ALT-Engine Micro game jam

What is Bitsy?

This "tiny" engine was made by Adam Le Doux who writes:

hi! bitsy is a little editor for little games or worlds. the goal is to make it easy to make games where you can walk around and talk to people and be somewhere.

What are we doing today?

By the end of class, we'd have made a Bitsy game in groups of 2-3 and (hopefully) also do a class presentation of our projects! The time limit is part of the game jam challenge ✨

Schedule

Prompt

Generate your bitsy game ideas with the following sentence:

a (noun) is wandering in (a place). upon (arriving at / encountering) (a specific location / object / person in the place), a story about (a topic) unfolds.

We’ll return to this in a moment. But first how do you do things in bitsy?

Intro to Bitsy

Get to the engine here: https://ledoux.itch.io/bitsy

We’ll take a stroll through the engine using this bitsy pdf handout

Look at what others have made: https://itch.io/games/tag-bitsy

If you want to look at even more tutorials / info / hacks/ etc…

• bitsy docs has the latest information about how to do things in the editor: https://make.bitsy.org/docs/
• Another tutorial (also in Chinese and Japanese):
• bitsy handout (lots of links to other things): https://rahji.github.io/bitsy-handout/web/
• bitsy tools map (also lots of links): https://haraiva.neocities.org/bitsytools#1,4

Let's brainstorm some ideas!

You’ve gotten a quick taste of the engine, so let’s come up with some ideas!

1. Grab a paper.

2. Write a version of this sentence with the parenthesis filled in with your own ideas:

   a (noun) is wandering in (a place). upon (arriving at / encountering) (a specific location / object / person in the place), a story about (a topic) unfolds.

3. When you’re done. Put your paper on the designated idea table.

Let's put it to a vote!

Each person gets Three votes

Read through the ideas. Place a star ✰ on your favorite ones.

We’ll take the top 4-5 ideas and write them on the board!

Let's get into groups!

• Three people max.
• Workshop the idea, make a sketch, storyboard, plan what you’ll make (remember that your game can be small)
• Divide up the work if needed. (writing, drawing, sounds, bitsy assembly)
• Make sure to add an ending somewhere in your project!

Notes on collaborating across multiple devices

Behind the scenes, bitsy is just storing everything as text.

Take a look at the “Game Data” tool. If you scroll around (or search for names), you’ll be able to find the data connected with your sprite / room / color palette

You can copy and paste things from one game data file to another.

If you’ve decided to use any hacks or plugins this might be a bit more tricky.

Exporting and sharing the game

From the “Download” tool you can export your game as an HTML file -- email this HTML file to me so I can add your project to the Bitsy Museum!

To share bitsy projects online, you can embed it on your website using an iframe:

<iframe src="path/to/my-fancy-bitsy.html"></iframe>

You can also upload it directly to itch.io and make a project page!

... THE MOMENT YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!

Some course reminders

• Homeplay 2 (Extra Credit) is due next Tuesday.
• Project 3 Sketch is due next Thursday.