Is a pretty good feeling seeing your team name mentioned on Gamasutra and Gamesindustry.biz.
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:
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.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Dundee here we come!
Today I received what was possibly the best email of my life. My little notification box popped up saying I'd received a new message from D2BD, and all that would fit in the window was "Dear Bears with Jetpacks, Con"
After a few deep breaths I clicked it and the full message popped up. The word 'Con' finished with "gratulations! You have been selected to take part in Dare to be Digital 2010."
I fell off my chair.
So we're going to Dundee for 10 weeks this summer. Amazing news that we're all ecstatic about... I know I'm not the only one who didn't stop shaking for an hour or so.
After a few deep breaths I clicked it and the full message popped up. The word 'Con' finished with "gratulations! You have been selected to take part in Dare to be Digital 2010."
I fell off my chair.
So we're going to Dundee for 10 weeks this summer. Amazing news that we're all ecstatic about... I know I'm not the only one who didn't stop shaking for an hour or so.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Presentation is key
Well we've just got back from Wolverhampton after presenting our game to the panel. It went well, the powerpoint went off without a hitch and we said everything we planned to.
The panel was made up of 2 guys from Blitz and 1 from Rare, and had some really good points which gave us food for thought on the way home. All the stuff they suggested made a lot of sense and would definitely have a place in Grrr!, let's just hope they give us the chance to do it.
Wolverhampton itself is a pretty nice place, we stayed overnight as we were first on this morning, and it's a good job too as we had a mishap on the train down and lost a laptop. It carried on the journey to Plymouth without us and we're still waiting for information as to whether it got handed in, so wish us luck in retrieving it. After all the police and train-company paperwork we arrived an hour and a half late, so it's lucky we didn't travel this morning. We managed to find a Nando's open so were able to at least have a good meal and a beer each before some last minute revision and a travel-lodge nights sleep. [Update: Amila has since got his laptop back! The train staff found it and returned it, a very happy resolution to this little episode]
We'll hopefully find out how we did within the next few weeks, so if you're interested stay tuned. I'll also post up the gameplay example videos and other stuff we made for the presentation as well when I've got some time, but at the moment I have 3 handins for the 5th May and another for the week after that. Who said a masters was easy.
The panel was made up of 2 guys from Blitz and 1 from Rare, and had some really good points which gave us food for thought on the way home. All the stuff they suggested made a lot of sense and would definitely have a place in Grrr!, let's just hope they give us the chance to do it.
Wolverhampton itself is a pretty nice place, we stayed overnight as we were first on this morning, and it's a good job too as we had a mishap on the train down and lost a laptop. It carried on the journey to Plymouth without us and we're still waiting for information as to whether it got handed in, so wish us luck in retrieving it. After all the police and train-company paperwork we arrived an hour and a half late, so it's lucky we didn't travel this morning. We managed to find a Nando's open so were able to at least have a good meal and a beer each before some last minute revision and a travel-lodge nights sleep. [Update: Amila has since got his laptop back! The train staff found it and returned it, a very happy resolution to this little episode]
We'll hopefully find out how we did within the next few weeks, so if you're interested stay tuned. I'll also post up the gameplay example videos and other stuff we made for the presentation as well when I've got some time, but at the moment I have 3 handins for the 5th May and another for the week after that. Who said a masters was easy.
Monday, April 12, 2010
We've got a green light
Today we got the news that we've been accepted to the presentation stages of the competition. That on it's own is no mean feat, but we're still a long way from Dundee. It's like joining the gym, you've taken a step in the right direction by filling in the forms, but until you put in some actual hard work you're still just a fatty.
The date for the presentations is next week, a LOT sooner than we had expected, so it's noses to the grindstone again to get something worthy of Dundee put together. Not great timing considering how many assignments we have at uni right now, but we didn't get this far in our education without learning how to squeeze every last second out a deadline.
Wish us luck. Not that we'll need it, we're ace.
The date for the presentations is next week, a LOT sooner than we had expected, so it's noses to the grindstone again to get something worthy of Dundee put together. Not great timing considering how many assignments we have at uni right now, but we didn't get this far in our education without learning how to squeeze every last second out a deadline.
Wish us luck. Not that we'll need it, we're ace.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)