Category Archives: Developer

Train2Game News: New ‘Durango’ console details

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It was revealed last week that Xbox World and PlayStation Magazine 3 won’t be published any more. Following that, XBW has used its penultimate issue to reveal details about the next Xbox.

According to the article, the next-gen Xbox – which it speculates is likely to be called simply “Xbox” – will introduce Kinect 2.0, use Blu-ray discs and feature directional audio, a TV output and input, ‘innovative controller’ and – at a later stage of the console’s life – AR glasses.

Current codename ‘Durango’ dev kits boast a CPU with four hardware cores, each divided into four logical cores and an impressive 8GB of RAM, XBW reports.

Editor in chief Dan Dawkins said “Xbox World has been at the cutting edge of Durango coverage for over 12 months. Unless something really dramatic changes, everything we reveal in our penultimate issue will be revealed long before E3 in June.”

The magazine has good form when it comes to next-gen Xbox leaks, having revealed in January Microsoft’s plans for augmented reality, directional sound, and a four-player, finger-tracking Kinect, all of which were later confirmed in the now infamous leaked planning document in June.

To read the full 8-page feature, buy the latest issue of Xbox World online or on Apple Newsstand here.

PSM3 features an equally large feature on PlayStation 4 and you can buy that on iOS here.

Train2Game News: UK Top 20 – 19.11.12

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Halo 4 was knocked off of the top spot by Call Of Duty Black Ops 2 this week. The PS Vita counter part, Call Of Duty Black Ops Declassified came in at 16. The other new entries this week are The Sims 3: Seasons which came in at number 9 and Kinect Disneyland Adventures which entered at 17. We now get to see how long Black Ops 2 will stay at the top of the charts.

Week ending 17 November 2012

POS.  TITLE  PUBLISHER  LAST
WEEK 
1   CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II ACTIVISION –
2 HALO 4 MICROSOFT 1
3 –  FIFA 13 EA SPORTS 3
4 ASSASSIN’S CREED III UBISOFT 2
5 SKYLANDERS GIANTS SKYLANDERS 6
6 NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED EA GAMES 4
7 JUST DANCE 4 UBISOFT 9
8 –  BORDERLANDS 2 2K GAMES 8
9   THE SIMS 3: SEASONS EA GAMES –
10 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2013 SEGA 5
11 WWE ’13 THQ 7
12 THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 15
13 MOSHI MONSTERS: MOSHLINGS THEME PARK MIND CANDY 12
14 –  DISHONORED BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 14
15 FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 MICROSOFT 19
16   CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS DECLASSIFIED ACTIVISION –
17   KINECT DISNEYLAND ADVENTURES MICROSOFT –
18 –  NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 NINTENDO 18
19 MEDAL OF HONOR: WARFIGHTER EA GAMES 10
20 RESIDENT EVIL 6 CAPCOM 13

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2012 UKIE Ltd

Train2Game News: SpecialEffect Charity Auction

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A new art exhibition is auctioning off game pictures for charity SpecialEffect. Everything on display at the London Game Festival exhibition is for sale.

Included in the initial batch are three signed pieces from Batman: Arkham City, two Fable 3 pieces signed by Peter Molyneux and the artists, a signed Metal Gear Solid ‘Raiden’ canvass, plus pieces from Tomb Raider, Dishonored, Moshi Monsters and Runescape.

The collection will be made available to bid on in four batches. The first batch is available now. The others will be put up for auction every Monday until 3rd December.

The auction is held online at www.londongamesart.com

Do remember to keep watching and sharing SpecialEffect’s video. They are well over half way to hitting the target of 25,000 views by christmas day. I know this can be done and it will really help spread the word of SpecialEffect!

Train2Game News: Chris Ledger talks to T2G Radio

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Chris Ledger spoke to me about the rise of Derp Studios and having their game released on the app store.

You can hear the interview here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1062901-train2game-chris-ledger-talks-to-mark-on-t2g-radio

Or read the transcript below

Hey I’m Chris Ledger, I’m on the Train2Game Designer course and I live in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

What’s your story? What are the past experiences that have shaped your life to who you are today?

The Train2Game design course even in its early stages did. I managed to do a few Portfolio Pieces, A High Concept Document and other working style documents. I managed to show that to a small iPhone developer and my first project that I worked on was licensed. The second one was the Game Jam in 2011, which was hosted by Train2Game and Epic Games. I was chosen as an individual to make the fourth team to go on to Make Something Unreal Live where we worked on a project which used the Fighting Fantasy license. The company, Derp Studios, which was The Gadget Show Live Team, just released their first title, Dire Consequences on the iOS store.

Tell us a bit about the game

The game, it’s a first person action game. It’s a wave game for iOS and you can buy optional spells, the more enemies you defeat you get souls. You can use the souls to get spells to help you through the waves. That’s the gist of it really. At one point, I nicknamed it horde with swords because it’s a wave mode like Gears so I thought horde with swords was the best way to describe it.

That’s a good way to describe it I think. So is this work for you now? Is this what you do for a job?

I did make Derp Studios a limited company in, I guess around April time, just after Gadget Show Live I think. We are planning to go ahead and make it a business and earn a bit of money from it, which will be nice. Even though it’s still like a hobby it feels but we do want to make money out of it as well.

How did you get that to happen?

There’s websites you can actually go through to register as a company. It doesn’t actually cost a lot. Well it can build up over time because you’ve got to get all the documents. I used a website called TheCompanyWarehouse.co.uk which is quite good. I actually signed the company up for a pound but you’ve got to pay for other things like helping you with documents and things because there is loads to do to set up a company, more than you’d ever imagine.

Do you think Derp Studios will enter the Power Up competition by Microsoft and if you do, do you have any early game ideas yet?

We would like to try that. We have been discussing it I can’t really say for certain if we’ll go ahead and do that. I know we do want to make a second project so that will start quite soon.

One thing that I have always wondered is why did you end up calling the studio Derp Studios?

Oh no, explaining this again! People usually ask that. Well in the early stages we didn’t know what to call ourselves and we were unknown for a while. Because we are all quite new to making games, we kept making mistakes and would say “Oh that’s a Derp mistake”. The most common phrase was “Oh Derp”. So it just kind of went from there.

What is your reason for getting into the gaming industry and how do you think getting into the games industry will change your life?

Well it’s changed my life already but I have always wanted to be in the gaming industry, ever since I was about 8 or something. I just wanted to give something back really to the gaming community and actually live out the dream of becoming a designer that I’ve had since a very early age.

How is Dire Consequences doing on the iOS App Store?

Better than I thought it would to be honest. I forget how big the iOS market is. We shoved it out there and we were over the moon when it was actually on sale. We had some quite good reviews but our average rating is 2 stars but I thought we are quite novice still and it is still quite buggy. People have been pointing it out, issues that they would like to see resolved and how we can improve it, which is absolutely great hearing feedback from a customer audience that have actually played it and experienced it, so that’s proven quite valuable. I think in the first week we have had three thousand downloads.

That’s Excellent. Thank you very much for your time Chris!

No Problem.

Train2Game News: App in development to ease gamer frustration

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A new app is in development that will allow gamers to take a screenshot of where they are in a game and a walkthrough will be found for them.

Sometimes gamers get stuck in a level and need help clearing it. This means going through the tedious process of pausing the game, reading through hundreds of search engine results and then, just maybe, finding the right help. With this new app developed by Noah Glaser, owner of popular gaming site LegendZelda.net, this could be a thing of the past.

Glaser’s goal is to create this easy-to-use app by May 2013. He will create the app which allows frustrated gamers to simply pull out their phones, take a picture of the screen and submit it. This will pull up a guide in both text/image and video formats for that particular section of the game and how to get past it. No hard-to-follow written steps, the Game Image Recognition Walkthrough App will provide textual and visual demonstration.

This is an interesting and potentially very helpful idea but to develop it he is funding it through Kickstarter.

The bonuses he is giving if you pledge are listed below:

Pledge $10 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo sticker

Pledge $30 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo sticker
·         LegendZelda.net bumper sticker

Pledge $50 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net bumper sticker
·         Zelda keychain

Pledge $100 or more
·         Free app
·         Zelda plush doll

Pledge $200 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net bumper sticker
·         Zelda guidebook

Pledge $350 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo bumper sticker
·         Zelda branded t-shirt
·         Zelda plush doll

Pledge $500 or more
·         Free app
·         LegendZelda.net logo bumper sticker
·         Built-in recognition within the app
·         Zelda Wii, n64, ds, or 3ds game of your choice

You can pledge here.

Glaser’s gaming sites have a large following and well-established communities which provide him with reliable connections for launching the new app. Through your funding and Glaser’s connections, the app would help gamers worldwide play better and smarter without the frustrating delays of getting through difficult levels.

Train2Game News: Five hundred gamers heading to American civil war

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Flying Squirrel entertainment has announced that they are working on a five hundred player game based on the American civil war.

The game, Battle Cry of Freedom, is going to be historically accurate. So all of the uniforms, weapons and scenarios will all be historically based on the American Civil War. There is going to be a large variety of player controlled artillery available, like mortars and cannons, each of which can use special ammunition types. There will be an engineer class who can build barricades, trenches and explosives and a musician for when you feel less violent. Lastly, the maps will be entirely destructible when it comes to fences, buildings or whatever is in the way.

In addition they are going to use real war civil war music, all the maps will be historically accurate recreations, there will be a regiment focused system that helps players join up with their unit, there is a goal system that assigns squads with specific objectives like supporting fire for artillery and there will be an engagement mode that is basically a historical objective mode.

Earlier this year Flying Squirrel Entertainment released the multiplayer focused Napoleonic Wars for Mount and Blade: Warband, which sold rather well with around 200,000 sales. With that game they unleashed two hundred players into early 19th century line battles that involved muskets, artillery and a customize-able battlefield.

Mount and Blade: Napoleonic Wars having two hundred players was pretty hard on their servers, so Flying Squirrel Entertainment has quite the challenge in front of them to make five hundred player battles without all of the lag. However, they are using a different engine this time around and they are entirely focused optimizing the game so it won’t needlessly load what the player cannot see. They are already reporting successful tests with up to three hundred and fifty players, so they have plenty of time to work on getting five hundred players to be manageable.

They plan to release the game in a year but, unlike Napoleonic Wars, this standalone title is being crowd funded by the fans and they are taking donations on their website.

Train2Game News: Games Industry Jobs – 14.11.12

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ART

 

3D Environment Artist – Additional Game Content
Art / Animation
Environment Artist
Horsham, West Sussex, UK & Europe
 

Position Overview:
We are looking for an exceptionally skilled and motivated team-player with a proven track record (or serious raw talent). The right candidate should be able to demonstrate excellent creative, technical and visual skill. They will be an accomplished Artist with a passion for creating believable worlds with the ability to produce stunning, high quality, efficient, real time game content for current and future generation consoles. The successful candidate will be working on creating additional game content. The position is for a fixed term contract until August 2013.

Required:
Visual flair and talent
Expert knowledge of Max/Maya
Expert knowledge of Photoshop
Knowledge of games development pipeline/environment/engines
Self motivated, good communicator, positive can do attitude, team-player
Love of visual environment creation

Ideal:
Proven experience implementing game environments
Formal art training
All round art ability
Love of games

 

You can apply HERE.

 

 

DESIGN

 

Designer (Contract)
Game Design
Central London, London
 

My London based client has a proven track record of delivering high quality games across multiple platforms.

They believe in working roles around skilled people rather than placing hires into predetermined jobs. They reward excellence, encourage responsibility and involvement and expect quality and diligence. Great people make great games and that is what they like to hire!

Summary:
Due to increased needs on two of their new projects they are looking for talented & hard working Game Designers to become part of their creative team. The Game Designer role covers a number of areas including scripting of game content, game mechanic and flow design and implementation.

Main Duties:
• Scripting game content
• Designing direction of game content
• Designing and balancing game systems and writing supporting design documentation

Skills:
Essential Skills
• Experienced in game design scripting
• Some experience in written game design
• Patience and a painstaking attitude to their work
• Good written and spoken communication and self management skills.

Desirable Skills
• Experienced at or an interest in writing
• Experience at or interested in traditional or 2D “digital” art.

Please contact Simon Hope to apply via email at: simon@aswift.com

 

 

 

DEVELOPER

 

 

Job Title C# Developer

 

Job Category Programming

 

Location Glasgow

 

Job Description Digimania makes cool, revolutionary and disruptive real-time animation software. We’re best known as the developers of Muvizu – a 3D animation app based on the Unreal 3 Engine.

Muvizu lets anyone make low-cost animations quickly and easily. We’d like you to help us work on our next big project. Digimania is a company of 26 staff and is based at The Lighthouse in Glasgow’s city centre.

We are looking for a brilliant and enthusiastic C# Developer, experienced with WPF (preferably in an MVVM environment) and .NET 4.

The candidate should be keen to learn, and have excellent knowledge of software engineering principles and design patterns and should have at least 2 years experience with .NET and WPF.

Experience with C/C++ and games development would be of benefit, as would a working knowledge of Agile development principles.

Skills required

C# developmentExperience with WPF (preferably in a MVVM environment).NET 4

To apply please send a CV and covering letter to robert.mcmillan@digimania.com

QA

 

 

Job Category:QA and Localisation
Region: UK
Area: South East
County: West Sussex
Location: Horsham
Salary Description: Competitive

Position Overview
– The Games Tester position is a responsible job; reporting bugs and providing quality feedback for our titles in development.
– These fixed term contracts are for our new Alien IP title currently in development. Several additional positions are also needed for our established Total War team during the same period.
– Test games in development for software bugs
– Enter bugs clearly and accurately into our bug database
– Verify and recreate bugs as required
– Report additional balancing, design and accessibility problems
– Specific support and general roles available

Essential
– A clear understanding of QA process
– A keen enthusiasm for gaming
– Good communication and reporting skills
– Driven and flexible approach

Desirable
– A clear understanding of QA process
– A keen enthusiasm for gaming
– Good communication and reporting skills
– Driven and flexible approach
– Experience of testing one full shipped title
– A good understanding of Strategy games (Total War)
– A good knowledge of current generation consoles (Alien IP)
– Games industry related degree (e.g. audio, art, design, etc.) or expertise in a specific game area is an asset (e.g. audio, technical, PC hardware, design or scripting etc.)
– Fluent in one or more of the following languages: French, German, Italian or Spanish
– Strong technical knowledge/skills (e.g. programming, scripting)

You can apply HERE.

Train2Game News: Fiona Stewart radio transcript

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Fiona Stewart spoke to BBC Radio Leeds recently. You can listen to the interview in the link below or read the following transcript.

http://audioboo.fm/boos/1049459-train2game-student-fee-stewart-on-bbc-radio-leeds-8-november

So what to do then if you are a talented budding artist but you hate the smell of paint? Well our next guest has just the answer you decide to start drawing art work for computer games and use a PC as your easel and brush. Fiona Stewart from Holmfirth has become so successful at this that the biggest company in the world has given her financial backing. Hi Fiona

Hello

What happened was it a sudden hatred of paint or had you always had it?

No, after I had the children it became more difficult obviously, with three kids running around the house and the paint drying and things like that, the smell and everything became more and more difficult as the kids were starting to grow up.

And it’s not a natural move then for someone who creates with a canvas say, to someone who designs games. How did that transition happen?

Well a friend of mine made 3D models and she asked if I could texture for her because that’s more sort of drawing and I started doing that then decided I actually wanted to make the 3D models as well and do the whole process.

How fascinating. What sort of things do you actually design now then, what do you work on?

Well I work on video games now, so we make apps, console games, games for 3DS and Android phones things like that.

So does it feel like art in the way it did perhaps pre-kids, when you were doing what most people listening to us would consider conventional art?

I actually think its more artistic. If you look at video games and things, the amount of art work thats in it is a good proportion of the actual game its self. I feel more that I’m contributing in an artistic way perhaps more than I did when I was doing it on canvas.

Of course, probably our best known Bradford artist, David Hockney he does so much of his work on the iPad now, doesn’t he?

Yes he does, yeah.

What about this backing from Microsoft then, how did that come about?

Well I met with Microsoft and showed them the game we have been making from the beginning of January. We did a Game Jam up in Scotland and won various awards and got BAFTA nominated for the New Challenge Award. So I showed him the game and he was very interested in it and it would make a very nice game on the Windows 8 mobile platform. He thought we would do very well, so he has been helping us

That’s rather nice and probably rather different from what most struggling artists experience in terms of funding supplies.

Yes, we have been very lucky really in so much that Microsoft have given us BitSpark programme, which is £30,000 worth of software that we can use and integrate throughout the whole of the team so that we are all using the same platform and various talks with other start ups which is very helpful as a start up.

Well good luck, it’s not the easiest of climates to be heading into any sort of start up business. Can I just ask you finally, do you miss the traditional art stuff or do you ever dabble occasionally?

It’s becoming more and more rare that I do because doing it digitally it’s there instantly, I don’t have to wait for any paints to dry. I am still being incredibly artistic but not having to wait around for things to dry.

Fascinating Fiona, really good to speak to you thanks for your time this afternoon. Fiona Stewart from Holmfirth on BBC Radio Leeds.

 

Fiona was also featured in develop magazine and you can read that in the link below.

Develop Magazine

Very well done Fiona! Good luck with everything.

Train2Game News: Student Diaries – 12.11.12

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Amanda Blatch diary – week 8

Another week, another diary.. I think I may actually be running out of things to talk about. Doesn’t mean the work has stopped, it just means I am still working on the UI and it would seem a little tiresome to just repeat myself about the same thing as last week so I will keep this brief for you guys reading this.

The game itself is getting cleaned up pretty well now and we’re so close to completion, trying to beat the clock and get the game submitted in time for the end of this month for release. Alongside that one of the in-studio artists is starting to work on the concepts for the new project so it’s something we can see it breathed into life in the next week or so, all quite exciting here at DR! We have also seen the departure of one of the T2G students who will be missed in the studio, we wish him the best of luck in the future with his career as an animator!

So apart from that, there isn’t much else to talk about soooo… till next week again.

 

Craig Moore Student Diary – Week 51

This week has been another incredibly busy one, adding polish and “fun” to the game is much more difficult than you would expect when it relies heavily on the balance of numbers as well as a lot of subjective reasoning. It does however feel like it is making some headway and the game inside what we have made is slowly rearing its pretty little head and hopefully it will blossom soon.

Tutorials are probably the bane of my life right now; they are so incredibly hard to get right. This really fine balance between hand holding and making the player feel like they aren’t on a linear path, you just kind of need to say “this is what you need to know to play the game, therefore I need to tell you X,Y,Z”. Balancing that and pacing it seems to be a fine art though…

It is Eze’s last week this week, he has done some awesome work for us while he has been here and it will be a shame to see him go. He has a lot of opportunities ahead of him though and I look forward to seeing what he gets up to in the future.

Time to get back to the grind!

Craig

 

Matty Wyett Simmonds – week 49

This week has been a bit of a bug fixing week for me, no real sprint, more just doing what I can to fix any issues, there is still lots to do though of course! There is always lots to do but never enough time, but now I’ve been given some freedom to work on the things that have been bugging me for a long time ^^.

During the weekend we had a small gathering at hour house to say good bye to Ezekiel who has just left. He’s been here for 6 months which is a long time and a lot of experience, so hopefully he jumps right into another decent job somewhere quickly.

Over the weekend I finally got some free time to do whatever! I played some planetSide 2, some halo 4 and even worked on my own project for a bit which is slowly coming along nicely. I was using GameMaker 8 to make an RTS game called Data Wars, however due to some annoying issues and limitations I jumped ship and have moved to Unity where I need to start from scratch. Nothing is salvageable because they are both very different programs (one being 2D and the other 3D for starters). I moved to unity because although it will be harder to work with, it will give me more freedom and potential features that could not be done in Gamemaker, which seems to be a terrible program for RTS games. 😛

Anyway, more to do at the studio now, till next week!

MattyWS

Train2Game News: UK Top 20 – 12.11.12

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Halo 4 has shot straight to number one which I think most people expected. The other new entries this week are New Super Mario Bros 2 in at a slightly disappointing eighteen and it is followed up by Forza Motorsport 4 at nineteen.

Week ending 10 November 2012

POS.  TITLE  PUBLISHER  LAST
WEEK 
1   HALO 4 MICROSOFT –
2 ASSASSIN’S CREED III UBISOFT 1
3 FIFA 13 EA SPORTS 2
4 NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED EA GAMES 5
5 FOOTBALL MANAGER 2013 SEGA 4
6 SKYLANDERS GIANTS SKYLANDERS 8
7 WWE ’13 THQ 3
8 BORDERLANDS 2 2K GAMES 19
9 –  JUST DANCE 4 UBISOFT 9
10 MEDAL OF HONOR: WARFIGHTER EA GAMES 6
11 FORZA HORIZON MICROSOFT 7
12 –  MOSHI MONSTERS: MOSHLINGS THEME PARK MIND CANDY 12
13 –  RESIDENT EVIL 6 CAPCOM 13
14 DISHONORED BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 10
15 THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM BETHESDA SOFTWORKS 16
16 PROFESSOR LAYTON AND THE MIRACLE MASK NINTENDO 11
17 –  F1 2012 CODEMASTERS 17
18   NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. 2 NINTENDO –
19   FORZA MOTORSPORT 4 MICROSOFT –
20 –  LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPER HEROES WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE 20

 

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2012 UKIE Ltd