April Meetup - Community "Show & Tell"

After a few months off, we're excited to announce our April Meetup! For this event, we're trying something slightly different. Rather than feature a single speaker, we're holding a "show & tell" with a couple of developers giving quick presentations of their work. The presenters at this event will include the following:

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John Watson - The Banner Saga

John Watson is the Technical Director for Stoic Studio, the creators of the acclaimed game The Banner Saga (http://stoicstudio.com/). He previously worked at Bioware as Lead Combat Programmer, and Sony Online Entertainment in various Technical Lead and Senior Programmer roles (on Star Wars Galaxies and DC Universe Online).

The Banner Saga is an epic role-playing game inspired by Viking legend, and famous for its unique art style and wildly successful Kickstarter campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga). It was released on PC and Mac in January, and the team is currently working on an iOS/Android port.

John will show off the current state of the game and give an overview of the tech they used (Adobe AIR) and how it works on iOS. He'll also discuss how they're using Scaleform to wrap the game for consoles and perhaps on iOS as well.

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Troy Gilbert - Puzzles by Thumb and Knighted

Troy Gilbert is a Senior Software Engineer at Mach 10 Studios, and formerly had stints at Zynga and EA. From 2007 to 2012, he served as CTO of Mockingbird Games, the creators of an online, Flash-based game making application.

Troy will discuss his recently completed game, Puzzles by Thumb (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/puzzles-by-thumb/id818564915) (iOS), as well as an in-progress idea, Knighted (iOS). Both are built on Flash, specifically AIR, which Troy says "is a fantastic platform for making games, often overshadowed by Unity these days."

Troy will talk briefly about the tech and workflow for building the games. He'll also cover the design of both games, one representing the culmination of 1.5 years of iteration, and the other representing the early beginnings of a game design.

Schedule for this event:
• 6:30pm - Arrival and socializing
• 7:00pm - Intro and announcements
• 7:10pm - Troy Gilbert talk/Q&A
• 7:40pm - John Watson talk/Q&A
• 8:30pm - More socializing

Supported by Autodesk:
Thanks to generous support from Autodesk, this event will include free pizza and beer. Autodesk recently released Maya LT, a 3D animation and modeling tool built specifically for indie and mobile game makers. For more info, please visit http://www.autodesk.com/

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