Ok, press releases are out. Official announcements have been made. The ink is nearly dry on the page, and OVER HALF the tickets for X48 Birmingham have gone already. If you’ve not registered yet, get gone to here: x48birmingham.eventbrite.com.
Once they’re all (or nearly all) gone we’ll open up the registrations for Huddersfield.
This week we’re starting to discuss the theme for this year’s X48. It was hard enough thinking of the ‘Evolution’ theme for last year’s X48, but thinking of two different themes is proving really hard.
There’s some great stuff going on with XNA in the running up to X48 with last year’s hosts University of Derby holding an XNA competition in their excellent Labs. We’ll be covering that on here.
So the key thing at the moment is getting your team registered. Registration is free, but please don’t register unless you’re serious about coming. There’s room for 60 people in the labs (less than last year) of each event, and team’s need to be of 2-4 people. If you can, register with your university e-mail address. If you haven’t got a university e-mail address but want to compete, get in touch and we’ll talk!
When X48 finished we quickly realised that due to time constraints most of the teams hadn’t had chance to package their games up in a format that most people would be able to download and play them in. Hence why the system requirements up to now have been quite restrictive.
So it’s with a hearty thanks to Andrew Sithers at Microsoft that we’ve now got the Top Three winning games of X48 in .ccgame format. To play these all you need is this, and a Windows machine with these requirements:
- Windows Vista Service Pack 1; Windows XP Service Pack 3
- A graphics card that supports DirectX 9.0c and Shader Model 1.1 is required. Shader Model 2.0 is recommended and required for some Starter Kits.
- .NET Framework 2.0 or higher is required.
Hopefully that will make getting your machine ready to play these games a lot easier that it was before.
Hang on, I recognise that shirt…and that hallway…and that beanbag!
That looks like one of the volunteers that helped keep X48 running smoothly when three pairs of hands weren’t nearly enough. Being awake that long and not being a coder obviously takes its toll on better judgement…not to mention co-ordination.
All the games that are playable are now available to download from the GAMES section. Unfortunately the time contraints on the teams meant that the system requirements are that of a machine used to code on. All the software is available to download for free, but we appreciate that this makes it more difficult. So a massive thankyou to Andrew Sithers at Microsoft who has offered to rebuild the games to be playable by more people. We’ll keep you up to date on our progress on that.
In the meantime, the lovely folks at Newspepper have finished editing together all the footage they took at X48 into this neat little film. Highlights for us include a sleeping Mike Reddy, a singing Marcus Lynn, and Team Aberystwyth getting massively excited by all things cheese!
Phew. Cor blimey. That was a gruelling two days, and also the most fun to organise and be at. Congratulations to all of the teams for some of the hardest work we’ve ever seen, as well as the most intense and imaginative. Without futher ado, here’s who won and what with:
First Prize – Huddersfield Green’s Seavolution. Prize: Student Passes for Develop Conference including travel and accomodation + a Flip Mino each.
Second Prize – Huddersfield Orange’s Involved. Prize: A Flip Mino and a £50 Amazon voucher each.
Third Prize – Team Newport’s Bellis Perennis. Prize: A Flip Ultra camera each.
Best Artistic Achievement – Huddersfield Orange’s Involved Prize: ‘The Orange Box’ XBox game including Portal.
Best Technical Achievement - Team Teeside’s Charles Darwin’s Magical Voyage Prize: ‘MegaDrive Ultimate Collection’ of classic Sega games for the XBox.
The Game That Diverged Furthest From The Theme - Team Teeside’s Charles Darwin’s Magical Voyage Prize: A copy of On The Origin Of Species by Charles Darwin.
Best #x48 Tweet – RT @heenix And this one time, at XNABandCamp, I broke my code >.> #x48 Prize: An XBox Racing Wheel.
Cheesiest game – Team Hull’s Evo Fighter Prize: Some damn fine cheeses.
Most ExperimentalGame – Huddersfield Black’s Chronofix Prize: A kite each.
Best Unfinished Project – The Derby & London Met Team’s EVO Prize: A crate of Relentless energy drinks for those extra hours
We’ll be posting all of the game information as soon as we’ve sorted through it and been to see our mums. Keep your eyes peeled, and get on the RSS if that’s how you roll.
Well, we’re approaching the 24 hour mark here at the University of Derby, and after a 2am Red Bull and milk run, we’ve finished encoding loads of videos and even had time for breakfast. We’ll be carrying on with the filming all day as the student teams wrap up their games ready to present to the panel of judges (who are returning from their hotel sanctuaries as we speak).
While doing the rounds yesterday, we interviewed the X48 mentors about their initial impressions of the day, the games, and what they saw happening…
X48 is well and truly underway. The teams have been thinking, designing, and coding now for nearly five hours and there are some brilliant concepts floating about. As you may or may not know about X48, the games are to be made to follow a theme. This theme was kept pretty secret until today when it was unveiled by Mr. Charles Darwin seen here:
The theme, if it weren’t already obvious, is EVOLUTION. It’s Darwin’s bicentennial you see, and Channel 4 Education along with Microsoft wanted to tie this all in and encourage original ideas that educate and inspire as well as entertain.
For we are still alive, and we are doing science!
We’ve been filming things ALL DAY with the Flip Ultras and Minos kindly provided by Flip Video. They’re great little gadgets and we’ll be giving some away as prizes. Speaking of prizes, we’ve not announced them on here yet…so here’s what they’re working for:
First prize – 4 passes to Develop including travel and accomodation, as well as a Flip Mino camcorder each. Second prize – A Flip Mino and £50 Amazon voucher each. Third prize – A Flip Ultra each. Check out the X48 Vimeo group where student teams, mentors and organisers will be uploading content like nobody’s business. You can also keep up on the action on Twitter, and use the #x48 hashtag if you want to join in.
It seems it’s XNA month this month. Not only have we been attached to our laptops in the name of XNA, but when we emerge we find that there’s the previously mentioned XNA Barcamp in Birmingham in March, it’s XNA Tutorial month over at GameDev.net (or at least it was supposed to be…it seems it’s been put off until March 30th), AND some folks at the BBC made their first foray into developing a Dalek game for XBox using Game Studio 3.0.
It’s only been a few hours since my last post, but more tickets have gone, and we’ve confirmed Dean Calver, Lead Programmer at Splash Damage, as an X48 mentor.
News of X48 is popping up everywhere on the internet already, and tickets are going fast. Lots of people asking about it on Twitter all over the world, so for the 80 students that will be part of this code-athon there’ll be a global audience.
In our conversations with XNA folk on Twitter we got wind of another XNA event happening just down the road in Birmingham on day two of X48. The XNA BarCamp will be held at iCentrum and is a show and tell open to all who are interested in XNA.
We concur with them that “they’re both going to be wild!” and are looking into streaming between the two venues. Full steam…
