First of all, I want to say I kind of rushed around so this is by no means extensive coverage of the show. I just had a quick walk around and if something took my fancy I had a look at it. As always there was some great work and I was very impressed. I basically talked to a few random people on projects that personally interested me. Here is my personal favorites.
Daniel Sweeney – Computer Arts – A Study In Villany
Lots of great quality artwork around the theme of Villany, some great sketches, models and artwork. I was very captivated by one of his pieces in particular of the lady. I don’t know what did it, but it just grabbed me, very high quality work. Check out his site if you want to see more.
Oliver Carson – Computer Games Technology – Facial tracking for avatars
Oliver’s software was taking data from an existing piece of facial tracking software, then trying to optimize the data captured to the basic needs so that it could be sent online and used for digital avatars. This one just perked my interest mainly because of my interest in Kinect, so the tracking of something like this for digital avatars in games would be amazing.
Al Campbell – Computer Games Technology – Variable difficulty
Al’s project was based around making variable difficulty games, the game will track a number of different things in the game, and based on how well the player copes with them it adjusts each of them. In his example it was a platform game, so it adjusts the jump height, the number of spikes and the spacing between platforms. He discussed with me the challenges of doing such a thing as you have to get a balance between tweaking difficulty and keeping the game challenging ( which is obviously the whole point in these games ).
Sorry Al and Oliver I don’t have links to your websites or anything because it wasn’t in the programme, please contact me with your details and I’ll put them up if you want.
