Category Archives: mobile

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up – 10.5.12

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The OnLive console is not dead according to CEO Charles Jablonski and UK general manager Bruce Grove. The new plan is all about forming partnerships to provide OnLive’s service, instead of relying on PCs and its own console.

The Volus race has come to Mass Effect 3 multiplayer with the new DLC, The Retaliation Pack. The comic relief character has been put in to the online game play to show the ever expanding war according to BioWare’s Chris Schanche. The new pack also sees the return of The Collectors to battle against.

Earlier this week it was announced that Windows 8 will primarily use real world currency over Microsoft points. This had the games world speculating that the Xbox Live Arcade was going to start phasing out MS points. Microsoft have announced this is not the case. XBLA will still use the previous points system.

Rovio and LucasArts have teamed up in an interesting combination to create Angry Birds Star Wars. The game will see the birds dressed as the main Star Wars protagonists and the pigs are going to be dressed as Storm Troopers and Darth Vader. The levels will be famous Star Wars locations such as Hoth and Tattooine. The game is being released November 8 for iOS.

IGN have brought their application to Xbox in the UK. The app is already available in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the USA. The app offers content, shows and access to its pro-gaming league.

Mark Zuckerberg has announced that Facebook has now surpassed one billion users. Since Facebook’s formation in 2004, it has seen more than 140 billion friend connections made, 219 billion photos uploaded, and 1.13 trillion likes. Facebook’s director of developer products said around a quarter of its active user base, about 230 million people, play games on the site in a month. He also noted that Facebook has more than 130 apps.

A one-man company, Cryptic Sea, has created a game called A New Zero. The game has no animation and only uses physics for any movement in the first person shooter. In addition, visuals are also procedurally generated, chopping Zero’s total size below a single megabyte. You can download the game from Cryptic Sea’s website.

Train2Game News: Microsoft pulling us closer to the future

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Microsoft are developing a new technology to read hand gestures. The device means more games design potential.

The device, currently named Digits, is worn on the wrist and creates a 3D model of the hand gesture that you do. It has been designed to be more comfortable than sensor gloves.

The technology was developed at the University of Cambridge, with help from researchers at Newcastle University and the University of Crete. It was unveiled at a conference on user-interface technology and a video has been posted online demonstrating the device in action.

Digits uses a camera-based sensor that detects infra-red (IR) light coupled with software that interprets the data produced to construct a model of a fully articulated hand skeleton. This is then used to interpret what the user’s hand is doing.

The equipment involves a IR laser beam which sends out a thin invisible line across the user’s hand to measure the distance to their fingers and thumbs to determine to what degree they are bent upwards.

David Kim, project leader, said “The Digits sensor doesn’t rely on external infrastructure which means users are not bound to a fixed space

“Ultimately we would like to reduce Digits to the size of a watch that can be worn all the time.”

Microsoft have given some ideas of how the device could be used including, but not limited to, shaping your hand like a gun for first person shooters and pressing your thumb down to fire, further improving your immersion without the need for a lot of space, like is the case with Kinect.

Microsoft’s team acknowledged the current device was still some way from being ready for market. It currently needs to be attached to a PC to carry out the necessary computations, making it impractical for real-world use. It also struggles if two fingers are crossed, the hand is flattened or if the user is holding something while making the gestures. However, the researchers suggested all these issues could be overcome with further work.

Train2Game News: University of Surrey starting development on 5G

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University of Surrey received £35 million to set up development of the new mobile technology, 5G. This follows the recent launch of 4G.

The money has been invested by mobile operators, infrastructure providers and the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund. The University has said the money will be used to create a 5G Innovation Centre.

The new 5G Centre will provide a unique facility which will attract international telecoms giants to conduct research and development on new 5G standards in the UK.

Prof Rahim Tafazolli, professor of mobile wireless communications and the director of Surrey University’s Centre for Communications Systems Research, said: “The boundaries between mobile communication and the internet are blurring, so the fifth generation is internet on the move

“4G for us is old hat. We started working on 4G 10 years ago.

“Statistics showed mobile data traffic is soaring. It looks like every year the traffic is doubling. Unfortunately capacity is not. We need to come up with technology, within the limited radio spectrum that we have, to accommodate this huge surge

“5G would be in place by the year 2020. What we have is good for the next 10 years but we need to be progressive, we can’t be complacent, the area is extremely dynamic.”

The release of 4G recently has meant that mobile games can be bigger, holding more content with no worry of the download speed being affected. The news of 5G being developed solidifies mobiles as a viable gaming platform for many years to come.

Train2Game News: Xbox360’s first free-to-play MMO

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The first free-to-play MMO is coming to Xbox360 next week. The game looks action packed, fun and very cute.

The game, Happy Wars, has been developed by ToyLogic who have previously assisted in the development of Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers Brawl. You can certainly see the Smash Bros. influences in this game.

The 30 player strategy/action title pits two teams of up to 15 players against each other as they attempt to lay siege to enemy castles and defend their terrain. Each player’s character will be completely customizable with thousands of items, including outfits, weapons, and shields. In addition to the large-scale multiplayer battles, the game will also feature an offline single-player campaign mode, co-op mode with computer-controlled adversaries and more.

You must be an Xbox Live Gold subscriber to get the game but it is free to download and play. You can purchase ‘Happy Tickets’ from within the game to spend in the in game shop.

Although the ToyLogic developed title is Xbox Live’s first foray into free-to-play, it isn’t planned to be the last. Signal Studios’ Ascend: New Gods will rely on micro-transactions for its money, and is set to launch next year.

The free-to-play business model has been long used in the mobile industry but this is the first time it has been used on an Xbox title. Time will show how it plays out.

You can watch the trailer for Happy Wars below:

Train2Game News: Game Jam on the Guinness World record site

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Train2Game’s World record Game Jam has a story on the Guinness World Record official website.

There are some great pictures from the weekend in the story.

You can read the story in the link below:

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/10/games-development-students-lose-sleep-but-win-game-jam-record-45209/

Train2Game News: World Record Certificate

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We have been sent our Guiness  world record certificate! The certificate was awarded for most participants at a 48 hour Game Jam. Well done everyone once again! It is a huge achievement.

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.