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.
Category Archives: Student
Train2Game News: Matty Wyett-Simmonds student diary: Week 43
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
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
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
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: Ben Stoneman’s final student diary
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
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
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.
Train2Game witnesses start of Zombie apocalypse
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!
Train2Game News: A day at Eurogamer Expo: Part 2
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.
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