Monthly Archives: October 2012

Train2Game News: SpecialEffect case: Ben

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SpecialEffect do amazing work.

Their caring work helps people with disablities play games and interact with their friends in an enjoyable way.

Following the challenge put out by SpecialEffect a few days ago, I got in contact with them to tell them what amazing work they are doing. They responded by sending me some of their cases which I would like to share with you.

The first is about a young man named Ben. The study can be read below:

CASE STUDY – BEN DECEMBER 2011

If you would like to watch the video and help SpecialEffect reach their goal of 25,000 views by December 25, you can do so here:

 

Train2Game News: Matty Wyett-Simmonds student diary: Week 43

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The weeks go by so fast I forget about writing these diaries!

As usual it’s been a busy week. We had a late night again to get some work done. If I haven’t mentioned already working in this industry is not easy, I can never slack otherwise I won’t finish my weeks work! I do enjoy it though so the amount of time I put into it doesn’t feel like much and it’s rather easy to overdo it sometimes.

Over the weekend I went to Leeds to see my girlfriend, who seems to be settling in well, the city is pretty fancy with lots of old buildings, it’s all pretty impressive. I also went to the museum there and saw a mummy! I had to take a coach up there (first time taking a coach anywhere) it’s not as bad as I thought it would be, didn’t sit next to anyone annoying. ^^

The project I’m working on at the moment is starting to look really awesome and it’s only a matter of time till everyone will get to see it! It will be my second commercial game which I think is pretty good going, I’ve sat through My Sea Park from the beginning to the end and now I’m doing the same with this one, however this time we have a lot of artists (4 and a half if you count Craig), but I’m still working just as hard! ‘Til next week!

MattyWS

Train2Game News: Ezekiel Morris student diary: Week 16

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This week has been excellent, so far, as I have finished all my sprints. I am now double checking that the animations are working in the game engine.

Last Friday I went back to my home town to see my family and friends, to catch up on stuff and it was great to see everyone. After meeting everyone I had a fat meal then I’m chilling down with the family watching The Big Bang Theory.

I went to Eurogamer Expo last Saturday and met up with some students and the tutors from Train2game. I took some good photo’s. I didn’t get to play all of the games on show as the queues were ridiculously long but the ones that I did play were Devil May Cry, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil 6 and Doom 3 in 3D.

Monday Oct 1st I had a team meeting with Commando Kiwi, we were discussing schedules for the new project that we are working on. My sprint is to create three concepts, so I will be working my ass off 6 hours a week. I’m happy to be working on the project as I like to doing realistic characters so yep it’s time to get to work!

Train2Game News: Craig Moore student diary: Week 45

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It’s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock ‘n’ roll!

Another heavy week, things are starting to ramp up and the pressure is really piling on. It’s strange, it doesn’t feel that too long ago we were pushing to get My Sea Park finished and now we are doing it for this new title which just seems mad! But then maybe that is the thing about making smaller bite sized apps and games.

We have spent a lot of time polishing and putting assets into the game, it’s really starting to come together with its full feature set and way more than half the assets. It’s going to be a big push, however, to get it all tied together in time.

I have confidence though that we are going to get there, we can’t really afford for it to slip unless we want to miss out on the Christmas window which could, potentially, be bad. We shall see but I would really like it to be done for then!

In other news, apparently I didn’t make a big enough thing out of Amanda’s car experience the other week, suffice to say, despite what she says, there were flames and exploding babies.. It was pretty horrific!

In further auto-mobile related news, my car went in for a mega-service today, £600! Honestly, I’m glad that only comes around once a year because that’s left me on noodles for the rest of the month, and not even good ones.

It’s lucky I love the job so much

Laters!

Craig

Train2Game News: Amanda Blatch student diary: Week 2

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So this week I was required to finish six vectored characters, one of which was a cross-dressing creature which made the end of my week… interesting. It’s a colourful character that you will all love once the game has been released, I certainly do.

Apart from that I don’t think there is too much to say on the placement front, just designing a set of characters and learning my way around Unity to make sure that the creations I make, cut and rig are fully working in-game ready for the designers.

Unlike last week there is little else happening but work and pushing to complete my set tasks for the week… and the frantic playing of the first Borderlands whose ending I failed to complete due to lack of time, just so that I can justify buying myself the second one (which looks AWESOME.). Oh and also… week-long of 25p apps in the Google play store… Buying Mass Effect Infiltrator for 25p instead of the £4.33 it normally is? HELLS YES.

Another golden gem that has me and one of my housemates playing a lot; Monsters Ate My Condo. It’s a colourful armageddon of noise, bright lights and unique, hilarious characters. It’s basically a unicorn’s dream of wonderful things.

p.s. There is also a unicorn in it… True story.

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up

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Five months since its release, Minecraft on the Xbox 360 is still selling 27,000 units daily. That’s an estimated 4 million copies sold, further solidifying the games legacy.

Valve’s Steam distribution service now sells software as well as games. The software is for games development. The products currently available on the store are ArtRage Studio Pro, CameraBag 2, GameMaker: Studio, 3D-Coat, 3DMark Vantage, 3DMark 11 and of course, Source Film-maker.

Halo 4 won’t be getting Kinect controls, says 343 Industries’ Frank O’Connor. His opinion is that while the motion sensor has its uses when it comes to the UI, controlling a core game is not what it’s for. Kinect will be used for Halo Waypoint however, which can be launched from in the game.

Reportedly, Arkane studios’ Dishonored will take over twenty hours to complete playing stealthily with killing no one. A brutal play through, killing anyone in your path, will take between 12 to 14 hours but that’s without exploring every nook and cranny, and knowing the solution to everything beforehand. It should take more thorough or inexperienced players longer than that.

PlayStation Europe is offering a month long internship to who ever can make the best game on LittleBigPlanet for the PS Vita. The best submission, as voted by a PlayStation judging panel, will be rewarded with a month-long internship at Swedish studio Tarsier. Games will be judged on gameplay, originality, and commercial appeal. The winner will eventually help work on official DLC for the game. To register an interest, go here.

A new mod has been developed for Crysis. The mod, StarCry, sees many different hit sci-fi shows making their way into the new user made campaign for the game. Franchises such as Stargate SG1 and Star Wars are featured in the mod.

Chasing Aurora developer, Martin Pichlmair, says that Nintendo is working hard to make the Wii U eShop friendly and open for independent developers. This opens up a whole new market with a new innovative console to work with.

World of Tanks official site, Wargaming.net, say that registration numbers have passed the 40 million mark. Players have been pouring into servers to check out the big 8.0 update, which overhauled WoT’s visuals and added proper physics. World of Tanks is one of the biggest free to play games in the world.

Cliff Bleszinski has announced he is leaving Epic. After two decades with the company he is moving on to expand his career. Whilst with the company he was responsible for games such as Jazzy Jackrabbit and the highly acclaimed Gears Of War series.

Bad Piggies, the Angry Birds spin-off from Rovio, shot to the top spot on the US iTunes App Store within three hours of launch. The firm said the game was the fastest chart-topper in the company’s history. The game is the third from the Finnish studio this year to hit the top spot within it’s first day of release. The other titles were Amazing Alex and of course, Angry Birds Space.

Train2Game News: SpecialEffect challenges Train2Game students

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SpecialEffect, the games charity, have a challenge for Train2Game students. Their goal is to get 25,000 views of their brand new “SpecialEffect – The Gamers Charity video” by December 25th.

They would like all Train2Game students share it via Facebook and Twitter to get fellow gamers to watch it and share. A community is big as ours should have no trouble getting the video up to 25,000 views.

You can read more about the charity and watch the video in the links below.

Will you take up the challenge?

http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/pages/about.htm

Train2Game News: Ben Stoneman’s final student diary

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JOB OFFER

I woke up today feeling great, yes it was a work day, however work was now entwined in my life and I liked what I was doing with my life.

I arrived at Unity, sat down and began to go through the support cases. it got to about 13:00 and I was feeling hungry and ready for lunch when suddenly a small stapled stack of paper was placed next to me. for some reason I knew what it was. “Read it carefully and sign if you agree” I heard.

I slowly drew the document in front of me and began to read…

“TERMS OF CONTRACT”

This was it! My hard work and perseverance has paid off. I had been offered the full time position!

Of course I was not a game designer, time to make games! No, I was a support specialist, dealing with tedious support issues and licence migration. I thought of it like this; I worked in a kitchen once and washed over 100 dishes a shift for 1 year, I got angry in my job because I wanted to be a chef.

The chef said to me “To be a chef like me you must first wash the dishes, we have all done it!”

I knew from this life lesson I was now washing the dishes of the games industry! A great place to start my journey to becoming a successful game designer!

Train2Game News: GameCityNights coming to a place near you

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The GameCityNights festival is going nationwide. The event annually held in Nottingham it is now hitting the road.

The festival celebrates everything from the game world with previous keynote speakers from Crytek UK, Harmonix music systems and Sony London Studio.

This years event is sponsored by Edge Magazine, SimCity, Maxis, EA and more. Previous years the festival has had no financial support so to get such big names is a big step forward.

“After three years of Nights gigs in Nottingham and loads of brilliant guests and audience members, it seemed like a good time to share the love,” says Iain Simons, director of GameCity. “The one thing we love more than doing GameCityNights events is driving – so this really is the ideal combination for us”

More details of the event are soon to come – it’s guaranteed to feature many playable games, intimate talks and panels with industry icons. There’s also the GameCity Arcade: a free space for indie devs to put their games. All the games will also feature on Edge’s website.

“So if you’ve got something to say or a game to show, get in touch,” says Simons.

If you have been working on a game lately and are looking for a place to show it and get feedback from the public, this is a good time.

Dates and locations are below:

November 13: National Media Museum, Bradford
November 20: BFI Southbank, London
November 21: Dublin Science Gallery, Dublin

January 24: Antenna, Nottingham
January 29: Arnolfini, Bristol
January 31: Junction, Cambridge

February 5: MAC, Birmingham
February 22: Animated Exeter Festival
February 23: GEEK2013, Margate
February 25: Carriageworks, Leeds
February 26: FACT, Liverpool

For more details on the event go to nights.gamecity.org

Train2Game News: Students in their local papers

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Train2Game Students Aaron Reeve, Michael Wittington and Scott Williams have been featured in their local newspapers for being a part of the world record breaking game jam held at University of Bedfordshire in Luton.

You can see the articles in the links below.

Sevenoaks_Chronicle_September_2012

Southall Gazette September 2012

Woking Informer September 2012

Well done guys. Good luck with everything you do.