Other sponsors include 1st Playable Productions and Vicarious Visions, game studios both located in the Troy area. And to draw in the hardcore game programmers, a concurrent Ludum Dare game jam will be run by the Tech Valley Game Space, with interaction and collaboration between the AR/VR hackers and the programmers encouraged. Teams will compete for $1000 in prizes and other giveaways.

This sounds like it’s going to be an amazing chance to hack, to collaborate, and to make connections in the growing AR/VR field. And did we mention the food? There was a ton of it last time, so much they were begging us to take it home on Sunday night. Go, hack, create, mingle, and eat. TVCoG knows how to hackathon, and you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks to [Duncan Crary] for the heads up on this.

Ludum Dare 20 Starting April 29th

April 19, 2011 by Kevin Dady 9 Comments

Ludum Dare 20 is only 10 days away! Great, what the heck is Ludum Dare? Well its only the most awesome video game creation contest on the internet, thats what. While originally for the hardest of the hard core, it has recently been split up into 2 events so everyone gets to have some fun.

The Jam is pretty relaxed in the rules. Lets say you and 4 buddies want to make the ultimate zelda remix using fan sprites and free music. This is where you want to be. Its there to give people who want to join in the fun but not make serious obligations.

The Compo is the real deal for those who are insane, or really good. You are given a theme at the start of the contest and 48 hours. You must then work solo and create all original content to use within your game. You can however use premade frameworks, game engines, libraries etc to accomplish your goal, but if you really wanted to you could make a 3D engine with brain fu*k during the competition. (though I would not advise it)

Prizes include internet bragging rights, and quite possibility the best darn feeling of accomplishment possible IF you manage to come up with some form of game, based on a voted theme, by yourself, in less than 48 hours.

Be sure to check out the rules and guide page for all details and I hope to see you there.