Ark! and The Lakes
Posted: 10th June 2010
Ark!
We've started out Integrated Development module and are now working on building a prototype of Ark!, the game we submitted to the Dare To Be Digital competition. Its good to know that we haven't wasted two months of preparation and are now working on something that the lecturers are already impressed with. Its a great experience for us as well as we get to practice the development cycle of making games and seeing how it all fits together - its very satisfying when it does. We're not using a pre-built game engine either - we're using a combination of Ogre3D, OpenAl and our own gameplay design to run the game. Its very exciting times and I'll be updating the appropriate project page over the coming weeks.
Climbing
Unfortunately the vast majority of my climbing partners have gone home for the summer and I'm left without much to do. However before they deserted me we had ourselves a trip to Borrowdale in the Lake District which was a fun learning experience. Climbing on limestone is very different to grit: it has better holds but it polishes very easily making it difficult to hold and worse (as I discovered first hand) to place gear in. We managed multi-pitch climb up Little Chamonix which was a fantastic experience, I seconded few tricky climbs and I spent one morning setting up top ropes for the less experienced climbers. I've also had a recent trip to Stanage Edge and experienced sunset climbing (perhaps the nicest way to do it) all the way till 11pm when it was pitch black (the head torch I have was only just adequate). As a result I'm now finding partners on Climbfind which is an excellent site for that very purpose so hopefully I'll still be able to get some practice in before people come back in September.