Microsoft 3D Design Tool Released

Earlier this year Microsoft announced that they would be supporting 3D printers as native devices in the Windows 8.1 operating system. The aim of this is to make 3D printing as easy as 2D printing is today. They’ve just released a 3D design tool, along with some rather nice 3D designs, which you can download for free from the Windows Store. Just search the store for “3d printing” to find it.

The program works with a newly released printer driver for the Makerbot printers. The program looks very good, but unfortunately at the moment I can’t use it to print with my Ultimaker yet as that printer doesn’t have driver support. I really hope that it arrives at some point, it would be a great step to making a 3D printer a proper “appliance”.

Hull University at Platform Expo

Getting to grips with interfacing.

I learned something new today. I leaned that it is actually possible for Simon and me to leave the university at ten minutes past nine, drive to the middle of Hull, set up 15 Raspberry Pi systems (with keyboard, monitor and mouse), get parked up and have it all ready for a class at ten o’clock.

Possible, but not exactly relaxing.And without the fantastic help from the crew at the venue, it would have been quite a different story. People, you were great.

As usual with these affairs the first few minutes are as hectic as a very hectic thing on roller skates. But then everyone settles down, people get into the material and start writing code and making lights flash. I love it when I ask someone “Have you ever programmed before?” and they say no. And you can see from that they are up to that they are enjoying it and might just want to do some more one day.

Some of the sessions were in the Ferens Art Gallery, which turned out to be an excellent venue.

We were down to do four workshops of one hour each. And we had a two hour lunch break which we used to go and see talks from Richard Adams from Microsoft and Carla Prada of Soho Studios.

Richard talked about the way that the business of making games is changing, and how companies like Microsoft are looking for Computer Scientists rather than great programmers to write for their latest systems. To me this makes a quite a bit of sense.  Writing good code is one thing, but creating programs with an understanding of how the system actually executes your program means that you can make much more effective use of the technology. This is not always an issue, the speed of modern processors is such that they can often compensate for inefficient code. However, this is not the case in games, where you need to squeeze the greatest possible amount of performance from the platform. We cover this in the second year, when Warren introduces C++ and talks bout things like arranging your loops and tests to make best use of the way that the computer processes instructions in hardware. Good to hear an industry professional telling us that it really is important.

Next up was Carla, telling us about the creation of  new kind of interactive children’s entertainment character for Sesame Street. It was very interesting to hear about the trials and tribulations that you get when trying to motion capture and then animate puppets, especially furry ones. And it was also nice to hear what an occasion it is to actually meet “Big Bird”. Carla showed some of the motion capture scenes, and it was fascinating to see how the puppeteers make things seem so alive.

Then for Simon and I it was time for a quick sandwich before going back into the fray for some more workshop action. Then we packed all fifteen monitors etc back into the cube and returned to the university, nicely in time for my 5:15 lecture, where I gave away some Platform Expo wristbands.

A busy, busy, day, but well worth it.

Faberdashery Space Marine Blue Looks Lovely

I’ve been trying some of the new PLA that I got from Faberdashery. This is Space Marine Blue and I think it looks ace.

David Clark from Cuba Entertainment on Unlocking your Dream

Today’s Rather Useful Seminar followed on nicely from the one last week, about steps to take to get your game out there. Except that this was the view from the other side of the street. David Clark of Cuba Entertainment has been in the gaming business since the early nineties working with such companies as Stainless Games, SCI, Eidos and Sega. He has seen the rise and fall of the cartridge based console, the disruption caused by the PlayStation 1 when Sony released it on an unsuspecting world, and most recently the shattering effect of the arrival of Apple and the App. Store on game distribution.

He has also seen the influence of the game publisher wax and wane and the rise of the self publishing game house. David was here to tell us how you can take your great software and make it into successful product. He had some very interesting things to say about money, where to get it from, what do do with it and the importance of an exit strategy.

Two things stood out from his talk for me. Firstly that 60% of something is an awful lot more than 100% of nothing. The value that publishing services can give to a game are well worth the cost. You might think that you can promote and sell your game yourself, but unless you got into game development to do just that, you are not going to enjoy it very much, and besides you should really be spending your time adding value to your product, not trying to persuade people to buy it. Much better to let go of some of the equity and use it to pay for people who can get things moving for you.

The second thing that stood out (and I was very pleased to hear this from David) was the importance of Networking. And no, I don’t mean WiFi. I mean having business cards, making useful friends and keeping people informed of what you are about. The kind of funding that a fledgling game developer needs is just the kind of stuff you can get from folks you happen to know who have spare cash lying around. So you need to make efforts to “happen to know” them. This means getting out there and promoting yourself, which is spectacularly difficult for an introverted computer scientist, but it is well worth the effort.

Thanks so much to David for coming along and giving us the benefit of his experience and knowledge.

You can find his presentation slide deck here.

Team NameString=YOLO win Three Thing Game People’s Choice

This is Ben from TeamNameString = YOLO who won the People’s Choice award for the recent Three Thing Game. We had 31 responses and these folks got the highest number of votes by quite a margin.

If you want to find out about their entry you can take a look at their judging video here.