TOJam is one of the best ways to get a feel for deving with a team. I was fortunate enough to assemble three über talented programmers (who's availability was variable throughout the weekend). A big thanks to Tenth Line for letting Michael and Enrico off for the event. Levo made a showing for both Friday and Saturday. I on the other hand had to run to work both evenings, and even sleeping at TOJam, under the IGP table, I only accumulated seven hours over the two nights. It was a good thing that the 24hour Sobeys was around the corner with caffeinated products to help maintain my constitution.

I have to give Barry Row and Andrew Tsui kudos. I tasked Barry with improving my programmer level graphics, no small feet. In the end Barry reveled his trade secret for adding in the awesome as he was quoted in saying: "I take the outlines that you have given me and use a filter to remove the suck. The process takes about forty minutes." The quote is not exact but it maintains the humorous sentiment none the less.

It was nice to see a familiar face at this event, especially one that I did not drag along and that face was Adam. He and I were actually in the same Digital Media course at York University a few years back, and I remember his compositions as some of the most solid in the class. Thankfully he was working on the music for us, which he magically produced in under two hours...simply amazing.

There were defiantly points at which I though that the entire weekend's effort would be for not. Enrico's sheer speed and my contingency planning paid off. This is a lesson for anyone designing a game. Always know which features are absolutely essential and which are enhancements that put icing on the cake. By having the option of eliminating non-essential elements you have a way to keep the development on task and reach milestones as well as have a way to lessen the load if you are pressed for time by impending deadlines.

I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at GCTO2 on SAT.03.2008. The presentations all had something to offer. Unfortunately I had to cut my presentation down by more than half in order to give the time to the last presentation and as such lost my train twice during the presentation. My hope was to walk everyone through the development process (with a sample game and images I had created just for the event) and to illustrate the infrastructure of the IGP. There will always be another Gamecamp so I will just have to ready my steel for GCTO3.