Overview

  • Attendance
  • Passionate Topics
  • Gameboy/Playdate
  • Presentations
  • Next Week

Attendance

  • Abu Shettima
  • Jonathan Buckel
  • Matthew Williams
  • Paul Shriner

Passionate Topics

Last meeting, we (the officers) were tasked with brainstorming topics we are passionate about. Here is what we came up with:

  • Cybersecurity / Privacy
  • Jailbreaking / Rooting
  • JRPG / RPG Maker / Retro Gaming / Retro Computers

We decided to focus on retro gaming, as there are many possibilities given by the subject matter. Of course, the other topics could still be good for singular meetings.

Gameboy/Playdate

We need to have a target platform for which we’d explore. Jon recommends either the Gameboy or the Playdate (a modern indie handheld console), as both have readily available development resources, unlike other platforms such as the NES or SNES.

With the platform chosen, members can make projects to run on it. We will likely need a couple meetings just to cover the development process, then we can break off into actual project development. This will need more thought, as we don’t want meetings to get out of hand (a game can quickly spiral out of control due to feature creep).

The benefits from this are numerous:

  • It’s rewarding to build a project from the ground up.
  • It helps the club grow through advertising (hey how’d you make that cool game? oh just join software dev club!)
  • A published game would look great on a resume!

More information about the Playdate can be found here. The actual unit costs $199, but they offer an officially supported emulator for free. We decided that we would start purely on the emulator, then if interest is high enough, we can buy the real unit.

Presentations

Jon discussed that you need to be passionate in a presentation, it shows if you’re not! Further, he brought up some bad presentation habits, including:

  • Being too rigid (standing in one place like a statue)
  • Being too quiet
  • Not being able to adapt to change (how the audience is reacting)

As this is a club, it should not be too formal/professional. It’s a good chance to learn, experiment, and even embarrass yourself. We can also just ask if there’s areas we need to work on, people want to help!

This is something the officers (particularly Paul and Matt) will need to work on.

Next Week

For next week, the officers will research Gameboy and Playdate development. We encourage anyone who will be coming next semester to stop by the next meeting to offer your feedback on our ideas.

Watch our Discord for the next meeting time!