The Game Jam Survival Guide -- Table of Contents -- The Game Jam Survival Guide -- Credits -- About the Author -- About the Contributors -- About the Reviewer -- www.PacktPub.com -- Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more -- Why Subscribe? -- Free Access for Packt account holders -- Preface -- What is a Game Jam? -- The goal of this book -- What this book covers -- How to use this book -- Meet the two Jamming friends -- Reader feedback -- Customer support -- Errata -- Piracy -- Questions -- What the experts say: Zuraida Buter -- 1. Before the Jam:Prepare Yourself for Success! -- Finding freedom in constraints -- What the experts say: Eric McQuiggan -- Game Jam survey stats -- What the experts say: Jason P. Kaplan -- Go with what you know -- Preparing your base code -- What the experts say: Mike Kasprzak -- Preparing your art tools -- Practice makes perfect -- Forming a team -- Social networking tips -- Things to avoid -- Don't try a new language -- Sleep is good -- Real life matters -- Food = Brain Fuel -- What the experts say: Mike Hommel -- Maintaining relationships -- What the experts say: Ian Schreiber -- 2. Hours 1-12:Your Quest Begins! -- Learn from others' mistakes -- Don't forget the sound! -- Dealing with the Game Jam "theme" -- What the experts say: Chevy Ray Johnston -- An example of a winning entry -- Coming up with a plan -- Building a game by first creating concept art -- Using graph paper or board game pieces -- Don't worry about making it beautiful! -- Avoid the latest fad-go low-tech -- What the experts say: Dr. Mike Reddy -- 3. Hours 13-24:Deeper into the Jungle! -- Motivation techniques -- Getting over "The Wall" -- Share your work-in-progress -- Keep in touch -- What the experts say: Austin Breed -- 4. Hours 25-36:Breaking Through The Wall! -- Keep It Simple, Stupid! -- No-art (rectangles) gameplay proof-of-concept.

Distil to the essential features -- Finishing a "working" basic prototype early -- Occam's Razor -- Break the rules of computer science! -- Brooks' Law -- "War Story": Diary of a failed Game Jam -- Common mistakes -- Reducing production time -- Hand-crafted versus computer-generated content -- Iterating the prototype to find the fun -- FIRST make it work, THEN make it pretty -- What the experts say: Christopher Nilssen -- 5. Hours 37-48:Getting to the Finish Line! -- "Captain's log"-diary of a winning entry -- Avoiding headaches -- What the experts say: Pekka Kujansuu -- What to do when you think you might not finish -- Don't beat yourself up! -- Cut-and-run: chop out the bad parts -- Heinous hacks and ugly code are A-OK. -- Common features of winning Game Jam games -- Polish, polish, polish -- Beta testing: fixing the difficulty and controls -- Packaging your game -- Submitting your game -- The importance of your game's name -- The importance of your game's description -- The importance of your thumbnail icon -- Top 100 icons (best) -- Bottom 100 icons (worst) -- What the experts say: Foaad Khosmood -- 6. After the Jam:Fame and Fortune! -- The voting process -- What the experts say: Phil Hassey -- The next steps: post - Jam professionalism -- Writing a post-mortem analysis -- What goes into a game post-mortem? -- Sponsors, portals, and app stores -- What the experts say: Chris Hopp -- You made it! -- A. Game Jams -- Finding a Jam: a list of Game Jams around the world -- The Global Game Jam -- Ludum Dare -- The Experimental Gameplay Project -- The Game Prototype Challenge -- The Super Friendship Club -- Klik of the Month Klub -- PyWeek -- Reddit Game Jams -- Newgrounds Game Jams -- TIGJam -- Dream.Build.Play -- Blitzkast -- B. Game Engines -- Choosing a game engine -- Flixel -- FlashPunk -- Unity -- Ren'Py -- Game Maker -- Multimedia Fusion.

Corona SDK -- haXe + NME -- CryEngine -- XNA -- BlitzMax -- The Unreal Development Kit -- jMonkeyEngine -- Stencyl -- Torque -- Construct -- HTML5 game engines aplenty -- C. Helpful Tools -- Essential tools -- Recording time-lapse videos -- IRC chat clients -- Generating sound effects -- Level editors -- OGMO -- DAME -- GLEED -- MapEditor -- Mappy -- TME - Tile Map Editor -- TileStudio -- tIDE (Tilemap Integrated Development Environment) -- D. The Community -- Social networking links -- Google+ -- Twitter -- IRC chat rooms aplenty -- Reddit -- TIGforums -- Other websites worth visiting -- Afterword -- A note from the author -- Index.