Level Design with Sjoerd De Jong

Sjoerd De Jong has been working with the Unreal Engine since 1999. He’s been involved in the development of five commercial Unreal Engine titles, has authored two books, released a training video and runs the worlds largest Unreal Engine 3 tutorials website! Add to this his five very large non-profit projects and more than 30 award winning Unreal levels and Sjoerd “Hourences” De Jong can safely claim to be an expert level designer and environment artist!

Hourences is visiting us next week for a week long workshop in the UDK! The workshop is reserved for SIM2 programmers and graphics, as a part of your Level Design course.

Time: Mon – Fre, March 1st – 5th, 08:00 – 18:00
Location: TBA

Goals for the week:
-Fully playable level in general
-Has some kind of gameplay valuable (needs a layout – not just a flat space…)
-Supports bots, and has weapons and such
-Actually resembles something (a building or landscape – not simply a bunch of cubic shapes)
-Needs at least one door and one elevator, and two scripted events.
-Needs to have a sky visible, with sunlighting.
-Needs at least one self-made particle system
-Needs at least one self-made material
-Needs to make use of both Meshes and Brushes.
-Needs at least one pool of water/lava/some other liquid

Nils Stadling from Microsoft

Time: Wednesday, January 20th, 13:00-15:00
Location: Almedalen library, E22.

Wii Workshop with Prof. Akihiko Shirai

Prof. Akihiko Shirai – creator of WiiMedia – is coming to GAME next week for a three day workshop on Wii-development!

Akihiko holds a Ph.D. in Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology and is currently employed as “science communicator” at the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation where he does just that; introducing the general public to emerging technologies by building new types of computer entertainment and games.

That is: he experiments with new types of human-computer interactions by building permanent exhibitions using laser range sensors, haptic interfaces, and augmented reality techniques to let visitors play to experience bleeding edge technology.

Some of his past research projects includes:
• VR and entertainment system design and development
• Robotics and Haptics for entertainment
• Tangible Playroom series (Haptic interaction platform for infants)
• RoboGamer (Physically connected game playing robot using GPGPU)
• SPIDAR (String based haptics interface)
• Springhead (Open source real-time physics engine)
• Digital Cinema (Production and screening)
• Augmented Distortion (Efficient deformation for low polygon model)
• GPUVision (Ultra fast computer vision on GPU)
• LuminaStudio (Real-time video composing on GPU)
• Axi-Vision (application for HD resolution Infrared ToF depth camera)

He has written several awarded papers, most notably the SIGGRAPH 2007 Best Paper; “WiiMedia: motion analysis methods and applications using a consumer video game controller”. This workshop is not to be missed! The workshop is reserved for staff and GAME programming students in years 2 and 3!

Monday, December 14

Lecture by Prof. Akihiko Shirai
Time: 14:00 – 15:00
Location: HGO, lecture hall E31

Wii Workshop intro
Time: 15:00
Location: HGO, lecture hall E30

Tuesday, December 15

Wii Workshop cont.
Time: 13:00 – 17:00
Location: HGO, lecture hall E30

Wednesday, December 16

Wii Workshop cont.
Time: 13:00 – 17:00
Location: HGO, lecture hall E41

Presentation of workshop results
Time: 17:00 – 18:00
Location: HGO, lecture hall E41

Alumni Days 2009 Program

The annual Alumni Days are upon us yet again! This year features three full days of guest lectures and workshops by our industry active former students – ending the week with a huge party over at the Motion Capture Studio. Be there or be square!

Wednesday

13:00 – 17:00 (3rd year GAME Students)
Mikael Hedberg – Frictional Games
Location: E30
Workshop: Storywriting

13:00 – 17:00 (All Students Welcome! – but space is limited on sign-up basis)
Jonas Eriksson och Johan Presto – Pitchin
Charlotte Ryberg – Disco Volante
Sign-up: with Maria Larsson at BAC
Location: GIP
Workshop: Att Kommersialisera Kunskap

Thursday

10:30 – 12:00 (All Students)
Tobias Lundmark – Starbreeze Studios
Location: Borgen Movie Theater
Quality Assurance: Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena

LUNCH

13:00 – 14:00 (All Students Except 3rd Year GAME Students)
Johan Svahn – One Man Productions
Lecture: How to Start Your Own Studio

13:00 – 17:00 – (3rd year GAME students)
Mikael Hedberg – Frictional Games
Workshop: continues.

14:00 (All Students Except 3rd Year GAME Students)
Workshop: “Konsten att gå rätt – hur du använder kroppen, blicken och rösten för att nå dina mål.”

Friday

10:30 – 12:00 (All Students)
Mikael Hedberg – Frictional Games
Lecture: Story Writing

LUNCH

13:00 – 14:30 ( All Students)
Martin Ekdal & Koshjar Hamedi – Donya Labs
Demonstration: 3D Optimization

14:30 – 15:30 (All Students)
Nils Stadling – Microsoft Sweden
Lecture: Introduction of Microsoft Partnership

15:30 – 16:00 (All Students)
Emma Mellander – Nordic Game
Lecture: Nordic Game Presentation

16:00 (All Students)
Don Geyer – Wrap-up and Party Tickets Distributed

19:00 (All Students)
Alumni Mingle & Party! – With DJ Doktor DRYG
Location: Motion Capture Studio

Tobias Lundmark – Starbreeze Studios

Tobias ‘Dopefish’ Lundmark is a GAME-alumni working (since 2006) at Starbreeze Studios as Quality Assurance. Dopefish has been in charge of breaking titles like The Darkness, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Bourne and the unannounced Project RedLime. He’s also a recurring guest teacher in our vastly popular online course Quality Assurance in Games.

Dopefish is coming here during the Alumni Days to do an informal Q&A-session about Riddick, Starbreeze and life as a game tester. Also, he’s promised to show some unreleased behind the scenes footage from the production of Riddick.

Question & Answers: Riddick – Assault on Dark Athena
Time: Torsdag, 10 December, 10:30 – 12:00
Location: Borgen Movie Theater