Train2Game News: Mid-week Round up

Train2Game student Fiona Stewart has been featured in The Sun. She talks about how she moved from traditional art to digital art and how it has affected her life. The Sun also featured an article about Daniel Gent, a disabled student of Train2Game who uses a voice activated computer.

Microsoft are bringing Atari’s extensive back catalogue to tablets and browsers. The new portal is called Atari Arcade and it’s opening with eight titles: Asteroids, Combat, Centipede, Lunar Lander, Missile Command, Pong, Super Breakout and Yar’s Revenge. The rest of the games are set to be released over the next few months.

343 Industries and Microsoft are releasing eight different pre-order incentives for Halo 4. Depending on where you order the game from you get a different in game item. The in game items include: Different Armour sets, Avatar Items and multi-player Emblems.

Humble Bundle Six has been released. The Humble Bundles are great for picking up some of the top indie games whilst helping charity at the same time. You pay what you want for the bundle but need to pay a minimum amount to get the game Dustforce. Other games included are: Rochard, Shatter, S.P.A.Z, Torchlight and Vessel.

Sony are releasing two new thinner PlayStation 3s. These new consoles are 25% slimmer than the current models and one boasts a 500GB hard drive the other is a 12GB flash memory model but a 250GB hard drive will be available.

Sony are also launching PlayStation Mobile in October. It is a new store for games to be released for mobile devices. An SDK for the store will be released in November opening up a new market for games developers.

Nintendo has come to an agreement with Unity. Developers can use the engine to create games for the Wii U. Unity users will have to pay for a license to develop for the Wii U, just like with the other platforms.

EA will support the very first GaymerCon. The convention is for the LGBT community to come together through their love of gaming. Their website says its purpose is to educate and inform “the gaming community of the presence of sexuality in our digital lives and promoting acceptance and social change through gaming.”

Finally a big congratulations to the winning team at the weekends world record winning Game Jam. RetroMetro won with their game, Royal Rush. I hope you enjoy your prizes and I hope everyone who attended the Game Jam had an excellent time!

Train2Game News: Unity reveal their next game engine

 

Unity has revealed the fourth version of their game engine, designed to boost AAA game development.

New features for Unity 4 include all-new Mecanim character animation system, DirectX 11 support, updated  mobile graphics, and the addition of Adobe Flash and Linux as new publishing platforms.

“We’ve been working on Unity 4 for a long, long time and are happy to finally be able to unveil its imminent arrival and outline its core features that will change the industry,” said Unity CEO David Helgason

“The revolutionary animation system and add-on deployments to Adobe Flash and Linux are some of the critical features introduced in Unity 4, which together maintain Unity as the strongest, fastest evolving modern games development platform available.”

“The introduction of the Mecanim suite of animation tools into Unity will completely change how developers integrate interactive animations and will result in awesome new gameplay experiences from the Unity community,” added Unity Lead Animation Developer Robert Lanciault,

“These tools will allow animators to work directly in Unity to create advanced and detailed animation blend trees and state machines for incredible and natural character animation.”

The full list of new features for Unity 4 is below.

• Shuriken particle system supports external forces, bent normals and automatic culling
• 3D texture support
• Navigation: dynamic obstacles and avoidance priority
• Major optimisations in UnityGUI performance and memory usage
• Dynamic fonts on all platforms with HTML-like markup
• Remote Unity Web Player debugging
• New Project Window workflows
• Iterative lightmap baking
• Refined component-based workflows
• Extensible inspectors for custom classes
• Improved Cubemap import pipeline
• Geometry data improvements for huge memory and performance savings
• Meshes can be constructed from non-triangle geometry – render points and lines efficiently
• Search, live preview and buy Asset Store assets from the Project Windo

There’s more on Unity here, including industry experience diaries from Train2Game students on work placement at the game engine creator.

What are your thoughts on the unveiling of Unity 4 and its new features?

Leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.

Train2Game student industry experience diaries: James Bouckley at Unity – week 11

Train2Game student James Bouckley  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In his latest industry experience diaries, he discusses making mechanics work and testing a game.

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

Train2Game industry experience diaries: Ben Stoneman at Unity – weeks 5-10

Train2Game student Ben Stoneman  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In his latest industry experience diaries, he updates on everything that’s been going on since his previous diary.

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

More Train2Game industry experience diaries are right here on The Train2Game Blog. 

Train2Game student industry experience diaries: James Bouckley at Unity – weeks 5-6

Train2Game student James Bouckley  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In his latest industry experience diaries, he discusses working with pathfinding and more.

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

More Train2Game industry experience diaries are right here on The Train2Game Blog. 

Train2Game student industry experience diaries: James Bouckley at Unity – week 4

Train2Game student James Bouckley  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In this industry experience diary, James discusses what he’s been working on at the studio.

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

More Train2Game industry experience diaries are right here on The Train2Game Blog. 

Train2Game student industry experience diary: Ben Stoneman at Unity – weeks 3 &4

Train2Game student Ben Stoneman  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In his latest industry experience diaries, he writes about using the Unity engine for animation.

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

More Train2Game industry experience diaries are right here on The Train2Game Blog. 

Train2Game student industry experience diaries: James Bouckley at Unity – week 3

Train2Game student James Bouckley  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In this industry experience diary, James details how he’s been helping out at the studio.

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

More Train2Game industry experience diaries are right here on The Train2Game Blog. 

Train2Game student industry experience diary: Ben Stoneman at Unity – weeks 1 & 2

Train2Game student Ben Stoneman  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In his first experience diary from the studio, he writes about how he’s been settling into his new role and what he’s already learned

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

More Train2Game industry experience diaries are right here on The Train2Game Blog. 

Train2Game student industry experience diary: James Bouckley at Unity – weeks 1 & 2

Train2Game student James Bouckley  is on a Train2Game work placement at Unity. In his first experience diary from the studio, James details how he’s settled in and the tasks he’s been doing.

Read what he has to say about his Train2Game work placement  here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game Scribd page.

More Train2Game industry experience diaries are right here on The Train2Game Blog. 

As usual, leave your comments here on The Train2Game Blog, or on the Train2Game forum.