This lot look like responsible programmers…..
We had our first presentation on the Mad Game Development week at lunchtime. You can find out exactly what I said here. I was amazed when several of the teams turned up, registered and even paid their two quid towards the cost of pizza. Astonishing. We are having another session on Wednesday where I’ll be showing how to make golf balls fly through the air and smash into targets. Should be fun.
If you want to find out more about our Mad Game Development head over to:
- to get started.
Remember that we have our first meeting today at 1:15 pm in the Design Lab (room 312) in the Robert Blackburn Building. Please can at least one of your team turn up at this.
Should be fun
Bought one of these today half price. Supposed to be flyable indoors. If by flyable they mean “once across the room and then straight behind the radiator” it is.
I might bring it in to the Mad Game Development so we can try flying it around the department…
We were sat in bed this morning when the FreeView box on the telly just blew up. Flash, bang, smoke and everything. I think one of the capacitors turned into a resistor for a very brief moment, before it turned into a puff of smoke. I remember a theory that I heard ages ago, which is that everything is actually powered by smoke. The proof, as it as told to me, was that if you “let the smoke out” the device instantly stops working.
Well, the theory is working well for me, with the result that we can only watch five channels. Although I honestly don’t see this as a huge problem. Then we went up town with the camera. Quite a nice sky, and some reasonable light, which was nice.
This is PrincesQuay in Hull. A shopping centre over water.
..and this is Queen'sGardens.
Getting plenty of interest in the Mad Game Development next week, which is great. If you are thinking of taking part, but worried about your programming background I’ll be doing some sessions next week which should help a bit. If you want something to do to prepare, I’d suggest getting in some practice with XNA and maybe a Physics engine. Easier than you think, and very, very useful.
Oh, and downloading the latest version of Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone might be a plan.
We are having a "Mad Game Development" in the department next week. Any students who are interested in taking part can sign up and get cracking on our game idea.
The game will be developed in a week, starting on Monday 18th of October and running up to the weekend of the 23rd and 24th of October when we are going have a "pressure session" where we can work overnight to get the game ready for submission to Xbox Live.
The scenario for the game will be released on Monday 18th at 9:00am on www.robmiles.com (i.e. here). Students from Hull are welcome to form teams of up to 4 to get together and produce a game. All the games must be written using XNA and target the Windows PC and Xbox 360. We will have some Xbox 360 machines on site for testing over the weekend, and some Windows Phones. If the game passes our stringent quality control we will submit to Xbox Indie games and maybe even Windows Phone Marketplace on Sunday.
If you want to create a Windows Phone version of the game then we will have a special category for Windows Phone submissions. A team can create one version that works on one platform or different versions. Your call.
If you sign up we would expect you to come along on Saturday morning to the department to take part in the "all nighter" part of the development, finishing at lunchtime on Sunday . We will be on hand to give help (we might even be working on our own version of the game).
Pizza and drinks will be provided during the night. We will also have a few games set up for rest and recreation. If you think you will have any time to spare.
We will be producing some artwork and other assets for the game. You can use ours, or make your own. We will also have a writer from 360 magazine along over the weekend to cover the game development and see what you are doing. So you might even end up in the magazine. And we have some Microsoft goodies to give away during the night.
We will be holding briefing meetings during next week when you can come and discuss how you are getting on. These will be at 1:15pm on Monday 18th, Wed 20th and Friday 22nd of October in the Design Lab (room 312).
If you want to take part, form a team and send me an email with the name of your team and the names of the members. I will register you and give you access to the resource pages on Skydrive, which will go live on Monday next week.
The development is open to students in the University of Hull from any Department and any year.
Staff can enter too, but they aren't allowed to have any of the goodies.
We went to Hull Fair tonight. I only ever go on the Big Wheel, and that is to take photographs. I’ve no head for heights, but if I view everything through the camera viewfinder I seem to do OK. This new little lens seems to be pin sharp too, which is nice.
If you are a student at Hull and you haven’t been to Hull Fair you are missing out. It is huge, well managed and pretty good value if you get there for happy hour.
This lunchtime I happened to take a look at the number of hits that I was getting on my blog. I have a fair idea of what constitutes normal traffic and what was happening was not normal. Oh no. I seemed to have had 12,000 hits. It seems that for some reason everybody was downloading my C# Yellow Book. I asked around on Twitter and I think I’ve traced it to a post on the MSDN Flash Newsletter. Thanks for your help folks. As it stands at the moment I’ve had 20,000 downloads, which is quite a lot.
I hope you all like it.
Well, it’s official. Microsoft have made a new Mobile phone. In fact they’ve made several. Probably more than 7. But I digress.
The launch event today sounded fun, and things are going to be even more fun next week. Now I freely admit I love my iphone. And it was with a twinge of regret that I popped the sim out of it and into my Windows Phone a while back. But I don’t really regret the move over.
I find the Windows Phone easier to navigate and it does all I want, including run my programs. I’m presently wondering if I’ll need to get up early on the 21st when everything launches to get my Windows Phone of choice, the HTC HD7. We shall see.
I downloaded an update to Windows Live 2011 today. Nothing like living in the future.
Anyhoo, it contains an update to one of my favourite programs, Windows Live Writer, which is what I use to write these hallowed pages. I’ve not noticed anything particularly new in the way of features, although it does look rather spiffy. Worth a look I reckon.
I also got the new Messenger client, which also looks quite good.
These are some of the audience. The other photograph is on Flickr too, just click the picture to find your way there.
Just had a great University Open Day (I enjoyed myself, hope the people that came along did too). We had a massive turn out and the brand shiny new Lecture Theatre was packed. I saw several people on the campus clutching their C# Yellow Books (even though the cover is not as yellow as I would have liked). I promised to put a bunch of links up on my blog that I showed at the end of the presentation. Here they are:
Earlier this week I got an email from Rachel, who has been reading my C# book. On the web site for the downloads I make the point that the book is free, if you want to give any money for it just put something in a charity collection tin next time you see one.
Rachel let me know that she put a sizeable sum to Shelter Box which seems to me to be a really good cause.
Thanks for that.
Some of the “lucky” Friday Nighters. The rest are on Flickr.
As luck would have it I, and one of the tutorial groups for the First Year C# course, have a session at 5:15 today. That’s 5:15 on a Friday.
Oh well.
The tutorial went OK in the end, and then I went home for Fish and Chips.
See you all next week.
A great audience. Even though not all of them like cheese.
Today I got on the train to Manchester, did 90 minutes of standup with a broken voice and then got on a train back to Hull. I had to wear two microphones, that’s how bad my voice was.
Anyhoo, the sessions I did (Writing Windows Phone Games and Windows Phone Marketplace) seemed to go OK. Thanks to the guys at Appamundi for inviting me to speak.
I said I’d put the slides and sample code up on the net and, as a man of my croaky word, you can find it all here.
On the way out of Manchester I, of course, took some photos.
Print Works and Odeon looking good
“The Wheel of Manchester” – it doesn’t half go round fast…
Another picture of leaves. Another tale of woe because all my slides and stuff didn’t work. The good news is that my marker pens worked fine and so we were able to learn some useful stuff without all this new fangled technology.
Yep. These folks look like quiz winners to me….
We had our welcome part for the Post Graduates today. Great fun (again). Even though I was rubbish at the Playstation Move fighting game which kept everybody occupied for hours. In the end Peter emerged triumphant, and I suggested that he now put “Sword Master” on his business card. I hope he does.
What do you do when everything goes wrong, your slides crash and your remote control goes dicky? You carry on with the lecture, that’s what.
This is the one helicopter I’ve not broken yet. I daren’t fly it any more…
This is not Manchester
The final schedule for the Developer, Developer, Developer event in Manchester next Thursday has now been set:
08:30 - 09:00 Registration, coffee
09:00 - 09:10 Welcome
Andy Wigley, Andrej Radinger
09:10 - 09:30 Windows Phone 7: A new kind of phone
Andrej Radinger
09:30 - 10:30 Understanding the Windows Phone 7 Development Tools
Maarten Struys
10:30 - 11:15 Silverlight App Development on Windows Phone 7
Andy Wigley
11:15 - 11:30 Coffee
11:30 - 12:15 Integrating with the device capabilities
Andy Wigley
12:15 - 13:00 Raising the dead: Apps that survive Tombstoning
Andy Wigley
13:00 - 13:30 Lunch (Not provided)
13:30 - 14:30 Games Programming on Windows Phone 7
Rob Miles
14:30 - 15:15 How to sell Apps through Marketplace
Rob Miles
15:15 - 15:30 Coffee
15:30 - 15:50 Cutting-edge WP7 apps: Cortexica’s visual search API
Richard Bassett
15:50 - 16:35 Creating Silverlight Apps that work Offline
Andrej Radinger
16:35 - 17:00 Wrap-up and the BIG PHONE GIVEAWAY
If you want to register, go here.
Spent most of today in the lab with the new first year students. Great bunch. In the very first lab session we bombard them with a maths diagnostic, a whole bunch of tasks, some questionnaires and last, but not least, they write and run a C# program. They took it all in good heart and it was great getting to know them. Lectures start on Monday. Looking forward to it.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
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