16 posts tagged with "event"

We're heading to San Francisco for GDC 2016!

Actually, we fly out a week early to tour PlayCanvas users on the West Coast. But we're really excited about attending the conference because we have a lot of coolness in store. Here's a quick run-down of what we'll be up to:

• Monday 14th - Tuesday 15th: Available for meetings to discuss all things WebGL - get in touch if you want to talk. We'd love to meet you!
• Wednesday 16th - Friday 18th: PlayCanvas will be demoing our latest and greatest tools, demos and games on the ARM booth (#1624) in the Moscone Center's South Hall.
• Wednesday 16th - Friday 18th: Mozilla will be showcasing our phenomenally popular game TANX on booth #936. Think you've seen TANX before and know the story? Think again! Head to Mozilla's booth for some surprises!
• Wednesday 16th: PlayCanvas will be announcing an amazing new feature in the PlayCanvas Editor at the Khronos WebGL session at midday at SF Green Space. We won't ruin the surprise but wow, you need to attend this and check out what we've built. It'll light up your life! (There's a hint right there) :D
• Thursday 17th: PlayCanvas will be presenting on Facebook's booth (#1416) at 2PM in the Moscone Center's South Hall: "Building WebGL Games That Work".

And we'll be partying hard in the evenings! Come share a beer with us!

Don't worry if you can't make it to GDC though. We'll be tweeting and blogging like crazy, keeping you in the loop.

On May 13th, San Francisco played host to 3D Web Fest.

The event was designed to showcase websites that represent the best of the best of the 3D Web. The content on show - presented as Live Performance Art – was amazing, delightful, surprising and at times disturbing. There were creations by artists and developers of all kinds showing off their best 3D web sites live with musical accompaniment. The running order was as follows:

• Tone Pong - A audio rich Pong experience
• Character Study for WebGL Games - Rag doll physics
• Gravity - Trippy gravity playground
• A Particle Dream - Trippy particle playground
• Maratropa - Twitter visualizer
• MTV EMA 2012 Opener - A Zoetrope, a fast-moving carousel which evokes the illusion of motion
• Seemore - Enter PlayCanvas and ARM's sinister realm of a monstrous man-eating plant
• Mountains of Mouthness - Mountains that read tweets aloud
• Rainbow Membrane - A VR demo where you are inside a box you can pull and push, performed with an OculusVR and LeapMotion
• Arterys - Visualizations of CT data of arteries, including flow
• Just a Reflektor - Control some effects in a music video using a webcam
• Lights - Music video flying over a procedural landscape
• (out)Looking Glass - A man contemplating himself in the mirror
• Nyumblies - Hand-made organic shapes swimming around
• Skazka - Dream-like landscape with dancing silhouettes
• VR Data Landscape - Fly through a landscape of abstract shapes, presented using a LeapMotion camera and a balance-board controller

Check out our Seemore demo up on the dual big screens:

The man behind the controls was Brad Grantham of ARM. He selected some superb music to accompany the visuals. Check 'Hush' out here. Kudos to Brad for doing an incredible job!

It's very exciting to see WebGL content being recognized as an artform and even more exciting to see PlayCanvas content representing the best of the web. We're looking forward to a follow up event at some point in the future!

PlayCanvas is passionate about education and many universities throughout the world are already using PlayCanvas to teach videogame development skills. One such school is ENTI, which is attached to the University of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain.

On 21st March, ENTI is holding VideoGame Day in Manacor on the beautiful Balearic island of Mallorca. It is their first workshop on videogame design and programming, where they are going to teach how to make robot dance using PlayCanvas! The workshop starts at 10AM and last for 4 hours.

The address:

Espai Na Camel•la, Manacor – Carrer d’en Tià de Sa Real s/n (see here for a map).

VideoGame Day is brought to you by two videogame experts. First, we have Josep Francesc Cortés Fullana from Manacor, who has been working in the field of video games for Kerad Games in Barcelona for many years. And there is Jordi Targa, the professor of the Upper Grade Educational Cycle in 3D, Games and Interactive Environments at ENTI, offering to the participants a course of programming and design of video games based on PlayCanvas!

The conference consists of two parts. The first part is the conference related to the video games world, constantly growing market, and the job opportunities it offers.

The second part is a practical course where the participants have an opportunity to create a video game online and thanks using PlayCanvas and also have a chance to win a powerful Chromebook-2 by entering our PlayHack event.

VideoGame Day is free of charge and welcomes everybody interested in videogame development.

You can apply for participation sending an e-mail to: info@enti.cat or confirm it personally in Education Department or Manacor Council (c/Muntaner 12)

It is recommended that all attendees bring a notebook for the practical part of the workshop.

So what are you waiting for? Why not enjoy some Mediterranean sun and learn some great new development skills at the same time?

Pizza, Beer and No Developer Tears​

Last Thursday we hosted an event for around 50 members of the London HTML5 Game Development community at our Idea London office. After striking a deal with Papa John's, we had a great talk from Amazon's Jesse Freeman and caught up with a community that we are proud to be a part of.

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Responsive Game Design​

After some catching up over a slice (or three) of pizza, Amazon's Gaming Evangelist Jesse Freeman discussed the challenges of making your game cross-platform and resolving this with Responsive Design. Offering advice on resolution, scaling, mechanics, syncing data and coding for cross platform, Jesse's even used his games Super Jetroid and Super Paper Monster Smasher to illustrate his points.

But what was the gist of Jesse's talk? Put simply, consistency. The modern gamer demands and should have access to the same gaming experience no matter what device they use or playing style they adopt. Hopefully Jesse's presentation will feed the attendee's ambitious cross platform ideas and projects.

London HTML5 Game Dev. Community​

While there are HTML5 communities all over the globe, if you are a developer (or interested in game development) in or around London you might be interested in the London communities events and online group. Not only can you become part of a growing community but you can learn, advise or simply gossip about HTML5 technologies.

In just over two weeks we are holding a presentation night at the Mozilla London office where amongst other speakers our CTO Dave Evans will be giving a talk on Virtual Reality for the Web. Anyone is able to attend! simply sign up here.

Last Friday night PlayCanvas resident artist Philippa Moore took our game SWOOOP up to Dalston to the London Game Space. The event?

LadyCADE, a casual and friendly gathering for people who make and enjoy games...and who happen to be women.

A fantastic event which we were delighted to be able to attend. Look out for future LadyCades at other events like Nottingham Game City later this year. Make sure you follow them on Twitter for more updates.

We held a make-shift high score competition with post-it notes on the wall and big congratulations to @flappyfingers for his determination in taking away to the top spot.

The final results are here:

Thanks to Gemma, Holly and others who helped to organize this great event.

PlayCanvas was proud to be one of the partners for this weekend's Great British Summer Game Jam. An event put together by Autodesk and Mind Candy where a group of extremely talented game developers got together over a weekend, teamed up and built a game in just 20 hours!

The Game Jam was to be judged by some leading industry figures like Ella Romanos, Harvey Elliot and Roberta Lucca and there was a special award for the Most Accessible game, with features designed to make the game more playable by gamers with disabilities.

PlayCanvas Jammers​

PlayCanvas added to the prize fund with free annual licenses for the winners but we also were on hand to provide technical support, tea-making and general dogs body services.

Several of the 10-or-so teams used PlayCanvas to create their game but it was Team "Godlike" who really shone out.

Made up of a group of seasoned game jam veterans, Team Godlike were nothing if not ambitious. Their game Sunshi*e was a Katamari Damacy inspired design, which saw the player evolve from tiny bee, to majestic swift (sadly they didn't get as far as the concorde they had in their initial plans), as your perspective grows the British Isles are revealed. All to an "English Country Garden" soundtrack.

Play Sunshi*e or check out the project

It's a great achievement for a weekend, and a glowing testament of how powerful PlayCanvas is, to for a team and collaborate to build a game in such a short space of time.

Team Godlike's efforts were rewarded as they came away with 2nd place, and have won themselves a great selection of prizes, though sadly not this most excellent trophy. Better luck next time team!

If you're entering a game jam in the future, why not give PlayCanvas a try? Don't forget to put in a little practice first though!

This week, thousands of indie developers are making their way to Malmö, Sweden for a very special conference. That's right folks - Nordic Game is here again!

Of course, PlayCanvas will be there to join the fun! And first things first - we want to meet you! If you love making games, you're going to love PlayCanvas so come and check out the latest build. But where? Well, this year, we will be demoing on Autodesk's booth (C1) and demonstrating a workflow to effortlessly publish Maya LT content as realtime 3D in the browser and on mobile. So make sure you drop by and find out why PlayCanvas is a better way to make games. If you would like to arrange anything beforehand, just send an email to info@playcanvas.com.

Game Jam​

But wait, there's more. Autodesk and PlayCanvas will be partnering on a game jam at Nordic Game. There are some great prizes on offer, such as a top of the line AMD graphics card, and not to mention Pro subscriptions to PlayCanvas.

So sign up, get jamming and discover why Maya LT and PlayCanvas make such a hot couple!

See you at the show!

Last week, I did a talk at the London Game Space about game development trends and how it is influencing what we are doing at PlayCanvas.

The event was recorded and you can see a video of the slides and my talk below. It was as Pecha Kucha style talk which means 20 slides, with each slide lasting 20 seconds. So it's less than 7 minutes long.

I think it does a good job of showing why we're building PlayCanvas.

CEO Will Eastcott at SXSW Accelerator

This past week the PlayCanvas founders have been deep in the heart of Texas at the celebrated mega-festival SXSW. We were chosen from over 500 companies to pitch to a enormous room full of business leads, journalists and tech enthusiasts. Will was on stage and we wowed them successfully enough to get through the final 3. Sadly another talented start-up crew beat us to the No. 1 slot, but a close 2nd is still pretty damn good.

We've moved on from Austin now, and we're in San Francisco preparing plenty of exciting news and demos for the Game Developer Conference. We look forward to sharing lots more stuff with you this week!

This last week was a frenzy of activity from the PlayCanvas founders. We trekked all over the UK to teach new people about PlayCanvas with demos and workshops.

Thursday​

Co-founder Dave running a workshop on HTML5 Game Development

On Thursday, I went up to the Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies in Nottingham and gave a workshop to a room full of interested developers. We covered the basics of a 3D engine, some quick samples of how Graphics, Cameras, Physics and Audio can be used, and then we ended the 3 hour session with the entire group building the Luna Lander demo that we showed you a few weeks ago.

At the end of the session, everyone had had a great time and had a playable game to show for it.

Friday​

The Open Arcade at Nottingham GameCity

On Friday, we were demoing at the Open Arcade in Nottingham town centre. The Open Arcade was an amazing space put together by the GameCity organizers to let game developers show off their work and also provided a communal place for playing the latest and upcoming independent game releases.

Sunday​

On Sunday, our other co-founder Will held a short session at the Mozilla Festival in London.

Again, a room full of people got a quick introduction to HTML5 Game Engines and 3D game development. They then dived in and this time built a working version of Pong, like in our other tutorial video.

If you run a university CS or gamedev society or a programming meetup and you'd like us to come and do session with your group, let us know via email or Twitter.