Games design students develop prototype at global event

Together with an international team, UCLan games design students Leigh Hadfield, Jarkko Kouva and Vytautas Januskevicius used the Unity Engine to create a very successful and engaging platformer game ‘Kevin’ for the PC. The trip was funded by the International Travel Student Bursary and organised by Rhoda Daly, Lecturer, Games Design, University of Central Lancashire.

Global Games Jam is a worldwide annual event supported by the games industry and educational institutions.
Within a 48 hour session university students and industry professionals work together to develop prototype video games. Students from UCLan were invited to participate in this year’s event at the University Of Applied Sciences Hogeschool Van Amsterdam.

Leigh combined his role as level designer with team captaincy, where he was responsible for ensuring all work flows were consistent and efficient.
He said: “Competing in the Global Game Jam was a fantastic experience, I feel what I have learnt will become invaluable to me as my career progresses. The highlight was being put in charge of a fantastic team who managed to produce the game that we envisaged.

We started from a whole host of concepts and from this we were able to narrow this down to a singular idea and this lead to the game development stage. I myself was responsible for keeping the team’s communication fluent, no easy task with six of the team members hailing for different countries. We used my initial concept for the game although this was changed and adapted as certain situations arose that were not within our control. As team captain it was down to me to ensure that all work flows would be consistent and efficient whilst also working on my creative role as level designer. I was able to apply a technique to level design that is not commonly seen which involved creating a visual paper level that was played with a character on a spoon. This gave me a feel for the flow and also how the mechanics were going to fit into the system we were creating. It also gave the freedom to make rapid changes on the fly as and when required. My project management skills were put to full effect and I was able to balance my time between creative input and project lead to great effect, something I feel cannot be taught in a classroom, only through unique experiences such as this. I would highly recommend this process of learning to anybody, to create a game in 48 hours and experience the benefits and limitations of game design can only enhance both reputation and skill set.

Reflecting on the event, Jarkko said:
“To have people in the same team from different backgrounds, all working together to make a game in 48 hours was an eye opening experience.
“We had many ups and downs in our development process. This project taught me how important it is to have a solid plan before making a game.
Global Game Jam was a fantastic experience and an eye opener. To have people in the same team from different backgrounds. All working together towards a single goal: to make a game in 48 hours. In a environment like that you can not be self-centered. Brainstorming and starting out was definitely the hardest part, when people had a lot of opinions and not that much experience working as a team before. We had 3 artists with different skillsets and style, including myself.
Through art exploration we managed to come up with an simple style that was fast to make, and easy to follow.
This project taught me how important is it to have a solid plan before making a game. We had many ups and downs in our development process. How good is it to have a broad skillset, so you can help others and fill in all the missing parts when working in a small team. What is it like to work in a team, learn new workflow and share your knowledge for greater purpose.

For second year student Vytautas, the event provided him with his first experience of working on an actual game.
He commented: “Working in a team can be very hard without good leadership and organization therefore I am very thankful for my fellow teammates Leigh and Jarkko who led the whole team to finish line.

Participating in the GGJ2014 as a second year games design student was a great experience for me because this was my very first time working on an actual game. Squeezing into a strict time limit was a challenge for me as I tend to work for myself with out worrying about the time limit. The whole event wouldn't have been so successful if not the determination and the team work."

Thanks to Global Game Jam and everyone involved!"

Pathfinding algorithms on grids

tháng 3 09, 2014 pathfinding No comments

The usual pathfinding algorithms I use — Breadth First Search, Dijsktra's Algorithm, A* — run on graphs. In my previous post I described how grids can be viewed as graphs. Most of the time, pathfinding on grids is fine. However, if you need more performance, grids contain additional structure that standard graph algorithms don't take advantage of. I wrote up some notes about this, either transforming your grid into a smaller graph, or modifying the pathfinding algorithm to harness the structure of grids. It's not something I've had to do in my own projects so if you have additional references or words of advice, I'd love to hear how I can improve that page.

Games design first years using 'actual' Ether-One assets.

tháng 3 05, 2014 Games design first years using 'actual' Ether-One assets. No comments

Pete Bottomley from WhitePaper Games recently introduced a level design project to Uclan games design first year students where they will create playable environments in UDK using 'actual' Ether-One assets.

Ether One is a first person adventure game that deals with the fragility of the human mind.

Your role is to piece together fragments of your clients history in order to help them.

So it’s finally here. We’re really happy to hear that White Paper Games have a brand new teaser trailer with the date of March 25th for release!
YouTube Link

Graph theory for pathfinding

tháng 3 04, 2014 grids, pathfinding No comments

While updating my pathfinding pages, I realized that although I cover graph-based pathfinding algorithms, I don't actually explain what graphs are or why we use them. So I wrote a short tutorial on graphs and grids.

Peter Field from 'Media Molecule' visits Uclan Games design

tháng 3 02, 2014 Peter Field from 'Media Molecule' visits Uclan Games design No comments

It was great to see Peter Field in the games design studio yesterday.
It meant a lot to all of us to have Peter re-visit the University of Central Lancashire and share his industry experience with us. Since graduating at UCLan, Peter has worked at Ninja Theory on 'Enslaved', Naughty Dog on 'Uncharted 3' and 'The Last of Us' and is now designing games at Media Molecule.
We're really proud of what Peter has achieved and it's great to know that he's happy to come back and see us and share some of his expertise.
I know the students enjoyed his presentation and found it really valuable.
We're looking forward to next time.

Arthur Parsons, Design Director at Travellers Tales, Warner Bros. visits Uclan

tháng 3 02, 2014 Arthur Parsons, Design Director at Travellers Tales, Warner Bros. visits Uclan No comments

We have been SO spoiled this last few weeks with visits from industry!!
On Friday we were lucky enough to have a visit to University of Central Lancashire from Arthur Parsons, Design Director at Travellers Tales, Warner Bros. Arthur gave a presentation about the recent brilliant Lego games that TT-Games have made, one being the fantastic Lego Marvel Super Heroes: http://marvelsuperheroes.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx
All undergraduate games students were invited along to join this MA Session and listen to Arthur's talk and we all learned so much about designing for an IP.
Arthur is always really generous with his time and advice and spent time afterwards chatting

to students and looking at student portfolios.
A great day at Games Design Course Uclan - for all of us ...again.