Tag Archives: Windows 8

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up – 09.01.13

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Xerneas and YvetalThe first news in this weeks Train2Game Mid-Week round up is a follow up to the Pokémon news from yesterday. The two legendary creatures that are briefly seen in the trailer have been named. They are Xerneas and Yveltal.

Video games had the highest total amount pledged out of all other categories on Kickstarter last year.  561,574 backers made 1.3 pledges totaling $83 million. Out of 2,796 video game projects launched, 911 were funded. Video games had almost double the amount of pledges than Films, the second most successful category. They make up nearly a quarter of Kickstarter’s total backers and total money pledged.

Valve have given the first glimpses of  what could be, the media named Steam Box. Code-named “Piston”, the system is still in a development stage and Xi3Coporation states the system will be “optimized for computer game play on large HD televisions”. The specifications have not been released yet, but will be built on Xi3′s Modular Computer chassis which is grapefruit sized, and will support both Steam and their recently released Big Picture mode.

Following the demise of City Of Heroes last year, Missing Worlds Media have decided to create a new superhero MMO, currently named Project Phoenix. Their aim is to build a Superhero game from the ground up and take what was successful from past games and build on it with new technology. If you are missing the super being you created, this could be one to keep an eye on.

Microsoft have sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date. The figure represents cumulative sales of Windows 8 including upgrades and sales to original equipment manufacturers for licensing. Windows 8 sales are following a similar trajectory to that seen with Windows 7, according to Windows chief marketing and financial officer Tami Reller. Microsoft also said that over 100 million apps were downloaded from the Windows Store in the two months following the digital distribution platform’s launch with Windows 8 and Windows RT. There are now more than 1,700 certified systems for Windows 8 and Windows RT.

Train2Game News: Train2Game in 2012 – July to September

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Guinness CertificateThe third quarter was probably the biggest for Train2Game, it was in September that we got in to the Guinness World Record books.

Microsoft sponsored the third Train2Game Game Jam in September and this one was the biggest game jam in the world with just under 300 participants.

It was also here that the Students got to test out Windows 8, before its release, for its game making potential. In the lead up to the Jam, students were put in to teams and worked together to learn how the operating system worked. Once at the 48 hour event they were raring to go and put what they had learned to the test.

When the event started the Students were given a theme to work from, following the great year England has had with the Olympics and the Queen’s Jubilee it was only natural that the theme was Pride Of London. This turned out a number of great games and the majority of them have now been released on to the Windows 8 app store for all to play.

The winner of the event was a game called Royal Rush by a team known as Retro Metro. The game saw you play as a cyclist dodging the busy London traffic and picking up coins. It is a nice, fun addictive little game based on elements of the arcade classic, Frogger.

Retro Metro won quite a hefty prize including a new phone, a few games, Microsoft points and most importantly of all, a trip to Rare studios where they will be able to present their portfolio and get valuable advice.

You can relive or experience the event for the first time in the video below:

Train2Game News: Mid-week round up – 12.12.12

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The Train2Game blog has once again been searching the internet and has found some of the biggest news from across the week.

The Rapid2D engine has gone live as of yesterday following its demonstration at the Evolve conference in London. Rapid2D is designed to help developers create apps for PC, tablet and Windows Phone 8 through the Windows 8 Marketplace. The engine uses C++ for scripting, and includes features such as physics, visual effects, sound particle systems, collision control and animated sprites. As well as the free version of Rapid2D, there will also be extra add-ons, upgrades and a pro-version available to developers.

Randy Pitchford, one of the developers behind Borderlands 2 has confirmed that there will be a new character class coming as DLC. Mr Pitchford previously said it was unlikely because of the amount of extra work the Mechromancer class took. The news was revealed after someone tweeted the developer saying “My mate says you won’t” to which Randy replied, “yes – we’re working on another character.” It’s as simple as that.

PopCap, the team behind hit casual games such as Plants v Zombies has announced that they are now working on a AAA title. The news comes following a tweet and job posting from PopCap. The game is a console game, inspired by Team Fortress 2. The job posting confirms that the game will use the Frostbite 2 engine, which is becoming more and more popular.

The final issues of PSM3 and Xbox World have gone on sale today. One of the many features in the last PSM3 magazine is a feature written by editor Dan Dawkins talking about the making of’ PSM3, office secrets, the highs and lows, how things have changed and how the future looks. Meanwhile Xbox World rounds up the biggest, loudest, saddest, funniest, most shocking moments in Xbox history and gives GTA5, arguably the biggest Xbox game of 2013, one final, epic preview.

Rovio has announced plans to release an Angry Birds feature film in the summer of 2016 and it will be in 3D so you can feel what those bad piggies go through. Despicable Me producer John Cohen has signed on as producer for the CG-animated movie, while David Maisel, former chairman of Marvel Studios and executive producer of Iron Man, will serve as executive producer. The movie will be produced and financed by Rovio outside of the studio system, allowing the Finnish company to retain full creative control of the project. Over 100 billion Angry Birds games have been downloaded since the games début in 2009.

Train2Game News: Train2Game Radio talks to Amy Methven

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Amy MethvenTrain2Game radio spoke to Amy Methven today about what inspires her art and how she got involved with Road Hog Game studios.

You can listen to part 1 here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1087762-train2game-student-amy-methven-on-train2game-student-radio-part-1

And part 2 here: http://audioboo.fm/boos/1087758-train2game-student-amy-methven-on-train2game-student-radio-part-2

or read the transcript below

My name is Amy Methven, I live in Elgin, Scotland and I’m doing the Art & Animation course.

Hi Amy, What’s your story? What are the past experiences that have shaped your life and made you who you are now?

Well all the way through High School, the only thing I really enjoyed doing was drawing and I would get in to all sorts of trouble for doodling and I only ever enjoyed doing art at school, it was the only thing I was ever really good at. It was all I thought about, the first thing I thought about when I woke up and the last thing I thought about before I went to bed. Just enjoying playing Video Games and various movies just inspired me to sit and draw my favourite characters. As I grew older I developed more of a passion for it and started to research the people who actually created these characters that inspired me and being very passionate about wanting to create things. Whether it’s through traditional painting or building sculptures is what I am all about really.

So what are some of the artist that inspire you to get into the Video Game industry?

There are a lot of concept artist that I love but the actual artists that got me in to the Video Games industry wasn’t actually anything to do with Video Games to be honest with you. I love surrealism, like Salvador Dali and all that kind of stuff. Looking at that kind of stuff and obviously because Salvador Dali did a little bit of animation as well, looking at the stuff and seeing it brought to life, that inspires me. Just being able to characterize and any form of animation and being able to interact with it through Video Games really inspires me.

So I know you are also working as part of a studio, with other Train2Game students, how did that studio form?

Well basically it started when I joined Train2Game, I started to put my artwork on to the forums and added a link to my online portfolio, just to let other students see what I was up to and then, through that I got various people messaging me to just chat about art in general and then I got a message from Gareth Brook asking if I would be interested in joining his team and I said yes, for definite. So that was quite out of the blue only been doing the course for 2 months and I am already involved in an up and coming studio, it’s just brilliant.

Did you get more offers from people other than Gareth or was it just Gareth that offered you?

It was just Gareth, the other people that got in touch were just other students who were just getting to know each other through the forums. But yeah he was the only one who got in touch with me about working together.

Tell me about the project you are working on at the minute with the studio?

The studio is called Road Hog and at the moment we have currently just started work on our first project and we are getting through it quite quickly actually. It’s called Little Green Dude or LGD and its basically based on the Video Game, Pong, from the 1970’s but with a modern twist on it and that is what this studio is aiming to do. Take retro gaming and modernise them. It’s going really well, I’m really enjoying it.

Why do you think you’ve taken the retro thing and taken it to the modern thing? Is that something you have all been passionate about?

We are really passionate gamers anyway but retro gaming is definitely my background, I played a lot of retro games. We had an Atari system so the very first game I played was one of the very first games ever released which was Pong but I did also play games like Pacman and Space Invaders and all that. That’s where it all started so it is really good to take those games and modernise them for both casual gamers and hardcore gamers.

What are you aiming to release Little Green Dude on? What Platform are you aiming for?

It’s aimed for Android and PC as well.

Yeah, is it going for a Windows 8 release?

Yeah.

Are you going to enter in to the competition that Windows are doing, do you know?

Yeah we are doing that, yeah, for definite.

What is the most dramatic or exciting thing you have done in your life?

Probably joining the Train2Game course! Before that I went to art school for 5 years studying contemporary, fine art. I am passionate about both traditional and digital stuff it wasn’t quite what I wanted to do with my life, just exhibiting art work in galleries and things like that, I really wanted to work in the gaming industry or film industry doing concept art and things like that. So I have to say up to this point, joining the Train2Game course is probably the biggest thing to happen, for the art side anyway.

What is your greatest ambition, where do you want to go with your career?

I want to go as far as I can. I want to just keep creating things for the industry and just have an outlet for my art work because for such a long time I didn’t really have a proper outlet. With various jobs that I’ve had it was quite boring jobs that had nothing to do with art, house keeping and cleaning and things like that. My life in general is to make sure I have some sort of outlet for my art work, I don’t really want to settle. So I just really want to go as far as I can with this. Just to see where it takes me really.

Is there any studio in particular that you would love to work for?

Well I have just started working with Road Hog so I would like to keep working with them for as long as I can!

Finally, where can people keep up to date with Road Hog Game news? Have you got a Facebook site?

Yeah we have a Facebook page set up, it’s: www.Facebook.com/RoadHogGames we will be uploading all sorts of updates on to that shortly.

Thank you very much for your time Amy, its been great!

No problem, thanks very much.

Train2Game News: Mid-week Round up – 28.11.12

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Good news for PlayStation Plus subscribers! For the festive season Sony are adding a number of new games including: Batman: Arkham City, LIMBO and Vanquish. All the games are added to the PlayStation Plus service on December 5.

Nintendo are offering a similar service where new and existing owners of the 3DS XL who register before January 15, 2013 will be able to download one of five games from the eShop. The titles on offer are Super Mario 3D Land, Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask, New Art Academy, New Style Boutique and Freakyforms Deluxe.

Take Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has announced that the Grand Theft Auto series has shipped over 125 million games since its debut on on the original PSOne. Zelnick put the series’ continued success down to the firm’s refusal to annualise as Activision has with Call of Duty.

Microsoft has announced that they have sold over 750,000 Xbox360’s over the Black Friday week. Xbox LIVE Gold Subscription sales also saw a surge of more than 50 per cent compared to last years Black Friday week, and US entertainment application hours logged on Xbox LIVE during the week of Black Friday was up 43 per cent over last year.

Microsoft has announced sales of 40 million Windows 8 licenses in the operating system’s launch month but 40 million licenses sold does not mean there are now 40 million Windows 8 users. Countless numbers of licences are bought up by hardware manufacturers for future use in new machines.

Dishonored is, clearly, a new franchise, publisher Bethesda has said. Sales of the Arkane-developed first-person action game are above expectations, Bethesda marketing chief Pete Hines told Destructoid, and so publisher Bethesda has added it to its stable of franchises, which includes Fallout, Elder Scrolls and Doom. In the UK Dishonored entered the chart at number two following its October release. It was kept off top spot by FIFA 13, but is the biggest launch for a new IP so far in 2012 (a title previously held by Sleeping Dogs). This record was achieved despite UK numbers company Chart-Track not counting digital copies sold.

Train2Game News: Eurogamer reports on Game Jam

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With the release of Windows 8 and the student games being published on the Store, Eurogamer has done a story on the World Record Game Jam.
You can read the article below

The Microsoft-sponsored game jam

Train2Game News: A new ‘World’ has arrived

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Steve Ballmer at the Windows 8 launch

Windows 8 is here. After many months of building anticipation the new Microsoft operating system has arrived.

Today saw the launch of the Windows 8 operating system, the Microsoft Surface tablet running the system and the Windows store.

Unlike previous versions of Windows, this one is designed for an array of different devices, including: PCs, notebooks, tablet computers and smartphones. It is built for a new generation of touchscreen devices, rather than the traditional PC and mouse.

Windows 8 has better battery life, faster boot time, a smaller memory footprint and has undergone 1.2bn hours of pre-release testing.

Windows have said that more than one thousand new PCs have been certified for Windows 8, with some being more affordable than several, already available, tablet computers. Many of the new PCs running the new operating system will have touchscreen ability, for users that want to control there PC with the swipe of a finger, instead of using a mouse.

Steve Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, says “Windows 8 PCs will be the best PCs ever, as the company faces down competition in tablets and smartphones from Apple and Google.

“Windows 8 shatters perceptions of what a PC really is and is a bold and innovative break from past Windows versions.

“Welcome to the world of Windows 8.”

Every Windows 8 device will come with the Windows store available and developers are adding hundreds of apps to it every day. The store has launched with an initial one thousand five hundred apps.

At the September world record winning Game Jam, the students who participated, worked on Windows 8 and a number of those apps are being released to the store. A list of all the student apps will be announced this coming Monday.

Train2Game News: Microsoft SmartGlass releases with Windows 8

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Microsoft is launching SmartGlass for a number of devices on October 26 alongside the release of Windows 8.

The new feature will mix Xbox movies, media, games and video between tablets, smartphones, PCs and consoles. The service will immediately launch with support for Windows 8, the Xbox 360, Windows Phones and the upcoming Surface tablet.

Pawan Bhardwaj, product manager Xbox Live, confirmed on Monday that “Microsoft wants to add a SmartGlass app to iOS and Android devices”

No release date has currently been set and whether Google or Apple will allow a rival music player on their devices is yet to be seen.

A variety of games and other apps will support SmartGlass functionality at launch. A list of the supported entertainment at launch is listed below:

Games:

  • Ascend
  • Dance Central 3
  • Forza Horizon
  • Halo Waypoint
  • Home Run Stars
  • Karaoke
  • Kinect Sesame Street TV
  • Prima Games

Sports:

  • ESPN
  • NBA Game Time
  • UFC

Entertainment Apps:

  • Elections 2012
  • HBO GO
  • MSN
  • NBC News
  • NOW TV
  • Slacker Radio
  • TODAY
  • Univision

Microsoft has also said that all Netflix films will soon support the service.

The release of SmartGlass and the Xbox music that has launched today with a dashboard update sees Microsoft move further in to creating an all entertainment service.

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: Students in their local papers

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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.