dotBrighton

An Introduction to Shaders

Shaders are an expansive topic.  They are capable of producing a huge number of effects and they make our games look great.  Often you don’t even need to know how or why they work in many of the environments we typically use, unless of course you need something a little more specific…

In this talk, we’ll look at how a programmable shader pipeline works and some of the amazing things you can do. I’ll be showing examples along the way, including some from Futurlab’s latest game, Surge.

Biography

Jack Lang started as a Flash developer in 2007, straight out of College and itching to actually make games rather than just studying them.  Having worked for a number of Studios, he initially joined Futurlab in 2010 and went on to be part of the team working on the Playstation Minis title Velocity later in 2011.

As well as having a bit of a hand in Fat Pebble’s smash hit ClayJam, in December 2012, Futurlab released a game solely programmed by Jack called Surge.

He’s also featured in Develop’s 30 under 30 for 2012.

Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about our meetings.  

Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

Stuffing the GameToilet 

I’ve been a Flash artist & coder since the bum fell out of the pixel artist market.  For the past four years I’ve been the in-house game developer at IPC publishing-owned, sports game portalMousebreaker.  I started GameToilet, the daily game design blog, to keep a track of the ideas I hadn’t had time to develop at that point, and also because there was nothing else to do on the bus to work.

4 years on and I’m not updating it so regularly ( I’m cycling and can’t balance the sketch book on the handlebars, hoho ) and am finally getting round to making some of the little buggers.  I’ll be taking a whistle-stop tour of my favourites from the +500 ideas on the site and possibly demo-ing some of the post-blog stuff.  If I remember to charge my phone!

Twitter: @KBsGameTOILET

Raffle

In addition to KB’s talk, we will also be raffling a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 6!  The winner gets a choice of either the Design, Web or Production Premium editions.

The usual rules apply.  You have to attend the meeting to be entered into the raffle.  If you cannot make it you can nominate someone to accept the prize on your behalf, assuming they have agreed to do so and are present at the meeting.  You get one ticket for each talk you have attended since the last raffle in July.  If you have given a talk in the last 6 months you get an additional 5 tickets.  The Managers’ decision is final!

Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about our meetings.  Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

Please note that this talk has been rescheduled and will now take place on 17 October.

Hi there, my name’s Paul Hayes and I’m a developer at Plug-in Media.  Almost 6 months ago we undertook our most ambitious project to date: Leonardo. Based on a live action CBBC TV series, it was to be a narrative led, full 3D racing game, with 4 types of vehicle, and a detailed world, all from within the browser using Flash.

A project like this was the perfect opportunity to try the new Flash publishing feature of Unity. Which at the start of our project, was still in development.

The game successfully launched on the 18th of September. But what have we learnt from the experience? What problems did we overcome? And most importantly what advice can I give to stop you making the same mistakes we did? Come and find out!

Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about our meetings.  

Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

Do you want to make games?  Whether you’re a coder, designer, artist or musician, whether you’ve never made a game before or you do it for a living, whether you’ve got practical skills or just big ideas, come along to the dotBrighton Game Jam and make games together over a weekend!

Working alone or as part of a team, you’ll have 48 hours to create a game based on the theme that’ll we’ll announce at the start.  Video games, board games, card games or playground games are all welcome – get creative!

We’ll provide tutorial sessions and support from games industry professionals, a friendly, welcoming studio environment, wi-fi and refreshments.  You bring a laptop, pen and paper or ideas.

At the end of Sunday we’ll play each other’s games and award prizes.

Tutorials

We’ll be running the following sessions on the Saturday:

• Making interactive stories with Twine
• A beginner’s guide to making 3D games with Unity
• Small is beautiful – designing, developing and actually finishing short projects

FAQ

I’ve never made a game before. Is this event for me?

Yes! This event is suitable for people with all levels of experience who want to make games. All you need is enthusiasm.

Is there an age limit for this event?

This event is suitable for over 16s.

Will this event run for 48 hours straight?

We’ll be announcing the theme on Friday evening, and stopping work to play each other’s games on Sunday evening. The Skiff will be available to use during the day and into the early evening on Saturday and Sunday (exact hours to be confirmed on the Friday). You’re welcome to work on your game outside these hours at home!

Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about our meetings.  

Follow @BrightonGameJam and @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

With thanks to our sponsors:

Make everything editable

This is the mission behind the CadetEditor: to make everything editable.  Over the years we’ve spent locked in darkened rooms tinkering with various game engines and building custom experiences, one problem kept rearing its head.  Designers keep asking: Can we just move this?  Can we just change that?  Much to the developer’s bemusement…

As projects became more ambitious, editors were increasingly required where hand-editing XML or writing game levels purely in code just wouldn’t cut it.  After doing this a few times you start to spot patterns between all game engines and editors, which leads you to the question: Could we make one editor for everything?

Twitter: @CadetEditor

Biography

Failing to avail himself of a proper job post uni, Rob Silverton set up Unwrong Ltd in 2004 with his brother Ed, on a mission to build cutting-edge user experiences for the web.  Eight years later, Unwrong are proud to have collaborated on award winning projects with great production companies in Brighton, London and beyond.

Rob is enthusiastic about building rich user experiences for the web and mobile. This enthusiasm began in uni with Flash 5 and AS1, though the advent of HTML5 provided a few more toys to play with.

Recent experiments include:

A proof of concept port of three.js to Dart: http://robsilv.github.com/three.dart/

Porting the famous AS Natzke Ribbons to Dart: http://robsilv.github.com/NatzkeRibbons.dart/

And of course, launching CadetEditor for Flash: http://www.cadeteditor.com

Twitter: @robsilv

ImpactJS

Following on from this, Edd Parris will be showing us ImpactJS, a JavaScript Game Engine developed by Dominic Szablewski.

Impact allows you to develop HTML5 games for desktop and mobile browsers with ease. It can also be used to make native iOS apps.

Twitter: @empika, @impactjs

For a free ticket, please sign-up here: http://dotbrighton15aug2012.eventbrite.co.uk/

Marshmallow Laser Feast trio Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas and Barney Steel talk about their processes, going from concepts on paper, to funded, realized ideas in the commercial arena.

Using two recent projects as case studies: the Sony Playstation Projection Mapped Virals and a Quadrotor driven, techno-ballet light show, they discuss conceptual and creative development, the technical challenges encountered along the way and their experiences of dealing with and selling ideas to various clients.

The sign-up page is here: http://dotbrighton25july2012.eventbrite.co.uk/

Biographies

Memo Akten

Memo Akten is a visual artist, director, musician and engineer working at the intersection of art, technology and science.  Developing and appropriating new technologies, he explores the processes of visualizing the invisible, extracting and amplifying the unseen relationships within images, space, movement, sound and time.  Driven by the urge to make the seemingly impossible possible and to awaken our childlike instincts to explore and discover new forms of interaction and expression, he invents new ways of creating and performing images and sound.

His work ranges from live music/dance/theatre performances, large-scale immersive interactive installations and music videos, to online works and mobile applications.

Selected exhibitions and performances include the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Royal Festival Hall (London), Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), Creators Project (New York, Sao Paulo, Beijing), Holon Museum (Tel Aviv), Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (Moscow), Sydney Biennale, Design Miami, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Edinburgh Film Festival, Mapping Festival (Geneva), Yota Space Festival (St. Petersburg), Glastonbury Festival and more.

Twitter: @memotv

Robin McNicholas

Robin McNicholas is one third of Marshmallow Laser Feast and co-founder of Flat-e.  He has worked within the convergent digital arts for over 10 years, focusing on live performance.

As a director he has worked on a number of large-scale audiovisual spectacles for such entities as the Vimeo Festival + Awards, Rambert Dance Company, Aphex Twin, Ron Arad and The Creators Project.  His commercial reel includes campaigns for Sony Playstation, Land Rover, Vodafone and Warp Records.  His adventures in the Marshmallow Laser Feast universe has resulted in flying quadrotor light shows, projection-mapped kinetic staging and arena tours. He loves his job.

Twitter: @robinmcnicholas

Barney Steel

Barney Steel is a visual artist who has been working within convergent digital arts for over 12 years.  He began his career as one of the D-Fuse collective and went on to found The Found Collective(FND).  More recently he continues his adventures as a founding partner of Marshmallow Laser Feast.

Driven by a desire to explore ways of experiencing content, his work breaks away from traditional formats and engages with new technologies as a means of creating unique experiences.

As a director, his work spans Photography, Live Audio Visual performance, Music videos, TV and Film to large-scale shows and immersive interactive installations.

Throughout a diverse career he has directed Music videos for the likes of Depeche Mode, Pendulum and The Wombats.  Traveling widely throughout Asia and Europe he has produced a body of work that has been performed and exhibited around the world in such places as the V&A (London), Onedotzero (Rotterdam), the Seoul Film Festival and British Council (throughout Asia).

His commercial clients include: Ron Arad, Depeche Mode, Warner Music, Sony, UBS, McLaren, Orange, Vodafone and more.

Twitter: @foundcollective 

Twitter: @marshmallowlf

Adventures in Chaos

People sometimes ask me where I get my weird ideas from, so in this talk I will attempt to trace the evolution of one of my ideas and chart its journey through the mess both inside and outside of my head.  Hopefully along the way I will give you some kind of insight into how I use After Effects to make my animations, if my laptop doesn’t die in the process.  I will also be bringing some weird videos along to play occasionally when I get bored listening to the sound of my own voice.

Biography

I’ve been working as a freelance animator for about 6 years now, creating surreal and nightmarish visions for TV titles, music videos and advertising campaigns.  However, I am mostly known for the weird stuff I make between jobs, for my own amusement.  I currently live somewhere in the Hampshire countryside where I work from home, animating with Adobe After Effects and fighting off a never-ending army of spiders.

Twitter: @cyriakharris

Raffle

In addition to Cyriak’s talk, we will also be raffling a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 6!  The winner gets a choice of either the Design, Web or Production Premium editions.

The usual rules apply.  You have to attend the meeting to be entered into the raffle.  If you cannot make it you can nominate someone to accept the prize on your behalf, assuming they have agreed to do so and are present at the meeting.  You get one ticket for each talk you have attended since the last raffle in December.  If you have given a talk in the last 6 months you get an additional 5 tickets.  The Managers’ decision is final!

If the weather improves, we may also have a barbecue.

For a free ticket, sign-up here: http://dotbrighton18july2012.eventbrite.com/

Robotlegs 2 – An Introduction

In this session we’ll look the differences between Robotlegs 1 and 2, and explore some of the new features offered by the framework.

Robotlegs 2 aims to be as small and simple as the first version whilst offering built in (and opt-in) solutions to a variety of common development requirements.

We’ll discuss the new extension mechanism that makes this possible and take a look at some of the extensions that come bundled with the framework.

There will be the opportunity to code along, so feel free to bring your laptop.

Biography

Shaun Smith is the director of Tyrell Industries LTD, and founder and CTO of TheEshuGames.com. Shaun started the Robotlegs project back in 2009 and is actively involved in the development of Robotlegs 2.

Twitter: @darscan

The sign-up page can be found here: http://dotbrighton11jul2012.eventbrite.co.uk/

Playing with Clay – Making Claymation Work in a Game

Everyone loves claymation, so why haven’t there been more games using the technique? In this talk, Fat Pebble art director Chris Roe and technical director Iain Gilfeather talk about the challenges they faced while making the claymation iOS and Android game, Clay Jam. From setting up an animation stage to real-time rendering; from getting the look and feel right to reactive interactions – Iain and Chris will take you on a creative and a technical journey through the wibbly wobbly world of clay. If you’re lucky, there’ll also be a live demonstration of stop-motion clay animation!

Creativity = Marketing: Using Your Strengths as an Indie

So you’ve got no marketing budget? Today there are more ways than ever to get free PR for your game, from social media platforms to blogging. So why do some great Indie games still not sell well, even when they’ve done everything right? Creative director of Fat Pebble, Michael Movel, argues that an Indie’s biggest marketing tool is the ability to make a game look and feel completely different.

Biographies

Iain Gilfeather

With over twelve years’ experience in the games industry, Iain has worked on many big titles such as ATV Offroad Fury and led the gameplay development of the award winning PS3 and Xbox 360 hit, Pure. He then spent last Autumn as a technical lead at Mind Candy before launching himself head first into the role of tech director at Fat Pebble.

Chris Roe

Art Director and co-founder of Fat Pebble, Chris began life as an artist and animator in 2002 and has always enjoyed creating a vast array of weird and wonderful characters. He started at Ninja Theory before joining Lionhead, where he worked on the famous Fable trilogy. A stint at Zoë Mode then saw him providing art for many exciting projects including Grease, You’re in the Movies and Haunt, before becoming the senior artist at their San Francisco office.

Michael Movel

Michael is creative director at Fat Pebble. He’s worked in games for over fifteen years at companies such as Lionhead, Zoë Mode, Blitz, Probe and Climax Brighton. Fat Pebble is the first company he’s ever been (jointly) in charge of and he’s enjoying not having to sit in endless meetings deciding what colour the score HUD should be.

Twitter: @FatPebble

Facebook: FatPebble

The sign-up page can be found here:  http://dotbrighton27jun2012.eventbrite.co.uk/

One of the most effective ways to improve game quality is to perform playtesting throughout development. However, what’s less well known is that there are many other user research approaches to improve the player experience, some can even be used before any code is written.

This talk will present clear case studies showing how these methods work, and how they can bring tangible benefits to the player experience. The methods produce objective evidence, giving confidence behind making design decisions which have a positive impact on gameplay.

Biography

Graham McAllister is the founder of Player Research, a user research and playtesting studio which provides insights into players and gameplay.

Player Research work with video game studios at all stages of game development, from concept through to release, helping to provide evidence to support design decisions and deliver the best possible player experience.

Their clients include EA, Sony, Disney, Sega, Splash Damage and the BBC among others.

Graham also writes the column on user research for Edge Online.

Twitter: @grmcall

Further details and the sign-up page can be found here: http://dotbrighton13jun2012.eventbrite.co.uk/