Blog for Toby W. Allen at GarageGames.com

Working on VT3 in 1080P

Toby W. Allen — 2007-02-06T19:32:33+00:00

So over the last six months I've been very quiet - For the most part this has been due to the fact that I couldn't talk about the projects that I've been working on. What's great thought is that I have been able to join a great company - Sumo Digital and now cracking on with some really really amazing games.

As some might have heard, today we've made the announcement about 1080p for Virtua Tennis 3, for which I'm helping with the production, and additionally the localisation, so you can expect some very strong localisation work (I speak 4 languages) and of course the Online side of things. Now from a screenshot perspective you might not notice that these are 1080p, but this is because you will have to see it on a screen that supports it, we use those massive Dell screens. The game really does look impressive and it's nearly a pixel perfect representation of the PS3 version - Well except for the addition of the online features.

Check the following our for the Online detail

European Press tour Online details: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLSK1a-5i5M

More news later... but now I need to get back to the project :)

{Game++} A success! 150ppl+!

Toby W. Allen — 2006-05-19T17:11:32+00:00

{Game++}

This year's Game++ Event we put on in the Union conference room was a big success! We had over 150+ students, lecturers, game developers come to listen to Rare and CreativeNorth speak throughout the day. With 45 pizzas from Dominoes, 200+ cans of drink and 12 Xbox 360 pods, everything enjoyed the event.

Nick Burton from Rare talked about their experiences as games developers and gave insight into how to get into the games industry. Phil Mundy of Creative North spoke about mobile games development and how he started his games company.

We also had a raffle for the Xbox 360 console, with loads of games and goodies from Rare! We would like to thank everyone for coming!

Torque
We also showed off the Torque Programming guide to students, industry and academia. I also spoke about Torque quite a bit, as I told the students that mostly if they want to make it into the industry and actually get something done, forget the nice graphics engines, use something that will give you a good production pipeline and get a game going. I must say I got swamped as soon as I mentioned Torque. About six people came up to me to ask questions and all.

Game++ and new opportunities

Toby W. Allen — 2006-05-17T02:16:41+00:00

Game++
We have 11 xbos 360's in the layout, 2 HD tvs, and loads of freebies. We've expected over 200+ students and game developers from the region. We're exposing a load of stuff.; from new games, to tech from RARE and MS in general. I spent the whole day setting up the 11-360s we have to create a wicked event. Tomorrow should be packed. I've just been out for drinks, yet I'm so dedicated that at 3:13am UK time, I'll writing a blog. That's nuts. I've got some news on jobs too I'll be posting in the next few days including an update on this event.

We'll be showing off the new Torque book Davey sent me. Should get the students inspired-No worries!

Right. I'm out. Night all. Pictures tomorrow.
Toby.

{Game++} Game Development Open Day

Toby W. Allen — 2006-04-26T12:45:06+00:00

{Games++}
It's finally here, Games Development Day has become {Games++} and we can now confirm the date and venue:

// Wednesday 17th May 2006, from 10:00am to 5:00pm
// Leeds University Union's Conference Auditorium

Leeds Game Development Society and Microsoft have joined forces to bring you a jam packed day of game playing, industry speakers and free food. In between playing and learning about the latest games there will be plenty of chances to win some really cool prizes.

Nick Burton and Simon Craddick from Rare will be talking about their experiences as games developers and will give an insight into how to get into the games industry. Phil Mundy of Creative North will be talking about mobile games development and how he started his games company.

If you and your friends want to come along please send us an e-mail outlining how many places you require and we will send back confirmation: ukcclubs@Microsoft.com

If you would like to drum up some further interest at your university please download the {Games++} poster here: http://www.studentpartner.com/gpp/ or check out our Flickr page at http://www.flickr.com/photos/48538768@N00/

Make sure you're there!

Mark, Toby and Ian

EA's Open Day

Toby W. Allen — 2006-04-10T00:16:36+00:00

EA's open day
Well I've just come back from a day at the EA studios in Chertsey, south of London - I was invited to attend as I'm looking for jobs for the moment as dev lead/producer type roles. I'm still working on my own projects with others, but voila.

So I ended up traveling all the way from leeds down to london, took a while, but it was alright. Got to the studios at 2pm when it started - with over 180+ students. While the main presentations where not for me, as EA was targeting them for people that we animators getting into games or whatnot, or people going into uni with the aim to end up in games, EA was showing what standard they should be at. Very good stuff for them.

I was more interested in the setup of the studio and how everything went and chatting to developers. While I'm actually under NDA with EA now (oh no another NDA) what I saw was pretty amazing stuff! While a lot of people have a negative view of EA, I saw from the inside a world that is really supportive of people and it's environment. Check out EA Studios to really get a feel for what they offer and their environments. What was cool was I remember working for the Belgian national TV on a game show and hearing of the new studios and thinking they were nuts - but I was always curious. Their place is really lovely, waterfront, fire place, lots of light and the dev teams seems really so happy to be there, the vibe was great! I ended up meeting with the Exec of the harry potter franchise, that was a nice little chat. I saw some devkits which were urm.. oups can't tell you much - but you can imagine they are all you want to make your games on!

While their main Chertsey studios are more corporate, I really like that setup. It's a clean and healthy environment to work (I can only imagine) but their equipment and people really makes them make good games. Even if you don't like their games for whatever reason, you have to look in terms of their achievements and quality. From my experience with the console games, theirs bug level are fairly minimal and they always provide a lot of casual fun. You can pick up Burnout and have a great bash. Heck I'm still playing Burnout 2 loads. This is not to say everyone else's stuff is crap, I've visited many studios over the last two years, but I must say, I'm a strong believer in creating an environment where you developers have the ability to breath, relax and flex their creative muscle while producing great products. It's like having a big house, with a massive lounge for everyone and chilling. You need the sofas, the tvs and space for everyone. EA provides this nicely. I'd love to visit the MS Game Studios to see how they would compare.

Bon, Bon.. thought I'd share the experience.

Gamasutra Article

Toby W. Allen — 2006-04-01T14:14:49+00:00

Hey,
Thought I'd put a little mention here as my Gamasutra article has been posted - Student Postmortem: The University of Leeds Game Development Society's NinjaSticks

It talks about the pros and cons of the society, the development of our game, mocap, torque, universities, etc...

Toby.

3am and you want to get retro! Tron!

Toby W. Allen — 2006-03-18T14:45:44+00:00

Tips and Tricks, little goodies, Tribes 2 Assets...

Toby W. Allen — 2006-02-19T14:43:32+00:00

Tribes 2 Assets
Since I've been doing a lot of research into the vehicles and weapons recently, I've stumbled upon some forum posts which had compiled version of Tribes 2 Assets. Now I thought, well if I do some searching there must be a fully open mod which reveals how vehicles have been done with the max files. After a bit of looking I came to find that sierra is still hosting the complete set of Tribes 2 Assets, with original max files and skins. I was just randomely looking at thier download section for Tribes 2. So you get to see and mess around with Tribes 2' orginal files! This is a little golden heaven as researching weapons, tank turrets, etc.. is super easy now! I've already looked into some files to check out how things are done and it's really a good insight. I've opened it under Max 8 and most will give you an error, but can be re-saved. Not only do you get the models and skins, you get the sounds and you can download loads of scripts! If you encounter .vl2 files, jsut rename them with the .zip extention and extract. Even though the scripts are heavily created for T2, they are a very good source of information on general scripting and methods of implementation.

Since the T2 Assets are 115mb I can't upload it to TDN, but this would be so beneficial in helping newcomers learn about modeling and exporting.

General Tribes 2 Assets: Contains all Max Files and Skins
Mod Tools: Contains all Max Files but no skins - I don't see the difference in Max files with the above.
Sierra's T2 download page

GG's Search Engine
I moved from Opera to Firefox a while back and been adding fun search engines, of which I found one for GarageGame's Search Engine. Maybe I'm catching up with things but this is sweet.

Musing...
Other than that.. I've been still messing with Vehicles, getting only slightly further than previously, I still can't see to get jets working. I'll try some further scripting at some stage.

TDN Work, more tutorials.. vehicles and GUI

Toby W. Allen — 2006-02-11T18:34:46+00:00

Well I've been busy on the Torque front, althought I really should be working on University work.

Simple Vehicle
This has been a really fun thing to play with. I got an old model up and I wanted to make it fly, as it's designed for this. So I thougt I'd research the flying vehicle stuff and write a tutorial. This is certainly one of the more complex areas of development, linking in all aspects of the engine. Its cool. I got my vehicle working in Torque:

I've been working on getting it running smoothly, it loads up fine in the racing sdk example, but I need into the fps. I've looked at many scripts and I'm going to work on something that should give the option for people to mount it either by collision or by keystroke. I need to fix a size bug in the mesh, and check if all the mountpoints work. The tutorial is pretty well underway now, with much of the information there. I'm not entirely sure about the contrails working or not? I know you need to bind a keystroke to the jetemitter, but this doesn't seem to affect the contrails? or does it?

I need to work on the scripts really and expose that side. For a simple flying vehicle, it's not easy to write something withouth being too complex about it. I'll work on it more. I have been having fun setting up a good amount of particle and effects, once these are done it's amazing how much you can do. It really helps to provide people with this sort of effects and information, it just gives people more stuff to play around with straight away.

Creating a simple flying vehicle

GUI

I looked into making a GUI overhall for NinjaSticks a while back and I found it rather complex and ill supported. Not in what the GUI can do but in how to edit it. So I started thinking about the best way to create a GUI that's easily done and produces something cool in a short amount of time. I didn't facy making little images that didn't together all that well, so I thought how about I just make a big window concept, and use PhotoShop's slices to provide me with all the little bits that go together. And I developed this photosop file, which I've provided in beta right now on TDN.

I haven't gotten to the scripting bit yet, but this will come in a little later once I have time for it. It's not that hard.

GUI Overhall Tutorial

Other than that, I still need to write more in the Visual Style section and polish the GUI and vehicle stuff. I've been peaking my nose into the weapons stuff, but that might wait until we get back into characters and all.

I guess I should be looking into showtool really.. umm..

And one last thing...
Few new projects, mostly around torque and possible the devil's machine, but who knows.. I'll talk only if someone gives me belgian beer!

TDN Resources

Toby W. Allen — 2006-01-03T10:59:57+00:00

Hey all, happy new year!

This is a quick little post to say that I've started three sections which I'll be working on in the next few weeks. The first being the Research section for visual styles, in which I will give out some tricks used to make sure you stick to an accurate representation of a visual style and look. The second will be creating a wasteland and third creating a tropical paradise. These will be for Torque 1.4 rather than TSE, as most of the core information will be valid for both.

I'll update later with some pictures and structure on stuff. It's pretty easy going, but it just needs to be compiled together to make for some lovely informational goodness!

Toby.