So our first week in Dundee is over, and we're all glad we have another 9 to go as it's been awesome.
We've made some great progress with the game, and the mentors have proven very valuable with their advice. So far we've redesigned several of our characters, and moved from a custom animation system to Havok, a change that should hopefully smooth our pipelines out and make life easier later on, as well as giving us some features we weren't sure if we'd have time to implement.
We've also had a chance to explore Dundee properly now, and are getting to know the center pretty well, especially some of the pubs. It's good to work hard, but we're finding that the Dare lot also like to play hard, something we're more than happy with. So far though the best thing about Dundee is the seagulls: they're bloody enormous. The other day I saw one swoop down and eat a 5 year old child in one mouthful, it didn't even have to chew.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Dundee 2010
Well we're here! We actually all arrived in Dundee over the weekend, but haven't had internet access, something that could drive a team of computing students insane.
We're currently in the lab after a day of induction including a huge group photo, free buffet, safety briefings and several arguments about who sits where on our table. There are a few teething problems with the PC's, missing software and stuff crashing whenever we try to save ANYTHING, but Dare have been really good about sorting all the problems, so hopefully it'll all be good by tomorrow morning.
The flat is great, lots of friendly people and plenty of consoles knocking about so there's always a game to play. We've got Welsh and Irish teams on our floor, 2 kitchens, 5 bathrooms and about 100 plastic ball-pool balls to trip over (the welsh were bored with no internet and plastic balls from poundland were the obvious solution).
Hopefully productivity will pick up as we iron out all the problems with our computers, but today's been a good introduction and everyone's really excited to get this game made and hopefully win something.
We're currently in the lab after a day of induction including a huge group photo, free buffet, safety briefings and several arguments about who sits where on our table. There are a few teething problems with the PC's, missing software and stuff crashing whenever we try to save ANYTHING, but Dare have been really good about sorting all the problems, so hopefully it'll all be good by tomorrow morning.
The flat is great, lots of friendly people and plenty of consoles knocking about so there's always a game to play. We've got Welsh and Irish teams on our floor, 2 kitchens, 5 bathrooms and about 100 plastic ball-pool balls to trip over (the welsh were bored with no internet and plastic balls from poundland were the obvious solution).
Hopefully productivity will pick up as we iron out all the problems with our computers, but today's been a good introduction and everyone's really excited to get this game made and hopefully win something.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Bears in the News
Obviously Dare have released a press-statement today regarding the 2010 competition as several sites have picked up on it. The news made front page on:
Is a pretty good feeling seeing your team name mentioned on Gamasutra and Gamesindustry.biz.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Gameplay Prototype Updated
We've found some time and updated the gameplay demo. It's now even more exciting, which means we actually have to give a disclaimer:
Warning: Playing the Grrr! prototype may cause side effects such as:
- Blisters on your fingers
- A compulsion to eat steak
- Dressing up the neighbour's cat with cardboard jetpacks
If you think you can handle these you can get it by clicking on the Grrr!:
Warning: Playing the Grrr! prototype may cause side effects such as:
- Blisters on your fingers
- A compulsion to eat steak
- Dressing up the neighbour's cat with cardboard jetpacks
If you think you can handle these you can get it by clicking on the Grrr!:
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Gameplay Concept Video
Have just uploaded the gameplay concept video to Youtube. This was the one we showed at the presentations and it's something we really feel helped our chances, after all if a picture is worth a thousand words what's the value of a video?
The level and characters you'll recognise from our concepts, the animation was by Tom using 3ds-Max, and if you pay special attention there is a cameo by Sean Connery at around the 43 second mark (there's not really.)
The level and characters you'll recognise from our concepts, the animation was by Tom using 3ds-Max, and if you pay special attention there is a cameo by Sean Connery at around the 43 second mark (there's not really.)
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Dare 2010 Update
Well it's now less than a month until we get started in Dundee (7th June) so all the wheels are starting to turn and thankfully most of them are going in the right direction.
I've set up a twitter account for the group
http://twitter.com/JetpackBears
so you can follow that if you want regular updates while we're hard at work.
Also, some of the stuff we had at our presentation should probably see the light of day around now, seeing as it played a large part in our being accepted it's only fair that it gets the publicity it deserves:
One of the things we think helped our cause the most was our interactive gameplay demo. We built it in Gamemaker, and you can play it at home. Just click here, extract it, and you can play. It's a 2 player demo, and you'll need a joypad for the 2nd player unless you can figure out how to get 2 mice-pointers working on 1 computer (we couldn't). If you really like it then I guess it's good news for you we got through to build the whole thing isn't it, but you'll probably have to come to Protoplay to have a go at the full version.
You'll recognise that fellow hopefully, he's the first of our characters to get the 3D treatment and it looks like the extra dimension hasn't done him any harm at all.
And here he is on his first test-flight
Looks right at home doesn't he.
Our flier we handed out to the judges:
I've set up a twitter account for the group
http://twitter.com/JetpackBears
so you can follow that if you want regular updates while we're hard at work.
Also, some of the stuff we had at our presentation should probably see the light of day around now, seeing as it played a large part in our being accepted it's only fair that it gets the publicity it deserves:
One of the things we think helped our cause the most was our interactive gameplay demo. We built it in Gamemaker, and you can play it at home. Just click here, extract it, and you can play. It's a 2 player demo, and you'll need a joypad for the 2nd player unless you can figure out how to get 2 mice-pointers working on 1 computer (we couldn't). If you really like it then I guess it's good news for you we got through to build the whole thing isn't it, but you'll probably have to come to Protoplay to have a go at the full version.
You'll recognise that fellow hopefully, he's the first of our characters to get the 3D treatment and it looks like the extra dimension hasn't done him any harm at all.
And here he is on his first test-flight
Looks right at home doesn't he.
Our flier we handed out to the judges:
We also had a couple of videos showing gameplay as it would look in the final version (basically animated versions of our map concepts), but for some reason blogger has disabled video uploading so you'll have to wait a little bit for those.
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