Hello there,

Last week we've introduced ourselves to this community and talked about our GGJ game: RGBuilder, an AR Competitive Multiplayer Game.

It was quite ambitious and as we've said, by the end of the Global Game Jam's 48 hours deadline it wasn't quite finished.

In this tweet you can see some of the gameplay we had by the end of it.

We were capable of detecting colours in the environment quite fast and players were able, not just to see their own towers, but other's as well. All that remained was finishing the game loop: Adding different coloured levels to the towers, checking if it was in the right sequence, ending the game, restarting it, “small” bug fixes…..the usual.

This past week has been mostly that, bug fixing and actually finishing the game loop. I am happy to say that we have finished the last part but bugs are eternal so that will never end, just pass it off as a feature:
- Why are the towers all leaning?
- We used the Tower of Pisa as a basis
- Some are attached to the ceiling…?
- Have you never heard of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?

In the beginning of the week we had a meeting to talk about where we wanted to go with RGBuilder and if we should just remake the game, with better code and server support, and not just some 48hour-assembled mess. After some discussion we concluded that, if it was only a prototype, we should finish it to at least have something to show. Luckily for us, that opportunity came knocking almost immediately.

Remember the startup I wrote about last post? ONTOP studios, a Portuguese studio focused on making games and applications with AR. After talking with them during Global Game Jam we kept in contact and today we had a meeting with them, in their offices, and it was a great experience.

It was our first meeting as a student's club with a possible partner and we didn't know quite what to expect. Once we got there everyone was excited to meet each other, play games and share their knowledge. We showed them the latest version of RGBuilder, talked about how the idea came up, our experience with AR, where do we see it going and our main difficulties. In return they gave a lots of feedback, mentioned some other tools we can use, particularly in terms of debugging and multiplayer communication. We also discussed possible collaborations/partnerships with them in the future and perhaps continue this RGBuilder idea…..but I can't/won't go into detail here ?

Finally we also got to play, and give feedback, on some of the games they are developing….but I can't go into detail about it either…I can however, share a gif of us playing it!

All in all, it was quite a productive meeting and certainly makes us more excited for the future of this club.

As always, follow us on our Social Media channels to learn more about RGBuilder and Game Dev Técnico on:
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Thank you for reading,

Manuel Guimarães

PS: We should find a better title for these posts….