Awesome Internet Things: Sleep!

Posted 3 March, 2013

It is a well known fact, to those that know it well, that sleep is important. Unfortunately most of us students don’t own one of those new fangled sleeping pattern things though we are fans of naps. So, here is a really quick post to give you the tools to have awesome sleeps!

#1 Sleepyti.me - You sleep in waves which means there is a rhythm between deep and light sleep; setting the alarm to wake up during light sleep means you’re going to be all smiles. In theory. Sleepyti.me essentially tells you when you should wake depending on when you want to head to bed or vice versa.

#2 Napwheel - Related to above, if you’re a student and must nap then fit it within this “rhythm” for a better nap. This works really well with LifeHacker’s suggestion to restart your day at 2pm.

HabitRPG Funded!

Posted 24 February, 2013

I realise this is posted up in the late evening on a Sunday but this still counts towards writing a post a week!

The main news this week is that HabitRPG’s Kickstarter has finished with a final total of $41,191! This is an incredible turn out of almost double the initial asking price of $25,000 and I’d like to say a great big thanks to everybody that backed!

We had our first development meeting yesterday to finalise our first first weeks work and to discuss some workflow and business decisions. The predominant outcome of the meeting for me is reducing my capacity in the HabitRPG scene for a few weeks and return my focus to University; that four years of study I’ve been spending so much of my time working towards. I need to spend four weeks at least on my Final Major Project in order to get my degree. Fortunately all of my HabitRPG work goes towards my degree so I’ve produced a lot of content for my final submission.

I will be continuing work on HabitRPG in the sense of organisation, management and design; all the paper-work behind the scenes as well as improving the Chrome-Extension and hopefully starting on the Firefox extension.

Busy is the word I’ll use. I’m going to be busy.

Till next time…

Awesome Web Things: Lifehacker

Posted 12 February, 2013

There are a tonne of fantastic websites, videos and resources out there on yee oldé internet; some well known others can only be found in the deepest darkest corners of interspace. I’m going to search and share these which I call Awesome Web Things so here we are looking at one of my all time favorite websites; Lifehacker. If I had to suggest one website for everybody to read, it would be Lifehacker. 

If you aren’t a reader of Lifehacker then shame on you! If on the other hand you are an avid Lifehackian then I’ll keep this post short and sweet. Lifehacker is a website that dedicates itself to making life more awesome with a variety of different tips, tricks and articles on a whole bunch of subjects. Each time you load up Lifehacker you’ll learn a something motivating, something thought-provoking or something simply cool.

Lifehacker is where I found out about HabitRPG, as well as most of the techniques I currently use for organisation and productivity. They have technology guides, interview tips and app suggestions. On top of that they have regular “Weekend Hacker” guides, live Q&A and interviews with awesome people.

Not everything will be up your alley but to put this simply; if you want to be better at this game that is life, hack it.

I’ll be looking at the darker corners of the web soon.Anybody got any awesome web things they use? I’d love to check them out!

Introducing HabitRPG

Posted 9 February, 2013

Following on from last weeks productive post today I want to introduce you guys to a project I’ve been working on; HabitRPG; a to-do list and habit tracker which treats your life like a Role Playing Gaming. You gain experience and gold for completing tasks but lose HP for failing at them; with the gold you can purchase items such as health potions or personally set your own rewards.  I‘ve only recently joined the team in the last few weeks and have predominantly been working on the Chrome Extension as well as behind the scenes organisation.

It’s fairly simple in its current state but it really works as a motivational tool plus we just released a bunch of new features including character customisation and the party system.

The whole reason I joined the project in the first place was because of its ability to motivate me; previously I was a pen & paper to-do list type of guy but features such has as repeatable daily tasks which if failed damage your character motivate me to focus and make sure I get things done. Give it a look and see if its your cup of tea.

We currently have a Kickstarter running with just under two weeks left to go and about $6,000 left to earn so we can build a mobile app for HabitRPG and fund some full-time development. Check that out but also its open-source so get involved on GitHub if you want to supply content, vote on our Trello board of requested features and like us on Facebook! 

Twenty Thirteen

Posted 28 January, 2013

Merry belated Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Birthday to those it affects. Another year begins, which I realise was a month ago, and as is the done thing the beginning of a new year is a time of reflection on the past twelve months and looking towards the future. You wake up in a drunken daze on the 1st of January, not quite sure how much of an arse you made of yourself the night before, only to curl up into the fetal position and promise that this year you’ll never drink again. Six hours later you meet the troops in the pub to calm yourself with a soothing pint of ale.

Within the first day most people have already broken some sort of new years resolution but then the idea of a new years resolution is an artificial one in the first place. If anybody truly wanted to better themselves why wait for some archaic point in time to propose to the world that they shall be a better person only to find themselves waking up in a field New Years Day with cider bottles taped to both hands; the resulting journey home poetically sums up how the rest of the year will transpire.

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First Week, Last Year (Also UDKLightmap Tutorial)

Posted 7 October, 2012

This past week my university year started up again, its my last year there and then off into the real world. Scary right?

Our last year consists of 4 things; a 5000 word dissertation, Professional Practice, Pre-Production and Production. Essentially its an essay and then just “make stuff”, our grade is based 100% that.

We have to choose a job role and develop ourselves towards that. For example choosing to be a character artist and then making lots of characters, researching character artists and generally focusing your work towards that role. Its a hard choice, I feel I need to get better at environment art as I’ve came so far, but then I’m incredibly interested in the role of Technical Artist (making scripts, shaders, VFX, tools etc) and also want to revisit what inspired me to pursue game development; level design.

So I’m going to try and focus on environment art, I’ve got a couple of projects to work on with live clients, indie & mod developers but hopefully I can sneak in some tech art somewhere. Depending on how things have went when the Production unit starts, I may be able to do some level design for it as the Production brief has to be a substantial project.

Oh, yesterday I recording my first video tutorial. Its about lightmaps in UDK with 3DSMax.

Epic Tutorial Handbook

Posted 2 September, 2012

So the lovely guys over at Papercut have put together a huge 300 page free booklet of various 3D and art tutorials by the likes of artists from Blizzard, Naughty Dog as well as various freelancers. Vertex covers a huge range including 2D concepting by John Park, 3D Character modelling by Tor Frick and even colour theory, performance management and general tips for being a freelancer.

Essentially, its pretty massive and if you’ve the slightest interest in being an artist, let alone a games artist you’d have already downloaded it before you’ve got this far in the post.

In addition, Papercut are running a modelling competition to celebrate the release of Vertex. It involves the likes of Hitler and George Washington battling each other with lasers, check that out to.

Rezzed 2012

Posted 12 July, 2012

So I wandered down to Brighton last weekend and attended the first Rezzed PC & Indie Games Show hosted by Rock, Paper, Shotgun and Eurogamer.net. It was genuinely really good. Twenty pound for two days of gaming, networking, industry talks and drinking. It speaks for itself really.

My favorite aspect of the event were the Developer Sessions, the most interesting of which were the talks by the indie companies. Although there were a number of sessions by larger developers they weren’t as immediately interesting as they are restricted to what they can say by publishers etc. The Project Zomboid team were the most entertaining in their hilarious talk about “How Not to Make a Game” and joked about the companies precarious past involving next door bomb labs and being robbed. Introversion on Prison Architect, Dean Hall on DayZ and the Indie Game Jam were great fun and genuinely really interesting.

As well as the talks by the various indie developers there was also the Leftfield Collection sponsored by Saga. Some of the indies such as Introversion and Unknown Worlds could afford their own booths, but they are essentially still indie teams. It was incredibly interesting to talk to the developers and play some of the games to get some idea of their thought process. It was a fantastic marketing opportunity for those on display as indies don’t usually appear in this type of environment.

After the show most of the attendees went to a bar down the road for drinks and conversation which is where I bumped into a number of the Natural Selection 2 team. NS1 was by far one of my favorite modifications for the original Half-Life and the NS2 team bought my loyalty through the free drinks they were buying me. It was a blast.

There was also a number of AAA games being shown such as Borderlands 2, Colonial Marines and Far Cry 3 and although I sat down to play them all they were not my focus for the event. The AAA developer sessions were also a lot less interesting than the in-depth talks of the indie teams.

For me that was what made Rezzed really stand out though. The events out at the moment are either extremely consumer targeted (e.g. Eurogamer & e3) or for paid developers in the industry (e.g. GDC & develop), Rezzed on the other hand was a good mix of both. The indie teams are small enough and not tied down by publishers or marketing people which allows them to really speak about the nitty-gritty of development but they also got some great marketing out of displaying their games in the Leftfield collection. The AAA industry was there with the blockbusters but it was in no-way overpowering and felt much more like a 50-50 split between the two different types of developers. They are already planning Rezzed 2013 for which I will be grabbing tickets as soon as I can.

Oh, I had to go on stage for the 1-Hour gamejam session and won my second piece of signed Valve memorabilia in the form of this limited print Dota 2 poster:

Tthats not me with mine but I assure you mine is just as prettyfied. I’ve left mine in the cardboard packaging otherwise it most definitively will get ruined as soon as my messy little fingers are upon it. I’m going to get it framed I think.

Every attendee also got keys to the closed Dota 2 beta so I’ll be playing some of that in the coming weeks also. Its much less forgiving than League of Legends I’ll tell you that now.

Till next time…

WordPress Wonders

Posted 21 June, 2012

Hey there guys, so I quickly bashed together a wordpress site today, hacked a template and what not.

Hopefully this will work better, look better and generally be better. The next step is getting my portfolio together to upload to the main page. Subscribe via email or RSS on the top right.

=D