Crunchtime Documentary on Youtube

 

Crunchtime Documentary

All 3 episodes edited into a single video

Crunchtime - DTBD documentary

So that time is finally upon us: the documentary shot last year during Dare to be Digital is going to be screened this week:

Dare to be Digital televised in C4 documentary

Long-running student development contest Dare to be Digital is to be featured in a new three-part Channel 4 documentary in the UK.
Called Crunchtime, the show is being produced by Headlight Pictures and follows 15 international teams as they compete in the University of Abertay's challenge to create a working video game within just 10 weeks.
The first part of the documentary is due to air on Sunday, March 27 at 7:25am GMT and shows teams from as far afield as China, Sweden, India and the US acclimatising to the Scottish environment and beginning their projects.

 Read the rest of the article at: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2011-03-21-dare-to-be-digital-to-be-televised-as-crunchtime

So depending on the editing choices made by the production team, this time next week the Bears with Jetpacks could either be hailed as superheroes, idiots, or we could have been cut out completely. I for one am desperate to find out which it is (and also a little bit terrified)




Also: http://www.develop-online.net/press-releases/70037/Crunchtime

Dare to be Digital Videos

Every so often during the competition a guy with a video-camera would come round, stick it in peoples faces until they felt obliged to say something, then dissapear again. He would also occasionally take me away for an interview (at least that's what I'm telling everyone we were doing).
All this footage got cut together into a great video that was shown during the awards ceremony at Protoplay, and has now been uploaded to Youtube.

There are actually 4 parts to it, and currently you have to goto the Dare channel to see the other sections, but hopefully they'll fix that soon.

This is of course not the only documentary the Bears With Jetpacks have been featured on, we're also part of "Crunchtime" a Channel-4 series about Dare 2010.

(Yup, that's Mark, me and Amila in the top left photo)

Bear to be Digital

The feature on our game has gone up on the [Adult Swim] page!

http://www.adultswim.co.uk/blog/bear-be-digital

It's great to see our team featured on such a large website, even if the team photo they used makes it look like I spent 10 weeks eating cream-cakes instead of working on the game (it's the wide angle lense I tell you!).

New Trailer

One of the most interesting things about writing a dissertation is the number of ways you can find to procrastinate. Having backed up my computer twice, learned morse code and seriously considered taking up karate from one of those youtube teachers, I thought it was about time I did something productive, and decided to make a new version of our trailer.

Now that's done I think I'll go and see how many marshmallows I can fit in my mouth at once.

Fan Artwork

Fan Mail!

Check out this awesome picture that Nathan Fletcher did for us.

If anyone else wants to see their drawings of the Grrr! blog then send them to thomascrofts@gmail.com

Tom

Protoplay 2010 and awards

Phil, Amila, Tom, Stefan and Mark collecting their award

Well it's all over and Bears with Jetpacks have come away from Dare to be Digital 2010 as award winners!

We won the new [Adult Swim] award for creativity and unique game play! A fantastic award to take home as all competition we have prided ourselves on having a very distinct game in respects to both looks and gameplay.

Protoplay itself was a fantastic experience, although exhausting. From 10 till 5 every day we were constantly busy with people wanting to play the game, and the vast, vast majority seemed to really enjoy it. Over the course of the weekend we had loads of people come back to play again because they had enjoyed themselves so much the first time round, and quite a lot of grudge matches and ad-hoc tournaments sprung up. We also had people asking when the game was going to be released and where they could get it, which was incredible for the team and really made all our hard work worth it.
While it did get wearing teaching hundreds of people the same controls it was hilarious to see dads annihilate their 10 year old sons and dance around fist pumping, only for their sons to demand a rematch and destroy them.

We learned a lot about the game and how to teach it, and found that if people didn't pick it up straight away, after two or three rounds they could give anyone a good match, which is a real triumph for our simple control system. Also every character seemed to have their fans, and there was a fairly even split between people's favorite maps as well, which we again feel is a great testament to how much time we put into designing them all.

Overall we're all really pleased with how the game came out, and can be really proud of what we've accomplished. After speaking to mentors and the public about our game we are sure that if we continued to work on it, we could release fairly soon and it would be a relative success. Whether we get to do that or not mainly depends on how people find themselves after we've finished university. While we'd all love to continue working on Grrr! I'm sure none of us will want to turn down a job at a major studio, so we'll see how things go in the next few months.

Deadline day

So it's deadline day...well not exactly, but we're probably not going to be sleeping before the deadline so it's close enough.

Everything has gone to plan and we're happy with our timing, just getting the last few tweaks in and adding a bit of flavour to the menus, then will be playtesting late into the night.
In the morning it's pack up and then relax, hopefully we'll not be too tired, but who knows what will happen between now and then.

Also here is our updated gameplay-trailer, hacked together in movie-maker:

Grrr! Trading Cards

Today is your lucky day.

Today you are witnessing the release of the first 4 Grrr! trading cards.
Only winners of Grrr! matches at Protoplay (or anyone with a printer) will be able to get their hands on these INCREDIBLY collectable cards.

Will you be good enough to collect the whole set?

More sand

Hot on the heels of the first screenshot of the beach comes a video of some gameplay.

This isn't really representative of how the final game will be (and still has the old lighting on), but we thought it would be worth showing exactly what the game looks like on a proper map.

A few other things making their debut in this vid are:

• Particle effects: explosions, gunsmoke, jet-exhaust, 
• Death animations
• New cursors

And for those of you wondering what we picked for the unicorns attack, your ears should give you the answer. Yes, that is the sound of a unicorn vomiting a rainbow and yes we're keeping it.

The Nuclear Family Beach

I just realised that we haven't even put an image up of 2nd level yet: The Nuclear-beach.
If Tom was writing this he'd probably tell you everyone that has seen it so far has given it a 'glowing report'. And if you want a meal there you can have Fission-chips. And before fighting the players can say "Let me Atom!"...oh god...

It's not quite finished (the joins between sand/tarmac/cliff-face/sea is the main issue) but it's been long overdue a feature on the blog.

W.H.A.L.E. stands for 'Weapons hatch and launch equipment'. The plan is for the silo door to slide open and a whale strapped to a rocket will fly out every few minutes.

Oh and bonus points to anyone who can name the 3 logos on the towels.

New lighting system

We've put a new lighting system in today, and you can see the changes above (older is on top). We've also taken time to optimise everything in time for the Intel Visual Adrenaline challenge, and the eagle eyed of you will have noticed that our frame rate has over doubled as a result, and (we think) it looks better.

Needless to say we're pretty chuffed with this.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

No it's a Bear. It's 10 feet tall and weighs a tonne and a half, how could you think it was a bird?

In 1972 a crack Bear pack was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These Bears promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as Bears of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the Bears With Jetpacks!

Emo Unicorn

Say Hello to the Emo Unicorn!

The Emo Unicorn comes from a loving family who live in the Unicorn Palace far up in the mountains. Unfortunately his parents have spoilt him rotten with Skate Ramps, Drum Kits and rare collection of Lances. This has caused the Emo Unicorn to turn into a spoilt, selfish little brat who cares only about himself.

Don't upset him or he will blind you with his magical ability to sick up deadly rainbows!

Hallam newsletter

Have just seen that there's an article about the two Sheffield Dare teams in this months Alumni newsletter:

http://www.shu.ac.uk/news/release.html?ID=664

It's alive!

Today Grrr! went alpha. The first two players were Mark and Tom, and Tom absolutely hammered Mark with 4 kills to none. He was so happy when this happened he actually danced a little, but then we realised that due to a bug Tom's team had been invulnerable, so he had to stop dancing and go back to work.

A few minutes later the bug had been patched, and the second match was played, with Stefan beating Mark, and then going on a winning streak of 3 games unbeaten before it crashed again when one of the crabs tried to teleport outside the level. Needless to say there are a lot of bugs which need patching, and lots more stuff needs adding, but it was a great to see our game come to life.

The picture above and the video below are of our test map, and as such looks a little bit rubbish. Soon though we'll have all our art-assets in and it'll look like the renders we posted up last week. Obviously there is a lot more to add (powerups, death animations, particle effects) but when they are all done we'll get to see exactly how good our game is, and that's what we're here for.

Our team image: The smoking gun

Above is our team-image as submitted for the protoplay program etc.

We've gone for a Frankenstein/Skynet type thing. Thankfully so far the only casualties have been Tom and Stefan, my least favorite group members.

Introducing...

The Emo-unicorn!

He's now been handed off to Tom for rigging and animating, so hopefully we'll see him in action before too long.

One thing we're still not sure of is how he should attack, we have 3 options. Should he shoot a rainbow out of his:

• Horn
• Mouth
• Bum

Answers in the comments or on twitter please.

Emo-Unicorn's Castle

Above you can see the asset set we'll be using for our first level, the home of our Emo-unicorn. This is just a quick layout to get scale right and see how everything fits together, but soon we'll have it ingame and will modify the layout for gameplay.

The unicorn prince is a spoilt brat who lives with his royal parents in what can only be described as a bloody huge castle. Since he turned 13 he started listening to the kind of music that makes the Beatles cry and subsequently decided that he wants to be more alternative, hence the half-pipe and ridiculous Hifi his parents have bought for their heir. The usually well behaved prince was left home-alone (apart from the 234 live in staff) when his parents went on holiday to Nania and he decided to hold a party, unfortunately this party was gatecrashed by various evil doers, and now a fight has broken out. A fight which you must win.

Here are some closeups of some of the assets:

Shark Animations!!!!

Introducing RoboShark!

RoboShark's goal is to infiltrate the human world by creating the perfect land suit so no one will suspect that he is from the sea. However, this isn't easy as he has a huge blue head full of evil teeth and has to shower every 10 minutes.

BEWARE!

He is very resourceful with disguises and can blend into any environment, he may even be standing next to you right now!!!!