dotBrighton

Unity3D: Getting Started and Moving Forward (Will Goldstone)

I’ll begin by presenting an overview for those new to Unity3D. Then, for more experienced users, follow up by demonstrating the new features that are coming in Unity 3.5:

New Particle system
Nav Mesh AI solution
Multi-object editing
Q&A

Unity3D: Why I’m Not Even Slightly Worried About This Whole Flash Thing (Iestyn Lloyd)

I’ll start by talking about my decision to switch to Unity3D after 10 years of Flash development. Then I’ll show some of the cool Unity3D projects I’ve been working on recently. I’ll explain why I chose Unity for these projects and describe my experiences, both good and bad.

The first project is The Thrill Electric, written by Leah Moore (comic fans will know this is Alan Moore’s daughter), an enhanced, 3D comic developed by Littleloud for Hat Trick and Channel 4. It was built for the Web and iOS and pushed Unity’s capabilities to the max.

I’ve also been making some experimental Unity3D apps for iOS using AR and the gyroscope with Adam Sharp, a talented 3D artist.

Finally I’ll talk about converting a Flash game to iOS and Android using Unity3D.

Biographies
Will Goldstone works for Unity Technologies and is author of the newly updated Unity Game Development Essentials. Having discovered Unity in its first version, he has been working to promote its ‘game development for everyone’ ethic ever since. Will has trained various age ranges in an array of topics from graphic design to film, game development and web design. Now focusing on training, marketing and community support with Unity Technologies, his free time is spent on Battlefield 3, writing loud music and playing frisbee on the beach. He is based in London.
Twitter: @willgoldstone

Iestyn Lloyd is Technical Director at Littleloud and founder of Lloyd Digital. He has worked in digital since 1996, specialising in delivering interactive content across multiple platforms for high-profile clients such as Channel 4, BBC, Paramount, Universal, Marvel and MTV. Many of the projects he has worked on have won awards, including a BAFTA for Bow Street Runner.
Twitter: @yezzer

Tickets will be available from noon on Thursday, 17 November. Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

So you want to develop for mobile. Maybe you want to chase those long foretold millions that await you in the App Store, maybe you want to avoid the self-defenestration that will occur if you are asked to make another banner or WordPress template. Maybe you are just looking for a new challenge.

Whatever the reason this session will cover what you need to know when transitioning to developing for mobile devices so you can hit the ground running with few to no broken bones. We will cover multi-touch, gestures, design conventions, prototyping, tips on making your app likeable and/or lickable and much more. We will also go over how to avoid common pitfalls and get going with your own project with a light sprinkling of case studies.

Biography
Paulo Fierro is a Norwegian-born developer with a passion for User Experience and over a decade’s experience of playing with the Flash Platform. Over the years he has created compelling experiences, strategic proof of concepts and other things we can’t talk about for clients such as Nickelodeon, the New York Giants, Research In Motion, Time Inc., and QNX Software Systems.

In recent years he has switched his focus over to mobile. Working together with some great designers he has developed award winning iOS apps such as the first official Flash on the Beach app and reached the #2 spot on the App Store in two markets (UK and Norway). A year and a half ago he left the big city lights of Oslo for Brighton, where he and his partner Niqui Merret established Jade Hopper, a micro-agency focused on mobile development.

Tickets will be available from noon on Thursday, 3 November. Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

Like a phoenix rising from a pile of brand website corpses, Flash 11 could potentially hail a renaissance for Adobe in the way people think about and use the Flash Player.
The main component of the release is the much talked about Stage 3D (formerly known as ‘Molehill’) APIs that allow Flash direct access to the GPU grunt once the preserve of desktop-only development. It is from here we see the seeds of change being sown – most applicably in the field of browser-based gaming.

But this is far from the end of the story. With the possibility of fast-paced graphics now thrown wide open, what new horizons are we looking at for Flash? And where do we turn for the tools, techniques and frameworks that will grant us the ability to harness this power?

At the London-based startup Mindshapes, Rob Bateman and his team have been finding out the hard way… with surprising results.

ABOUT ROB
Rob Bateman is an internationally renowned web developer and community leader who specializes in content for the Flash Platform, and has always held a particular fascination with 3D on the web. In 2007 he co-founded the Away3D engine with Alexander Zadorozhny, and has been leading development for the last three years. He lives and works in London UK where his production and consultancy company Away Media provides expert services in the field of browser-based 3D content.

He is also the co-author of the recent Away3D handbook: The Essential Guide to 3D in Flash, published by Friends of Ed. Thanks to our friends at Apress we will have some copies of Rob’s book to give away!

Tickets will be available from noon on Wednesday, 19 October. Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

WebGL allows us to create interactive 3D right inside the browser, directly from JavaScript. No plugin is required, just a modern browser.

This session will cover the basic concepts of working with WebGL and how the technology is used in real-life projects. Carlos will also showcase a couple of WegGL pieces, walking the audience through the production of each project, sharing his thoughts about the work and showing behind-the-scenes demos and prototypes.

Biography
Carlos Ulloa is the founder of HelloEnjoy, an interactive studio specialising in high-end real-time 3D for the Web and mobile.

Carlos has been passionately involved with interactive entertainment since the early 90s, developing Playstation & PC titles at Psygnosis and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. In 1999 he moved into online advertising, employed by leading agencies in Madrid, Barcelona and London, and his work evolved into the fields of graphic and typographic effects, motion design, interactivity and mainly 3D. In 2006 he created Papervision3D, the Open Source 3D engine for Flash.

At HelloEnjoy he continues to explore ways to make 3D design accessible to broader audiences. A good example of this are his latest pieces, helloflower, an intuitive 3D flower creator for the iPad, and HelloRacer, a high-end interactive car simulation available for the WebGL and Unity platforms. The studio also partners with advertising agencies around the world to create engaging experiences and games for their clients.

Carlos has been a regular contributor and speaker at international conferences such as Thinking Digital, TEDGlobal, Creativity and Technology, Casual Connect, FITC, Flash on the Beach and Adobe MAX.

He currently lives and works in Brighton, UK.

Tickets will be available from noon on Wednesday, 5 October. Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

My name is Charlie Hobson. I make games for mobile phones. I’m making a little game called Lola. I want to put Lola on people’s mobile phones. How can I do it?

I have to think about how each phone is different. Some people just like their phone. Some people like what their phone does. I can use different things to make Lola such as Unity, Flash, HTML5 & Corona. I need to think about what each phone can do. There are lots of different phones to think about, like iPhones & Androids.

I can use the Marmalade SDK. Marmalade works on all different phones. It is my extremely most favourite SDK. I can use it to make one version of Lola for all different phones.

I can make a Lola demo for you. I will show you how it works. Veer left for Marmalade, Wednesday 28 September at The Skiff. It will be DotBrighton’s birthday too so there will be cake. After Marmalade, Cake is completely the bestest best thing I know.

I’ll begin by explaining the goals of making game prototypes and some of the difficulties encountered. Using case studies of projects that I’ve worked on, I’ll discuss some of the techniques employed in deciding what to prototype and which tools we used to make them.

After that short presentation we’ll try some group prototyping using the tool I’m most familiar with: Unity. I’ll provide a very basic working Unity project that together we’ll prototype a new feature for, in under an hour.  We’ll work in groups of three, so if you can, bring a laptop with the free version of Unity installed.

Profile
Iain Gilfeather has been a professional Games Programmer for 12 years, using C, C++ and C# to write AI and gameplay elements for games on variety of platforms, including the multi-million selling Pure (pictured).  He’s currently coming to the end of a stint working as Tech Lead on Black Rock Studio’s Concept Team and is about to take a stab at Indie development.

Tickets will be available from noon on Wednesday, 17 August.  Follow @dotBrighton on Twitter for updates.

LISTEN:

DAVID PILGRIM is unstuck in space. He lives in two places at once. Sometimes he works in the commercial games industry. Sometimes he is far away in Nottingham Hackspace. The crafty makers who controls this space say it is called Tralfamadore, and is 446,120,000,000 miles from the commercial games industry. You can relax and make fun things in hackspaces. The commercial games industry is different. It is full of first-person shooters and job redundancies. The ground there is full of bonemeal. As a joke David calls it Schlachthof-funf. So it goes.

David meets many different sorts of people. Tralfamadorians communicate telepathically and have many sexes. They can breathe cyanide and spend all day thinking about possible futures. Their games, their shapes, their capers, their japes. He says the people in the games industry can be like this too but that they are just normal human beings and do a lot of things normal human beings do, like getting emotional and thinking about money.

David says humans and Tralfamadorians both enjoy making things they care about, and mustering the courage to go it alone. David says this is important and ties us all together, and wants to tell us how, on Wednesday 10th August at the Skiff in Brighton.

So it goes.

CAP. LXXVIII

How the Emperor Silvertus being so commissioned by Digirati made an interactive timeline in HTML5

In the mean season before HTML5 arrived on the shores this island the DotBrightonians were driven towards Flash to build their sites. Then in the 2010th year of the incarnation of our Lord a body of HTML5 warriors led by Emperor Silvertus landed at Brighthelmstone. Silvertus persuaded the lay folk to abandon their wanton Flash development. He was well prepared to be a standard bearer for HTML5 and jQuery by using them to provide user-friendly access to historical data about the estates of wealthy Britons.

The Anglo-UXers and the SysPicts being the remaining tribes of the Britons were won over to Silvertus’ flag by his showing them the timeline was future-proofed against cross-platform concerns, and provided a fall-back for older browsers. Uniting the tribes thus it was generally held that there was no need to use Flash when they could use jQuery.

Now when Silvertus’ power waxes brightly he seeks to illuminate the thanes of Brighthelmstone in his learning by way of a public address, which he will deliver at The Skiff on Wednesday on the 27th day of July to talk of his design process, his technological options, and the specifics of his implementation.

trans. from the Latin by The Venerable Ricadius.