Ok, so the title lies a bit, I'm not really an indie developer, I mean, yeah, I'm a programmer (to an extent) and yeah, I do 'work' for an unsigned developer, but we're just a bunch of students working on a project so we can pass the semester. Hell, technically I'm not even a programmer yet, I'm just one of the guys people turn to when they want to know if something is achievable within the engine.

But enough technicalities, that's not why I started this, I actually started this because I haven't sorted out my own website yet (that's coded, designed and hosted somewhere), but wanted to get my thoughts out early so I don't lose them later on.

Here's a quick run down on what's going to happen over the next 5 or 6 months at my learning institution of choice:

-This coming Wednesday, about 4 or 5 groups, consisting of 4 people or less (I'm technically not in a group, didn't attend the first day this semester) are going to pitch their games. All in all, there's some very achievable ideas in there, a futuristic racer in the vein of Wipeout and F-Zero, a gore filled 3rd person survival game where the player is a viking, a fighting game based on tae-kwon do tournament rules and a few other small projects (including the cool idea of something like GeoWars, but in a 3d space). None of us know which projects are going to be picked or how many are going to be picked. We have a rough idea of what they're looking for however.

-The Wednesday following that, we're all required to apply for jobs/positions within the projects which have been picked. This process involves all the usual job application stuff; a letter of application, a resume and an interview - it also requires us to dress nicely for the occasion, a change from my usual band shirts and jeans. At this stage, for me to get anywhere, I need to apply for a position doing some sort of coding, given that my skills in other areas are weak.

-After that, they've set us various checkpoints for us to have basic gameplay elements completed by.

-Our work eventually gets assessed sometime, then we're given time to polish it up before we submit a gameplay video (I think) to the panel of judges who are deciding the best unsigned indie game at this year's Game Connect: Asia Pacific, they'll end up nailing it down to the four best who will get to demo their games at the conference, which is a goal we're all chasing after.

-After that, who knows, I sure as hell don't.

So, we essentially have 18 weeks all up, to design, implement and 'publish' a game, with a working prototype finished by week 8, and we all still don't know what we're going to do yet. I'll probably update with another post after wednesday or maybe thursday (when we find out what was selected). It's not going to be easy, but it will be fun, stressful, antagonising etc. etc. (so basically like helping a friend move, like I did on the weekend). So until my next post <insert some sort of informal goodbye here>.