End of April 2010
Posted: 30th April 2010
Apologies for the total lack of news but I have barely had time to breathe this month. Things are now calmer and I have a better view of the next few months at least.
Dare To Be Digital
As I mentioned in my last post I was part of a team called Heavenly Duck Studios that submitted an application to attend a competition in Dundee for 10 weeks to build a prototype for a game we called "Ark!". We did manage to get through to the next round with mostly positive feedback - our biggest change as result of this was to move from the Xbox to the PC as they said it would require mouse control. The next round was to face a panel of industry experts and pitch our idea in more detail at Wolverhampton University. As soon as we got the news we started working on the presentation solidly and pitched repeatedly to colleagues and lecturers (many thanks by the way) until we were satisfied with the quality. Along we went and despite some interrogation being continuously aimed towards me we left feeling we had done the best we could and that the reaction was good. Over a week later (yesterday in fact) we got news that unfortunately we wouldn't be going to Dundee.
While we learnt a lot about how to pitch and evolve game ideas (much like any studio would do whilst searching for a publisher) the feedback we received from the pitch (I think) hasn't given us anything to learn from as 90% of it is very positive with phrases such as "good roles and strong team", "good humour" and "receptive team". I would have preferred the feedback to be damning so I have something to go from it but maybe this is an indication of how competitive the places were. I could go into political theories of limiting the number of teams from the same university but I think that would be rather childish of me. Congratulations to all those who did get through - you thoroughly deserve to!
Climbing
As a result of not making it to Dare I will be in Sheffield during the summer and I think I would like a break at some point. As such I intend to go on some kind of climbing holiday in the near future. I even plan to buy some of my own gear in the very near future although what I am not entirely sure - should I just aim at sport climbing or go the whole way and buy some trad gear? I'm tempted by the latter but it is a lot of gear that adds up in cost and since I don't know where I'll end up in 6 months I'm slightly hesitant that I might be wasting money. If you have any advice on either matter please get in touch!
In terms of my skills I took part in a bouldering competition .... with a hangover unfortunately so my performance was very sub-par. It was very entertaining however to watch others do what seemed to be the impossible! My top roping has extended to 6Bs and my lead climbing has now reached 6As. I also did my first multi-pitch trad climb at Lawrencefield (Pulpit Groove, VDiff 4a) which was great fun - definitely have the bug for trad climbing.On the same day we even did some bouldering at Owler Tor and Secret Garden - fantastic day!
University
Been very busy with work especially with the Dare competition hanging over our heads. There was one particular weekend where two assignments were due on the Friday which caused mayhem in the labs. Now most of the lectures are over (for good), I have two more assignments to do before our integrated development project starts followed by our individual research projects. In the mean time I am going through Mike McShaffry's Game Coding Complete which is so far very interesting!
Like I said - I've been busy! I'll hopefully update more regularly in the near future!