Winter #ue4jam: February 8-11th - THEME: ON THIN ICE

General Announcements
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2018 Winter #ue4jam Winners

Finalists
Fireline - Icy as Hell
Team Has No Name - Eggspionage
Weekend Struggle - Sneaky Love

Special Category Winners
Something, Something Reality
Hot Dogs Studio - Raining Penguins VR
Best Game Under 100MB
Symmetry Break - SuperSnow
Best Character Design
Feverdream Studios - On Thin Ice: With the Law

It’s time for our Winter #ue4jam! Once a quarter, Unreal Engine hosts the #ue4jam to give developers a chance to polish their skills and compete for awesome prizes!

THE RULES
Work alone or with a team (up to 5 members total) to make the most incredible project in Unreal Engine 4 based on the given theme and submit before the deadline.

OFFICIAL RULES

GETTING STARTED

Tom’s presentation on Game Jammin With UE4!

If you need help finding a team, hop over to CrowdForge.io! You can start building a new team or join one there.

Assembla will give all participants of the #ue4jam access to their platform for game development teams to build iterations of their game using their Perforce and SVN repositories. As a cloud version control provider with PM tools built in, Assembla is an effective asset to any gaming developer, and we are excited to watch Assembla’s continuing emergence within the game development community. To get access to the Perforce server, PM me that you will need access and your team’s email addresses. Please also check out tutorials on using Assembla and Perforce beforehand.

PROJECT REQUIREMENTS
Here’s the list of submission requirements to win a prize:

  • The game must include custom gameplay that exceeds the gameplay found in Epic Games’ starter templates.
  • All art assets in the game must have a material other than the default applied to it.
  • Submissions must be packaged for Android (unfortunately there are limitations with iOS), Windows or Mac OS. No full, unpackaged projects. VR projects are accepted. Android games can be distributed via the Play store as well.

HOW TO SUBMIT AN ENTRY AND TIMELINE
In Unreal Engine game jam tradition, we’ll be kicking this one off and announcing the theme on the livestream on February 8th at 3PM ET](Christmas Countdown – Time since Feb 8, 2018 3:00 pm started in Raleigh) and giving participants the weekend to create and submit an awesome game built in the engine. The jam ends on Sunday, February 11th at 11:59PM ET](Christmas Countdown – Time since Feb 11, 2018 11:59 pm started in Raleigh).

Fill out the SUBMISSION FORM](Winter #ue4jam Submission) before **Sunday, February 11th at 11:59PM ET, **which will be made available here once the event has started.

You will need the following information:

  • Team Name

  • Each Team Member’s Name and Email Address

  • Name of your submission (Please format it with your team’s name attached, ex. TeamName_GameName, and please use this formatting for your project file as well.)

  • A download to a download of your game

  • Provide a direct link to a .zip file of your game

  • List any content that was created before the jam that was included in the final submission.

  • This does affect the score, as we judge on what is made during the jam’s timeframe. Submitting an entry with pre-made content that is not disclosed may lead to disqualification.

  • A link to gameplay footage to be included in our highlight reel on the Winter #ue4jam results livestream, if you so desire.

  • Please keep your video between 30-60 seconds.

There will also be a 2018 Winter #ue4jam project thread that will go live at the start of the jam. This will be for sharing and discussing your jam games.

AWARD CATEGORIES AND PRIZES
There are three special categories with prizes and prizes for the top three finalists in the main category. We judge submissions for their visual aesthetic, unique use of the theme, and gameplay on a 1-5 point scale. The top 3 teams will be declared our finalists.

SPECIAL CATEGORY PRIZES
Our “Special Categories” are for teams who create amazing games, but have something just a little different.
This winter, our Special Categories are:

  • “Something Something Reality” for the best game that is either an Augmented or Virtual Reality experience.
  • “Best Character Design” for the submission that creates the unique and well-designed character.
  • “The Tiny Award” for the best game that comes in under 100mb.

Winners of these special category prizes will be rewarded with:

FINALIST PRIZES
All entries will be judged for their aesthetic, unique use of the theme, and gameplay. The top three entries will be declared our finalists.

All Finalists will receive:

Many thanks to Intel for sponsoring the Winter #ue4jam and supplying our community with rad prizes! I encourage you all to check out their Game Dev Program at Game Development and sign up. They’d love to provide your team with resources to help you succeed -> Get ready. Get noticed. Get big. The 280GB Intel® Optane™ SSDs are provided by Intel’s Achievement Unlocked program.

We’re thrilled to have Nick Honneger of Assembla and Ben Mears of SideFX on our panel of judges for the Winter #ue4jam!

We can’t wait to see the results :cool:
Happy developing, and good luck!
Theme Announce Countdown](Christmas Countdown – Time since Feb 8, 2018 3:00 pm started in Raleigh)
Deadline Countdown](Christmas Countdown – Time since Feb 11, 2018 11:59 pm started in Raleigh)

Streaming your work on Twitch? Let us know so we can follow along!
Are you on Twitter? Show off your work using the #ue4jam](https://twitter.com/hashtag/ue4jam?src=hash) hashtag!

Helpful Links for Jamming!
Official Sites
Getting Started Docs
Reduce Your Package Size
Top Tips for Game Jams
Wiki Tutorials
Wiki Code Tutorials/Snippets
Training Videos
Tutorials and Guides
Blueprint Getting Started Thread
C++ Getting Started Thread

Youtube
Unreal Engine’s Official Youtube Channel
Peter L Newton’s Youtube Channel
TeslaDev’s Youtube Channel
Mathew Wadstein’s Youtube Channel
Luos’ Youtube Channel

Tutorials and Guides
Tutorials by Tom Looman
Blueprint Guides by Romero

OUR SPONSORS
Intel Software
SideFX
Assembla
CrowdForge.io
Low Entry
Panda Studios
SilverTM
W3 Studios
Whitman and Olbert

GAME JAM ENTRIES
Note these are all download links!

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“In Unreal Engine game jam tradition, we’ll be kicking this one off and announcing the theme on the livestream on February 8th at 3PM ET](Christmas Countdown - Time since Feb 8, 2018 3:00 pm started in Raleigh) and giving participants a week to create and submit an awesome game built in the engine”

Should this say “weekend”?

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Yes, thanks :wink:

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While I don’t mind the short notice (since two week’s notice is typical in the workforce), I do mind that the jam length has shortened this time around :frowning:

I don’t know about MegaJam 1-week lengths, but the Thursday-Tuesday lengths felt perfect imho and had a lot of traction with quality.

But even still, glad the Special Categories are there (though more varied ones would be appreciated).

Can’t wait to see what folks create!

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Will be the first one I’ll be participating in. 3 days seems like a fun challenge! Good luck everyone!

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I was thinking of trying to aim for the tiny category, as I love procedural content.
To prepare a bit I’ve tested packaging minimal builds, and I’ve got some questions:

Is the 100MB limit for the .zip archive, or for the extracted files?

What files must be included? Say I was building for windows, could I exclude the UE4 pre-req distributable? (which is 38MB)

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Anyone looking for a team?

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I’m a VR games developer, living in Munich, Germany. Looking to team up with CG and Sound Artists.

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Do I need to sign up or is it based on when you submit a game?

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You guys never showed the showreel for the last jam, you had only a small overlay during the stream that went through a few of them. It would be cool if at the end of this stream you played the full showreel in fullscreen, no commentary or anything so you wouldn’t need to present it, just the showreel playing on its own to show off all the games, or if not at the end of the stream then just uploaded onto youtube at some point. I’m asking because I (and I’m sure others) would really like to see all the games together in one place and seeing your own game, even if just for a few seconds, is really exciting.

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Our group consisting of people who worked together for many ue4 jams - looking for experienced artist, preferably focusing on texturing/materials.

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The extracted files should be under 100 MB, and it should be built and packaged.

No sign up required. Just submit your game by the deadline :slight_smile:

That’s a good idea! I’ll be sure we get those up somewhere in the future.

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Me and my team would like to know where and how to submit our game. There is no link to submission.

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I’m looking forward to this one! I took Friday off just so I can focus on it!

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So, me and few other were planning to join, however rl stuff messed up the plans hence my question. If I were to get in solo or in two, or whatever, how does the rules handle using marketplace content ? Is it forbidden, is it going to be judged differently if used ? Never done any sort of jam and was always curious how do you approach bought assets cases ?

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List any content that was created before the jam that was included in the final submission.

  • This does affect the score, as we judge on what is made during the jam’s timeframe. Submitting an entry with pre-made content that is not disclosed may lead to disqualification.
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Gotta improve reading skills I guess, thanks for pointing this out.

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The link to the submission form will go live once the jam kicks off.

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Thanks for answering, just a clarification on my second question:
What I meant was the option in the package settings:
Project Settings -> Packaging -> Prerequisites: “Include prerequisites installer”
As this is a whole 38MB out of the 100MB limit, it’s a pretty big deal. I just wanted to confirm if it’s intended that we have to include this or if we can skip it.
(Usually one would want to include this when shipping a product, but as your setups will already have the prerequisites installed it might not be needed)

I guess in the end what I’m wondering is if there’s any limit to what we can strip out or if anything goes as long as it’s a packaged product.

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Superb Work Unreal Engine hosts! You give & supports developers a chance to polish their skills & confidence. Great.