Perhaps not too far down the road, campus gamers will be playing video games developed by students at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
A new student organization has sprung up at UNL called NDev, short for the Nebraska Game Development Club.
The club's goal is "to produce quality game projects through inter-disciplinary means while spreading interest and knowledge of the video game industry," said Daniel Zeligman, a senior computer science major who first came up with the idea for NDev.
Zeligman said NDev is composed of creative minds from all corners of UNL.
"We have artists, designers, writers and programmers," he said.
Zeligman and his co-founder Alan Wigness, a junior computer science major, took it upon themselves to find a faculty sponsor and to promote the club around campus.
"We got flyers and went out and did some legwork and at the first meeting, there were about 40 kids there," Wigness said. "We got really excited because now, we actually had bodies."
Charles Riedesel, chief undergraduate adviser for UNL's computer science and engineering department and faculty sponsor for NDev, said he's glad to see this organization back on campus.
Riedesel said UNL had a club similar to NDev, but it had leadership problems and disbanded a couple of years ago.
But he sees things differently this time around.
"As you can tell, I'm very excited," he said. "I see great value in (NDev). It's a tremendous draw for computer science."
The club will work to develop three different games this year.
One is a two dimensional platform in which the main character is a leprechaun. The leprechaun goes around a virtual world collecting orthodox icons of fortune, each awarding either good or bad luck, with various encounters along the way, Zeligman said.
Second, NDev will be developing a 3-D tower defense game in which players will have a satellites orbiting a planet of their choosing and will have to defend it from falling missiles and asteroids.
The third game being designed is more of a combination of two classics. It is a role-playing game consisting of an avatar traveling through a 2-D world similar to "Final Fantasy" or "The Legend of Zelda," only the combat scenes more closely resemble those of Street Fighter.
The club plans to submit these games to festivals and contests in search of both legitimacy and prize money.
"We would like to get some added exposure," Wigness said. "You can publish your games online and they can become popular, but with these contests, you get to see what you're really made of."
Riedesel said the group provides students with the chance to explore computer science in a way not offered in the typical classroom setting.
"We don't have any classes that deal with (game development)," he said. "(NDev) goes beyond people just putting code together."
The group is still open to anyone interested in the video game industry, and Zeligman said they are still actively looking for 3-D animators and artists.
If the first meeting's large turn out is a sign of what's to come from NDev, gamers and programmers should be warming up their thumbs.
"We have a good mix of genre and flavor and we're doing what we're interested in," Wigness said. "I'm super excited."
is a member of the 
Be the first to comment on this article!