The German-French “TOTEM Summer School Mobile Mixed Reality Game Jam Hackathon 2012” (probably impossible to include more buzzwords in a title) is one week of location-based game development for dedicated students taking place this July. It is organized by the German-French research project TOTEM – Theories and Tools for Distributed Authoring of Mobile Mixed Reality Games. Students will work together in small teams and design and develop their own mobile mixed reality game over the course of a week. The games could be based on GPS, use NFC or Wifi signatures, include augmented reality, be played in teams, alone or against other people, … You will use the tools developed over the course of the project that should ease the development process. There are no real limits, we just want you to roam the city streets with your games. And what better time join the fun than this July?
Arrival: Sunday, July 22nd
Work: Monday, July 23rd to Friday, July 27th
Departure: Saturday, July 28th
Castle Birlinghoven [1], Fraunhofer Campus Birlinghoven in Sankt Augustin, Germany
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Before arrival, students will receive a reader with relevant research papers and tutorials to prepare them for the summer school. After arrival, students will be separated into small groups of 2 to 4 depending on their interests and skills. Each group then works together developing one game that will be presented and played on the last day of the summer school. The best games will be published on the project’s website. The student tasks cover all aspects of developing mobile games, including for example game design, graphic and sound design, game programming and user testing. We hope to get results in the realm of previously developed games like Tidy City [2], Portal Hunt [3] or aMazing [4].
The summer school is organized by the TOTEM project members: Fraunhofer FIT [5] (Germany) and Institut Telecom [6] (France). The TOTEM project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and by the French National Research Agency in the frame of the Program Inter Carnot Fraunhofer.
The games will be developed for Android, so the client side programming will be done in Java. Any server components will be written in Python and also utilize our ZebroGaMQ communication middleware [7] in case of demanding multiplayer games. Furthermore for managing all game objects you will use TOTEM.Designer [8] (a web-based authoring environment that lets you create, structure and export all assets needed in your game) and TOTEM.Scout [9] (the corresponding mobile app for in-situ authoring).
The summer school is mainly targeted at master students. If you are an exceptional bachelor student, you might give it a try and convince us with a strong application. PhD students are also welcome.
Previous knowledge in game design, mixed reality games and/or location-based games is a plus. Programming experience is extremely helpful. We will however also provide a light-weight system where less experience programmers can create a game by just using a little bit of JavaScript. Also, graphical user interfaces need to be designed, and good sound design is always important for games.
Most importantly you will need to show a strong dedication, motivation and willingness for hard work throughout the summer school.
Please download the application form (see below), fill it in and export is as PDF. To complete your application, please provide:
Please zip all files and name the archive “firstname_lastname.zip” before sending it via email to summerschool2012@fit.fraunhofer.de [10].
Please take your time filling in the application form and answer all questions thoroughly. The form will be the main way of judging your suitability, so you need to give us more than just a line per question.
The deadline for applications is Friday, June 29th, noon, German time. We are aiming on letting you know as early as possible after the deadline has passed.
We are planning on covering your travel costs (oversea places are limited though), your accommodation (shared room) and meals. So you don’t need to worry about money but can focus on your game.
We will provide you with Android smartphones and tablets for developing the games. You need to bring your own laptop however, and you need to have installed all necessary software beforehand (and familiarized yourself with it).
The Summer School is an official course of the Media Informatics programme of RWTH Aachen ("Praktikum"). Students will receive 10 ECTS and be graded. After the Summer School students have to hand in a short report of their work.
Students from other universities will also be able to gain credits, but of course the exact amount needs to be negotiated with the home university.
Do not hesitate to contact us via email with any questions or concerns you might have: summerschool2012@fit.fraunhofer.de [10]
The summer school is over and we had an excellent group of 16 international students [11]. They have created five games, and you can find out more information about them on their dedicated pages:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| application_form.doc [17] | 41 KB |
Links:
[1] https://maps.google.com/maps/place?cid=6230646323256152284&q=Schloss Birlinghoven, Sankt Augustin, Deutschland&hl=en&t=v&dtab=2&ie=UTF8&ll=50.759203,7.221472&spn=0.040667,0.104713&z=14&vpsrc=6
[2] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=tidycity
[3] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=portalhunt
[4] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=aMazing
[5] http://fit.fraunhofer.de/mars
[6] http://www.it-sudparis.eu/fr_accueil.html
[7] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=Communication Middleware
[8] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=TOTEM.Designer
[9] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=TOTEM.Scout
[10] mailto:summerschool2012@fit.fraunhofer.de
[11] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=node/152
[12] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=node/155
[13] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=node/156
[14] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=node/157
[15] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=node/158
[16] http://www.totem-games.org/?q=node/159
[17] http://totem-project.fit.fraunhofer.de/images2/application_form.doc