Patrick Mitchell – RIT German Games Industry 2019

Dawn of the Final Days – 48 Hours Remain

Despite what the title says, the Germans thought we were leaving Friday evening, not the day after, and so were preparing to leave already; the “final” day was basically the day before. The confusion was cleared up long ago, and so, we were to switch rooms for one night before we went. The whole day was up to us, so naturally, I spent it showering, watching YouTube, and planning to do more souvenir shopping and then not doing so. It didn’t help that the service on my SIM card ran out and now ran at “reduced speed,” i.e., too slow to feasibly do anything (including using Google Maps) except text on Apple Messages and nothing else.

I did discover a really neat item at Starbucks while searching for a very late mini-brunch, a chocolate cheesecake muffin.

That stuff at the top is, like, real cheesecake stuff. The chocolate part is good too. Why isn’t this more common?

Stephen then treated us to ice-cream, citing the fact he wasn’t allowed to buy us drinks. I intended to get some non-desert food into me at the train station McDonalds, thinking it’d be an easy grab and go deal, but I was SORELY mistaken. I had more trouble ordering there than I ever had anywhere else throughout the entirety of my trip. (To be fair, there were really hard to understand people the Germans took care of in other places.)

Frankly, though, I’m glad, because it compelled me to get a slightly less anticlimactic last dinner, a very long, thin stick of bread sandwiching salami and butter.

After my last night of rest in Germany, it was time to get a quick breakfast and prepare to leave. There were no complications. I stopped by the train station after breakfast to compare prices with Sam’s help. I didn’t quite know how to access the subway tickets as opposed to the ICE tickets, so I left Sam to it and headed back to my room to finalize my packing.

At 11:50ish, I headed down to the lobby and checked out, and then me and Sam headed out to the subway, got some cheap tickets to the airport, and were off. The airport was unintimidating; whether that’s because Germany’s airports are less crowded or because I’m just that much more optimistic after the inflight’s smooth sailing, I’m not sure. Regardless, checking our bags and going through security was just as easy as the vibes suggested, and made the ominous warnings I got via email seem vastly overblown.

Said ominous warnings. No such interviews were done. [MAY HAVE ONE IN AMERICA]

Since everything went so smoothly, we were sat down next to our gate and ready to go at 1:35PM-ish…and our flight was set to board at 4:25PM according to my boarding pass, and leave at 5:10PM according to the email confirmation. We had a lot of time to kill.

There’s always someone or a group of people camping the outlets at the airport, and since me and Sam were so early, we got to be those people. I spent a lot of my time playing games worry-free because of the outlet, but after a while went out to do a little more shopping, since Sam had pointed me toward the stores.

On my way there, I noticed an oddity; a place to play various games for free, in the airport. Nothing in their selection particularly interested me, but it was very neat.

I took a while shopping, getting guidance from my parents about what they’d like, and then looked for a place to spend my last full euro. I stopped at a McCafe, where I bought a rainbow donut for €1.75.

Despite being a typically shaped donut, it had little pockets of jelly filling all around it!

Shortly after that, it was time to get on the plane.

The seats were like the ones on the plane we flew in on; the outlets were slightly different, but still worked. I never tested the ethernet ports to see if they actually worked, because I spent the whole flight playing games, and getting mad at Smash Ultimate’s CPUs and their stupid immaculate reaction time garbage.

A little ways into takeoff
Breaching the sea of clouds

I still have yet to really see why airline food is demonized like it is, because the food on this flight was even better than last time. (The only bad food I’ve ever had on an airline was really, REALLY bad, though. Maybe I’ve just always been on the right lines.) All it was described as was “beef,” with the only elaboration I could get being “it has rice with it,” so I can’t place a name on it, but it was good.

There was originally more there, I only thought to take a picture once I had fully realized how good it was.

Eating was a bit of a challenge, though, because my table was the only table out of all the tables in the row and the row behind us that was broken, as shown in the video below; As soon as I got the food, it almost slipped right off then and there.

Regardless, the ride was anything but excruciating, and going through customs was a breeze. I didn’t quite understand what “commercial merchandise” meant specifically, so I said I did have some (the candy I’d bought at the Frankfurt Airport), but judging from what the man I talked to said (“I appreciate the honesty,” after explaining what I was declaring), that was unnecessary.

Grabbing my checked bag was super easy, too. There were LOADS of bags already there, and within seconds, I spotted mine, and grabbed it off with no issue.

It bears noting that I’d accidentally left my old SIM card at In Via, where it was likely trashed on accident or broken on accident, so I had no service to communicate with my parents, and the WiFi wasn’t cooperating either. But we immediately found each other with remarkable ease, and after buying a quick second dinner of sorts, I was on my way home.

This trip was great! I really appreciated having a schedule, because I tend to be a very sedentary and content person, and more of my days would have likely turned into nothing days like the final day if I didn’t have my travel-mates and the germans to spur me on. Thanks for everything, everyone!

Worming through Worms

Thursday was the day we were to head to Kalypso, a studio I’ve never really heard of that’s famous for a game series I’ve never really heard of, Tropico. More specifically, Kalypso is an entirely private publisher that is actually kind of a big deal, especially due to being private. They were very nice people, and despite the small size of their space, still managed to seem important simply by handing us all Fritz-Kola with El Presidente, the main figure of Tropico, emblazoned on them, and not after the fact, either; this was a bona fide brand deal. They also had catering, which I didn’t touch, because I don’t eat lunch. Germany sure does feed itself well.

The only picture I got from the trip was the Kola. We were allowed to take pictures (except for one slide which spoiled something; we didn’t sign an NDA, but I’m not going to go any further out of courtesy) but I just didn’t.

After that, we headed to the graveyard. It was gloomy and gray, and it was actually almost cold now, in stark contrast to all the days before. It wasn’t much more than a normal graveyard, to me, but I did take some pictures of some odd and interesting graves.

The graveyard from near the entrance.
Yes, all of that is stone.

The temperature turning toward the cooler end didn’t stop us from going out to get ice cream afterward; we were told by the people of Kalypso that there was a really good ice cream place in Worms. They weren’t wrong!

The ice cream at this place had numerous odd flavors I didn’t understand because I don’t speak German. The germans told me that the flavors mimicked common candies. I hesitated trying any of them out of fear of nuts. I got Oreo and “Raffaello.”

Oreo wasn’t just vanilla with Oreo cookie chunks in it like you’d expect from usual ice cream. It was actually Oreo flavored, and the cookie chunks weren’t directly from Oreos, but rather, like Oreo cookie flavored chunks specially made for the flavor. I don’t know what they were, exactly, but they were good.

Raffaello was a very, VERY profoundly dark chocolate flavor. My mom loves dark chocolate and even she would have to do a double take, it was so dark. It was very good, just pretty startling, especially from an ice cream. If only more ice cream places were this good.

After that, we took a quick shopping break, and headed back. I bought some candy, and while I was, I spotted weed gum. I felt obligated to take a picture, because that sounds like a terrible idea. Whatever works, I suppose.

Once we’d gotten back into Frankfurt, we made our way to a schnitzel place that was a snug fit for our large group. It was a very cozy place, even though the waiters were hard to understand even for the germans and seemed both tired and vaguely disgruntled. The schnitzel was even better than it was at Salzkammer, too; it’s hard to describe its flavor, but it was a unique kind of taste that I can’t recall ever having, and it was really nice. I’m definitely going back if I ever return to Germany.

A picture from the area we were all seated at.
Germans seem to do thick fries far better than America does. Maybe I’ve just not been to the right places in America, or maybe America’s just better at thin fries.

We all paid for Volker’s meal as a token of our appreciation for herding us all to the right places, showing us a good time, and keeping any of us from missing any trains or getting lost around any corners.

The Big Boy Studio Tours

To start out our Wednesday, we departed for Nintendo of Germany. Nintendo of Germany doesn’t handle any development, but they do handle localization, which occasionally involves some game tweaking. Regardless, it was really neat to be there.

First, we had a substantially lengthy meeting briefly going over some of Nintendo’s history and past directors, as well as their mission statements, and then going into what Nintendo of Germany specifically does.

The rooms were named after my favorite Nintendo games; Mario 1, Mario 2, Mario 3, and Toad. True classics.
The view out of the meeting room window.

When the meeting was done, and after everyone’s questions had trickled out, we went back downstairs to the ground floor to have lunch. Since me and my family generally don’t eat lunch, I wasn’t hungry. I did, however, get a chocolate chip muffin. I also saw a magnetic pin of Mario smoking a blunt in an official Nintendo office. I can’t tell if that’s beautiful or perverse.

Notice how the wrapper has a very easy to peel rim around it, unlike what I’m used to in America.

We were then shown to what I think was the break room, but it doesn’t really matter what room it was, all that matters is that it was jam packed with neat Nintendo stuff absolutely everywhere.

There was even a gift shop on the floor that I didn’t take a picture of. Reportedly, there were hard to find Amiibos there for cheap, but we had very little time, so my general lack of interest in Amiibos kept me from realizing until it was too late. Me and Sam did, however, buy things, with the help of the woman who was giving us the tour. I got a “Kirby’s Dream Blanket” which I think I’m gonna hang like a poster, and some Legend of Zelda decals for gadgets such as phones, tablets, and laptops. There were some lame, stock image decals in the pack, but also some really nice ones.

After that, we went to visit Crytek. Like Nintendo, we had to sign an NDA, despite the fact we weren’t told anything that wasn’t publicly known in both. Crytek, however, was a little more strict and didn’t want any pictures taken of the studio, which was alright, since there wasn’t much in there that inspired me to take a pic to begin with. It’s hard to compete with Nintendo’s star power, especially when your audience consists of a decent number of Nintendo fanboys.

A lot of the presentation was similar to Nintendo, but unlike Nintendo of Germany, Crytek has developers. We didn’t see too much development going on; in fact, the offices felt particularly empty. I think we arrived at lunch break, and it was also hot today as well, so that may have been a factor.

Our hosts spent a substantial amount of time selling us CryEngine, and for good reason; they want to rival Unity and Unreal with their engine as a large side project. I’m mostly unimpressed, because all the technicality goes over my baby freshman head, and a lot of the neat things shown were repurposed components and work-arounds, which honestly doesn’t really rub me the right way. It’s no doubt a “high performance realistic 3D” game engine, and I think that’s just far too narrow a scope to rival Unity or Unreal. Not to mention they’re still working on the documentation. All that said, it’s got a lot of potential, and I’m at least interested to see if they can rise to match their goals.

With nothing left on the agenda, we headed back to Frankfurt, and after some deliberation, decided on getting ramen for dinner. I was concerned we wouldn’t have enough space for everyone and it’d be a shoddy stall restaurant, but I was more than satisfied with what we ended up at. It was a very nice restaurant, and the food I ordered—shio ramen with three gyoza as an appetizer—was great. I think a hint of spiciness in the ramen really makes it that much better, though. Oh, and I also sort of used chopsticks for the first time. I don’t think I could eat solid food with them, but they’re not bad for eating noodles.

I forgot to take a picture before eating. It looked all nice and orderly when I got it, as restaurant ramen tends to look.

At the restaurant, we decided to hold a Smash Ultimate tournament back at the hotel. I gathered my switch dock and HDMI cable (I knew they’d come in handy!) and headed to the room, and we got started. I did surprisingly well, maybe because Link’s projectiles are really hard to deal with even if the one playing him isn’t very good. I ended up getting third place, but I think that’s very respectable considering I was playing characters I’m not that great at, namely Joker. (I’m not that great at anyone, to be frank, but I’m better at some characters than others.) Sam won the tournament after losing in the very first round and clamoring up through Loser’s Bracket, and after Alex dipped out to help the games go faster and also sleep.

It also probably warrants noting I was using my usual controller, and everyone else was using joycons.

Frankfurt Sightseeing and Receptioning

Having gotten an inexplicably decent sleep, I was out and ready to stroll around Frankfurt with little difficulty, at least as far as I remember. That is, except for the fact I had to go back and get my glasses just as the others were leaving. By the time I was back, they were gone; I’d told them to go on without me, but I didn’t expect them to be so far ahead. I walked at a pace substantially quicker than my usual, and never quite caught up to them on the way. That probably wasn’t helped by a couple photo detours.

Once I’d reached their destination, Frankfurt Cathedral, however (which they graciously supplied a link to in the group chat which I could plug into Google Maps), I found them standing around. Apparently, I’d arrived just a couple minutes before the sightseeing was about to start. I’m glad I was on time, because the Cathedral was just as impressive and nice to look at on the inside as the outside.

Looking up the outside of Frankfurt Cathedral.

Looking around the inside of the Frankfurt Cathedral.

Look at all the detail on this singular little corner on the outside of the cathedral.

After that, we began to simply walk around Frankfurt, as I took pictures along the way.

The protruding center part is actually another building, behind the white one. What unfortunate placement…

I didn’t realize it as I walked across, but we went across the Eiserner Steg, a bridge famous for it’s staggering amount of love locks. I wouldn’t have recognized it was a famous bridge had a good friend of mine not noted it while I was texting her. While everyone else was getting lunch, I took a detour back down there to look at it again, appreciating it a little more this time.

Take a look at all those locks!

This would normally be enough to wrap up a whole day for me, but we had another event in store for us; a reception with the Mayor of Eltville am Rhein himself, Patrick Kunkel. I only learned of our shared name about two-thirds of the way through said reception.

Before we attended that, however, we had to get there, and once we did, we had plenty of time to spend until the reception. Me, Mike, Stephen, and Volker stopped to get ice cream first due to the sweltering heat, and the rest of the time I spent doing nothing by the river, which beat back the heat significantly with its cool breeze. I drifted here and there, loitering and lounging until I came to settle at a drinks place where everyone else was until it was time (which I did not take any pictures of).

The castle we walked into (yes, a castle) was positively full of flowers, ones I took many, MANY pictures of, but I kept only the best ones. Here they are;

The reception involved a short tour of one of the towers of the castle, from which we had a nice view, plus a few historical exhibitions within that I was too knocked out by heat to care about. I took pictures of the view, but they were through windows and not very remarkable. It was startlingly cool inside, to the point of being downright chilly. I joked the mayor was hoarding all of the cold air for himself.

Looking up inside the top floor of the tower.
A view of the tower from the outside.

Afterwards, a miniscule “meal” of sorts where we were served champagne and pretzels with a special cream cheese to go with them. I did, in fact, take a couple sips of the champagne, but promptly decided it didn’t taste very good and I’d much rather have a couple glasses of water to combat the ever-present heat. The trees and coming dusk helped, at least. I can, however, technically say that my first drink of alcohol was in a big flower garden castle behind closed doors with a mayor that shares my name, overlooking a pretty river.

The place we had the drinks and pretzels, and where the panorama was taken. The tables aren’t shown.
The cream cheese we had with the pretzels.
The champagne I quickly abandoned in favor of water.

The Fires of Frankfurt

We woke up at a reasonable time to get on our train from Paderborn to Frankfurt to start the second half of our trip. Just before heading out, we got the opportunity to buy some breakfast and a snack for the train. After some debating with myself, I decided not to buy any candy for the train, but instead, buy a supplement to the breakfast I had at In Via.

All that shininess on the pastries is sugar icing of some kind, by the way.

The train ride was plenty comfy, and had WiFi, so I spent it writing one of these blog posts. In what felt like no time at all, we were off the first train and waiting for the second. I decided to wander, see if I wanted to buy anything, and look for a bathroom. Find a bathroom I did, but at a price. Literally.

I was thinking to myself, figuratively, that bathrooms are a commodity in these midway train stations, and then I see a toll booth, with more secure doors than I’ve seen than any other toll booth in recent memory. I don’t know if the goal is to get stingy people to resort to desperate measures, or what, but regardless, it was easily the worst bathroom I’ve been in the whole trip. Even in other public bathrooms, the toilet seats were on securely and they didn’t smell bad. It wasn’t unworkable, though. One doesn’t require much to go through the bathroom process.

The next ride in our trip to Frankfurt didn’t have enough seats for all of us, but me and a couple others got by sitting on our suitcases. I played against Alex in Super Smash Brothers Ultimate and got moderately to severely bodied for all but one match, which coincidentally happened to be our last one. I’m not saying he rage-quit, but… (He absolutely did not rage quit. I’m merely obligated to make an overconfident joke about it.)

Frankfurt, like Paderborn, made a terrible first impression. Though we got there very much in time, unlike my arrival to Paderborn, it was hot as all hell, seemed fairly shabby (I would later learn this is only the case for the area near the train station), and vaguely stank of smoke. It was even hotter in the hotel, even in the lobby, and only some lucky customers get a ceiling fan in their room. It’s not even an extra charge. I pity, and worry for those without a window OR ceiling fan.

After the raging thunderstorm that exploded onto the scene almost as soon as we set foot in the hotel, the sky brightened once more, like night turning into day. It was only half past four, but it felt like eight throughout the storm, and the brightness of the sky was frankly a little disorienting. Not disorienting enough, however, to prevent us from going out to dinner.

I’m pretty sure there were intermediate events, but I’ve forgotten them if so. We found a nice place called Salzkammer, which was constantly playing music that sounded uncannily similar to Despacito for the entire time we were there.

Here’s Despacito in German. I’m not sorry.

I had a schnitzel, followed by some white chocolate mousse. “Sweet and sour rhubarb” didn’t quite sound like the kind of thing I’d enjoy, but I had faith that it wouldn’t be put in with the strawberry, white chocolate, and vanilla ice cream if it didn’t go well with it, and that faith was well placed. It certainly couldn’t match the strawberries (which I’m beginning to think I should eat more often), but it was no slouch.

Finally, Frankfurt had one more special event planned for me; it introduced me to Frick and the MEAT ROOM. I did not enter either of these stores(?), and do not plan to change that, because I fear the consequences.

And so, my first night at Frankfurt came to a close. The stupid levels of heat were thankfully beaten back a little by a fan graciously given to me by the front desk, and allowed me to sleep fairly well. All’s well that ends well?

Beat the Boss Post-Mortem & Final Paderborn Dinner Review

There’s a reason I wanted to work on Beat the Boss as opposed to all the other games that weren’t left on the cutting room floor (rest in peace, DDWD, gone too soon). Not only did it seem in scope, it seemed genuinely fun just from concept alone. I didn’t, however, account for the infallible mantra every game developer should be following whenever they make a new game: “My game is out of scope.”

The rest of my team didn’t recognize that either until they got their hands on their keyboards, and removed the whole “elemental synergy” thing as soon as they did. It’s from that point that the game design turned into an indecisive whirlwind of disjointed ideas; we only really discussed the design in the beginning, before we’d removed the elemental abilities. This led to another all too common issue; a communication deficiency.

I’ve mentioned that I felt like an intern already, but I also felt like an ambassador; a coder and secondary game-designer that bridged the gap between one side of the room and the other, literally.

Now that I think about it, the only thing I worked on for the entire jam that actually got implemented properly was the text inside of the boss’s health bar. None of the abilities got put in despite them all being 97% done (all they needed was some damage inflicting code), and my fully functioning cooldown icons were dropped as well due to bugs in experimental lighting and whatnot taking priority. We had models for breakable pots in the background and pretty destructible pillars, but no final character model, fireball model (even though fireballs for the boss were made), or crossbow bolt model. We didn’t even implement the shield model that was displayed front and center on one of the statues. The focus seemed to be on graphics, and yet, half of the game straight up didn’t have graphics to begin with. Our game was a jack of all trades, master of none, and that could have been changed with some more communication, and maybe a reevaluation of priorities.

Despite all that griping and despite my dissatisfaction with how little I got to actually do for the game, we managed to make something very nice for a handful of days. A jack of all trades, master of none is nothing to sneeze at for a game jam game; it’s leagues better than a broken mess that barely works. Even despite all the issues I think we had, all we really needed to iron them out was time.

A gameplay video given to us by Ingo, one of our teammates.

After the game jam presentations, however, we had some time to relax, and after that, dinner, at a burger place I can’t remember the name of at the moment.

I decided on getting a “DT Bacon Dog,” some ginger ale, and some Calamari, deciding that, worst case scenario, I’d feet it to my associates should I not have room / not like them very much. Meanwhile, Mike was debating whether he should get a triple patty burger or a five patty burger. It’s worth noting finishing the five patty burger, entitled something along the lines of “THE BURGINATOR,” would get you a spot on a hall of fame, a hoodie, and a few other goodies, so he didn’t just have a death wish.

The Bacon Dog wasn’t quite up to my very American savory standards, but it was still very good. Unlike what I’m used to in America, the bacon was seriously good. Had you taken out the hot dogs and replaced them with fresh grilled American ones, you’d have a really dangerously good combo going.

The DT Bacon Dog. When the menu said “zwei hotdogs” I figured they’d come in separate buns. It was as difficult to keep together as it looks.

The calamari was just as good as I expected; not very. It was still decent, but not worth eating after filling myself up on the Bacon Dog. The batter to calamari ratio was a little too high, and it wasn’t quite salty enough anyway. Better not salty enough than too salty, though.

The calamari. It really wasn’t that bad, there was just a little too much batter and I was full. The salad was pretty good, though.

Meanwhile, Mike was eating his triple patty burger and suffering greatly. It was mostly due, however, to covering an entire french fry in hot sauce entitled “PAIN 100%” and eating it.

Because I’m well known as a bold risk-taker, I decided to try it, by taking about a pinkie-tip’s worth of it, gently dipping the tip of a french fry into that, and briefly touching the sauce with the tip of my tongue.

A french fry garnished with bona-fide, 100% all natural pain.

I swear that the tip of my tongue came close to going numb; the heat wasn’t painful, because I only just barely touched the sauce, but it was some INTENSE heat. I honestly, truly believe that if I’d eaten a “proper” serving of it, I would have literally passed out. The moment I felt the heat, I realized Mike’s predicament. He was handling it like a champ, though, considering everything. The big glass of milk he emptied not long after probably helped.

Tobi, on the other hand, had eaten an entire triple patty burger and was now finishing Alex’s, and offering to finish Mike’s as well, should he need to. I simply sat there drinking my second glass of ginger ale, completely full. I don’t know if it was just because I was abnormally thirsty, the ginger ale is better in Germany, or I just haven’t realized it, but the ginger ale was very good. Maybe I ought to drink it more often.

The Barbeque (and a little bit of work on the Game Jam too)

Another day of the game jam, another round of stubbing out code and making small changes. This time, I made the fireball and crossbow essentially work as intended, and left the grappling hook ability to another coder.

The crossbow fires a single bolt normally, three bolts when charged once, and five bolts when charged twice. The fireball is very similar, but it fires a pathetically small fireball with no charge, a bigger one with one charge, and a very large one with two charges. The cooldowns, speeds, and a bunch of other things were yet to be implemented / balanced. That was the game design team’s job, or at least, that was my impression. Referring to myself as an “Intern” in the first game jam blog post really couldn’t describe my situation better. I do things, but do those things get implemented / matter? Maybe.

Today, however, there was an event, so I actually have more things to talk about! We held a barbecue out in a glade somewhere I can’t exactly name, since I was graciously driven there and back by my German peers.

I had a hamburger of sorts, with a steak (I think?) as the “burger,” a piece of bread I had to cut myself, and some special burger sauce. It was surprisingly good. Steak being my favorite food probably helped. I didn’t take a picture of it, because I didn’t think to, but I did take a picture of the strawberries.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen strawberries this red and healthy looking. They tasted good, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen / eaten strawberries in general, actually…

Besides eating, all I really did was wander around aimlessly and talk to some people. Alex went full Minecraft, made himself a small stone axe and defiled mother nature with his creation, so there’s that.

You show that tree, Alex.

Though I intended to work some more upon getting back, it being 8:30PM already—compounded the thoroughly uncomfortable heat of the game lab—convinced me to head back “early.”

It’s so bright out, even though this picture was taken at 9:00PM.

Kind of getting there a little bit

It’s honestly hard to remember what I did the second day of the game jam because most of the work I’ve done has been small or was stubbing code for someone else. After some reviewing the edit logs, I realized Friday was the day I started remapping controls and adding the Shield special. A lot of my time was spent trying to make it easy to edit for balancing purposes and other such things, time that probably could have been spent on other things if our architecture was a bit better. I sure do have a thing for attracting bad architecture, and not realizing it soon enough to call it out.

I have no pictures because we spent all day indoors, even though I personally took a couple breaks to walk outside and get some fresh air.

I didn’t get a wide array of things done, so there’s really not much else to say. I made some players slower when a button is held.

Our discord, which should have been used a hell of a lot more, in my humble opinion

The Start of the Jam

Despite it being a public holiday, In Via was still serving breakfast, though they opened slightly later, at 8:00. (Germans sure do seem to wake up early.) After eating said “late” breakfast and getting prepared, it was time to set out to the university for the game jam. We were running a little late, so Stephen called a cab for himself, me, and some others. It was a large cab, with two rows of back seats, so we were all comfy and got where we needed to be. I still don’t trust the cabs here, not after Michael’s cab story.

First, we split into myriad groups of two, where we’d each come up with an extremely bare-bones pitch or idea, which we would then pitch to two other groups of two who would also pitch their ideas. We’d then combine / adopt ideas as needed and come up with a decent, actual game pitch. Finally, we’d have three votes and give them to our favorites, deciding which ones would be dropped.

I was the one who did the pitch at the front of the room for our group. We had in mind a game temporarily titled “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Warp-Drives,” a poorly executed play on Guy “F L A V O R T O W N” Fieri’s food review TV show. We called it DDWD (Dee-dee-dub-dee) for the very short time we still had the pitch before it was murdered in cold blood by a lack of votes.

The idea was to have splitscreen multiplayer where one player is a waiter, and the other is a chef. The waiter would have to take orders to pass to the chef, clean up spills, deal with rude customers, etc. with the mouse or controller. The chef would take orders from the waiter and make the food accordingly with the keyboard / another controller, then pass it back to the waiter who would finally serve it. I, personally, think it was a good idea that was worth a shot but oh well the votes said otherwise. 🙁

Instead, I was shifted onto another interesting game, Beat the Boss, a boss rush game initially intended to have multiple classes each with an ability that synergies with the others, such as an ice man who freezes people and a fire man that does extra damage if the enemy is frozen. We later down the line decided that was out of scope. The core gameplay remains unchanged, however; the goal of Beat the Boss is to beat the boss (hopefully we’ll even have more than one boss to beat!).

Two players choose from two classes (hopefully four classes, maybe even four players, later down the line if time allows) and charge into an arena to take down a big boss, armed with only a sword, a dash / dodge roll, and a special ability. Players die in one hit, but can be revived by their friends, making each fight a careful balancing act of staying safe, beating the boss, and keeping your friends in the fight should they become deceased.

The original brainstorm board for Beat the Boss. We have since changed a fair amount, such as it being a “twin stick shooter” kind of deal with the triggers and bumpers doing actions and the sticks doing movement and aiming.

I don’t feel like I got much done that first day. Most of the time spent was planning out the game, which I did feel I participated in, and waiting for the lab computers to do literally anything. Even when the computers finally finished doing whatever it may have been, due to the early state of the game, it was difficult to test things or visualize what needed to be done. I felt like an intern mixed into the developers of a brand new game.

I did add in a very, very rudimentary basic attack, the sword swipe; on click, a hitbox appears in front of the player, about as long as them, and about twice as wide. It’s got a nice rhythm to it, last I checked, but I can’t tell if the rest of my team is headed down the “press the button in rhythm” route like I am or the “RAPIDLY SLAM THE BUTTON TO SWING AT SUPER SONIC SPEEDS” route. This was largely possible due to Ingo’s excellent code stubbing.

I had headed home early due to lack of things to do at the moment, but my team continued to progress, and by the evening, we had movement, rolling, and even an adequate camera that simulated what the game was generally going to look like. Despite the relative lack of technical progress, getting the kinks worked out early is always preferable to getting them worked out later, and breaking everything in the process.

The RIT Siege on Sparrenburg!!

We spent our time in the morning resting / freshening up before we headed out at 10:45 to catch a train to Bielefeld. Maybe I’m just not paying attention to the scenery at home, but it feels like Germany is much greener. Being that green is my favorite color, I appreciate it.

The view out the train to Bielefeld’s window. I find that pretty clouds like this often spur me to take pictures.

When we got to Bielefeld, we found ourselves in the middle of a carnival. There were all kinds of typical carnival sights to see, like ferris wheels, spinning contraptions I usually refer to as “X-Treme Merry Go Rounds” (I don’t know what they’re actually called), and numerous places to eat food of all sorts. Nothing much struck me except a hot dog stand with american flag designs all over it (which I regrettably didn’t take a picture of) and a neat drink stand of sorts with a medieval, high-fantasy motif.

Beerenweine, a fantasy themed beverage stand, presumably alcoholic by the name. They’re evidently well stocked on potions.

But we had no time to dabble in the carnival. (That’s a lie, but just go with it.) We had a castle to siege—The Sparrenburg, Bielefeld’s landmark—and a big hill to climb. I’m no stranger to walking up hills, and it was no less difficult walking up this one than any other respectable hill. I must have gotten stronger since my summer camp days, though, because I wasn’t completely knocked-the-hell-out by the time we got to the top. I was, however, tired enough to stop and admire the castle from the outside.

Just outside The Sparrenburg, before the bridge to the front entrance.

And so, we breached the castle walls by walking into the wide open front entrance. It was completely serene inside, and awoke my usually dormant desire to wander and look at things. Look at things I did, and many a picture did I take.

Map of The Sparrenburg, from www.sparrenburg.info.

Just outside The Sparrenberg’s entrance, to the right.
On top of Schuster Bastion.
The courtyard / visitor center, just inside the inner walls.
The view from St Mary’s Bastion.
The view of the bridge to the front entrance, from St Mary’s Bastion.
Looking up at the central tower from behind.
Inside the courtyard, looking out to the right.
A statue of Friedrich Wilhelm, Elector of Brandenburg. Lighting is hard.

Then we started our tour, the guide unsuspecting of our scheme to take over the castle. We first looked at a very old well not too far behind the central tower, originally 60 meters deep if I recall correctly (partially filled with debris from hostile occupation and time). After some more looking around the edge of the inner walls, we descended into the catacombs, which dated back to the 1600s.

The living quarters of the soldiers during the Thirty Years’ War, and likely other times. Complete with a large oven, very little light, and a cannon or two. (The original cannon[s] are no longer here.)

Looking up and out of one of the openings in the catacombs. The alcove on the right was used to store logs, tar, and soldier residue to dump on foolish invaders.

Unfortunately, it was here the guide got wise on our plans, and put us in the soldier’s disciplinary prison, a fairly small featureless room with a lumpy floor and no light besides an electric light installed on the wall in the modern day (which was operated by a switch outside and out of reach, might I add!).

We were promptly let out because I’ve been lying to you all this time, we were never actually sieging anything, as far as you know. Emerging out of the impressively cold catacombs (so cold you could see your breath!) and into the sun once again, we made our way to climb the central tower. After our gracious hosts paid for everyone’s access, we made our way to the central tower’s entrance, but not before I took a picture of some flowers.

Miscellaneous flowers to the right of the old well. You can see it on the right edge. Why didn’t I take a picture of it?

The climb to the top of the central tower, as to be expected for a 37 meter tall tower, was a long one, with three different flavors of staircase; metal, wooden, and metal spiral.

Getting to the top however, was worth it; from there, we had a view of all of Bielefeld, just as the brochure boasts.

Looking down on the courtyard from the central tower.

Misc. scenery from atop the central tower.

A picture of the sky from atop the central tower.

After coming down from the tower and leaving The Sparrenburg, we went on a quest for the fabled “spaghetti ice-cream,” something I initially thought was going to be spaghetti noodles hanging off a vanilla ice-cream cone. I was wrong, but not disappointed.

A menu displaying various Spaghetti Ice Creams. I ordered the Spaghetti-Tris di Pasta, despite my carbonara affinity. (It looks like there’s nuts in the carbonara one.)

My order of Spaghetti-Tris di Pasta, chocolate, fudge, and chocolate. I forgot to ask for no nuts, so the left heap went uneaten. (I was full anyway. It’s a lot of ice cream!)

We intended to go out to a bar after returning to Paderborn by train, but most of us didn’t feel up to it, including me. An eventful day, and one that went by quickly, even despite all the walking.