A few weeks back my friend Simon came up with the great idea of doing a game jam here in Perth. A game jam is where a bunch of people make teams and try to develop full games in a time limited situation. Similar competitions are Ludum Dare, and Pyweek. They are a lot of fun, and you tend to get lots of code and experience out of it.
This is the tenative title, and main character, from my entry into the competition:
Anyway, Simon built this cool community site in a matter of days using Pylons, which you can see at http://gamejam.org/ and then we put out the word on the internets, and now we are in the midst of it, with eleven days left to go. The turnout has been pretty superb and I am looking forward to seeing everyone's finished projects. The competition is very loose; you can use any engine you want and pretty much do any kind of game you want, as long as you use the 'significant asset' in your game. Also, it isn't really limited to Perth only and it only just started not long ago, so if you have a hankering to develop a game idea then this is the forum for you; go ahead and join the fray!
My own game is a vector graphics platformer. I think I'll probably get all the code done in time with a basic playable game, but I'm not so sure about getting it deployed onto all platforms. We'll see, I guess!
We'll almost certainly do more game jams in future months. Can't wait.