What is PTI Costa Rica all about?

PTI stands for the spanish translation of
Professionals in Information Technology(in spanish Profesionales en Tecnologías en Información)

It was created from a desire to work in videogame development and at the same time give back to the world by using and mixing the experience and knowledge I have gathered throughtout my life,
which includes skills such as programming, software architecture, pscyhology, social responsibility, and more.

I believe that videogames have the best potential to reach more people and to really engage them, and I know that in order to really fix any problem you need to solve it from its roots, otherwise the same problems will eventually appear again.

Many of the problems which exist in today's society have not been solved because there is still more to change from its sources.

Addictions for example, are often the symptom of other problems such as family conflicts, traumatic events, mental illness, rejection, among others.

Generally, society members don't know the root causes of someones problems, which eventually turns in the well known discrimination towards people in need of help.

Also, even with the programs that exists today which try to help people in need, these will not be enough as long as the behavior from society members towards this people don't change.
This behavior is actually one of the reasons for relapse.

And it is not that society members are bad, but that we have been educated in a way where we discriminate, where we fear what we don't know and where we don't go deep in the causes behind the problems. Even in our jobs, specially in IT related fields we are usually told "patch it", we'll deal with the root cause later, which generally does not happen.

I firmly believe that videogames work better where other programs have failed, because as mentioned before they can reach bigger audiences, because with games we can also simulate real life situations, and create challenging and engaging gameplay evoking desired emotions that cause the learned topics last for long and not be forgotten easily.

What is Zephyr 2D

Zephyr2D is a 2D RPG isometric videogame currently in development.
Initially conceptualized by Eduardo Fonseca from @pticostarica.

The game is about a nuclear accident caused by humans negligence.
This accident results in unexpected mutations in living beings on the planet, while humans are turned back in what you would call "cave men", the rest of animals in the planet are mutated in a different way: their natural abilities are strengthen, they receive the abilities of reasoning and talking.
3000 years after the accident humans have already evolved without memory of what really happened, but animals are the planet's dominant species, and have taken revenge against humans.
There is only one city left where humans reside, named "Chaos Land" where a young female lives,
her name: Zephyr.
Zephyr feels something is not right and that humans are more than what they think, she has spent all her live trying to figure out what is not right, without any luck, but her time has come, and her path will take her to an adventure with powerful enemies, and unlock the truth from the past.

Zephyr 2D - Player Exp Gain and Level Up (Draft)

Zephyr Fighting Apollo

Zephyr 2D is still in an early stage, where some of the main gameplay mechanics are programmed, and the art is in the works and soon to be updated in the live concept demo playable at our website


You can follow Zephyr 2D and the company on their respective pages:
Zephyr 2D Facebook
Eduardo Fonseca Twitter
Company Facebook
Company Twitter
Company G+
Company Youtube Channel
Company LinkedIn

How to create videogames with no budget

As time passes and technology advances, new services and products are created, which facilitates many tasks in a lot of professional fields, game development is not the exception.

We have reached the point where you can create video games without spending a single dollar,
Warning: This does not mean, it will be easy or that your games will be successful, it however may work for you as a way to be introduce in the industry, create games for your own fun, or small prototypes(or Proof of Concepts) to share your ideas.

First let's see what we need to create a simple basic mini game

• An idea
• Development Tools
• Access to Internet

The Idea

Ideas are free, and an idea usually takes you to other idea. Inspiration is one of the keys to generate ideas and every persons has their different ways to get inspired, listening to music, reading books, meditating, talking to people are just a few ways in which people can be inspired.

Development Tools

A set of software that will create your game development environment.\

Concept Art

For concept are you can create it with tools such as Microsoft's Paint or Gimp

Gameplay

For gameplay you can use free game engines such as Unity or Unreal

Unity comes with an IDE(Integrated Development Environment) named MonoDevelop and you can also download Visual Studio Community Edition if you like it more. In future releases both engines will come with a version of Visual Studio already in the installers.

3D Models

3d Models can be create at no cost by using blender, or you can also download some from sites such as OpenGameArt.org, Archive3d, or TF3DM

For humanoids and a small subset of animals and monsters there are websites such as Mixamo, which allows you to even rig your own characters or download free rigged characters and animate them yourself, the website also offer a good portion of free animations.

Sound and Music

There are tools such as audacity which allows you to create your own sounds, or you can also download sounds from websites such as OpenGameArt.org, or Freesound.org

Marketing

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+ are free and useful places where you can do your marketing for free.

What's the trick?

The fact that there are tools which help you do everything incurring it no cost, does not mean that you don't have to work hard.

You still need to learn about a lot of topics, and understand how technology and trends work, including human behavior.

If you want to create a good video game, it is usually not enough to just go download a game engine and start creating a game, first you need to learn about things such as storytelling, game design, level design, 3d modeling, rigging, animation, concept art, anatomy, human behavior, behavioural patterns, culture and gender differences, creation of sound, marketing trends, blog creation, websites traffic generation, programming, analytics, and way more.

But guess what! You can still learn and apply all of that for free!

Google allows you to find almost anything you need, if you get to know the right keywords to search for, Youtube has a lot of useful training videos in all of the topics mentioned before.

There is always very good free information in websites such as:

Gamasutra

GamecareerGuide

GDCVault

If you want to learn to create games but think you don't have enough money to do it, check the post How To Learn Game Development for Free

Detective Kids videogame idea revealed

Detective Kids is a videogame currently in development, it has the objective to enhance kids deductive skills.

The game is about a kid who decides to explore beyond so decides to go out of the nerighborhood, as time passes our kid realizes is already nighttime and that is los, without any idea of the way home, nor any persons nearby that could be asked for help.

Our kid's mission is to find the way home, but there are challenges in the way.
The kid will get hungry and need to find food
The kid will get sad and need to find ways to recover an emotional balance
The kid will get tired and needs to find safe places to rest.
The kid will need to follow the clues in the way that will unblock others, eventually revealing the way home.
The kid will be affected by nature events such as rain, and snow, and needs to find ways to protect from these.

The mechanics will cause kids to use their max potential, enhancing their abilities.

The game is currently in the works, implementing some concepts of the core functionality.

Here is a video showing a concept for camera view, city layout, and attributes gauges

Stay tuned to this blog to know more of the progress.