48-Hour Contest 5: Article I
48-Hour Development Contest: A Word from the Coordinators
[Published on GameCareerGuide.com March 18, 2008]
By Paul Skowronek and Mitchell Keith Bloch
The University of Michigan hosts an annual game development challenge, in which small teams of students have just 48 hours to develop a video game. GameCareerGuide.com is running an exclusive five-part series written by the contestants about their experience making a game in just two days. Here, we meet the event coordinators, who explain how the 48-Hour Game Development Contest works.
The University of Michigan hosts an annual game development challenge, in which small teams of students have just 48 hours to develop a video game. The event is run by the campus' game development club, Wolverine Soft. Mitchell Keith Bloch and Paul Skowronek are the coordinators for this year's event. This is their account of the contest.
I'm Paul Skowronek, one of the event managers of this year's 48-Hour Game Development Contest. I have competed in the last two contests, but I felt burned out on participating this year, largely because I was awake for the whole event last year. Knowing that this year's event would have more participants from more schools, and that last year's coordinator had a rough time managing the event, I volunteered to co-coordinate with my friend Mitchell Keith Bloch, Wolverine Soft's president.
Event Planning
We had discussed the event a little bit throughout the semester, but we only truly start to plan it the Saturday before the contest. Among the more mundane details (for example, Mitchell and I schedule time when we'll sleep), we discuss how to record the participants' experiences. We decide to ask them to keep journals and will further document their work by extensively video recording.
We also discuss the theme. "Steven Colbert" had been suggested several years ago as a joke; I have a bad feeling about it, but can't think of any compelling reason not to use it. While it would be an interesting change to use a very specific theme, I'm not convinced, and don't finalize anything.
Both of my roommates will participate in the contest, so when I see them, I pretend that Mitchell and I have not yet discussed the theme.
During our weekly club meeting the following Thursday, I avoid talking about any games at all. We have to work secretly so as not to give anyone an advantage in the contest.
Mitchell leaves and then calls me 20 minutes later. Pretending to be meeting with someone else, I also excuse myself and join Mitchell, unbeknownst to the other club members.
I join him outside at a restaurant. We invent a couple code words to disguise our conversation just in case a participant passes by, and though I still have misgivings, we agree that "Honoring Stephen Colbert" will be the theme.
The Contest
The Friday before the contest begins, I grab a video camera. Mitchell and I hang out near the contest room and grab something to eat before the event gets rolling.
I videotape the room before anyone else enters it as a precaution. It's filled with computers, and if anything is damaged during the contest, we will have evidence of the condition of the room before we arrived. When the contest ends, I'll grab a few more shots of the room to show its state as we left it, too.
The first hour is fairly hectic. I retrieve a few boxes of prizes from the club office and spend the rest of the hour with Mitchell, registering contestants and setting up teams. Students from Michigan State University (MSU) have come over to compete with us, and I had expected the MSU president to set up the MSU teams (because that's essentially what happened last year). But as the host, Mitchell expected to set up all the teams. This miscommunication confuses us a bit, but we eventually accept MSU's pre-arranged teams.
Around this same time, I received a phone call. It's a call that I will not actually have time to return until the following Wednesday -- that should give you an idea of how hectic the contest gets.
After announcing the teams and giving them a moment to find each other, Mitchell gives me one more chance to veto the theme, which I do not.
At this moment, we make two mistakes. First, I don't have the video camera out when the crowd first reacts to the theme. There's laughter mixed with scattered disbelief and one or two instances of confusion. Second, we had not yet announced any rules, the most pressing of which is "Don't eat or drink anything inside the contest room."
We're surprised to discover that one of the teams has no experienced game programmers, and that none of the other teams have any to spare. I'm not too worried because some of last year's games were made by rookie teams, and they seemed to manage. But this team doesn't have any idea where to start. Mitchell gives them a short tutorial on a framework he developed.
I work a nightshift job off campus, so at around 8:30, I take the bus back to my apartment. The buses aren't running when my shift ends at 5 a.m., so I watch a couple movies to kill time until the buses start running at 8.
Mitchell looks exhausted when I get back, and he sticks around for a little while before leaving. Most people are gone or sleeping, so I take the camera around to anyone who's awake. I also get a shot of everyone who fell asleep in the room because they are hilarious. People don't start returning or waking until 10:30, and nearly everyone returns by noon.
The next shift switch for me happens at around 4 or 5 p.m. when Mitchell returns.
Mitchell takes over moderating, but I decide not to go home because just traveling there and back on the bus will waste a whole lot of my time. I eat my lunch in the office and sleep on the couch. A few hours later, I wake up and return to the contest, then fall asleep again in the second (emptier) contest room.
A few hours later, I relieve Mitchell. His Sunday morning shift was fairly uneventful, except for several conversations with building personnel. I do a few more video interviews, then switch shifts with Mitchell again in time for lunch.
Just before the contest ends, we go around and make sure everyone is prepared to submit a working build. The judges arrive late, which is okay because we need those extra minutes to set up demos and labels for all the games.
Mitchell creates a spreadsheet to tabulate the votes and collects the first few, while I play all the games. We then trade roles. We post the results on our projector screens one by one as we announce them. When a team is announced, the members choose prizes from our selection table, and pose for a picture. When the teams take too long, I raffle off a T-shirt or mesh bag.
After everyone is done and gone, we check and video tape the room, stash the contest supplies in our office, then go home and sleep.
-- Paul Skowronek, Wolverine Soft events coordinator
Mitchell's Take
I'm Mitchell Keith Bloch, one of the contest coordinators for this 48-Hour Game Development Contest. Along with my co-coordinator, Paul, my responsibilities include reserving rooms, scheduling the event, organizing teams, advertising, finding judges, finding sponsors to donate prizes, and, of course, deciding on a theme for the contest.
Every contest has a theme that all games must be designed around, to at least some extent. Usually the theme influences art, sound effects, music, and story more than anything else. Occasionally, however, a game will be produced that would never have been made if not for the theme the developers were presented with. Those are often the most interesting games to play come the end of the contest.
Saturday, January 12
3:00 p.m. Paul and I meet in the Tap Room in the Michigan Union. We begin by forming a list of things that need to be planned that we have not yet dealt with. Judges have all been contacted by this time. Most sponsors have responded positively, though we are concerned that we might not have enough prizes if all participants who have shown interest actually attend. We decide to get the Advanced Graphics Rooms as well as the Windows Training Rooms to make sure that we have enough space for all the contestants.
We plan the schedule. We will state on the official schedule that the contest begins at 6:00 p.m. on Friday; teams will be announced at 6:30; and finally the theme will be announced at 7:00. Games will be due, available for download from the web site at 7:00 on Sunday, 48 hours later, and judging will commence immediately. One hour before that, we will begin nagging the participants to release the final copies of their games. And one hour before that, we will announce to everyone that it is very important to back up any working copies of their games and to make their final changes by 6:00 p.m., if at all possible. Of course, as soon as judging is over, we will hold the awards ceremony where everyone finds out the total ordering of games from best to worst and everyone gets a prize of a brand new video game from a major game development studio. Also, we decide to offer a free dinner to all participants on the Saturday evening, near the middle of the contest.
We also discuss tips to try to help the participants of the contest. We suggest using tools that you know in advance of the contest wherever possible. Keeping regular backups of working builds is essential. Getting sleep can be very beneficial to a contest. Ensure that communication is effective within your team. We list common sense ideas that are easy to forget in the heat of the moment. We plan to state them at the start of the contest.
In the end, we discuss the theme for the contest. As Paul's roommates will be participants, only I take notes on this part of the discussion. I come up with three theme ideas. One is derived from my idea from last year. "Stephen Colbert" becomes the new theme, "Honoring Stephen Colbert," which I believe is a much more malleable theme. Honoring Stephen Colbert seems to me to be a pretty easy thing to do. Previous themes have been "Freedom" and "Relaxation," so this suggestion is a bit unusual for the contest. In the end, we aren't able to decide and defer the decision until later.
Thursday
8:00 p.m. I call Paul and suggest we discuss the last remaining point of the contest: the theme. In the end, we go with "Honoring Stephen Colbert." We still avoid committing completely. Leaning strongly towards the theme choice, we head back to dev session at a staggered pace so as to avoid suspicion.
Friday
6:00 p.m. I head to the Wolverine Soft office and get someone to come back to my place to help carry boxes of prizes. Unfortunately, some prizes are not here yet, so some participants might have to settle for older prizes from our stockpile. We make our way to Windows Training Room 1 where we set down the boxes and leave them closed for the time being.
I begin to organize the teams as I see fit, trying to meet their requests when possible while keeping team fairness in mind. One point of contention is that we are allowing the teams from Michigan State University to use Torque, a proprietary library, which we cannot even examine due to licensing restrictions. Whether this places the other teams at a disadvantage is unknown, but any participants using Torque will have to be kept isolated from the other programmers. People keep trickling in until 6:55. Around that time, Charles Roman from MSU reminds me that he has in fact organized the teams from his school. Of course, this gives me no opportunity to balance the teams, and it might make the atmosphere a bit more adversarial than I was hoping for, but it cannot be helped. In fact, that one participant from MSU wants to work alone makes the organization much easier.
7:00 p.m. I read off the teams and make sure that everyone finds one another. After doing so, I turn to Paul and ask if he agrees that it is time to announce the theme. Furthermore, I ask if he is still leaning toward the theme choice we made the previous evening. As we are both still in agreement, I stand and state that I am going to announce the theme. The room falls into silence.
"The theme is 'Honoring Stephen Colbert,'" I announce, and the room erupts. Some of the more experienced teams leave to discuss possible game ideas. A minute later, Paul regrets not getting the announcement on tape. A minute after that, I regret not giving our suggestions on how to have a successful 48-Hour Game Development experience. I proceed to send those suggestions via email. Whether anyone will read them in time is anyone's guess.
7:20 p.m. One of the teams has no experience making games between the three of them, and one of the team members has left to look for books on game development. We have 44 people in 16 teams, so I suppose it was bound to happen with the sheer number of new people. I offer them a quick one-hour tutorial on the use of the Zenipex Library, a game development framework or engine that I have developed over the past two years.
Having taught tutorials on it in two separate semesters with Wolverine Soft and having used it to teach Camp CAEN (a summer program for younger students), I expect to be able to help them if they really need it. They agree and I quickly grind through four tutorials, teaching them how to render images on the screen, how to get keyboard and mouse input, how to organize game code, how to get sound into the game, and so on. They seem content to play with what they have learned for now, so I leave them to experiment.
8:30 p.m. Paul leaves for work. Unfortunately, he was not able to get off work for the night. I will stay until 4:30 a.m. before he comes to relieve me of duty. He will not have had any rest yet. Some time between noon and 1:00 p.m., I will relieve him so that he may actually get some rest. [Note: You may have noticed that my time references don't exactly match Paul's; that's a testament to how the 48-hour contest warps your sense of time.]
I visit with the teams and ask for quick video interviews. Most people don't seem to know how to respond, so I come up with some questions to ask them.
A few groups that are using my engine, the Zenipex Library (or Zenilib) ask me to answer some questions about it. Those who have used it before are rusty, and those who haven't find certain aspects of the engine to be counter-intuitive.
10:30 p.m. Things finally start to calm down enough that I can sit down for more than five minutes at a time. Some group members leave to get some sleep.
Saturday
1:40 a.m. About 45 minutes earlier, I call in a delivery order for some food. Now that it has arrived, I let everyone know that I will be downstairs for a half hour or so. I run outside to pay the delivery person, but on my way back, I realize that I left my access key card upstairs. I'm locked out.
I stand outside in the freezing January weather, without a coat. Luckily, I'm not the only one who ordered food, and someone else eventually comes out and lets me back in, where I hand out the food and we relax for a short while.
2:10 a.m. I answer questions about my engine, very sporadically now. I circulate the room again, taking quick video interviews of anyone still awake. I spend a bit of time revising the online versions of my tutorials to fit the most recent version of my engine. Most of my time is absorbed by the Internet, my eternal friend.
4:45 a.m. Paul returns, tired as ever. I suppose I should leave as soon as possible to maximize sleep for the night, but I am concerned for Paul. I realize that he has not actually had any rest yet. After asking if he will be okay for a while, I tell him that I will be back by around 1:00 P.M. I walk back to the dorm, a nice, freezing, 10 minute walk. North Campus has never seemed so still and lifeless.
5:00 a.m. Sleep.
12:00 p.m. My alarm rings. Eventually, I get up and I head over to the contest. I say hello and goodbye to Paul. We decide that he will skip dinner and that I'll see him around 11:00 p.m. He goes to sleep in a nearby room. I record more video interviews. Time marches on.
6:45 p.m. I announce that we will be buying dinner for everyone, and I place an order for 18 pizzas.
8:30 p.m. The pizzas arrive. We herd everyone over to the Pierpont commons to eat, locking the rooms behind us. Everyone relaxes and discusses their next moves. The dinner is successful by all accounts.
9:15 p.m. Back to work. I lead the march back up to the rooms and unlock all the doors. Everyone filters back in fairly quickly and gets down to business. A few people have questions for me, but not much eventful happens.
Sunday
1:30 a.m. Paul finally relieves me. I have a shower before going to sleep.
10:30 a.m. My alarm jolts me awake. I head back to the Windows Training Rooms to relieve Paul.
5:00 p.m. I bring out a two-hour countdown clock on four projection screens. I remind everyone that they should back up their games if they haven't yet. Working releases need to be submitted before 7:00, so we will be asking for them starting at 6:00. Alongside the countdown clocks, I post some instructions: Include all redistributables needed to run your game. You must have a working web site and download link for your game by 7:00. Keep regular backups!
I take another series of quick video interviews of as many groups as possible. Finally, I pull out the prizes and cover a table with them.
6:00 p.m. I make sure everyone knows how to get their stuff online, redists included. The people from MSU, who don't have web accounts here, simply need to turn in their stuff to me. I will get it online for them, provided they get it to me in time.
7:00 p.m. Professor Laird (UM Ann Arbor), Professor Winn (MSU), and Professor Maxim (UM Dearborn) arrive. All three run programs related to video game development and have graciously agreed to judge the contest. I am only able to give a list of game submissions to them after a few minutes have passed. Participants begin playing and judging one another's games as well. I begin to tabulate the votes as they come in to keep things moving efficiently.
8:00 p.m. Our judges depart after having played through all 14 games that were playable. We thank them, but let them know that we do not expect them to stay for the final vote tabulation and award ceremony. When the last votes have been recorded, Paul and I determine how to combine the judge's votes with the popular vote. The final calculations are performed and the games are ranked.
We go down the list of games. The winning team gets first pick at the prizes and we take their photo. Each subsequent team also gets to pick prizes. As we wait for them to decide on their games, we give away T-shirts and bags as raffle prizes.
9:30 p.m. We congratulate everyone on a job well done and send them on their way. We do one last sweep of the rooms to make sure they are clean and lock everything up. The contest is over. Well done everyone.
Mitchell Keith Bloch is president of Wolverine Soft and co-coordinator of the 2008 48-Hour Game Development Contest.
Original Article on Gamecareerguide.com
[Published on GameCareerGuide.com March 18, 2008]
By Paul Skowronek and Mitchell Keith Bloch
The University of Michigan hosts an annual game development challenge, in which small teams of students have just 48 hours to develop a video game. GameCareerGuide.com is running an exclusive five-part series written by the contestants about their experience making a game in just two days. Here, we meet the event coordinators, who explain how the 48-Hour Game Development Contest works.
The University of Michigan hosts an annual game development challenge, in which small teams of students have just 48 hours to develop a video game. The event is run by the campus' game development club, Wolverine Soft. Mitchell Keith Bloch and Paul Skowronek are the coordinators for this year's event. This is their account of the contest.
I'm Paul Skowronek, one of the event managers of this year's 48-Hour Game Development Contest. I have competed in the last two contests, but I felt burned out on participating this year, largely because I was awake for the whole event last year. Knowing that this year's event would have more participants from more schools, and that last year's coordinator had a rough time managing the event, I volunteered to co-coordinate with my friend Mitchell Keith Bloch, Wolverine Soft's president.
Event Planning
We had discussed the event a little bit throughout the semester, but we only truly start to plan it the Saturday before the contest. Among the more mundane details (for example, Mitchell and I schedule time when we'll sleep), we discuss how to record the participants' experiences. We decide to ask them to keep journals and will further document their work by extensively video recording.
We also discuss the theme. "Steven Colbert" had been suggested several years ago as a joke; I have a bad feeling about it, but can't think of any compelling reason not to use it. While it would be an interesting change to use a very specific theme, I'm not convinced, and don't finalize anything.
Both of my roommates will participate in the contest, so when I see them, I pretend that Mitchell and I have not yet discussed the theme.
During our weekly club meeting the following Thursday, I avoid talking about any games at all. We have to work secretly so as not to give anyone an advantage in the contest.
Mitchell leaves and then calls me 20 minutes later. Pretending to be meeting with someone else, I also excuse myself and join Mitchell, unbeknownst to the other club members.
I join him outside at a restaurant. We invent a couple code words to disguise our conversation just in case a participant passes by, and though I still have misgivings, we agree that "Honoring Stephen Colbert" will be the theme.
The Contest
The Friday before the contest begins, I grab a video camera. Mitchell and I hang out near the contest room and grab something to eat before the event gets rolling.
I videotape the room before anyone else enters it as a precaution. It's filled with computers, and if anything is damaged during the contest, we will have evidence of the condition of the room before we arrived. When the contest ends, I'll grab a few more shots of the room to show its state as we left it, too.
The first hour is fairly hectic. I retrieve a few boxes of prizes from the club office and spend the rest of the hour with Mitchell, registering contestants and setting up teams. Students from Michigan State University (MSU) have come over to compete with us, and I had expected the MSU president to set up the MSU teams (because that's essentially what happened last year). But as the host, Mitchell expected to set up all the teams. This miscommunication confuses us a bit, but we eventually accept MSU's pre-arranged teams.
Around this same time, I received a phone call. It's a call that I will not actually have time to return until the following Wednesday -- that should give you an idea of how hectic the contest gets.
After announcing the teams and giving them a moment to find each other, Mitchell gives me one more chance to veto the theme, which I do not.
At this moment, we make two mistakes. First, I don't have the video camera out when the crowd first reacts to the theme. There's laughter mixed with scattered disbelief and one or two instances of confusion. Second, we had not yet announced any rules, the most pressing of which is "Don't eat or drink anything inside the contest room."
We're surprised to discover that one of the teams has no experienced game programmers, and that none of the other teams have any to spare. I'm not too worried because some of last year's games were made by rookie teams, and they seemed to manage. But this team doesn't have any idea where to start. Mitchell gives them a short tutorial on a framework he developed.
I work a nightshift job off campus, so at around 8:30, I take the bus back to my apartment. The buses aren't running when my shift ends at 5 a.m., so I watch a couple movies to kill time until the buses start running at 8.
Mitchell looks exhausted when I get back, and he sticks around for a little while before leaving. Most people are gone or sleeping, so I take the camera around to anyone who's awake. I also get a shot of everyone who fell asleep in the room because they are hilarious. People don't start returning or waking until 10:30, and nearly everyone returns by noon.
The next shift switch for me happens at around 4 or 5 p.m. when Mitchell returns.
Mitchell takes over moderating, but I decide not to go home because just traveling there and back on the bus will waste a whole lot of my time. I eat my lunch in the office and sleep on the couch. A few hours later, I wake up and return to the contest, then fall asleep again in the second (emptier) contest room.
A few hours later, I relieve Mitchell. His Sunday morning shift was fairly uneventful, except for several conversations with building personnel. I do a few more video interviews, then switch shifts with Mitchell again in time for lunch.
Just before the contest ends, we go around and make sure everyone is prepared to submit a working build. The judges arrive late, which is okay because we need those extra minutes to set up demos and labels for all the games.
Mitchell creates a spreadsheet to tabulate the votes and collects the first few, while I play all the games. We then trade roles. We post the results on our projector screens one by one as we announce them. When a team is announced, the members choose prizes from our selection table, and pose for a picture. When the teams take too long, I raffle off a T-shirt or mesh bag.
After everyone is done and gone, we check and video tape the room, stash the contest supplies in our office, then go home and sleep.
-- Paul Skowronek, Wolverine Soft events coordinator
Mitchell's Take
I'm Mitchell Keith Bloch, one of the contest coordinators for this 48-Hour Game Development Contest. Along with my co-coordinator, Paul, my responsibilities include reserving rooms, scheduling the event, organizing teams, advertising, finding judges, finding sponsors to donate prizes, and, of course, deciding on a theme for the contest.
Every contest has a theme that all games must be designed around, to at least some extent. Usually the theme influences art, sound effects, music, and story more than anything else. Occasionally, however, a game will be produced that would never have been made if not for the theme the developers were presented with. Those are often the most interesting games to play come the end of the contest.
Saturday, January 12
3:00 p.m. Paul and I meet in the Tap Room in the Michigan Union. We begin by forming a list of things that need to be planned that we have not yet dealt with. Judges have all been contacted by this time. Most sponsors have responded positively, though we are concerned that we might not have enough prizes if all participants who have shown interest actually attend. We decide to get the Advanced Graphics Rooms as well as the Windows Training Rooms to make sure that we have enough space for all the contestants.
We plan the schedule. We will state on the official schedule that the contest begins at 6:00 p.m. on Friday; teams will be announced at 6:30; and finally the theme will be announced at 7:00. Games will be due, available for download from the web site at 7:00 on Sunday, 48 hours later, and judging will commence immediately. One hour before that, we will begin nagging the participants to release the final copies of their games. And one hour before that, we will announce to everyone that it is very important to back up any working copies of their games and to make their final changes by 6:00 p.m., if at all possible. Of course, as soon as judging is over, we will hold the awards ceremony where everyone finds out the total ordering of games from best to worst and everyone gets a prize of a brand new video game from a major game development studio. Also, we decide to offer a free dinner to all participants on the Saturday evening, near the middle of the contest.
We also discuss tips to try to help the participants of the contest. We suggest using tools that you know in advance of the contest wherever possible. Keeping regular backups of working builds is essential. Getting sleep can be very beneficial to a contest. Ensure that communication is effective within your team. We list common sense ideas that are easy to forget in the heat of the moment. We plan to state them at the start of the contest.
In the end, we discuss the theme for the contest. As Paul's roommates will be participants, only I take notes on this part of the discussion. I come up with three theme ideas. One is derived from my idea from last year. "Stephen Colbert" becomes the new theme, "Honoring Stephen Colbert," which I believe is a much more malleable theme. Honoring Stephen Colbert seems to me to be a pretty easy thing to do. Previous themes have been "Freedom" and "Relaxation," so this suggestion is a bit unusual for the contest. In the end, we aren't able to decide and defer the decision until later.
Thursday
8:00 p.m. I call Paul and suggest we discuss the last remaining point of the contest: the theme. In the end, we go with "Honoring Stephen Colbert." We still avoid committing completely. Leaning strongly towards the theme choice, we head back to dev session at a staggered pace so as to avoid suspicion.
Friday
6:00 p.m. I head to the Wolverine Soft office and get someone to come back to my place to help carry boxes of prizes. Unfortunately, some prizes are not here yet, so some participants might have to settle for older prizes from our stockpile. We make our way to Windows Training Room 1 where we set down the boxes and leave them closed for the time being.
I begin to organize the teams as I see fit, trying to meet their requests when possible while keeping team fairness in mind. One point of contention is that we are allowing the teams from Michigan State University to use Torque, a proprietary library, which we cannot even examine due to licensing restrictions. Whether this places the other teams at a disadvantage is unknown, but any participants using Torque will have to be kept isolated from the other programmers. People keep trickling in until 6:55. Around that time, Charles Roman from MSU reminds me that he has in fact organized the teams from his school. Of course, this gives me no opportunity to balance the teams, and it might make the atmosphere a bit more adversarial than I was hoping for, but it cannot be helped. In fact, that one participant from MSU wants to work alone makes the organization much easier.
7:00 p.m. I read off the teams and make sure that everyone finds one another. After doing so, I turn to Paul and ask if he agrees that it is time to announce the theme. Furthermore, I ask if he is still leaning toward the theme choice we made the previous evening. As we are both still in agreement, I stand and state that I am going to announce the theme. The room falls into silence.
"The theme is 'Honoring Stephen Colbert,'" I announce, and the room erupts. Some of the more experienced teams leave to discuss possible game ideas. A minute later, Paul regrets not getting the announcement on tape. A minute after that, I regret not giving our suggestions on how to have a successful 48-Hour Game Development experience. I proceed to send those suggestions via email. Whether anyone will read them in time is anyone's guess.
7:20 p.m. One of the teams has no experience making games between the three of them, and one of the team members has left to look for books on game development. We have 44 people in 16 teams, so I suppose it was bound to happen with the sheer number of new people. I offer them a quick one-hour tutorial on the use of the Zenipex Library, a game development framework or engine that I have developed over the past two years.
Having taught tutorials on it in two separate semesters with Wolverine Soft and having used it to teach Camp CAEN (a summer program for younger students), I expect to be able to help them if they really need it. They agree and I quickly grind through four tutorials, teaching them how to render images on the screen, how to get keyboard and mouse input, how to organize game code, how to get sound into the game, and so on. They seem content to play with what they have learned for now, so I leave them to experiment.
8:30 p.m. Paul leaves for work. Unfortunately, he was not able to get off work for the night. I will stay until 4:30 a.m. before he comes to relieve me of duty. He will not have had any rest yet. Some time between noon and 1:00 p.m., I will relieve him so that he may actually get some rest. [Note: You may have noticed that my time references don't exactly match Paul's; that's a testament to how the 48-hour contest warps your sense of time.]
I visit with the teams and ask for quick video interviews. Most people don't seem to know how to respond, so I come up with some questions to ask them.
A few groups that are using my engine, the Zenipex Library (or Zenilib) ask me to answer some questions about it. Those who have used it before are rusty, and those who haven't find certain aspects of the engine to be counter-intuitive.
10:30 p.m. Things finally start to calm down enough that I can sit down for more than five minutes at a time. Some group members leave to get some sleep.
Saturday
1:40 a.m. About 45 minutes earlier, I call in a delivery order for some food. Now that it has arrived, I let everyone know that I will be downstairs for a half hour or so. I run outside to pay the delivery person, but on my way back, I realize that I left my access key card upstairs. I'm locked out.
I stand outside in the freezing January weather, without a coat. Luckily, I'm not the only one who ordered food, and someone else eventually comes out and lets me back in, where I hand out the food and we relax for a short while.
2:10 a.m. I answer questions about my engine, very sporadically now. I circulate the room again, taking quick video interviews of anyone still awake. I spend a bit of time revising the online versions of my tutorials to fit the most recent version of my engine. Most of my time is absorbed by the Internet, my eternal friend.
4:45 a.m. Paul returns, tired as ever. I suppose I should leave as soon as possible to maximize sleep for the night, but I am concerned for Paul. I realize that he has not actually had any rest yet. After asking if he will be okay for a while, I tell him that I will be back by around 1:00 P.M. I walk back to the dorm, a nice, freezing, 10 minute walk. North Campus has never seemed so still and lifeless.
5:00 a.m. Sleep.
12:00 p.m. My alarm rings. Eventually, I get up and I head over to the contest. I say hello and goodbye to Paul. We decide that he will skip dinner and that I'll see him around 11:00 p.m. He goes to sleep in a nearby room. I record more video interviews. Time marches on.
6:45 p.m. I announce that we will be buying dinner for everyone, and I place an order for 18 pizzas.
8:30 p.m. The pizzas arrive. We herd everyone over to the Pierpont commons to eat, locking the rooms behind us. Everyone relaxes and discusses their next moves. The dinner is successful by all accounts.
9:15 p.m. Back to work. I lead the march back up to the rooms and unlock all the doors. Everyone filters back in fairly quickly and gets down to business. A few people have questions for me, but not much eventful happens.
Sunday
1:30 a.m. Paul finally relieves me. I have a shower before going to sleep.
10:30 a.m. My alarm jolts me awake. I head back to the Windows Training Rooms to relieve Paul.
5:00 p.m. I bring out a two-hour countdown clock on four projection screens. I remind everyone that they should back up their games if they haven't yet. Working releases need to be submitted before 7:00, so we will be asking for them starting at 6:00. Alongside the countdown clocks, I post some instructions: Include all redistributables needed to run your game. You must have a working web site and download link for your game by 7:00. Keep regular backups!
I take another series of quick video interviews of as many groups as possible. Finally, I pull out the prizes and cover a table with them.
6:00 p.m. I make sure everyone knows how to get their stuff online, redists included. The people from MSU, who don't have web accounts here, simply need to turn in their stuff to me. I will get it online for them, provided they get it to me in time.
7:00 p.m. Professor Laird (UM Ann Arbor), Professor Winn (MSU), and Professor Maxim (UM Dearborn) arrive. All three run programs related to video game development and have graciously agreed to judge the contest. I am only able to give a list of game submissions to them after a few minutes have passed. Participants begin playing and judging one another's games as well. I begin to tabulate the votes as they come in to keep things moving efficiently.
8:00 p.m. Our judges depart after having played through all 14 games that were playable. We thank them, but let them know that we do not expect them to stay for the final vote tabulation and award ceremony. When the last votes have been recorded, Paul and I determine how to combine the judge's votes with the popular vote. The final calculations are performed and the games are ranked.
We go down the list of games. The winning team gets first pick at the prizes and we take their photo. Each subsequent team also gets to pick prizes. As we wait for them to decide on their games, we give away T-shirts and bags as raffle prizes.
9:30 p.m. We congratulate everyone on a job well done and send them on their way. We do one last sweep of the rooms to make sure they are clean and lock everything up. The contest is over. Well done everyone.
Mitchell Keith Bloch is president of Wolverine Soft and co-coordinator of the 2008 48-Hour Game Development Contest.
Note: views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and are not necessarily those of Wolverine Soft.