Nerf Firepower

One of my ambitions is never to hold or fire a real gun. But that doesn’t stop me from playing with toy ones every now and then. At Three Thing Game we had a kind of mini arms-race when Christophe turned up with his little Nerf gun and James went home and came back with one of the above. Which is astonishing. It is two guns that make into one big one. It has a sight and everything. And of course I had to have one.

Turns out that ToysRus have them on offer. And if you reserve on-line you get a five pound voucher that you can spend at the store next month. I’m going to use mine to buy some more darts…..

Three Thing Game Rocked

These are all the survivors, given the HDR treatment. There’s a clean version on Flickr too, along with around 100 pictures taken during the event.

Yesterday was a great day. Everything was wonderful apart from the bit where I found nothing in my camera where a battery should be. However, thanks to a Sony Bloggie that I happened to have with me just in case of such stupidity, we managed to get videos of all the teams and their games. At the moment I’m transcoding them as fast as I can and putting them on YouTube. Search for the tag threethinggamemarch2012 if you want to see them. The rest of the videos will be up tomorrow.

A huge vote of thanks to Dave G, for making the lab available and being there to make it work, Adam for tech support, Martin for night watchman duty, Warren, Derek, Kevin, David M, Simon and Stuart for judging support, Jackie for sorting out the Sony connection, Mark for sorting the food and David P for turning up to provide support.

And kudos to the students for making the best games we’ve ever seen at Three Thing Game. We had some great stuff shown off this time.  And here is the winners roll.

Winners: “The Infamous Two Sirs” Christophe and Rob with “Pocket Starlight” which took “Boy, Contraption and High-Jump” to altogether another level.

Second place: “Run Dead Studios” Russell, Alex and Jon took “Sheep, Fireworks and High dive” and made “Shear Carnage” for Windows Phone. That really should be in the Marketplace by, say, last week.

Third Place: “BRB”, Alexsejs,     Arturs,   Nataloya, and Paul managed to work the Olympics into a snazzy spaceship shooter from the words “Alien, Spaceship and ‘at night’”. Again, that should be on your Windows Phone real soon.

One more prize to go, the “People’s Choice” award that was judged by the teams themselves. I’ll have the results of this tomorrow, when I’ve finished crunching the numbers.

Some tips for next time:

Just about everybody grasped the “simple is good” principle. Lots of teams got something working and then added to it. Others weren’t afraid to drop complication to get things going. After all, if the player doesn’t know that the original gameplay design included rabbits with laser eyes they are not going to miss them if they get dropped. This is the single most important factor in success. Having lots of ideas is great. Feeling you have to make them all work and put them in version 1 is not. Keep a “book of features” and write them all down. Then put them in order of implementation and work your way through.

The next most important thing is to make a proper game. What you make should be like a story. It should have have a beginning, a middle and an end. Don’t just make the middle bit, that’s a tech demo. Figure out how you sent the scene, what the player does in gameplay and how they fail/succeed. And put all this in. It is better to have a game that goes all the way to “Game Over” than adding extra features to the middle bit but never let it end.

Make it social. Some games let the players put their scores on Facebook. Bragging rights are big. And sometimes much easier to add than you might think (step forwards Windows Phone).

When you come to present your results don’t spread the blame. Don’t blame Fred for baling and leaving you with no graphics. The judges don’t want to hear your problems. Never say you ran out of time. It just makes you sound like a bad planner and the judges know that you had just as much time as everyone else.  If you must mention something that isn’t how you wanted it to be, talk about future plans and developments in a positive light.

Whatever you did, get something out there. Blog screenshots, put games in Windows Phone Marketplace or wherever you can. Just about everything I saw over the weekend had potential. Make sure you show your stuff off. It can only do you favours.

And, and this is the most important bit, Have Fun. Lots of people did, and that’s why they’ll be back next time. And do even better.

Update on 2012-03-20 20:29 by Rob

I've got most of the videos up on YouTube now. We had some camera problems with some of them, for which I apologise. I'm going to buy a whole bunch of nice big SD cards so that we don't have this problem again. Special kudos to the Sony Bloggie which did a really good job of capturing several of the presentations.

Update on 2012-03-20 22:35 by Rob

There is a very cheesy picture of me, and some news and video from TTG here.

Three Thing Game Ends

Just a very quick note to let you know that the competition is over. I’m a bit too tired to put a full breakdown on the site just now, but the picture above is a clue that might help you work out who won. Pictures and videos tomorrow.

Three Thing Game Starts

Perhaps the best way to make sure you do well in Three Thing Game

The competition started today. Find out more here.  Pictures  here.

Dragon for a day

- what would you do with this?

I got to be a dragon today. For a little while. Elliot, one of our final year students, is doing one a module which is all about teaching computing in schools. He had the neat idea of asking Emma to show our HIVE Immersive Visualisation Suite to his group and then getting them to pitch business plans based on the technology they’d seen.

And he needed some dragons for the pupils to pitch to. Which is where I came in. So today we got to see the presentations.

Most impressive. Virtual golf on a cruise ship, using motion capture to sell fashion, 3D mapping for fire safety and the winner, an immersive take on driving lessons.

All presented with enthusiasm and not a little business acumen. To say that this was probably the first time these folks had presented to an audience in this way they did a very impressive job. As I said at the time, make sure that when you are telling people the things that you have done you mention you’ve done stuff like this. Great stuff.

Hull Computer Science Blogs

I tell all my students to start a blog. Not because they’ll instantly get loads of readers, or because the world necessarily cares much what they think right now (sad but true) but because it is good practice for writing.

Writing is important. It is how we tell people stuff. Being good at writing is a really useful skill to have. And like any skill it gets better if you practice. I’ve been blogging for the thick end of 10 years or so (and I do mean the thick end). I’ve set myself the goal of writing something different every day and I’ve mostly kept at it. It has made me much better at writing. I can turn out a few hundred words really quickly now if I need to. And the words make a lot more sense than when I started. Or as I used to say “Sense words make much more now. Want cookie.”

The lovely thing is that quite a few Hull students have taken my advice to heart and even got together to bring you all their stories in one big chunk of blogging goodness. If you head over to http://hullcompsciblogs.com/ then you can see what they are up to.

I hope they all keep at it. Starting a blog is easy. Keeping it going is the hard part. You don’t need to write every day, but you do need to have writing as part of your routine. And when you do something, even if it is just go see a movie, try to put down a piece that sets out what you thought about it. And keep an eye out for things to write about. As I always say:

“What doesn’t kill you makes a darned good blog post.”

Sorry about this

Update on 2012-03-15 19:42 by Rob

Years ago I did this blog post along the lines of "If you aren't finding shelfish particularly relaxing you may have bought the 'Little Book of Clam' by mistake." Every since then I've been tickled by the way you can swap two letters round and get a lovely, absurd, result. Then, in the Programming 2 Lecture today one of the students had a "Keep Calm and Carry On" T-Shirt, and I knew how I was going to spend my lunch hour......

Media Magnet

Jake Zukerman of BBC Look North sets up Lindsay for another take….

In between all the lectures and labs and other stuff for today we had BBC Radio Humberside drop by for a chat with some of our students and then BBC Look North came by to find out more about Three Thing Game and Platform Expo. The radio session was a hoot. Steve Redgrave (someone I’ve known since before he was famous) came along and did a storming interview with a bunch of our First Year students who told him all about the joys of studying Computer Science at Hull.

The filming was fun too, although I never know where to put my eyes when someone is taking video of me. If I look at the camera I worry about seeming too intense, and if I look around I worry about seeming too shifty. And then there is the vexed question of which is my best side….

Anyhoo, it all passed off well enough. Yesterday we had a reporter and a photographer from the Hull Daily Mail come to see us and today I was delighted to find that the article had made it to print, with a great picture of some of our students and some quotes from a bloke referred to as “Rob Mile”. I’ll take that as close enough..

Later on Darren did a very good session about PS Suite, which is the new Sony game development they will be releasing later this year. We’ve got special permission for our students to use it in the Three Thing Game competition, and Stuart Lovegrove of Sony Studios in Liverpool will be taking a look at the things that they have made.

All gripping stuff. And then tonight I’ve managed to build a Gadgeteer device that can talk to my Eggbot. Exciting times.

Platform Expo 2012 Needs You

One of these could be yours…

Platform Expo 2012 is picking up speed. It is all happening on the University Campus over the weekend with a whole host of events including our little Three Thing Game programming competition. I heard today that the folks from Raspberry Pi will be making an appearance, along with all kinds of other really interesting folks. You can find the complete program here, an there are special deals for Hull students that want to come along and join in.

Or you could go for free. The organisers are looking for Helpful Souls who will be happy to take lend a hand. In return for spending some time showing people around the campus, helping folks set up and generally being a “Really Useful Engine” you will get free access to the event, a T shirt and a lovely Ubisoft goodie bag. This is the kind of helpfulness that also looks good on your CV.

If you are interested in this opportunity or would like to find out more details, please send an email to Brett Rogers at minigrim@minigrim.karoo.co.uk and specify which day you are interesting in working, either Saturday/Sunday or both.

Imagine Cup Preliminary Summary Due

Today is the last chance for submitting your Preliminary Summary document for your entries into the Imagine Cup Software Development challenge. You need to send in your document (at least 600 characters – so no Tweets) by the end of today.

Note that this is not something that will contribute to your judged score, it is more of a “sanity check” for the entry. For example if you said something like “We are thinking of creating a social networking site for everyone to use and we are going to call it "’Book of Faces’” then the Imagine Cup team might come back and politely suggest that something similar has been done before and you might like to change your approach slightly.

If you change the basis of your entry, perhaps targeting a different set of users or using a different technology in the light of your experience then this is absolutely fine, but if you completely change direction then you should send an update to the Imagine Cup team to let them know. As I write this (9:00 am GMT) you have around 15 hours to get your submission in. So get too it.

Three Thing Game Auction

These are the teams with the things that they bought.

Three Thing Game March 2012 is rolling. We have 33 teams (yes, 33!) with a total of 111 students taking part. Today we gave each team their Three Things to work with. Actually we didn’t just give them out. We sold them. Each team had 530 “Bank of Thingland” pounds to bid for things. If a lot came up that they fancied they could make a bid for it. We had to auction 99 things in 50 minutes, and we just about made it. Tremendous fun. The development starts now, with the 24 hour game development running over Saturday night.

Happy 40th Birthday Darren

Notice how Darren (HellBoy) has filed down his two horns to just a couple of yellow marks on his head, specially for his birthday…

It was Darren’s 40th birthday yesterday. He knew this. What he didn’t know was that we did too. So when he turned up for a “jetlagged drink” this evening he wasn’t quite expecting a whole bunch of folks to jump out and say surprise. So we did.

Great fun was had by all, lots of familiar faces, drink, and cake. Number one wife reminded me that the next “big birthday” for me will be my sixtieth. Can’t wait.

Open Day and Holy Trinity HDR

I took this in Hull Holy Trinity Church this morning while I was up town shopping. It is an HDR picture made from five original images. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

Then, this afternoon we had our last Saturday open day of the season. As usual I took a shot of the audience:

Another good turnout. And of course we had a lucky (!?) winner of my XNA book.

After the open day it was back home to vacuum round the house (what  lifestyle I have) and spend some more time playing with HDR pictures.

I quite like this one too. Next time I’m going back with a proper tripod. Balancing the camera against bits of the furniture doesn’t always make for the best compositions.

If you live in Hull and you haven’t had a look around Hull Holy Trinity church then you are missing out. It has an interior that would put quite a few Minsters to shame.

Three Thing Game Funny Money

Spent a few minutes this afternoon making some money for the Three Thing Game auction on Monday. Teams will each be given a wad of cash each to bid for “Things” they can use in their games. 1:15 pm in Lecture Theatre A, Robert Blackburn Building. Should be fun.

(James just asked me how it is going to work. Actually, at the moment I have really no idea….)

Hull Digital March Meetup

This evening I went off to the Hull Digital March Meetup. We had a talk from Steve Bell of Kingston Communications about the upcoming fibre optic developments in the city. It looks like we are going to get some seriously fast networking around the place, I’m looking forward to getting it where I live. Then we had a talk from Gareth Hanson and Dave Foy who run 'Woof', an on-line marketing consultancy based in Hull. They were talking about Google Analytics. I use it on this site to carefully track all my visitors and analyse the effect of changes to the content so that I can relentlessly tune the material to increase the number of visitors and make them stay longer.

Actually I don’t. Because my blog is not really a business as such. I have Google Analytics enabled, and every now and then I go and look at which way the curves are going, but I don’t really do much with the information. But the important thing is that I could. Gareth and Dave made the point that by proper configuration of the analytic content in your pages you can find out where readers “bounce” from the site and the effectiveness of each step of your transactions. The bottom line is that if you are serious about making the most of your web presence, and finding out which of your pages are working hardest for you, you should look into this technology.

The Muppets

I’ve enjoyed The Muppets since first seeing their TV shows way back when. And A Muppet Christmas Carol is one of the best films ever made. Tonight we went to see the latest Muppet Film. Well worth a visit, although you’ll be humming the songs long after you have left the cinema.

Make TouchDevelop apps and put them in Windows Phone Marketplace

One of the many neat things that I saw at SIGCSE last week was TouchDevelop. This lets you write Windows Phone programs on your Windows Phone. The programming language and the user interface have been carefully crafted to work on a small handheld platform. If you have done a bit of programming already you should have no problem creating simple scripts to do all manner of interesting things. There’s even a simple sprite engine with physics support for game creation. There’s a free book about it that you can download.

It’s early days yet, but the developers of the environment have just taken a massive step towards making the platform into a genuinely useful place to create things. They’ve made it possible to publish your TouchDevelop scripts in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Up until now you could spread your scripts around to other phone owners, but only via the TouchDevelop phone application. Now you can distribute your TouchDevelop applications and games to the entire Windows Phone owning world. This means you could get on a bus with nothing but your Windows Phone and a good idea. And then get off the bus three hours later with a completed application which is ready for sale. Amazing stuff.

Find out more here.

Three Thing Game Rides Again

These are the teams from last time with their random things. This time we are having a “Thing Auction” which should be fun.

We launched the latest “Three Thing Game” competition today. Teams were invited to sign up for our game development competition which starts with three things. You can find out all about it at www.threethinggame.com. We are very lucky this time because Stuart Lovegrove from Sony is coming to help the judging and tell us a bit about PS Vita development. In fact a couple of our teams are quite keen on entering with a game for that platform. The good news for them is that the development environment for the Vita is C#, which is the language we teach at Hull.

We’ve already had quite a few teams sign up, but if you are Hull student you should find an entry form in your inbox. Fill it in and bring it along as soon as you can (places are limited) if you want to take part.

Update on 2012-03-07 09:32 by Rob

I really must get my ears syringed, or something. Turns out that people said "PS Suite" and I heard PS Vita. We will be making games using PS Suite, not for the Vita platform.  

Lumia 800 Battery Life Tips

When I first got my Lumia 800 I did some tweaks to improve battery life. I’ve just passed them on to a fellow owner, and they helped for him too, and so I thought I’d blog them (mainly so I don’t forget myself)

I turned off “Synchronise game requests” on the Game settings and “Notify me when new networks are found” from the WiFi settings. I also set “Download new content” to 30 minutes on both my email inboxes. I configured the Kindle application to display text as white on a black background, this makes a big difference to the consumption on the OLED display.

With these settings, which don’t cause me any inconvenience at all I can get a day of use out of the phone with enough left to limp through a second day on battery saver mode if I forget to charge the phone overnight.

Home to Windows 8

Got home to Hull this morning at 11:00 am. As I had rather cleverly (if getting up at 4:00 am for three days counts as clever) kept my body clock on UK time while I was away, I wasn’t suffering too much from jetlag, although I was suffering a bit from lack of sleep.

Anyhoo, I was wide awake enough to download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and install it on my Acer Iconia W500 tablet. I’d put the Developer Preview on the device earlier, and I thought it might work well. It does. I’ve got me a snappy Windows tablet that works a treat. If you’ve got one of these devices and want some Windows 8 goodness you can find a useful howto here. This was written for the Developer Preview of Windows 8 but it works fine with the latest version too.

Windows 8 itself is interesting. It really is a system of two halves. The Metro powered Start Menu gives you Live Tiles and a very finger friendly environment. The desktop gives you a, well, desktop that looks and behaves pretty much like being at home, although it is noticeably quicker than previous versions of Windows. Startup and shutdown times have shrunk dramatically  too.

The Acer running Windows 8 is a reasonable iPad substitute. It even has a Marketplace where you can download and install applications, including a free copy of “Cut the Rope” which is a really good game. And of course I can plug in a keyboard and a mouse and then fire up Visual Studio to do some proper development.

I’m looking forward to seeing Windows 8 running on “pure” slates/tablets which are based on ARM technology. With built in Live Mesh integration you should be able to move between different platforms really easily, using the iPad like devices to consume information and the Windows Desktop behaviours to produce it.

Actually, for me one of the best things about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is the version of Pinball FX which is shipped with it. This is a very good implementation of the game and it runs really well, even on my little Acer.