These folks are the true survivors.
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.
Judges and videos
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. | 
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. 
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. 
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.
This is most of the students at the start, lets see how many are left at the end. We got cracking with Three Thing Game this morning. Great things are being done, or at least thought about. Just about everyone has turned up, which means that we have around 100 students in the department for 24 hours or so, trying to finish off a game. There are loads of pictures on Flickr, some of them even have captions. Find them here.
If you want to find out who you will be working with, you can download the team lab assignments here. Note that they have all been given suitably spooky names….
You can find the content from the XNA session (along with lots of other stuff) here: /demos Here are links to the code we developed in the session, plus a bonus “coloured cloud” version. The presentation was firsts given at Mix 11 in Las Vegas earlier this year. You can find a video of the presentation here. You can get a free XNA book from here.
Three Thing Game is a student development competition that we run in the department. It originated with an exercise in 2010 called Destruction Golf in which a number of student teams had a week to create a game. We ended the week with a 24 hour development session where the games were finished and a winner judged. The event was the basis of a really good article in 360 magazine. You can find out more here. We give each team of students three “things” around which they can base a game. The things are suggested on the web site in the weeks leading up to the event. We have students from all years taking part, in the October 2011 event we have around half the teams from the first year. The competition is as much about project management and planning as it is about game design, coding and assets. An approach based on getting something working and then iteratively adding features has been found to be much more successful than those based around a “grand plan” with lots of “great ideas”. You can keep coming back to this site to find out more about the competition, and how the teams are doing.
[Warning: this is a graphics heavy post. But worth it] 
These are the things, who knows what magic they hold. Three Thing Game October 2011 started today. We have 25 teams and 75 things to give out. So let’s get on with it. 
Ergo Studios: Scott Smith, | John Firmin and | William Mason
”Giant Sniper of Doom” | 
Tactical Nuclear Penguins:
Josh Crowther, | Alex Beamer and | Dan Burns
”Funky Robot goes underground”
 I chose this weekend over Battlefield 3: | Lindsay Cox, | Devon Hansen, | David Hart and | Michael Bumby
”Gun toting volcano in space” | 
Double A's:
Anthony Quinn and | Aaron Ridge
”Extreme hamster in the graveyard” | 
Bottled Games:
Steve Muir, | Leigh Boynton, | Simon Johnston and | Marc Cutsforth
”Fairground mouse jungle quest” | 
ALE:
Ermin Huremovic, | Luke Young, | Anthony Church and | Adrian Smith
”Jelly werewolf ghost story” | 
Drop Table Team;: '
Tom Forbes, | Joe Smith, | Ben Coveney and | Mat Bajer
| | ”Skateboarding Chicken Hospital” | 
Team Thunderhead:
Toby Russell, | Rob Bedding, | Jonathon Rich and | Tom Proctor
” | | Skeleton Fridge at School” | 
The Honey Badgers:
Keelan Jenkinson, | Jacob North, | Scott Sanderson and | Bektas Ozer
| | ”Alien Dog with a Banjo” | 
Smoking Hashtables:
Sam Cutler, | Dan Endersby, | Louis Deane and | Alex Mann
” | | Bearded Frankenstein Fighter” | 
Aeonian Arts:
Arron Martin, | Willliam Grey, | Sam Healand and | Caine Martin
| | ”Faster than Light Zombie Desktop” | 
The Four Horsemen:
Nick Case, | Alex Hatton, | James Czerwitt-Hampshire and | Mark Dyer
” | | Heatseeking Vampire of Stealth” | 
Fez Productions:
Heather MacDougal, | Thomas McPherson, | Matthew Narey and | Miles McGann
” | | Reality TV Star Pies Crypt” | 
Rage Against the Turing Machine:
James Taylor, | Joe Wilson, | Dominic Rihaldi and | Josh Twigg
” | | Spandex Banker Overkill” | 
The Unlikely Alliance:
Scott Neil, | Daniel Karkin, | Waseem Akhtar and | Alex Pringle
”Summoner Bomb Speedboat” | 
The Infamous Two Sirs:
Christophe Lionet and | Robert Marshall
| | | | ”Tomb Ninja Travelodge” | 
Troll:
Robert Campbell, | Tim Chadwick, | Lawrence Worrell and | Samantha Henstock
” | | Bungalow Dragon of Death” | 
What's That Coming Over the Hill:
Joshua Moon, | Andrew Flatters, | Abdul Muzammil and | Emily Bradshaw
” | | Cheese Penguin Apocalypse” | 
Vapour:
Johannes Van Rig, | Ben Outram, | Steven Bul and l | Tom Kingston
| | ”Magic Mum Comic” | 
4Play:
Alex Chard, | Sam Harrison, | Shuef Khan and | Niall Hammond-Blackburn
| | ”Disco Killer Doodle” | 
Ad-Hoc Productions:
William Dann, | David Armstrong, | Nathan Hickling and | Katherine Fielding
” | | Orchestral Assassin Butcher” | 
Team Awesome:
Stephen Foster, | Sean Mackan, | Callum Elshout and | Danny Alan
” | | Frankfurter Badger Canal | 
Scribble:
Alex Tanser, | Luke Harrington, | Steve Davis and | Ben Allison
| | ”Curry Dinosaur City” | 
Nerd-Tacular:
Grant Lodge, | Codie Collinge, | James Croft and | Tim Roth
”Long haired mummy on safari” | 
Jaybodanto:
Jamie Crossman, | Robert Bailey, | Thomas Smith and | Daniel Moorhouse
| | ”Galactic Vegetable Dragon” | 
