Students

Students Explore Multi-Touch Gaming With Oculusia

Online Videos by Veoh.com This is a video of a game called Oculusia, created by a group of University students at the Aalborg University Copenhagen as part of their bachelor thesis. The game involves protecting sea sponges along the sides of the table from the one-eyed boss in the center by shooting at it, using a deflection paddle to defend the sponges from the boss attacks as well as other players' missed shots. Thomas Miksa, one of the students involved, sent us this video, along with a bit of explanation.

We believe that multi-touch will be everywhere in a few years, already seeing it now with Jeff Han's Perceptive Pixel, Microsoft's Surface, and the iPhone. When the multi-touch platform develops further and end in the hands of more consumers, they would want to play games on it. Oculusia is one exciting example of how these can be designed and implemented.

In case creating the game wasn't enough of an achievement, Thomas notes that they also built the table itself. Damn fine work gentlemen!

10:40 AM on Tue Jun 17 2008
By Mike Fahey
3,582 views, 32 comments

Latest by .em.: That looks great! I bet it's fun (and it seems like quite a project). more »

nintendo ds

Nintendo Releasing Student DS Games (Hurry, Limited Time Only)

Last year, Nintendo worked with some Japanese students to come up with a few experimental DS games. Now, in a pleasantly surprising move, they'll be releasing these games, free of charge, over Japan's DS download stations. Four games will be available, with each available for two weeks. The first game will be up on March 13, with the last on April 24. There's an eerie, temporal feel about this whole thing: because the games can't be saved, once Nintendo yank them from the service, they're gone. Forever.
Nintendo Japan [via Siliconera]

2:30 AM on Fri Mar 7 2008
By Luke Plunkett
1,890 views, 8 comments

Latest by Xelotath: If it was here some group would dump it but it's not so hopefully a Japanese guy will do it. It's easy if you work at the store and have a slot-2 flash cart. But those games have a high more »

xna

Microsoft Handing Out XNA (And Lots of Other Stuff) To Students

As I logged into my school email account this past week, only to be greeted with the news that some libraries are way too protective over their microfilm (damn you, Yale!), a little item on the news section of our login page caught my eye. Microsoft is giving away several full-fledged programs to college students, hoping to lure them away from Adobe-powered and open source software; in addition to Visual Studio Professional Edition and Expression Studio, they're also handing out XNA Game Studio 2.0, including a 12 month trial subscription to XNA Creators Club (plus some other stuff). Under the initiative titled 'DreamSpark,' they're hoping to rope in people early on, with the hopes of reaping the financial benefits later.

DreamSpark is simple, it's all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology - or just get a head start on your career.
Who can get this right now?

We are kicking this off in 11 countries/regions, giving DreamSpark to millions of students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. If you are not residing in one of the countries listed keep checking back, we will be adding more countries throughout the year.

There's more information over at the DreamSpark website, plus you can find out if you're eligible and all that good stuff.

10:30 AM on Sat Feb 23 2008
By Maggie Greene
4,227 views, 91 comments

Latest by DaiMacculate: @homernoy: Oh yeah no I agree with you that you were responding to an overblown statement, and I tried to factor that into my response without jumping into that dialogue you were having with the other guy, but I guess more »

game design

Gaming Vignettes: Hush

Ian Bogost has an interesting analysis of a little 'rhythm' game called Hush, a USC Interactive Media student produced number that uses the 1994 Rwandan civil war as a backdrop. The point of the game is to keep your child calm by singing a lullaby — letters that drop slowly down the screen and must be pressed when they're at their brightest on screen — lest the Hutu patrol finds you (the screen cuts to red, leaving little doubt of what happens if you fail). True vignettes are found rarely in gaming, but Bogost thinks that despite the flaws, Hush points to how vignettes could be incorporated successfully into games and gaming culture: More »

1:30 PM on Sun Feb 17 2008
By Maggie Greene
2,134 views, 16 comments

Latest by zenpoet: @Ping5000: its in the lexis commercial. I like the idea, but agree that it should attempt to be more soothing, less jerky. I suppose to argue the other side, have you ever tried to be soothing when completely frazzled? I suppose more »

igf

IGF Student Showcase: Entries Close Monday

In another bit of Independent Games Festival, a reminder that entries for the IGF Student Showcase close this Monday (15 October). If you're 13 or older and were a full or part-time high school or college student as of the Spring '07 semester, you're eligible to enter - and they're even accepting entries of game mods. There's more information at the IGF site, but the basic rules and regs are after the jump: More »

1:30 PM on Sun Oct 14 2007
By Maggie Greene
570 views, Comment

oddities

Atlantic-10: Taken Out of the Ballgame

Remember the good old days of college activism? The all or nothin' days? George Washington University student Joshua Meridith, a sports columnist at the school's newspaper, The Daily Colonial, is calling for a boycott of EA's new MVP 06 NCAA Baseball because G-Dub-U didn't make the final roster of schools. It's entirely possible that EA wanted to put the school in the game and couldn't reach an agreement, and considering that there are precisely zero Atlantic-10 teams in the game, I'd assume there was some sort of business-related issue at hand. But in the meantime, we're young, get angry! More »

11:43 AM on Fri Jan 20 2006
By lsmith
92 views, 2 comments

Latest by harkonnen: Considering that nobody follows NCAA baseball, outside of friends and family of players, I dont know why there is such a fuss. My guess is that there approximately 50 people in the nation who know if the pre-programmed stats and more »

oddities

Pac Man Runs Free at University of Michigan

I understand that exams and the weeks surrounding them are stressful. I went to Michigan, I remember it (it wasn't that long ago). A couple of UMich students decided to break some of the stress of studying with a Pac Man plus Ghost zerg through the Undergraduate Library and one of the campus' computer labs. It's captured on shaky-cam here. More »

12:30 PM on Wed Dec 21 2005
By lsmith
325 views, 1 comment

Kotaku

Green Lantern, Joker Join MK Vs. DC Universe Line Up

Gawker Media Network