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.
Whilst Train2Game were at Eurogamer over the weekend, they witnessed the beginning of the Zombie apocalypse.
The link below shows the picture evidence of these nightmare creatures with Train2Game
http://www.facebook.com/Train2GameEuroGamer2012
See everything Train2Game got up to at Eurogamer 2012
Not for the faint hearted!
This is the continuation of my day at the Eurogamer Expo held in London at Earl’s Court.
The first game I tried in the afternoon was the new Devil May Cry from Capcom. With the main character, Dante, being younger, he is cockier and cooler than ever. I have not played previous Devil May Cry games. It’s a grand display of action in a beautiful demonic world with a good mix of Angel and Demon powers it looks to be attractive with a good pace of action.
I finally got my first play on a PSVita at the show, playing Little Big Planet. The game was enjoyable, it made good use of the touch screen. However I did find the way that I was holding the device meant I was touching the track pad on the back. It didn’t affect the game I was playing but I fear it might when a game uses the mechanic.
I didn’t get to play a WiiU unfortunately. I did however have a look at it. The person I watched was playing ZombiU. The game definitely blows away any worries that it is going to be all family games again like with the Wii. ZombiU looks like a good horror with impressive graphics. It uses the tablet controller in interesting ways, having to hold up the tablet to the screen so that it can disable a jammer in one of the in game areas. My only worry is whether the tablet will be too big in your hands to use comfortably.
After a little shopping trip, buying a Joker shirt and an Assassins Creed wall scroll, I came back to the Capcom stand to play Resident Evil 6. Now you may know I am a big fan of the series, so much so that I have the Umbrella logo tattooed just above my elbow. I was disappointed with Resi 5, I felt that it had lost all of its horror elements. Resident Evil 6 however seems to have something for most people. Playing as Chris Redfield you get a good action paced story, like what it seemed they wanted Resident Evil 5 to be. Playing as Leon Kennedy however you get a good sense of the survival horror similar to the first games of the series. There is a third character called Jake who I didn’t get to try out, my guess would be he is a mixture of the two styles.
As I was playing Resident Evil 6, I turned around to see a zombie who was eyeing up my arm. The guy had amazing make up which was so good in fact he wouldn’t look out of place in The Walking Dead. He then proceeded to give a friend of mine his phone to get his picture taken with a character from Mortal Kombat, that isn’t something you see every day.
I attended the Train2Game stand once more and saw the results of the Royal Rush competition I mentioned in the first part of this blog. The winner got a limited edition silver Xbox360 Controller and it was handed to the winner by The Joker.
The final game I played at the event was the Tomb Raider reboot. The game was absolutely gorgeous and Lara Croft no longer feel likes an immortal woman. She now feels flawed and real as you run around which adds to the immersion of the game. I was doing a hunting mission and my objective was to kill a deer using the Bow and Arrow I had just obtained. My only complaint was the arrows seem far too weak. I shot the deer straight through the neck, thinking that would kill it no problem. It then took an extra six arrows to take it down. The game is still in pre-beta though so I am sure such problems will be fixed by release in March.
Before I set off to drive home I headed in to the Cybercandy store and I bought my self a Zombie survival energy drink to keep me going through the drive home. I had an incredible day and it is very exciting seeing all the games that are soon to be released.
On Saturday I was sent to the Eurogamer Expo held at Earl’s Court in London. I am going to give a recap of my day for anyone who couldn’t be there.
My first clue that the day was going to be a good one was seeing The Mask queuing to enter. I was surrounded by hundreds of other early entry ticket holders all eager to burst through the door and get their hands on the up coming games.
As the doors opened and we all filed in. I knew exactly what I wanted to play. I walked straight to the over 18 area to finally get my first taste of Arkane Studio’s Dishonored.
The demo gave you a good taste. I got to use the possession skill, walking around in guards bodies to sneak around, before falling out and assassinating them. The blink skill is a good mechanic, similar to that of Nightcrawler from Xmen, you can teleport short distances without being detected and get to hard to reach areas. The world its self looks beautiful and the level design is so versatile. I can not wait to get my hands on this game.
Next up I had a shot at Hitman: Absolution. Everyone who played the Square-Enix game got a little Agent 47 model, who now sits proudly on my desk. The graphics are of a very high standard and the game play is typical Hitman from what I could see. Having only played Hitman:Blood Money previously, I was happy to see the ability to peak from hiding places, which was seriously lacking in earlier games. This will probably be another one I end up getting.
After seeing highly amusing stickers that were for the iOS game Carmaggedon I had to hunt down the stand. It is a remake of the game released fifteen years ago that had so much controversy surrounding it. When the game was first released the public didn’t like the fact that you had to run over people. They had to change it to zombies or face the game being banned. Now that times have changed the game is back in all its glory, the way it should have been.
I then visited the Train2Game stand to say hello. I was happy to see many students and potential students attending. Royal Rush, the winning game from the world record winning Game Jam, made by RetroMetro, was playable at the stand. Train2Game held competitions daily, who ever got the highest score on the game was awarded a prize later in the day.
At midday it was time for the Dishonored developer session. We all took our seats and were introduced to Christophe Carrier and Dinga Bakaba from Arkane Studios. They took us through the story and some of their development ideas before doing two demos for us. The first time through they demonstrated the stealth aspects of the game, using the blink mechanic and distractions to get to the end of the level. No one was killed and he was only spotted once before disappearing out of sight. The second time was much more brutal. Killing everyone he could find using different methods. The highlight of which being the moment he froze time with a bullet in mid air, possessed the guard who had fired it and walked in front of the shot before leaving his body and unfreezing time, making the guard shoot himself.
That covers my morning at Eurogamer. There was so much to do and see through out the day I am going to have to split this in to two blogs across the day. Check back later for the continuation.
The Game Jam is not only a time of creativity but it can also be a time of love. This was the case for two people last year.
Lloyd Knott, 28, from KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, met Joyce Webb, 25, from Hampshire, at the 2011 Game Jam. Joyce is a student with Train2Game and Lloyd was an advisor for the event. The two just celebrated their six month anniversary at last weekends world record beating Game Jam.
Being an advisor Lloyd could wander around, giving him an excuse to spend time with Joyce, talking to her and getting to know her. Following on from that Game Jam, Joyce and her winning team, Indigo Jam, went on to be part of Make Something Unreal Live.
After 6 months of developing and creating, Joyce got to go to The Gadget Show Live as part of the competition. Lloyd was assigned to Indigo Jam to help them get bits done and got to spend more time with Joyce.
Leading up to the Gadget Show the teams had monthly meetings at the University of Bedfordshire in Luton. It was at the last of these the two got together.
Joyce said “Well, it all started when one of the guys on the team, yes I’m putting this firmly on Dan Rutter’s shoulder, started saying he thought Lloyd liked me. Being a generally oblivious person, I thought he was just winding me up. When Lloyd was eventually assigned to our team to help get things ready for the Gadget Show, I noticed he was behaving a little oddly from the last few times I’d spoken to him. However it wasn’t until he asked if I’d like to go and see a film after the final meet up in Luton that I realised than Dan was right all along”
Lloyd said “Well I first met her at the last game jam where I was told to look after their team before helping out the other teams, but nothing really happened till after I was put on their team to help them get stuff ready for the gadget show. We got talking on their team speak server and kinda hit it off.”
After going to see The Raven, the biopic of Edgar Allen Poe, the two realised they had a lot in common and decided to become a couple.
Lloyd has just left Lionhead to begin working at Microsoft and Joyce is a Train2Game student who works at Odeon Cinemas in Andover.
Not only are Game Jams great for being creative and a good thing to put on your CV, you might even find someone to fall in love with. I wish the very best of luck to both Lloyd and Joyce in everything they do.
Week after the big game jam and have been hard at work!
We’ve had to make up for the time off and we’ve all been pretty busy here. We did a few late nights (up to 10pm) as well.
I’ve been churning out art assets at the same time as fixing assets that don’t work correctly in game. I also did my first purely 2D art work in a very long time which was pretty cool I think.
Other than that I’ve not had much of a week. Me, Craig and Amanda went to the pet store at lunch time one day to get some dead mice for her snake, Craig desperately wanted to get hamsters for the office which I don’t think Clive would have appreciated as much as we would.
I was in my first car crash this week too! I wasn’t driving though so I don’t know if it counts, but still it happened.
I also got a new phone which is awesome (Samsung Galaxy sIII), My sII died the night before so I went out and got it on contract. Very worth it if you haven’t tried a Galaxy phone, much better than the iPhone5 I think.
This week has been very stressful and not the best of weeks. Trying to fix animation errors and getting things to work in Unity, so it’s been annoying.
I don’t like Unity I know some people might find it OK but my experience using it is I hate it. It was simple enough using UDK.
I enjoy animating characters but I never realized how much hard work was involved especially when you’re given a deadline. Learning how to use Maya and Unity at the same time has been tough. So when I import the animation sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, it’s annoying to have to keep on asking for someone to sort the problem. I try doing it myself but still struggling a bit with some issues, the animation works in motion builder.
Finally I’ve found out what’s stopping the animation and it’s working perfectly. I haven’t felt comfortable using Unity I ‘am afraid I will break the game. I know this isn’t my strong point but the good thing about this experience is I now know how to use Maya so great experience. I can’t wait to do my thing soon.
Blizzard Entertainment released Mists Of Pandaria yesterday. The latest expansion for World Of Warcraft. Blizzard have also said that they have no fear of Windows 8 and will release games for any platform their players are on.
Avenged Sevenfold have released a new track that will feature on Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2. The song, Carry On, is the second song the band have released for a Call Of Duty game. They previously released Not Ready To Die with one of the Call Of Duty: Black Ops DLC packs.
Telltale’s five Walking Dead episodic games will be put on disc in December for Xbox360 and PS3. The game is based on the graphic novel turned TV show and through playing them myself I can say, if you are a fan of the series, play this game. You won’t be disappointed.
Nvidia’s head of cloud gaming, Phil Eisler, believes that cloud gaming could take over from consoles. He believes that consoles have one final generation in them before they die out, leaving the world of gaming in the hands of the cloud.
Ubisoft have announced that Assassins Creed 3 will not play on Windows XP. The company has released the specifications needed to play the game. There is a version for Windows 8 in the pipeline though.
Bethesda have released an animated prequel to its upcoming Dishonored. The webseries is called Tales of Dunwall and the gorgeous animated shorts are being released in three parts. The videos can be found on YouTube and they show the downfall of the in game city.
Sony Xdev are giving a small studio the opportunity to win £25,000. This new initiative, called Playstation Pioneers, will reward developers for a PlayStation Mobile game concept and will also offer successful candidates the opportunity to work alongside XDev. Further details can be found here.
An extra four titles have been added to the Humble Bundle 6. The titles are: Bit.Trip Runner, Gratuitous Space Battles, Jamestown, and Wizorb. If you have already purchased the bundle, you will get the new games added at no extra cost.
If you are attending Eurogamer this weekend you can get a special surprise when you play Company Of Heroes 2. Everyone that plays the game or attends the developer session at the event will get a code to access a future beta for the game.
Finally Train2Game will be at Eurogamer this weekend. If you are attending go and say hello, it is always nice to meet these people. I will be attending on the Saturday so if you see me feel free to talk to me. I hope everyone that attends has a brilliant time.
Its story time kids!
This week has been a bit of a mammoth task for me, it has been a case of completely planning and attempting to organise the full storyline for the game. It’s a bit of a new beast for me, taking to creating a narrative is something I have only really ever lightly touched on.
Being an arcade gamer at heart my story lines tend to start and end at ‘Save the Princess’ so embellishing on that and pushing my narrative skills has been a good exercise. Especially when considering the fact that I am working with quite a strict set of predetermined story lines it certainly stretches the old grey matter.
That has literally been my week, when I look at the work I have done it doesn’t sound like much, but making it all intertwine and essentially work takes up a great deal of time and trying to ensure it’s going to work best for the player is another world entirely!
Apart from that I have been knee deep in my Train2Game work, I’ve moved on to my final few assignments while I am waiting for my first submission to be marked, hopefully I will get the course finished before the end of the year, at least that is my target.
Ciao!
Craig
So.. first diary, first week. What is there to say? First day at DR Studio I met a lot of people, t’was pretty cool. Also did my first concept sheet for an in-game character and vectorized it and made her look so sickingly adorable it was fun.
Wasn’t the last character piece this week though as I went on to do the same to an additional two characters, before then getting my hand held through the entire cutting and rigging process in Maya and 3Ds Max as they were things I hadn’t done before.
That night I learnt to rig for this game I’m sure my housemates were going to forcefully drag me away from the computer had it not been so late and I was so very, very tired. Luckily after a good night’s sleep I was able to pick it up again in next to no time and storm my way through the remaining two vector characters so they were ready to go in the game.
Annnnd I think that is about it!
Not really much to say as my week was mostly about learning the style, processes, where to store files correctly and how to use programs that I hadn’t used before. Wait, actually there was that car accident after my first day of work at the beginning of the week where Matty and Craig did NOT nearly die despite what their diaries this week might say. Mostly based on the fact that when travelling at about 15-20mph, the vehicle will not scream into a blazing inferno.. so there.
Boom. Week 1 diary complete! See you all next week.
The Train2Game Blog 