Where Would You Think

You can even view Rob’s Netherlands presentation on Microsoft Channel 9.

Rob Miles of the department has been presenting at Microsoft conferences over the last few weeks. He has given sessions on the .NET Micro Framework and Windows Phone development at DevDays 2010 in the Netherlands and TechDays 2010 in London. Last week he was due to travel to Portugal to present there, but the volcanic ash cloud stopped him in his tracks.
Not one to be beaten however, he covered his office wall with Portuguese flags and conference logos and did the entire presentation using a webcam, two laptops and an assortment of robots. By all accounts it was well received, some even said it was preferable to having him there!

You can find the presentation here. You can find out more about the presentation at Rob’s blog, here.

The “Instinctive Input” team show off their certificates. If you look really closely you will see that they are all individually signed by Bill Gates. Well done folks.

We didn’t win, but one of the two teams we sent down to compete in the UK Imagine Cup Finals came a creditable third place. Many congratulations to the “Instinctive Input” team who took there eye tracking system down to Reading, hardware demonstration and all, and managed to put on a great show by all accounts. 

Congratulations to the Outcry team as well, who also got a finalist place. I’m really pleased that Hull managed to get two teams into the UK finals for the Software Development Challenge, this must make Hull the most successful entrant in the UK competition.

The teams had a great time down at Microsoft UK Headquarters. They saw demos of the latest technology and presentations from UK Game Development houses. Great stuff. I’ll have some more pictures and team details next week.

For Hull the Imagine Cup story is not quite over though. Christophe and Daniel found out earlier this week that they have made it through to the next round of the Game Development competition.

Micro-Mart, a weekly UK magazine about computing has a really good item about XNA and Indie game development in it this week. It starts at page 92. Well worth a read (as is the whole magazine actually). Rob Miles of the department makes some points about getting started in game development.

Iain Kelwick, manager of Seed Software, watches as Rhett Lezama and Ashley Kelham demonstrate Aogion their iPhone

Two students from the department on our MEng Game Development programme now have their first game in the Apple App. Store, where it is proving popular and even making them some money. They started developing the game at the start of their final year of the course. It is based on an old favourite which has been customised for the iPhone platform and given a network dimension as players everywhere can upload their top scores and compete for worldwide bragging rights. The game has gained the pair some fame, they even got to make an appearance on BBC Look North.

If you want to have a go, search the App. Store for Aogi.

Orta and title slide. Nice hat.

Orta (or Ben Maslen) is graduate from our department who is into iPhone development and other cool stuff. Our student computing society, Hull Com. Soc.  invited him up to Hull to give a talk about what he has been up to.

Very good presentation. Nice to hear some of the things that we go on about during the course coming back at us from an ex-student. Orta made the point that when you start doing something like this that you must actively engage with the developer community, asking questions and helping others. Just writing a game and putting it out there is one thing, but you also have to work at “being out there” to promote both yourself and the things that you have done. 

From what he showed us, he seems to be doing pretty well at it.