University of Huddersfield 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!

Huddersfields Black Banshee team, made up of Canalside studio‘s Helen Fricker, Ben Blakemore and Chris White won Best Art for their game Squniverse at X48 in Birmingham.

X48 is a marathon gamecamp where students and indie developers use Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 3.0 to create a game in less than 48 hours.

I went to chat to the team for some insight into the game.

Squniverse (skew-ne-verse) is a unique platform adventure puzzle game. It’s quick, fun and arcadey with a cartoony art style, which really complements the game.

You play as an explorer in a strange world looking for the ends of the universe. Each planet acts a as level, each containing Helium veins, which you must mine to fuel your balloon. This balloon allows you to fly to each new planet. Beware of the ‘SPACE SQUIRRELS’ as they are protecting the Helium on each planet and they will even sacrifice their nuts just to try and stop you.

The team added “This game idea came about quite slowly, as we didn’t really get any main idea pinned down until 6 hours into the event! We sat down and drew out the whole game again, keeping one main element from the original game plan – moving from planet to planet, we all agreed this was a good way to go. There was something missing though; how would the game be a challenge?!! – Easy …Space squirrels!… after a lot of planning we got straight back to the making of it! It was a very tiring experience, but was worth it”.

A unique game borne out of one student’s dream has won the top prize from Microsoft’s international competition, the Imagine Cup.

Games Design student Ben Hinchliffe, along with his team, have won a two week placement at RARE studios, the company who created the hugely successful ‘Viva Piñata’ game for the XBox. The team used XNA programming to create ‘Drizzle’, a PC- and XBox-playable game which highlights the problem of acid rain. The objective is to catch the acid rain as it falls to the earth and convert it into water, which is then used to grow trees. As the trees multiply, the smog covering the earth disperses to reveal a green haven. Progressive levels reveal different countries which need to be purged of smog, until the completion of the game where the whole world is green. Fellow Games Design students David North and Anthony Trolley, alongside Games Programming student Karl Mitson spent five months designing and developing the game and presented it at the awards show, drawing a crowd of impressed gamers and sparking an interest from RARE.

The Imagine Cup is billed as the World’s premiere technology competition and has, for the first time this year, extended its brief to include a Games Development category. The competition challenged the creative and technical skills of students and individuals from all over the globe to create a game which is not only entertaining but promotes the creation of a sustainable environment.

Team leader Ben Hinchliffe explains: “The idea came about following a dream I had of me playing the very game we have now created. At first, I thought nothing of it – just that it would be an interesting project to pursue when I had the time. But shortly after, I saw the brief for the Imagine Cup competition and thought it was so weird that my idea matched the specifications of the competition so closely; maybe it was a premonition! We worked really hard for five months on the game and we’re really chuffed that it did so well.”

The recent competition win is the next step in the continued success of the University’s School of Computing & Engineering. Microsoft were so impressed with the team’s DreamBuildPlay entry, ‘Yo Ho Kablammo!’, last year that they will be releasing the game worldwide as part of their Arcade LIVE package, meaning players from all over the globe will be able to compete against each other in the pirate-style game. Informatics Subject Leader Damian De Luca explains:

“This is such a competitive area so it’s great as a School and as a university to have students that win both nationally and internationally. To have a group of students who are capable of succeeding at this level – not just once but year after year – proves there is something special about our students and that they really do deserve this kind of acclaim.

“We are the only university that is actually contracted to Microsoft as a publisher – we have a working studio that takes conference calls from the team in Seattle and we are actually publishing globally-played games – this really sets us apart in a big way. Students here are given a true experience of not only designing and programming games, but following them all the way through to the release date – this is a unique experience we are very glad to be able to offer our students.

(copied from http://www.hud.ac.uk/news/hudd-lines/news_stories/08_08_stories/student_game.html)

You can see the Drizzle trailer on youtube…

Congratulations!

The Game Republic Showcase is a yearly event that gives all final-year and postgraduate games students from Yorkshire and Humber a fantastic opportunity to showcase their work in front of the region’s games companies!. This years event was hosted by Sheffield Hallam University and was held on Tuesday 5th May, featuring over 70 students and 23 projects. Four Yorkshire games companies -Sumo Digital, Tuna, Team 17 and Rockstar Leeds – sponsored the awards, which featured prizes for Game Technology, Game Art, Game Design and Best Team.

Our winning entries were:

Rockstar Leeds Award for the Best Team

• 1st prize Full Scale War University of Huddersfield – Team Flash
  (Steven Hayhurst; Ben Hinchliffe; John Barnard; Michael Wood; Jamie Warden; Dale Rea-Taylor; Luke Fielding; Martin Baker, Ashley Rickman.)
• 2nd prize Jet XS University of Huddersfield – Team Awesome
  (Mark Brotherton; Karl Griffiths; Andrew Boothroyd; Edward Brown; Andrew Morgan; Samantha Testa; Ben Gouldstone; Daryoush Nekooi.)
• 3rd prize QB University of Huddersfield – Discoverable Games
  (Edward Addley; David Webb; Karl Mitson; Lee Adam; Sophie Houlden; Christopher Chadwick; William Eades; Liu Wendian; Sam Earl.)

Team 17 Award for Game Design

• 1st prize Full Scale War University of Huddersfield – Team Flash
  (Steven Hayhurst; Ben Hinchliffe; John Barnard; Michael Wood; Jamie Warden; Dale Rea-Taylor; Luke Fielding; Martin Baker, Ashley Rickman.)

Sumo Digital Award for Game Technology

• 1st prize Jet XS University of Huddersfield – Team Awesome
  (Mark Brotherton; Karl Griffiths; Andrew Boothroyd; Edward Brown; Andrew Morgan; Samantha Testa; Ben Gouldstone; Daryoush Nekooi.)

The winners of the Best Team award – the Full Scale War team from the University of Huddersfield – were given a work placement at Rockstar Leeds.

Further details at: http://www.screenyorkshire.co.uk/gamerepublic/student-showcase/

Photos of the event can be viewed at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30700599@N08/sets/72157617685250039/

(copied from http://www2.hud.ac.uk/ce/news/news-items/2009/0509-gamerepublic.php)

Youtube of the event…

Huddersfield computer games students do it again, this time at the x48 game-camp!

On Friday 20 March 2009 80 budding videogame design and development students from all over the UK took part in X48  a two-day intensive development session dedicated to gaming.

Using Microsoft’s XNA Game Studio 3.0, X48 offered the student teams an unprecedented opportunity to be mentored by and have their work reviewed by computer giant Microsoft and UK broadcaster Channel 4  key sponsors of the event produced by Pixel-Lab.

The event was themed to challenge the students to develop games that look beyond the traditional puzzle or first person shooter in a bid to create new conversations around gaming and attract the attention of new audiences.

Students from the School of Computing and Engineering’s BSc Computer Games Programming and BA Computer Games Design courses walked away with three of the six awards, including the first prize!

First Prize: Seavolution Huddersfield Green Team
Programmer: Jay Walton
Artist: Dan Fitchie

Direct link to Vimeo

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Second Prize: Involved Huddersfield Orange Team
Team Lead/Designer/Producer: Ben Hinchliffe
Lead Artist/Artwork: David North
Lead Programming/GamePlay: Karl Miston
AI Programming: Adrian Smith

Direct link to Vimeo

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Most Experimental Game: Chronofix Huddersfield Black Team
Tom Spankie
Chris Rickett
Sam Birch
Cheung Lap Pun

The winning team get passes for Microsoft’s Develop Conference (including their travel and accommodation) and a Flip Mino each.

(copied, then modified, from http://www2.hud.ac.uk/ce/news/news-items/2009/0409-xna.php)