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OLPC Physics Game Jam For an XO

Posted by kdawson on from the come-to-learn-come-to-win dept.

Brian Jordan writes "For 48 hours during the weekend of August 29-31 at the OLPC Physics Game Jam Boston, game developers will compete in teams of 2-4 to design and implement a physics-based game for the One Laptop per Child XO laptop. There are prize categories for indie, professional, and remote developers (Ludum Dare style). In addition to OLPC/Jam-related swag for all participants, one team will win an XO laptop. Participants should have some game development experience, but we'll be going over the development process during the event — read below for details. If you'll be in the Boston area this weekend, or want to participate remotely, sign up before August 22. If you're a graphic artist, sound designer, musician in the Boston area, or want to be a volunteer, get in touch." Click the magic link for details of the crash course in game programming being offered.

Eric Jordan of the Box2D project will be giving a talk on developing physics games with pyBox2D for the OLPC XO. Nirav Patel, the Google Summer of Code student working on vision processing for the XO, will describe combining physics and vision processing for interactive games. And Alex Levenson, OLPC summer intern and creator of the x2o physics game, will give a remote introduction to level design for his game.

6 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. one team will win an XO laptop by frovingslosh · · Score: 4, Funny
    one team will win an XO laptop

    So it's One Laptop Per Child, but Only One Laptop for an entire development team. Hardly seems right.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:one team will win an XO laptop by felipekk · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are not the kind of person they are looking for.

      OLPC is a non-profit organization. They seek people that have similar things in mind.

    2. Re:one team will win an XO laptop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Especially when you consider that the Boston police are likely to shoot you if they catch you carrying it. After all, it has blinking lights on it and it certainly doesn't look like a NORMAL laptop... ;-)

  2. Developed for the XO? by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is this a Windows or Linux game designed for Sugar's GUI, or can one develop specifically for Sugar and run it wherever the Sugar interface is (regardless of whether it is running on Linux or Windows)?

    1. Re:Developed for the XO? by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 4, Informative

      The idea is to develop specifically for the set of libraries associated with Sugar. This means libraries like pyGTK, pygame, olpcgames, and in this case, pyBox2d and Elements.

      There is a lot of information about creating OLPC Activities on the OLPC Wiki.

      --
      eclecti.cc
  3. Re:not what they really need by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The XO was meant for educating childs (developing countries or not). A game that makes them understand physics, thru a game, goes to the core of the mission of those machines.

    Spreadsheets (childs 1st need to learn how to do and understand math) or file managers (the interface somewhat hides that is a filesystem below) dont look as compatible with those goals.