Three Thing Game Rides Again

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.

Update on Wednesday, March 7, 2012 at 09:30AM by Rob

I really must get my ears syringed, or something. Turns out that people said "PS Suite" and I heard PS Vita. We will be making games using PS Suite, not for the Vita platform.  

Lumia 800 Battery Life Tips

When I first got my Lumia 800 I did some tweaks to improve battery life. I’ve just passed them on to a fellow owner, and they helped for him too, and so I thought I’d blog them (mainly so I don’t forget myself)

I turned off “Synchronise game requests” on the Game settings and “Notify me when new networks are found” from the WiFi settings. I also set “Download new content” to 30 minutes on both my email inboxes. I configured the Kindle application to display text as white on a black background, this makes a big difference to the consumption on the OLED display.

With these settings, which don’t cause me any inconvenience at all I can get a day of use out of the phone with enough left to limp through a second day on battery saver mode if I forget to charge the phone overnight.

Home to Windows 8

Got home to Hull this morning at 11:00 am. As I had rather cleverly (if getting up at 4:00 am for three days counts as clever) kept my body clock on UK time while I was away, I wasn’t suffering too much from jetlag, although I was suffering a bit from lack of sleep.

Anyhoo, I was wide awake enough to download the Windows 8 Consumer Preview and install it on my Acer Iconia W500 tablet. I’d put the Developer Preview on the device earlier, and I thought it might work well. It does. I’ve got me a snappy Windows tablet that works a treat. If you’ve got one of these devices and want some Windows 8 goodness you can find a useful howto here. This was written for the Developer Preview of Windows 8 but it works fine with the latest version too.

Windows 8 itself is interesting. It really is a system of two halves. The Metro powered Start Menu gives you Live Tiles and a very finger friendly environment. The desktop gives you a, well, desktop that looks and behaves pretty much like being at home, although it is noticeably quicker than previous versions of Windows. Startup and shutdown times have shrunk dramatically  too.

The Acer running Windows 8 is a reasonable iPad substitute. It even has a Marketplace where you can download and install applications, including a free copy of “Cut the Rope” which is a really good game. And of course I can plug in a keyboard and a mouse and then fire up Visual Studio to do some proper development.

I’m looking forward to seeing Windows 8 running on “pure” slates/tablets which are based on ARM technology. With built in Live Mesh integration you should be able to move between different platforms really easily, using the iPad like devices to consume information and the Windows Desktop behaviours to produce it.

Actually, for me one of the best things about the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is the version of Pinball FX which is shipped with it. This is a very good implementation of the game and it runs really well, even on my little Acer.

Goodbye to SIGCSE 2012

Pat Yongpradit does his Kinect booth session at SIGCSE 2012.Very smooth work sir.

I said a farewell to the Microsoft crew at SIGCSE today. When I left they were still working hard manning their stands on the exhibition floor. I only went by to say cheerio but I ended up dishing out tickets for the booth prize draws and talking to folks until I had to rush out and grab my airport shuttle. Great fun these affairs. Nothing quite like talking shop with a bunch of like-minded people. Thanks to the Microsoft crew for inviting me over.

Just as I was leaving there was great excitement at the hotel. Michelle Obama was in the house. She was dropping by to meet with some military families in the area and then take part in a fundraising luncheon. The hotel was full of large blokes with big shoulders and earpieces plus a huge queue of audience members, all looking super smart and obviously looking forward to the event.

SIGCSE Fun

This was on the wall of the room that we used for the presentation today. Who knew tables and chairs could be so dangerous in large numbers?

Did my two sessions at SIGCSE today. And before them both I did a very shouty 15 minute booth session which was fun. And loud. Sorry if my booming voice was a bit noisy folks, I feel particularly bad about the chap standing in front of me who seemed to rise about six inches into the air when I went into “Town Crier” mode to promote the session...

These are some of the Kinect presentation audience at the start of the session, both audiences were great with some lovely questions. Thanks folks.

I promised that I’d make the slides and the demos available after the session. You can find them all here. Some other useful links that you might find, er, useful.

www.csharpcourse.com – my C# Yellow book and C# from Java Orange Book. Also some XNA content you might find useful.

Microsoft Faculty Connection – you can find the Kinect content by typing Kinect into the Search Curriculum Resources box and doing a search. You can also find my Windows Phone content here too.

Kinect for Windows – if you want to work with any of the Kinect content you will need to install the Kinect for Windows SDK.

Channel 9 Videos – these are videos of some of my stuff. There is a session on the Kinect (with working demos) and other stuff you might find interesting

Windows Phone in Rhyme – and why not..

After my talk I had a wander around the exhibition.

This is the Touch Develop team strutting their stuff at a booth talk. They’ve just released a free book about writing Windows Phone programs on Windows Phone. And they have some really exciting plans for the future. I plan to spend the flight back writing some code on my Lumia (in flight mode of course)

One way to stop folks wandering off with the pens…..

The Gadgeteer crew in action. They have some really nice stuff here including a scary powerful buggy.

Want one.