ACEE report

Now that I had time to recharge the batteries it’s time to tell you what happened.

I arrived at 9:30 in the company of my friend cebola by Bus, luck would have it that my car broke down. After getting a little lost inside the DEI building we finally found our way into the rooms where ACEE was taking place.

It was 30 minutes till the event was supposed to start so to pass the time we offered to help. Of course we never expected to be put in charge of monitoring some of the expositions room during the morning since the two ladies that were soposed to volunteered couldn’t come :(.

While taking care of the expo rooms we made sure we got a chance to check all the games exposed, some that caught my eyes were:

• Crazy Wings by David Gil the game was a simple plane shooter but it was a lot of fun, I really liked this one.
• Fog Town by Paulo Faria, I couldn’t believe it! A complete FPS (as far as I could tell) truly impressive stuff, the enemies were super hard to beat but according to cebola the author didn’t seem to have any problems with them, guess I need to practice.
• Star Force by David Gil, once again a very impressive piece of work, I can’t even imagine how to write something like this.
• Pacman Arena by Nuno Subtil, who doesn’t like this old classic, but what really caught my eye was the fact it was open source so I could see how it ticked (and I will too), great help for those that are still learning.
• Tranceball by Paulo Faria, this one stood out for its use of lighting effects, unfortunately I didn’t play it much since it was still an early beta and had some annoying bugs like exiting every time you lost and complaining we didn’t have a sound board.
• Caverna by Pedro Amaro, I kept trying to get on the high scores but I simply wasn’t good enough one day when we will meet again I shall beat it with a stick. or better yet rank nº1.

One of the things I also noticed was the number of Java Games being displayed, a very interesting tendency considering the emergent mobile gaming and that fact that all the current Portuguese gaming companies make games for mobiles. Who knows maybe, that’s how Portugal will be put on the gaming map, through mobile games :).

Anyway, that was the end of the morning so me and cebola walked over to McDonald’s and got our self’s some delicious junk food (Gentlemen at McDonald’s, I expect to see the check in the mail ;)).

On to the second round we arrived a bit late to the first presentation, something I immediately regretted since we missed most of the Lost Ages presentation, it is a MMORPG by Guilherme Santos, Hugo Mardolcar and Rui Casais, and that is all I really know (to embarrassed to ask, yes I know it’s silly).

But from what I’ve seen the game looked very promising and I seriously expect it to go places, although they might have some problems with their choice of the Torque Engine with is not the most suited to MMOG as it was mentioned by some people in the audience, I really hope they can overcome any problem they encounter.

Then Alaney Dória, talked about the IGDA and the plans for the Lisbon Chapter. He also gave us his views on the current state of Game Programming in Portugal.

The idea to unite the community is a good one and I hope they succeed but I’m not so sure, just having one chapter for the whole country would be optimal.

In the end he gave out some T-Shirts and books to some of the participants, namely to only IGDA card carrying members in the room Diogo Andrade, the developers of Lost Ages, Paulo Faria for their impressive FPS and finally to Nestor for coming all the way from Spain to be with us with out even knowing the language (we all talked to him in English).

After that David Gil gave us a presentation about his work and how he got there, then he showed some 3D techniques used in his games but very superficially. It was a shame that he didn’t get into more detail but we were already running late and probably he didn’t want to freak out possible newbies with to much details.

Finally, the last speaker of the day Dr. Licí­nio Roque took the stage and talked of the replay value of single player games and possible solutions in MMORPG and how to make MMORPG truly massive. I have some thoughts on the subject myself but I’ll reserve them for another time.

Once that was over he gathered and took a group photo of the ones that were still hanging around, said our goodbyes and went home.

The event was nice but it still has a lot to improve. My suggestions for next year is that it be held during the weekend (so that us working guys don’t have to miss a days work) and be a two day event, 1º day game exhibit, 2º day presentations and coding workshops (can you see me drool). Then Advertise, Advertise, Advertise! We want to fill those rooms with people and I know we can

Also those girls have to show up, I would’ve really liked a chance to have socialized with the guys a bit more, the guys from Portugal 1111 were there and I didn’t even know…

So until next year I’m off, got games to make (doing my part for the next ACEE ;)).

Note: For a more in depth review of the ACEE you can check Alaney Dória review or the Oficial ACEE report once they become available.