Tag Archives: train

Train2Game News: Marvel LEGO, Assemble!

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Marvel LegoYour Train2Game blogger was very excited to get the news that there is going to be a Marvel Lego game coming later this year.

Marvel Super Heroes are assembling for an action-packed, brick-smashing good time!  Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, TT Games, The LEGO Group and Marvel Entertainment announced that LEGO Marvel Super Heroes will be available from autumn 2013 on all platforms. LEGO Marvel Super Heroes is the first instalment in the highly successful LEGO video game franchise to feature famous Marvel characters.

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes offers an original storyline in which Nick Fury calls upon Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine and other heroes spanning the Marvel Universe to save Earth from such threats as the vengeance of Loki and the hunger of Galactus, Devourer of the Worlds.  LEGO and Marvel fans will enjoy classic LEGO video game adventure and humour, while playing as their favourite Marvel characters.

Tom Stone, Managing Director, TT Games Publishing said “We’re very excited to bring a myriad of classic Marvel characters to life in LEGO form for some fun, family-friendly game play in LEGO Marvel Super Heroes.

“Players will brave the ultimate mission to save the world as they explore famous landmarks in LEGO New York and take the adventure beyond Earth to iconic locations in the Marvel Universe.”

TQ Jefferson, Vice President, Games Production, Marvel Entertainment added “Fans of both LEGO and Marvel have wanted this game for years, and we’re addressing that demand with more Marvel Universe characters than ever in a console game,

“If you’re a fan of Spider-Man, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Guardians of the Galaxy or scores of other Marvel characters, this is the game for you.”

In LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, players will unlock more than 100 characters from across the Marvel Universe, including fan favourites like Spider-Man, Iron Man, Wolverine, Captain America, the Hulk, Thor, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Deadpool, Loki and Galactus. The game will pack in a plethora of super-cool character abilities, combat-like action sequences, epic battle scenes, puzzle-solving and a unique story told with playful LEGO humor.

I for one, being a big fan of Comics and the Marvel universe, am really looking forward to this game.

Train2Game News: New Pokémon game announced

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Pokemon X & YTrain2Game and other Pokémon fans around the world were delighted to hear the next generation of the popular game is being released in October with some big changes.

The Pokémon Company and Nintendo announced that the next generation of Pokémon video games, Pokémon X and Pokémon Y, will launch worldwide in October for the Nintendo 3DS system. This is the first time in the history of the series the game will be released around the World on the same day. The game introduces new Pokémon, a new storyline set in a spectacular 3D world, and dynamic battles.

Tsunekazu Ishihara, CEO of The Pokémon Company said “The worldwide launch of Pokémon X and Pokémon Y this October allows players to begin their adventures at the same time. Now, Pokémon fans across the globe can discover the secrets of Pokémon games and can collect, battle, and trade with each other immediately.”

Junichi Masuda, video game director at Game Freak Inc. added “We brought Pokémon into an entirely new dimension and we’re incredibly excited to bring Pokémon X and Pokémon Y to fans. The stunning visuals, a completely redesigned environment, game scenario, music, and communication features will bring smiles to the faces of video game players around the world.”

Pokémon X and Pokémon Y will be the blueprint for an exciting array of new animation, Pokémon TCG, and toys debuting around the world.

Train2Game News: New Nvidia hand-held console announced

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Project ShieldTrain2Game has discovered that Nvidia just announced Project Shield, a new gaming console that looks like a controller attached to a 5 inch HD screen.

The new hand held console runs on the Android operating system but what sets it apart from the other android platforms is that it has a controller similar to a current console controller for ease of use.

Project Shield is powered by a custom 72-core Nvidia A15 GeForce GPU and features a 5-inch 720p retinal multi-touch display, integrated speakers, wi-fi connectivity and the Android operating system. It’s also designed to interface as a controller with an Nvidia GPU-equipped PC, allowing you to play games from your couch.

Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia said “Project Shield was created by Nvidia engineers who love to game and imagined a new way to play. We were inspired by a vision that the rise of mobile and cloud technologies will free us from our boxes, letting us game anywhere, on any screen. We imagined a device that would do for games what the iPod and Kindle have done for music and books, letting us play in a cool new way”

No word yet on what the device will cost. A post on the official GeForce website lists a tentative release window of Q2 2013. The site states “It will first launch in the US and Canada, with a worldwide rollout to follow. Pricing and final specs will be unveiled closer to availability.”

The Android gaming platform seems to be a big player in 2013 with the OUYA games console, the recently announced GameStick and now Project Shield from Nvidia.

Train2Game News: UK Top 20 – 7.1.13

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fifa13Over the Christmas break Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 was knocked off of the top spot by Far Cry 3 with Fifa 13 taking number two but now it has shifted again. Fifa 13 is the number one game with Far Cry 3 at number 2.

Week ending 5 January 2013

POS.  TITLE 

PUBLISHER

 LAST
WEEK 

1

FIFA 13

EA SPORTS

2

2

FAR CRY 3

UBISOFT

1

3

– 

 CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II

ACTIVISION

3

4

– 

 HITMAN ABSOLUTION

SQUARE ENIX

4

5

– 

 NEED FOR SPEED MOST WANTED

EA GAMES

5

6

HALO 4

MICROSOFT

7

7

JUST DANCE 4

UBISOFT

6

8

FORZA HORIZON

MICROSOFT

10

9

– 

 LEGO THE LORD OF THE RINGS

WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE

9

10

   THE ELDER SCROLLS V: SKYRIM

BETHESDA SOFTWORKS

12

11

ASSASSIN’S CREED III

UBISOFT

8

12

 

 SONIC & ALL STARS RACING TRANSFORMED

SEGA

16

13

 – FOOTBALL MANAGER 2013

SEGA

13

14

WWE ’13

THQ

11

15

DISHONORED

BETHESDA SOFTWORKS

14

16

MEDAL OF HONOR: WARFIGHTER

EA GAMES

15

17

– 

 SKYLANDERS GIANTS

SKYLANDERS

17

18

FORZA MOTORSPORT 4

MICROSOFT

20

19

 – DISNEY EPIC MIKEY 2: THE POWER OF TWO

DISNEY INTERACTIVE STUDIOS

19

20

LEGO BATMAN 2: DC SUPER HEROES

WARNER BROS. INTERACTIVE

18

Leisure software charts compiled by Chart Track, (C)2013 UKIE Ltd

Train2Game News: SpecialEffect Charity video

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SpecialEffect Over the past few months I have been updating you with all the good work that SpecialEffect have been doing and trying to get their video up to 25,000 views.

SpecialEffect is a wonderful charity that helps the disabled to play games. This means that they can interact with other people and play together on a level playing ground.

The SpecialEffect website describes themselves as “Doing whatever it takes to help everyone with disabilities to have a better quality of life. For some, this means access to fun and leisure activities like computer games. For others, it’s giving them a voice at a time when they can’t even speak.”

SpecialEffect help people by using there loan library which is where all the specially made controllers are loaned to those in need. For example a specially created Wii mote for a girl who lost her limbs to Meningitis.

The charity also uses their StarGaze project to help people who can move nothing but their eyes. StarGaze is, perhaps, the most labour-intensive and demanding element of SpecialEffect’s work. A huge amount of care and sensitivity is required to ensure that the person we support has a gaze controlled computer system – as quickly as possible – that is personalised to meet their specific and often complex needs.

Dr Mick Donegan, the CEO of SpecialEffect said “Time after time, people with disabilities tell us what they want and need most is to find a way to enjoy themselves – a way to interact, compete and make new friends.

“It’s difficult or impossible for them to access mainstream videogames and leisure technology, and before we started there was nowhere to go for independent and expert advice and support to help them use technology to actually have fun!

“At the heart of the charity is the determination to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to help each individual, and that necessitates a huge range of services. On the one hand, our GameBase website is giving information to many people who might need immediate specialist advice about accessible games and controllers. On the other, we have an increasing waiting list of very severely disabled individuals with complex problems that we know will take us years of support visits and equipment loans to achieve any level of success.

But that’s why we’re here. If the charity had been set up to support just one individual, it would have been more than worthwhile.”

The charity has been trying to get this video to 25,000 views by Christmas day. It isn’t far off so please keep watching and sharing the video as much as possible to spread the word of the amazing work SpecialEffect do.

Train2Game News: Train2Game in 2012 – April to June

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Train2Game at Gadget Show Live gets a surprise visit from a Dr Who Dalek

Train2Game at Gadget Show Live gets a surprise visit from a Dr Who Dalek

The second quarter of 2012 was especially good for me as it was in April that The Gadget Show live was held.

The Make Something Unreal Live was possibly the biggest thing Train2Game had done up to that point. It brought much media coverage and gave the students involved a highly valuable experience.

The 4 teams at the event got to meet such industry professionals as CliffyB, then from Epic Studios, Peter Molyneux who had just launched 22Cans and Jon Hare the man behind Sensible Software,

The event started in November of 2011 following a Train2Game Game Jam which was sponsored by Epic. The top 4 teams from there then had 6 months to create a game which was to be released on the iOS store.

The games that were created were based on the Fighting Fantasy books. This gave the teams more time as it took story creation out of the equation and it already had an existing fan base to work from.

You can check out the video from the 2012 Make Something Unreal Live contest below:

Train2Game News: Train2Game in 2012 – January to March

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Train2Game2012 has been a good year for Train2Game and the students and I am going to take you through some of the best bits.

At the end of January some Train2Game students entered a game jam in Scotland.

The Scottish Game Jam is part of Global Game Jam 2012 and at the event Train2Game Art & Animation students Fiona Stewart and Corinna Bruce were winners of the Best Art Award at the Scottish Game Jam.

It was at this jam where the game Shplem was created and nominated for a BAFTA award.

The first quarter of the year was also the run up to the Make Something Unreal Live competition.

Four student studios: Commando Kiwi, Derp Studios, Digital Mage and Indigo Jam were working hard trying to get together their games which were based on the Fighting Fantasy books which would be displayed at The Gadget Show live in April.

It is a time I remember well as I was a proud member of Digital Mage and it was one of the greatest times of my life.

Possibly the most important part of early 2012 was the government announcing that they would implement the Games Tax Relief. Just the mere announcement of this has seen the games industry grow to new heights.

Train2Game News: Train2Game Radio talks to Joanna Janse van Vuuren

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CEO of Savage Sea Studios with Megan Marie of Crystal Dynamics.

CEO of Savage Sea Studios with Megan Marie of Crystal Dynamics.

Today, Train2Game radio Spoke to CEO of Savage Sea Studios, Joanna Janse van Vuuren. Joanna tells us how the studio came together and how an illness led her to the gaming industry.

You can learn more about Savage Sea Studios here.

You can listen to the interview here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1122380-train2game-student-joanna-janse-van-vureen-talks-to-mark-t2g-radio

Or read the transcript below:

Hi my name’s Joanna Janse van Vuuren, I’m on the Art & Animation course and I live in Brighton.

Hi Joanna, how you doing?
I’m doing great thank you very much.

Excellent. So tell me, what’s your story? What are the past experiences that have shaped your life and made you who you are now?
Uh, well, I’ve got quite a few of them! I’ve always loved Video Games since I was really small. I remember me and my sister got a really ancient Commodore 64 when we were little, we played it on a little black and white TV and then from there we got a PC. We played games like Age Of Empires 2 and Half Life and that’s what really got me in to gaming. From there, in my teens I got more energetic and I found out about Tae-Kwon-Do, it’s a martial art and I really love to kick people! So from there I went to Uni and did a sport and leisure management degree but unfortunately a couple of years in to it I got quite ill. I couldn’t do Tae-Kwon-Do any more because of the physical aspect of it so I spent a lot of time in bed or on my sofa, playing on my Xbox and I could see myself maybe doing something like that. After that I had a few basic jobs when I was healthy again. Shop jobs and call centres, all the kind of basic jobs. I definitely knew it wasn’t something I wanted to do in the future and then the Train2Game advert popped up in the news paper and I applied immediately.

Do you think you would maybe want to make a game about the old Tae-Kwon-Do and stuff?
Yeah, I’ve been considering it yeah but it’s a very fast sport, I’m not sure how it would work so much. I’ve been thinking about it and comparing it to games like Street Fighter and all those types of games because I used to love them when I was little. I think it’s just the violence of those sorts of things I like!

So What would you say the most dramatic or exciting thing you have done in your life is?
I think this entire year has been quite busy for me! A lot of things have happened. I’ve now started my own Tae-Kwon-Do school which gives me a lot of flexibility to work on my own coursework and portfolio and earlier this year which is probably the biggest thing I’ve done so far is me and Philip Stevens, who is on the developer course, have been playing around with a game idea for a while so we decided we wanted to make this game in to a proper product. So we started recruiting for some other students to help us out and that’s when we created our own studio, Savage Sea Studios.

So what’s the game idea you have been playing around with if you can say much about it?
Well we haven’t got a name for it at the moment. It’s still got a jokey code name at the moment which is, Project Trolling. It does have Trolls in it and some other things in it which I can’t reveal too much at this stage but it’s kind of like the old 2D pixel art games but with bringing more of a 3D aspect to the way it looks.

What sort of platform are you aiming for then?
At the moment we are just going to boot it on to the internet and then hoping when that’s sorted, because it’s our first game we want to develop and kind of continue our education of the game making process. So we are just taking it to the internet on your PC and maybe taking it to iPhone or Android.

What are you using to make the game?
We are using Game Maker Pro

How are you finding that?
It’s quite good. We have two developers that’s, Philip Stevens and Luke Jackson and they obviously do all the codey stuff for it and then there is me and another Artist Chris Straver and a designer who is Kieron Baker. We all work together because it’s quite a simple programme for us all to understand and it’s not to heavy on any of the game making process so we find it quite easy to use.

Finally, What is your greatest ambition and where do you want to go with your career?
Well I would quite like to get this game finished! It’s taking us a long while but obviously we have to balance our own jobs and personal lives and our coursework with studio work as well. All of us want to create a studio together where we would all get money and develop it up quite big or work in a big studio ourselves.

That’s fair enough! Thank you very much Joanna
Thank you very much for interviewing me.

Train2Game News: Aardvark Swift announce Search For A Star competition

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ASwift compAardvark Swift have announced the fourth annual Search For A Star competition will go ahead in January 2013.

The Search for a Star nationwide competition is designed to highlight and reward the UK’s most promising video games students. The competition spans the UK’s leading areas of higher education including; universities, colleges and blended learning courses such as Train2Game.

The competition takes the form of three stages and mirrors a typical recruitment process within the games industry: A technical test, preparation of a demo and finally a panel interview. Entrants are given a real taste of what it takes to make it in the games industry.

The competition process is designed to get students ready to work professionally and give them the first chance to enter games development companies in the UK. All entrants get CV and Portfolio advice from Aardvark Swift, with the aim to prepare them to apply for placements and permanent roles. Up for grabs for the winners will not only be physical prizes provided by Microsoft but also internships at some of the most prestigious games developers in the UK, including: Sony Evolution, Exient and Boss Alien.

Created by Aardvark Swift, the competition is contributed to by some of the UK Games Industry’s most respected video games developers including, The Blast Furnace, Headstrong Games, Rockstar Leeds, Microsoft, Sony Evolution and many more.

A spokesperson for Aardvark Swift, said: “The Search for a Star competition aims to make entrants more employable, raise their profile and hopefully lead to permanent employment. As a recruitment agency specialising in gaming we are looking to bridge that gap between education and employment, which is where many people struggle to make a final step into the industry. As part of the wider games industry it’s really important to us that the UK’s video games industry goes from strength to strength and students get opportunities for employment.”

Lizi Attwood, The Blast Furnace, said: “This is a tremendous opportunity for students to make their mark on the UK’s games industry and take steps towards gaining future employment. The competition spans the whole of the UK and any educational institution can put forward students to the competitive process. The competition creates a level playing field where each individual will be judged by working professionals, who know what knowledge and skills the industry is looking for.”

You can find out more about the competition and apply by visiting Aardvark swift, here.

Good luck to all those who enter and enjoy yourselves!

You can read the full press release in the file below

Search For A Star – Announce Final

Train2Game News: Train2Game Radio interviews Matthew Greenwood

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Little Green DudeTrain2Game Radio interviewed Matthew Greenwood, the developer for Road Hog Games. He tells us his coding experience and how he got together with Road Hog Games.

You can follow Road Hog Games on Facebook here or on twitter @roadhoggames

You can listen to the interview here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1118876-train2game-student-matthew-greenwood-talks-to-mark-t2g-radio

Or read the transcript below:

Hey I’m Matthew Greenwood, I’m from Surrey and I’m doing the Developer course with Train2Game.

Hello Matthew, how you doing?
I’m not to bad

So tell me what’s your story? What are the past experiences that have shaped your life?
Right well from a very young age I have kind of been forced, as it were, in to programming. When most people were getting their first CD’s, I got my very first Spectrum +2, 48k BASIC and if ever I wanted to do anything I have always had to write it myself. Pretty much had to grow up and effectively write my own things since I was about 8 years old and of course at that age, games. Everyone else was playing Super Mario Brothers and I was playing my own version of it.

So you have always been making games then and have always been interested in that?
Yeah, I started off at a young age playing games and making my own versions of them. I kind of got more in to developing websites and doing all the background server programming stuff for various different companies. I’ve pretty much been solely into programming really since a very young age.

What is it you do for a living now?
I’m actually a software engineer for a brand management company. We do an online brand management system for the likes of various big companies.

Do you think that helps your game development at all or is it a completely different sort of thing that you have to keep swapping between?
Programming wise, most of it is very similar. The work that I do in the actual Train2Game course has actually helped me greatly with a lot of new stuff that I have had to take on at work. It’s kinda helped both ways

What is the most dramatic and/or exciting thing you have done in your life?
I think the biggest thing so far is attending the Game Jam with Train2Game.

Is that the most recent one, the one with Microsoft?
Yeah that was the World Record attempt.

Yeah, how did you find that?
That was an absolute nightmare! It was brilliant fun, I met lots of great people but I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I was pretty much behind that computer non stop. For the few times I did leave the computer I had a few people staring at me because my eyes were just getting redder and redder over the weekend.

So was it at the Game Jam you met the other people of Road Hog or was that a different way you got together?
Yeah, Terry and Gareth were both part of the same team for the Game Jam, Team 46, and we came up with a game called Monumental but we never actually had an artist at all during the Game Jam, so we spent most of the time getting photos off Google I think it was and various other places. We became really good friends and now we are off to do this and I think either Gareth or Terry found Amy, who is now our resident artist and it’s helped us greatly in lots of ways for the new game.

Excellent. So finally, what is your greatest ambition for your career. Where do you want to go with it?
That’s a big one. I think I would actually like to be able to work for myself and to be able to pick and choose what sorts of projects I want to work on rather than having to work on everything because you need the money in the door.

Excellent! Well thank you very much for your time Matthew!
Thank you very much.