University of Huddersfield Computer Games

X48 was hosted at the University of Huddersfield (press release) over 2 days in March. The University of Birmingham (see Huddersfield win Best Art in this post) hosted the other X48 in February. X48 is a marathon gamecamp where students and indie developers use Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 3.0 to create a game with the theme “Giants” in less than 48 hours. They actually had about 27 hours. It started yesterday (Friday March 20th) at 11am and finished today (Saturday March 21st) at about 5pm. The event was hosted by the University of Huddersfield in Canalside West.

Myself and Daryl Marples were there representing the staff. Speaking from my perspective it was an excellent 2 days filled with creativity, technical wonder, junk food and energy drinks and lots of rockband…. oh and still unbeaten at Sega Rally ;o) . The judges included representatives from Microsoft, Rockstar, Tuna and University of Wales, Newport. Huddersfield students took the prizes for Best Art, Most Experimental and 1st place overall. Many congratulations to all the teams that took part. *I promise to get better screen shots etc asap*

1st Overall: “Arrogant Incas” by team “Birthday Cake”

Best Art: “Impossible Tusk” by team “Salt, Pepper, Done!”

Most Experimental: “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” by team “Nothing Personal”

“Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” demo on YouTube

All prizes…

Overall

1st: Birthday Cake with Arrogant Incas
2nd: Team Awesome with Giggas
3rd: UoD with Tetriangle

Special Prizes:

Best Art: Salt Pepper Done with Impossible Tusk
Most Experimental: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
Oohh Shiny Prize: Krunch Bunch
Plagiarism Prize: Drop Dead Interactive with Faceless Corporation
Most Unfinshed Game: Naked Cow with Torchlight

You can see photos from the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixellabphotos/sets/72157623466047564/?page=2 (bottom row of page 2, then all of pages 3/4/5). Videos from the event are at http://vimeo.com/groups/x48/videos. The main X48 site can be found at http://www.x48gamecamp.com/.

We were also on the Huddersfield Examiner website, see here.

I will update this post as and when more screenshots, photos and videos become available. The organisation was looked after by pixel-lab but from the Huddersfield side, special thanks to Oscar, the student helpers, the technicians who were on hand all of the time and everyone else involved.

Once again, congratulations to all the teams!