As part of trying to help the IGDA Ireland chapter bring together Irish Developers, Open Emotion Studios will be hosting a national games jam in September called “The Open Emotion/Winnitron Sham jam” – It’s called this because its hosted by Open Emotion, Sponsored by Winnitron, based in Limerick (Sham is a Limerick colloquialism which can mean a number of things in different contexts eg. “C’mere to me sham” or “I’m gonna kick the heart and soul outta ya sham”  and is a Jam (Basically where a bunch of programmers, artists, sound designers etc. come together to make games in a short timescale).

Basically the goal is to bring Irish Devs together to develop games for the Irish Winnitron arcade cabinet. We are hoping to get input from Irish indie legend, Terry Cavanagh in respect to the theme of the Jam.

It will run from 12 A.m on Saturday the 1oth of September all the way through to 12 A.M on Monday the 12th of September – Most devs wanted a nice 48 hour period to do everything so we obliged as you get more creativity out of a 48 hour jam generally, compared to a 24 hour jam. Selected games will make their way onto the winnitron where they will be able to be played by people all over the world.

If you are interested in being involved follow the topic over on Facebook, Game Developers Ireland or Open Emotions Twitter Page and let us know as we’re trying to get an idea of numbers,

(Source: openemotionstudios.com)

We had been talking with Terry Cavanagh a while back about making a game for the Winnitron IRL as he’s a great Indie developer and he’s Irish , (Monaghan :). And Terry is interested in making something for it, but unfortunately he’s really busy at the minute working on his own projects, mainly Nexus City http://distractionware.com/blog/?p=1469 which looks amazing. So to he has decided to put one of his old games on instead.

He gave us a choice of Self Destruct , Bullet Time and Bullfist, all of which are great and would be brilliant on the Winnitron, but we had to choose and we thought that Self Destruct would suit the best. 

Self Destruct is a rock hard space shooter that was created by Terry and Annabelle Kennedy for TIG Sources’s procedural generation competition in 24 hours. It is a perfect fit for the Winnitron as it’s fun, fast paced and encourages competition through it’s leader boards. We’re really excited to have something Terry and can’t wait to test it out on the machine when it’s ready. K

So another few milestones reached this past week, after gathering up all the necessary supplies myself and Kieran got back at it and now we have the control panel with its two button layout done and dusted!

Further to that we have a solid frame built for the monitor to rest in, couple of touch and go moments with the jigsaw blade cutting awkwardly close to fingers and upside down drilling to securely hold the screen in place. All good and no fingers lost just yet.

We can now begin preparations for the front frame that sits around the screen along with the speakers above. After that its the implementation of the artwork and a few other nice touches and we will be all set! Full speed ahead !! R