How Things are

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We’ve had our final auction of this Three Thing Game. After a lot (and I mean a lot) of money changed hands the final thing mapping as as follows.

Team Name

Thing1

Thing2

Thing3

       

A Druish Princess

Invading

Marvel

wearing glasses

Aint no partly like a kambham-party

Steaming

Spam

copyright infringement

Beta Jester

Tron

Speed

attack

Battle Brothers

Something beginning with P

Ship

Spoon

Brayshawshank-Redemption

Pink

Nuts

In the rain

BRB

Snowing

Spendthrift

Banker

C Hash

Keyboard cat

Vampire

at midnight

Chicken Dippers

Chicken

Hamster

Parade

COMPUTER SCIENCE FC

Ghost

Yoghurt

Gangnam Style

Did you mean "Uncle Mikes Recursive Prolog Party?"

Fighting

Toast

Party

Double Jump

Atomic

Bath Sponge

Raider

Fresh Pot

Shark

Saxaphone

At the Zoo

Honeybadger Productions

Ninja

Mountains

Defence

Left 4 Dev

Cooking

Neon

Apocalypse

LightMass

Evil Wizard

Cricket Bat

in the graveyard

M.C.S.

Camel

Bus Stop

Werewolf

Men On A Mission

Sneaky

Assassin

With a moustache

Michael Jacksons Indian Takeaway

Poptart

Deoderant

Teddy Bear

Mr. Parse

Jelly

Orchestra

Four Letter Word

Mulan

Daft Punk

Rhymes with Truck

Pinball

No Method(), No Class{}

Caffeine

Monkey

under attack

Pigs Might Fly

Pirates

Duvet

racer

QWERTYUIOP

Lion

Skeleton

Swimming

Red Light:Green Light

Heroine

Nick Cage

wearing a tutu

Rusty Spoons

Roman

Motorboat

Pig

Sheerware Games

Flying

Bombs

Tank

SkyNet

Bungling

Bread

Pie

TBC

Zombie

Butler

Swimming Pool

Team HAL 9000

Dragon

Spider

goes fishing

Team Plan B

Gazebo

Javelin

word processor

Team Titans

Lonely

Robots

find love

The C Hashes

clone

Vampire

Apocalypse

The Compilers

Underwater

Atom Bomb

bike ride

The Cosmic Corn Snacks

Students

Bishop

assault

The Infamous Two Sirs

Goldfish

Plug hole

Invasion

The Runners Up

Grunting

Spring

Light cycles

The Y-Nots!

Fruitcake

Banana

temptress

Three Men

Lightning

Kung Fu

plays piano

Three Game'o'holics

Fighting

Desk

In a Dress

I think my favourite has got to be “Ghost Yoghurt Gangnam Style”. Can’t wait to see the game.

So Many Things. So Little Time.

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What 20,000 pounds actually looks like. Of course you can't spend it in the shops...

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Teams and their Two Things

We had our Thing Auction today. Last year we just managed to get through all the lots in the time that we had. This year we had more teams and just didn't make it. There was a time when I thought that we would get everything done, then a couple of mammoth bidding wars put us a bit behind schedule.

Never mind. We plan to run the "Third Thing Auction" just before the Rather Useful Seminar on Wednesday. That's at 1:15 pm in LTD on the Third Floor of the Robert Blackburn Building. The lecture is all about preparing for Three Thing Game, so it seems rather appropriate.

If any team really can't wait until then to get their hands on a thing, they can contact me and I'll dig one out for them.

It was fun though. The sound the crowd made when the thing "Keyboard cat" came out was wonderful.

Three Thing Game October 2012

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I took this picture at the last Three Thing Game during Platform Expo, when we had Imperial  Stormtroopers wandering around the campus, and even going shopping with the kids.

Anyhoo, the time for Three Thing Game is nigh again. We’ll be dishing out the things and getting people writing games in the week from 22nd to 28th of October. Teams of up to 4 students from Hull can sign up and take part. We’ll be having our “Thing Auction” on Monday, where teams can bid for “things” to base their games on. There might even be a special prize for the team with the “Most Valuable Thing”.

Once the things have been awarded, then the development starts. We’ll be running a Rather Useful Seminar on XNA game development in C# for those who are just getting started, and then on Saturday and Sunday, during the 24 hour “crunch development”  we’ll have experts from the MonoGame team showing us how to get our XNA games ported onto Windows 8 and maybe even into Windows Store.

The judging will be on Sunday 28th, when you get to see what everyone else has managed to produce. There will be prizes and, of course, great honour for the winners... Find out how to sign up and learn more about the competition at www.threethinggame.com

Three Thing Game Autumn 2012

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Followers wanted….

Three Thing Game is coming. With new Bank of Thingland money, improved auction action and all round added wonderfulness, including the MonoGame team who will be coming along for the weekend and giving some sessions on porting XNA games to Windows 8. Thanks so much to Lee Stott from Microsoft for sorting that out.

You can find out more by reading this wonderful blog, going to www.threethinggame.com (which in a strange kind of way links you back to this blog) or by following the all new, highly shiny, ThreeThingGame on Twitter.

And stay tuned for some riveting hardware developments for the competition which might (or might not) actually include riveting.

Making Things

A gadget that makes gadgets is probably the ultimate gadget. So a few weeks ago I sold a whole bunch more cameras (I seem to do all my saving by means of the “camera bank”.) and ordered an Ultimaker. Peter reckoned that this was the best of the 3D printers and I was attracted to it by the level of detail that you could print with, and the fact that it came in a kit, which I could spend the upcoming bank holiday working on with Number One Son.

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Several weeks later a heavy box arrived which contained motors, circuits and some lovely laser cut birch plywood which would be fitted together to make the finished printer. So, armed with the very detailed instructions and beautifully packaged and labelled pieces we set to work.

It was great fun. Like Lego, but bigger and with bits that light up, bits that get hot and bits that move. And you learn lots of new terms like “Bowden Tube”, “Peek insulator” and “STL file”. And at the end of it you have a thing that makes things. The principle is very simple. At one end you push a plastic fibre which goes down a tube to the “extruder head” which contains a heater and a very fine nozzle.

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This is the finished product, I painted it blue. The machine “prints” in 3D by moving the head over a build surface, adding successive layers of extruded plastic to create the design you fed into it. It is fascinating to watch the head buzzing around. Number one son made a video of it printing out a Companion Cube here.

One of the great things about the printer is that it can print extra bits for itself. If you look at the picture above you can see a bright pink fan ducting on the print head which I printed and then fitted to replace the one that the printer ships with. The new duct does a better job of focusing the cool air onto the print so that it hardens more quickly. If I have an idea for a better design I’ll simply print that out and then fit it.

Tonight I decided to print out a new locking assembly for the “Bowden Tube”. This is the tube that guides the raw plastic fibre into the extruder head. I was especially interested in this because it contains a screw thread, and I wanted to see how this would turn out. The print did not go well, mainly because I left the printer heated for too long, and some fibre in the tube melted and formed a plug that stopped the flow. I had to strip down the print head, clean out the blockage and then rebuild everything. Two hours of messing around with bits and bobs. And I loved it. At the moment it is extruding very well, but I’ve got a little leak of plastic around the nozzle which I’ll have to seal up. I’m looking forward to adding some sealant and then trying again.

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This is the assembly I printed tonight, with a knurled nut on top of the fitting and a thread that works really well. Perhaps I should get some different coloured plastic to work with…

The main reason I got my Ultimaker was not to print parts for it (which would be kind of recursive) but to make cases for other gadgets. The Gadgeteer platform provides a lovely way of making devices, but they will still need a box. As long as the box is smaller than 8 inches in any direction (the build volume of the Ulitimaker) I can design and print it. We already managed to print out a box for number one son’s Raspberry Pie device.

This is not a technology ready for prime time. But it is a tinkerers delight. You don’t just get to play with the bits, you get to make more bits to play with too. There might be people out there who will say that in the future everyone will have an Ultimaker, and that one day the machines will make themselves. This might happen at some point, but great as it is I can’t see my little blue box printing out a Stepper Motor or a Microcontroller any time soon. To me it is very similar to the very first TVs that were made by John Logie Baird. They worked by spinning disks and flashing lights and were thoroughly impractical for proper viewing. But they got people engaged with the idea of being able to view things over long distances. The Ultimaker is just like this. It is slow (although really fast for a 3D printer), noisy and not 100% reliable, but that doesn’t matter. What it does seems as magical as watching someone 100 miles away must have seemed in 1925. When people really figure out how to do this, how to make different colours and build more quickly, then I can see that there really will be one in every household. And another piece of Star Trek technology will have arrived in our lives.

We will be launching a spin off from Three Thing Game (Three Thing Thing) later this year when we will get people building gadgets using Gadgeteer (keep your diaries clear for the 27th – 28th of October folks) and I’ll bring along the printer so that we can make some boxes for whatever gets made.

Oh, and if you want to find out more about Gadgeteer, Peter has produced some superb posts about the platform.

Joe’s team wins TTG Prize

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Getting it going on

For this competition we introduced a new feature, the Three Thing Game “competitor’s prize”. This was voted for by teams who went round the entrants and checked out each other’s work. After going through the marksheets and totalling up the numbers I found that “The Infamous Two Sirs” had got the most points. However, they were happy that as winners of the main competition it was OK to let the second placed team, “Joe you’ve got it going on” have the prize. Thanks for that guys.

“Joe’s team” made good use of the Kinect sensor to produce a very interactive tower defence take on the words Fruitcake, Tower (I think – they got a wildcard) and Word processor. Well done guys, your signed Wipeout artwork awaits.

Three Thing Game Rocked

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These are all the survivors, given the HDR treatment. There’s a clean version on Flickr too, along with around 100 pictures taken during the event.

Yesterday was a great day. Everything was wonderful apart from the bit where I found nothing in my camera where a battery should be. However, thanks to a Sony Bloggie that I happened to have with me just in case of such stupidity, we managed to get videos of all the teams and their games. At the moment I’m transcoding them as fast as I can and putting them on YouTube. Search for the tag threethinggamemarch2012 if you want to see them. The rest of the videos will be up tomorrow.

A huge vote of thanks to Dave G, for making the lab available and being there to make it work, Adam for tech support, Martin for night watchman duty, Warren, Derek, Kevin, David M, Simon and Stuart for judging support, Jackie for sorting out the Sony connection, Mark for sorting the food and David P for turning up to provide support.

And kudos to the students for making the best games we’ve ever seen at Three Thing Game. We had some great stuff shown off this time.  And here is the winners roll.

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Winners: “The Infamous Two Sirs” Christophe and Rob with “Pocket Starlight” which took “Boy, Contraption and High-Jump” to altogether another level.

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Second place: “Run Dead Studios” Russell, Alex and Jon took “Sheep, Fireworks and High dive” and made “Shear Carnage” for Windows Phone. That really should be in the Marketplace by, say, last week.

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Third Place: “BRB”, Alexsejs,     Arturs,   Nataloya, and Paul managed to work the Olympics into a snazzy spaceship shooter from the words “Alien, Spaceship and ‘at night’”. Again, that should be on your Windows Phone real soon.

One more prize to go, the “People’s Choice” award that was judged by the teams themselves. I’ll have the results of this tomorrow, when I’ve finished crunching the numbers.

Some tips for next time:

Just about everybody grasped the “simple is good” principle. Lots of teams got something working and then added to it. Others weren’t afraid to drop complication to get things going. After all, if the player doesn’t know that the original gameplay design included rabbits with laser eyes they are not going to miss them if they get dropped. This is the single most important factor in success. Having lots of ideas is great. Feeling you have to make them all work and put them in version 1 is not. Keep a “book of features” and write them all down. Then put them in order of implementation and work your way through.

The next most important thing is to make a proper game. What you make should be like a story. It should have have a beginning, a middle and an end. Don’t just make the middle bit, that’s a tech demo. Figure out how you sent the scene, what the player does in gameplay and how they fail/succeed. And put all this in. It is better to have a game that goes all the way to “Game Over” than adding extra features to the middle bit but never let it end.

Make it social. Some games let the players put their scores on Facebook. Bragging rights are big. And sometimes much easier to add than you might think (step forwards Windows Phone).

When you come to present your results don’t spread the blame. Don’t blame Fred for baling and leaving you with no graphics. The judges don’t want to hear your problems. Never say you ran out of time. It just makes you sound like a bad planner and the judges know that you had just as much time as everyone else.  If you must mention something that isn’t how you wanted it to be, talk about future plans and developments in a positive light.

Whatever you did, get something out there. Blog screenshots, put games in Windows Phone Marketplace or wherever you can. Just about everything I saw over the weekend had potential. Make sure you show your stuff off. It can only do you favours.

And, and this is the most important bit, Have Fun. Lots of people did, and that’s why they’ll be back next time. And do even better.

Three Thing Game Funny Money

Worthless Money

Spent a few minutes this afternoon making some money for the Three Thing Game auction on Monday. Teams will each be given a wad of cash each to bid for “Things” they can use in their games. 1:15 pm in Lecture Theatre A, Robert Blackburn Building. Should be fun.

(James just asked me how it is going to work. Actually, at the moment I have really no idea….)

Three Thing Game Rides Again

Class of Three Thing Game October 2012

These are the teams from last time with their random things. This time we are having a “Thing Auction” which should be fun.

We launched the latest “Three Thing Game” competition today. Teams were invited to sign up for our game development competition which starts with three things. You can find out all about it at www.threethinggame.com. We are very lucky this time because Stuart Lovegrove from Sony is coming to help the judging and tell us a bit about PS Vita development. In fact a couple of our teams are quite keen on entering with a game for that platform. The good news for them is that the development environment for the Vita is C#, which is the language we teach at Hull.

We’ve already had quite a few teams sign up, but if you are Hull student you should find an entry form in your inbox. Fill it in and bring it along as soon as you can (places are limited) if you want to take part.

October Three Thing Game Winners

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These folks are the true survivors.

[Cross posted from www.threethinggame.com/]

Well, we lost a few on the way. The effects of fatigue and the lure of Halloween parties meant that some of our teams didn’t make it to the finish line. However, a good time was had by all and I’ve never seen so much pizza eaten by so many so quickly. The pizza company had to send two cars to deliver all 40. And it all got eaten…

This morning at 7:30 Simon and I went around with a camera and got presentations from all the teams of their games. The videos will be up tomorrow so you can see for yourself how just how good they are. We had some especially impressive solutions from First Year teams who, with only five or so weeks of C# under their belt, produced some highly playable results. Then, at 9:00 sharp the three judges, Warren, Neil and Simon watched the top ten teams and picked the winners. Which was so difficult we had to award two second prizes.

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Judges and videos

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You’d think they’d look pleased with prizes of this quality….

This is the team that won the award for best interpretation of their Three Things.  “Tactical Nuclear Penguins”, made up of Josh Crowther, Alex Beamer and Dan Burns had to make something from “Funky, Robot, goes underground”. And make something they did. An underground exploring robot agent working down through caverns to fight the devil no less. Hooked up with great dance move beat matching action and coming to Windows Phone Marketplace near you soon.

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The first Second Place team, if you see what I mean, “The Double A's”. Anthony Quinn and Aaron Ridge produced a fast moving, pretty much market ready for Windows Phone take on “Extreme Hamster in a Graveyard”. Great work, even if they couldn’t keep their eyes open at the end.

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This is the second, Second Placed, team. “I chose this weekend over Battlefield 3” , aka Lindsay Cox, Devon Hansen, David Hart and Michael Bumby. Their game based on “Gun-toting, Volcano, in Space” combined Bejewelled style action with a sideways blast-em-up which had the player matching threes to arm Space Marines attacking the Volcano.  Lots of guns, and lots of toting.  Great work guys. And don’t worry, we’ll have Lego prizes for all of you once we’ve been down to ToysRUs.

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The Winners, with their prizes.

The Winners were praised by the judges for producing a game for Windows Phone that was good enough to sell right now, with delightful graphics, a well honed mechanic and good adherence to the theme. And you could slice the moon in half. These guys are making a bit of a habit of winning,  having nabbed the prizes in the last competition too. “The Infamous Two Sirs”, Christophe Lionet and Robert Marshall produced a game based on “Tomb, Ninja, Travelodge” that looks excellent and plays great. Well done guys.

The next Three Thing Game will be on the weekend of 17th and 18th March 2012. Start planning now.

Three Thing Game Starts

Class of Three Thing Game October 2012

All the students, with their things.

We have started Three Thing Game October 2011. You can find out more here. You can find all the pictures here.

If you want to tweet about it, or follow the tweets, take a look at #threethinggame on Twitter.

This is the largest competition we have ever had. Good luck folks. Don’t forget the special sessions on Windows Phone and XNA development on Wednesday, starting at 2:15 pm in LTD. These sessions are open to anyone who wants to get started writing games, not just “Three Thingers”.

Three Thing Game is Full

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I told the First Year C# lecture about Three Thing Game this afternoon and loads of them signed up. Well done folks. We are pretty much full now, with 23 teams in the mix. I’d planned for 15, so we are going to have to spread out into extra labs around the place. I’ll be assigning spaces to teams and asking you if you are bringing your own kit.

I’ll be doing some sessions about XNA and Windows Phone Game development next week in the lead up to the 24 hour development on Saturday. Some things to bear in mind:

  • You can work on your game and assets in the run up to the 24 hour session.
  • We will have some folks around to give you help overnight (including me)
  • The best approach is to start with something simple that works and then add assets and behaviours. I’ll be giving out some sample code next week that will help.
  • I expect everyone who makes something to put it out there, either via the Xbox Live Indie games or Windows Phone Marketplace. Anyone who gets a game out there is guaranteed a place at the next Three Thing Game in March next year.

This is our biggest ever event. We will need even more Pizza. I hope it will all fit in the van..