James Battersby

News

Masters Nearly Done

Posted: 17th September 2010

Who'd have thought it but I am now very close to the end of my Masters degree!

Its been unbelievably good fun doing the course and I have learnt a considerable amount - hopefully it will lead to great things in the game industry. As a result I have started my job hunt, casting a very wide net as I do. I'm looking for a programming job in a game studio - I'm happy to do any kind of work and anywhere in the world! So if you're hiring and haven't done so already, check out my CV and portfolio!

As far as my uni work is concerned my final project has gone exceptionally well and almost completely trouble free. Its gone so well that it has caught me unawares and unfortunately I wasn't able to organise a proper public test of the game (mainly due to an issue with the university ethics committee). Its not essential for the marks but I think it would have given the project nice validity to the research I have done. In either case, I have completed a lifetime ambition of creating a complete, if simple, game and by taking into consideration all aspects of design, artwork, sound design and of course programming. I'm thoroughly chuffed!

My plan for the short-term future is after completing this course I will try to find some part-time work and spend the rest of the time working on my portfolio. Theres going to be a few of us around and there are murmurs of getting together to either make a mod or small indie game. I sincerely hope this is the case as its already been demonstrated to us all several times that our results are always greater than the sum of our talents.

On the climbing side of things its beginning to hot up again as the weather begins to cool down. I've somehow ended up on the committee for the climbing club and I've launched the club's first website (not my best work). I've also volunteered to help train the freshers at the indoor centre and help supervise outdoor trips. Personally, I've been pushing my outdoor lead grade to Hard Severe (although everytime I log them it comes up as Very Severe (the next grade up)) and I've even taking to more bouldering and even soloing the easier grades (I spent most of yesterday morning soloing Mods and Diffs at Burbage South Edge). Its become more of an exploratory activity now rather than a scare-myself-shitless exercise, probably because I'm climbing better and trusting my gear more.

In any case, exciting times ahead! Keep checking here for updates as I may start working on something very exciting in the near future and then, who knows?

Research Based Product Development

Posted: 20th August 2010

Hmm, been a while.

Well the main reason for this is because I have been very busy working on my research project which is looking into the intrinsic integration of education in games - you can find out more in my portfolio. I'm about two thirds through the development part of the game and its going well. I recently received some feedback from my supervisor and got some great advice on how to improve it once I've got the main gameplay sorted. Its still rough around the edges but I will be adding all sorts of effects to it soon enough. A lot of the work has been made simpler by using scanned copies of existing assets and using SFML as my graphics/media library. Should be able to get a really polished version by the end of September with research results.

Otherwise I've been climbing a lot in the Peak District and pushed my leading grade up to Hard Severe which has prompted thoughts about getting an SPA qualification but that I'll leave for the future. I'm off to Wales for the Bank Holiday weekend to try out some good multi-pitch climbs - really looking forward to that, it'll make a change from the short single pitches we have here (they're great but you can be left with wanting more).

As far as my career is concerned I am beginning to look for roles - I don't finish until the 30th September but I'm very keen to get my foot into the industry somehow and fulfil a life ambition. Exciting times!

Ark! Complete

Posted: 7th July 2010

After four weeks of continuous development we have finally completed our prototype of Ark! for our Integrated Development Project. The game was originally pitched for the Dare To Be Digital competition but unfortunately we were unsuccessful in securing a place in Dundee. Nevertheless we persevered and persuaded our lecturers that this project would we worthwhile and more relevant to the careers we are pursuing. Unfortunately we lost a programmer in the process due to him being on a separate course but we gained an additional artist. This required the project to be re-planned and a few features had to face the axe unfortunately in order to ensure that we had a quality product at the end of the project.

It has been extremely good fun working on this project and what really pleases me is that we haven't made a quick and dirty prototype - we could easily continue development on this game and scale it to be a fully fledged product without having to drastically change anything. It also runs smoothly despite the fact we haven't tried to optimise it at any point so far which is something we would should we add more complex features into it. You can download a copy of the prototype from the project page as well as other design documents etc.

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.

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!

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