Lightning Talks 2017

It's time for this year's lightning talks and once more Game Dev and Game Tech Brisbane will be joining together!

We do this once a year, a series of short rapid-fire talks one after the other. Tech and Dev talks will be interspersed throughout the day. As per our usual format. We'll also have a short break midway through as normal.

Speakers talk for 10-15 minutes. The topic can be anything relating to game development. We are also happy to accept new speakers on the day of the event... time permitting. Anyone can speak so come and tell us about your favourite trick, engine, tool, API, dev process... you get the idea.

There are still a few slots open and anyone can sign up to speak on the day. So if you're interested, feel free to join the list via the form below:

http://bit.ly/GDLT2017

Wren Brier - Creating UI art in Photoshop

In this talk I will teach you my best tips and tricks for creating UI art in Photoshop. Learn to use artboards, smart objects, device preview, vector shapes and layer styles to make UI creation fast, iterative and painless.

Wren Brier has been working as a games artist in Brisbane for five years. Her primary areas of expertise are 2D character art, UI and pixel art, but she dabbles in pretty much everything. She currently works at Well Placed Cactus.

Ben Droste - Making Games as a Solo-Developer: 10 Quick Lessons in 10 Quick Minutes

The Eyes of Ara was a three-year solo project and the first independent title by someone with no programming, audio, PR, or business experience. In this lightning talk, Ben will run through several lessons he has learned since founding his studio four years ago: including some smart decisions that paid off, some useful insights he picked up along the way, and some other lessons that were learned the hard way.

Ben Droste is the Director and Lead Developer at 100 Stones Interactive, his one-man games studio. Last year, Ben launched his studio’s first title: The Eyes of Ara. Ben has over a decade of game dev experience behind him, having work as a Senior Environment Artist and Level Designer on multiple titles across a wide range of platforms, at studios such as Krome, Sega, and 5 Lives.

Braycen Jackwitz - Back To The VRuture: On VR Design Challenges and Bad VR Puns

The VR industry is filled with two things: design challenges and bad puns. This talk will be a quick look at solutions to some of the biggest challenges VR developers face, and a stern warning against thinking your VR pun is better than it actually is.

After tinkering around with VR dev for the last few years, Braycen Jackwitz decided to finally put all that knowledge to good use and formed Pillow Head Games in 2016. Since then he has released 'Watching Grass Grow in VR' on Steam, and working towards releasing his second VR game 'The Zero Dome'.

Ben Carruthers - Games Education

Ben Carruthers will be discussing the work involved as a Games Development Educator, the processes and the opportunities to students in Games Education.

Ben Carruthers has been working as a Games Educator for the last 4 years, working between RTOs through to working as Games Lecturer at JMC Academy. Currently working as the Trainer and Assessor for Datum College providing their Unity Certification course (developed in conjunction with Unity).

Olga Varlamova - Branching Narratives - A Journey of Many Tales

Player choices are at the core of an interactive experience; however, a truly interactive story where a player can create their own unique and compelling narrative has its technical limitations. Olga Varlamova will be taking you through the different types of non-linear game that can be developed by a small indie team. You will be presented with an overview of writing techniques and tools used to create games where players can interact with a meaningful story.

Olga Varlamova has been working as a writer on Defiant’s Hand of Fate 2 creating branching encounters and challenges while also working at KIXEYE as a Quality Assurance Analyst. Her passion lies in creating games that give players choices to affect the outcomes of the story.

Dylan Ford - How to translate Good Level Design to a Visual Model for your game.

When designing levels, it can be valuable to outline the parts of the level which is considered to have value to the game play. This often is done informally, but by setting out a model to visually represent these elements, you can map out a level by the types of experiences it offers, in the same way you could draw a physical map of the level. This talk looks at some of the key experiences of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and how they translated over into Bees Won't Exist.

Dylan is an organizer of the meetup and a recent graduate at QUT. He has always had a passion for game design and is working on one of several projects given half an opportunity.