games development
June Newsletter
Bristol Games Hub Newsletter
The latest updates from the hub, news from Bristol & SW developers, jobs, opportunities & events.
Bristol Games Hub is a non-profit space for games and play. We run this newsletter, host events and also rent desk space at a cost price with no strings attached so you can get on and create amazing games. Contact debbie at aurochdigital dot com for more information or with news items for the next newsletter and let us know if you have any news you would like sharing in the next one by 15th July please!
Next Games Hub Anti-Social: 27th August, 7.30pm
We’ll give you more info on what they will be closer to the time, but stick the date in your diaries! If you have a suggestion for a talk, drop us an email!
Games Hub News:
BGH Marketing Group Meetup
The Hub marketing group, an informal meet-up of people to talk about the means and ways to market games, is meeting on Wednesday 17th at 7.30pm. We’re talking Reddit & Facebook this time plus a general chat. If you want to come along, please email tom at aurochdigital dot com so we know you’re coming as numbers are limited! If you can’t make it, we’ve got an email discussion group too here.
Going to Develop: Brighton?
We’re putting together an informal dinner for developers, on the evening of the Tuesday 14th. If you are interesting in coming for some food, drop us an email to debbie at aurochdigital dot com. Spaces are limited, so we can’t promise anything!
Monday 22nd June: Unity Meetup – More Procedural Meshes!
Full info is below in events. Info page is here.
SW Freelancer/Company Dev Directory
If you’re looking for people to help on a project, or you are available for work – put your details in. Please only list info you’re happy to have in the public domain:http://bit.ly/bghdirectory
SW Game Dev Jobs Facebook page – Find roles and post new openings here…
Dev Scene News
Pocket Gamer Connects – San Francisco
After successes in London, Helsinki, and Bangalore, Pocket Gamer Connects is going stateside and bringing the premier mobile-focused B2B event to San Francisco on the 7th and 8th of July. More information is available at pgconnects.com, and you can keep up with the event on #PGCSanFran. If you’re headed out there, contact Bristol-based journalist Peter Willington, who will be in attendance.
More info links:
http://www.pgconnects.com/
https://twitter.com/search?q=%23pgcsanfran
Or contact Peter on; peter.willington at steelmedia dot co dot uk
Creative Gaming Award
PLAY15 festival introduces the new ‘Creative Gaming Award’ You can submit concepts, alpha and/or beta for any game that deals with the medium in a creative way. Categories are;
– Most Creative Game
– Most Innovative Newcomer
Deadline is 15th July and there is no cost to enter and winner gets €3000! Full info on this PDF.
Auroch Digital
First off, a huge thanks to all who have signal-boosted the news of Dark Future: Blood Red States. We had great coverage from PC Gamer, Kotaku, Game Debate, Rock Paper Shotgun, Pocket Tactics and many more! We’ve also announced the winner of our Chainsaw Warrior: Lords of the Night competition – to write the best 80s action movie style review! We’re also recruiting and have a jobs page on our site now, which can be found here and below.
Twice Circled
Twice Circled, “I released the Big Pharma beta earlier this month. It’s a game about running your own pharmaceutical company. I’ve been astounded by the response from Youtubers/streamers with some really high profile people covering it, including Northern Lion and Sips from The Yogscast. Despite a few graphical bugs and some performance problems, the general reception has been overwhelmingly positive and I couldn’t be happier. The full release on Steam is planned for later this year. For further information, head over to the official website.”
Jobs & Opportunities
Auroch Digital
We have now filled the Producer role (and welcome Kelly Venables to the team!) We’ve still got open vacancies for an experienced programmer and an office manger/book keeper! http://www.aurochdigital.com/jobs/
Creative Youth Network
Creativeyouthnetwork.org.uk do great work with young people and are looking for a paid mentor to help a talented upcoming game developer – anyone interested?
Events Diary
Games Hub Marketing Group (June 17th 7.30pm)
Join us at Bristol Games Hub for a peer learning session about how to tell fans about our games. We’ll be looking at social media and Reddit. Email tom at auroch digital dot com if you want to come along!
Lunchtime Talk: Bringing computing into the real world (1pm Friday 19 June – Pervasive Media Studio)
We all love our computers, but generally they are mostly something we keep indoors. In this week’s talk, the PM Studio are delighted to welcome digital artist and creative coder Seb Lee-Delisle to the Studio. Seb will be showing us that really amazing things can happen when we take our computers into the elements.
http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/events/fri-19062015-100pm
Wales Games Developer Show (June 19th)
Pop over the border to see what the great devs in Wales have been up to and make some new connections! Info is here: http://www.walesgamesdevshow.org/
Unity Meetup – More Procedural Meshes! (June 22nd 7.30pm)
At Bristol Games Hub: The Unity meetup is back, on a Monday no less! This time around we have the second instalment on how to create 3D models from code ready for you. In this final part of his talk, Alexander will cover the following topics:
- A short recap on creating procedural meshes to introduce newcomers to the topic and provider a refresher to everyone who attended last time
- UV coordinates & Texturing. How to put pretty pictures on the surfaces of your meshes.
- Bezier curves. Create smooth curves to define surfaces or paths
- Delaunay Triangulation. Turn an arbitrary series of points into a surface with Triangle.Net
Signup to the meetup can be found on our meetup page:
http://www.meetup.com/Bristol-Unity-Game-Developers-Meetup/events/223161687/
Board Game Night (1st July, 7.30pm)
Join us at Bristol Games Hub on 1st July to play amazing board games. Bring a title along and/or join in another game. All welcome – email tom at aurochdigital dot com if you want to come along.
Lunchtime Talk: Hardware Startups, Manufacturing, and the Far East: a how to (1pm Friday 17 July – Pervasive Media Studio)
This week the PM Studio welcomes back product designer, maker, manufacturing engineer and 3D printing enthusiast Richard de Lancey. He was nominated for Stuff Magazine’s Design of the Year award for his work on AlphaSphere and is currently running his third startup business; DELCO – a design and manufacture agency based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
http://www.watershed.co.uk/pmstudio/events/fri-17072015-100pm
Quick Links
- Why start-ups fail. Learn from those who have.
- Moral codes in gaming.
- The making of Lemmings
- The quiet growth of the games industry
Thanks all!
Wellcome Trust and Epic Games Launch Big Data VR Challenge
This is a great opportunity peeps! Need to email them by the 31st March if interested!
THE WELLCOME TRUST AND EPIC GAMES LAUNCH: THE BIG DATA VR CHALLENGE
The Evolution of Data Visualisation – Taking Research to the Next Level
Tuesday, March 24th 2015 – For many, the collision of the video games world with the serious business of biomedical and humanities research seems like an unlikely event, but that’s exactly what the Big Data VR Challenge is designed to facilitate.
By harnessing some of the brightest minds in interactive entertainment, the Challenge is attempting to solve an ever-present problem in research – how to sift through huge data sets to find connections, trends and solutions in order to unlock hidden meanings.
The Challenge is a joint initiative from the Wellcome Trust and Epic Games, and today marks the call for submissions. At stake is a $20,000 prize for the winning team, whilst all six participating teams will each receive $5,000 to cover out of pocket expenses. The selected teams will be invited to participate in the first workshop at the Wellcome Trust on Thursday 9th April when three research topics will be unveiled.
Dr. John Williams, Head of Science Strategy, Performance and Impact at the Wellcome Trust, said: “We are lucky to live in a world where we are surrounded by an astonishing amount of data in all its various, sometimes nebulous, forms. Researchers need to be able to handle data better – to follow threads, play with connections and immerse themselves – without feeling overwhelmed. This is where the skills of the games industry can really help. The Big Data VR Challenge has the potential to convert that information into knowledge for the wider benefit of the research community, and that is hugely exciting.”
The highly immersive nature of virtual reality provides the best format in which to explore the potential threads and connections that may present themselves within huge data sets. The Challenge will explore how skills like intuitive UI development, management and manipulation
of large data sets and the creation of immersive, inherently understandable worlds can be usefully applied to the scientific community. Game developers are familiar with working with large data sets.
A modern open world game, for example, is built from a huge amount of data, combining massive geometry, textures and sounds and a lot of effort goes into building processes to transform, load and validate all of that data.
The Challenge will also explore how entertainment-focused game design skills can impact the handling of big scientific data sets which are not necessarily innately engaging, easily understandable, or traditionally entertaining.
“Year on year, the games industry continues to improve the science behind these amazing pieces of entertainment. The calculations required to recreate a lifelike environment are enormous. Our latest demo enables a player to explore more than 250 square kilometers of open terrain which is all generated in real time, something that would have been unthinkable as little as two years ago. Game developers are continually pushing the boundaries of what is possible, which in a way gives them a strong affinity with science researchers who are trying to define the unknown,” commented Mike Gamble, European Territory Manager, Epic Games.
Teams with an interest in creating immersive VR experiences are invited to apply to take part in the Big Data VR Challenge, which will be run with peer review during the development stage, and a jury to determine the overall outcome. The Challenge will culminate at this year’s Develop Conference in Brighton. In the first instance, studios should register an interest in participating by sending an email to bigdataVR@bastion.co.uk. Applications to participate will close at midnight on Tuesday 31st March.
About Unreal Engine
Developed by Epic Games, the award-winning Unreal Engine is known for bringing high-fidelity experiences to PC, console, mobile, Web and VR. Unreal Engine accelerates the creation of games, applications, simulations, visualizations and cinematic content. Download Unreal Engine for free at unrealengine.com, and follow @UnrealEngine for updates.
About the Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a global charitable foundation dedicated to improving health. We provide more than £700 million a year to support bright minds in science, the humanities and the social sciences, as well as education, public engagement and the application of research to medicine.