Independent Games Festival & Game Developers Choice Awards

I apologise for the long post but here we go. (My opinions will be in soon)
Winners  Independent Games Festival & Game Developers Choice Awards

2014 IGF Award winners are as follows:

http://www.gamespot.com/videos/2014-independent-games-festival/2300-6417847/
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/213548/Papers_Please_takes_the_grand_prize_at_16th_annual_IGF_Awards.php

Seumas McNally Grand Prize
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope

Excellence in Visual Art
Gorogoa by Jason Roberts

Nuovo Award
Luxuria Superbia from Tale of Tales

Excellence in Audio
DEVICE 6 from Simogo

Excellence in Narrative
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope

Best Student Game
Risk of Rain from Hoppo Games

Audience Award
The Stanley Parable by Galactic Cafe

Excellence in Design
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope    

Annual Game Developers Choice Awards are:
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/213557/The_Last_Of_Us_wins_top_honors_at_Game_Developers_Choice_Awards.php
Game of the Year
The Last of Us from Naughty Dog

Ambassador Award
Anita Sarkeesian

Best Narrative
The Last of Us from Naughty Dog

Best Visual Art
BioShock Infinite from Irrational Games

Best Technology
Grand Theft Auto V from Rockstar Games

Best Game Design
The Last of Us from Naughty Dog

Best Handheld/Mobile Game
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds from Nintendo EAD

Best Audio
BioShock Infinite from Irrational Games

Pioneer Award
Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill of Riot Games

Best Debut
The Fullbright Company for Gone Home

Innovation Award
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope

Audience Choice Award
Kerbal Space Program by Squad

Lifetime Achievement Award
Ken Kutaragi

Best Downloadable Game
Papers, Please by Lucas Pope

Hearthstone Errors: 001 Weapon Oddity

Odd Graphical Error with Weapons

 

Today I noticed an odd graphical Error that seemed to be with the text area for all the weapons when observing them in my deck viewer. It was a bright pink box, about the same stock pink you get when you open up microsoft paint, assuming it is some sort of text test outline. I have provided some screen-shots at this link to illustrate the issue.

Ideas, University and No Smoking

Business Launch Pad

Last semester I took part in this http://businesslaunchpad.ulster.ac.uk/about.html where you are meant to come up with a business idea and then proceed to flesh it out to get to a point where you are able to pitch this to future investors. I still feel that I would love to follow through on this but I need to spend a good week on it to really get all the areas fully fleshed out. If I am unable to get this sorted out before the end of the semester and get counted for university credits I will continue= this and get it finished.

Been enjoying the Blue Swede after watching the Guardians of the Galaxy and hearing the song Hooked on a Feelin’ (linked below)

Current Video Plans

Hearthstone; Mediacore Opinions; Black Slate Production Game Update; University Related Videos; Mediacore Pre-Generations; Mediacore Current Opinions News’ish

So this is not a comprehensive list of what I plan on getting sorted or what I think I will get sorted just a glimpse of what I am currently thinking about. 

Hearthstone – this will be me playing arena mode and having a bit of fun. I am thinking I may need an intro for this but really not necessary. 

Mediacore Opinions – This will serve as the reviewing section for myself really to illustrate the current positives and negatives that I have seen in the game and not attempting a critique of the way I think it should be done. Again it is called Mediacore Opinions for a reason. 

Black Slate Production Game Update – Within my university course a team that I am heading are making a game idea and I think that this could be documented quite well, may be interesting. 

University Related Videos – where I was thinking that this would be fantastic for me to do revision with producing these shows, this will show my knowledge of the topic while helping that knowledge to spread to others while reinforcing it in my head as well. 

Mediacore Pre-Generations -  where we will start of a generation (e.g. NES) and just go through it at the same pace as the current generation and draw comparisons, with a review of games of that generation and (like retronoobz) to see if they will hold up. 

Mediacore Current Opinions News’ish – or something to that effect. :P

Electronic Cig

I have to fully thank the Electronic Cigarette for getting me completely off both the normal cigarettes and nicotine for about 7 months now. I will probably be making a bigger post about this or a video but just wanted to pay thanks to the company that helped. This isn’t really what they are intended for but I felt they were a great help.

Links:    www.gecigarette.co.uk; http://www.gecigarette.co.uk/genesis-echo-electronic-cigarette; http://www.gecigarette.co.uk/t/Discover; http://www.gecigarette.co.uk/genesis-echo-manual-battery; www.gecigarette.co.uk/echo-lanyard;

New Pages on Blogger

OOOOHHhhhh I have went all fancy, I am now using the pages on the blogger. I will be putting all my online contact details and such things like twitter on the same page. This will have the added benefit that if I want to put all the contact details on a description, for instance, they will be prepared all in the same place. I will also be using the blogger where I will put all the content through and then I will have a paste of this where I can paste it into all the parts of moltile, where all get updated at once. I can also create new pages for different things like a gifts page on steam or content that I am working on for example.

Hearthstone & University

Hearthstone Heroes of Warcraft
My goodness I have finally found my card game. Online where I don't have to sink all the monies into it and it seems to be generally balanced well and the 3 different modes present a different challenge to myself keeping it fresh. I highly recommend it as it is free and you don't have to spend real money on it if you don't want to. Whenever I do get a better cash flow after the student life I will hopefully be able to spend some real world money to basically say "yes keep this up blizzard".

Episode 3 of Moltile plays Hearthstone Arena



Moltile plays Hearthstone Arena Episode 3
Card Overview:  00:30 to 02:20
Play 1 02:49 to 15:23
Play 2 16:04 to 32:39
Play 3 33:15 to 40:05
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I had seen the company NineDotStudio on extra credits a while back and they seemed like a great company fighting for an improvement in the game development lifestyle. Then I saw their game that they are working on and my jaw hit the floor of how beautiful the assets were for the game. I do plan on getting the game and hopefully doing a video for it as well. This is their URL http://ninedotsstudio.com/
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=134884522



Current University Life
The travel is long but the work is hard.
Firstly I wouldn't trade where I am, what I am doing and where I think I am going but it doesn't stop me from feeling the strain of the workload on top of the hard travel. I am in class only 3 days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday) but I usually need to go in another 1 or 2 days each week. This is again due to the workload and the type of work. Travel consists of leaving the house at 5am to walk a couple of miles to get my first bus. This takes me near the Belfast bus station where I get the 6:30am bus to Derry/Londonderry to get me in for 8:30am. Then it is a quick 20min walk to the uni after that. Coming home is the same distance, obviously, but not the same timing. On the commute home I roll the dice whenever I get my work done, if I get the Derry/Londonderry bus back to Belfast at 5pm I only have to wait 20min in the bus station for my next bus. Otherwise if I get the 5:30pm bus I will have to wait in the bus station for over an hour.

The work is, overall, very hard, and it isn't the work itself generally it is just the large amount of it that needs to be done in such a short time frame. All the while we are meant to be working on personal projects, making a portfolio and revising for the tests that are littered through out the semester. Oh well, if things go according to plan I will have a game with one level done, a placement for next year, exams finished, portfolio looking awesome and a new computer screen all sorted by end of May. Still, as of writing, I have yet to buy my tablet to do more work on the bus but I have been a bit busy. :P

The other main gripe with university is the course I picked has a 1 Year in the Game Developing Industry Placement, which basically means I work for a company for a bit less than their usual staff and they get help, in the form of money, to train me. I thought as this was an essential part of the course that the university would be set up to assist me in finding this. As I have found out this was a massive, NO! Really they are set up only for their Computer Science students and even at that they are not perfect on this front either. With the earlier time constraints that I mentioned earlier there are the additional hindrances of no help and no direction on how to go about securing a placement. I will be attempting to get this years students to feed back into the placement so that future students will have a fighting chance but not before I get my own placement sorted out.