Game Development Lab

Graduate students from the gLab presented approaches to generate realistic collision sounds for games at the Austrian science fair “Lange Nacht der Forschung” on November 7, 2009.

Collision sounds are an essential part of physics-based computer games, such as racing simulations. Playing the appropriate sound when two cars collide or a solid object hits a wall is no trivial task and usually requires a large number of different, prerecorded sounds.
gLab students Martina Karrer and Wolfgang Lenzelbauer presented an alternative approach where collision sounds are generated dynamically, based on actual physical parameters. Their application (based on gLab’s engine Cogaen) enables the use of a tablet pen to scratch a variety of different objects. This triggers the generation of an appropriate sound based on the intensity of the interaction.

“Lange Nacht der Forschung” is an initiative of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research to display current research topics of universities and research facilities to a wider audience.

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The GLab will proudly be displaying ongoing projects during the annual Open House at the Hagenberg campus of the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences on Friday, March 13th. Students and lecturers alike will be on hand to show some of the most recent games and game technology projects. The Game Development Studio will be exhibiting projects in the fields of audio synthesis and graphics and physics engines. The games Revive (Xbox360) Balkan Reign (PC), and Wobble (multiplatform) will be on display. Game prototypes from both the Game Concepts and Design class and the undergraduate program will be installed on computers in the Warehouse lab for visitors to try out and offer feedback. Feel free to drop by and play to your heart’s content!

Students from the Media Technology and Design and Digital Media programs in Hagenberg will be presenting their semester projects. Animations, games, and interactive applications produced during the past semester will be presented and your feedback is appreciated! Free beer and get-together at the end of each presentation day. All presentations are in Lecture Hall 4 (HS4).

The Audio for Games conference is the 35th international conference of the Audio Engineering Society, focusing specifically on the technical and creative aspects of game-audio. The conference is for game-audio professionals and those whose work is related to audio for games.

The conference programme is designed to cover cutting edge technology and techniques in today’s and tomorrow’s titles, including areas such as digital signal processing, spatial audio, music and sound content creation, codecs and speech processing. This is a chance for the games industry to share experience of how to get the best out of current and future technology.

This isn’t a conference about games with an audio bit, and it’s not a conference about audio with a games bit, this is a conference about audio for games!

More Details about the conference as well as registration details can be found at http://www.aes.org/events/35/index.html

Title: AES 35th International Conference – Audio in Games
Location: London, United Kingdom
Start Date: 2009-02-11
End Date: 2009-02-13

The Game Development Lab in Hagenberg is now an official member of the Sony Playstation Portable Academic Development Network. The Glab has its very own PSP development kit and the first projects are currently underway. This is a landmark event for the Digital Media program, as it will allow students to develop their own games for the PSP console.

The Lounge

The winner in the category “Games” of this year’s mediengala is the Adobe Flash based game “The Lounge” by Philipp Horwath and Christopher Tazreiter. After receiving their Media Cube, both were understandably happy since there had not been any clear favorite among the five nominated games and competition was tough: A classic board game called “Mammon”, the online multiplayer game “BugAttack”, an interactive AI-based simulation named “War of the Worms” and the interactive puppet simluator “Dedo del Titulo”.

The Lounge puts one to three players in the roles of a waiter and two barkeepers. The waiter uses the mouse to assign new visitors to a free spot at the bar while the barkeeps have to use the keyboard to keep the customers happy by fulfilling their needs for drinks.

Christopher Tazreiter and Phillip Horwath

Here is what the jury said:

“The project shows that the fun factor is one of the most important elements of a game. The game requires a high level of level of concentration, ability and teamwork in order not to chase away the customers but send them home totally satisfied.”

Congratulations to Christopher and Philipp on their success! A big thanks also to the other four nominated projects. Thanks to them we can proudly show a broad variety of games that are of a high standard and  make competitions such as these possible in the first place.

Play The Lounge!

The 8th annual mediengala presents the best student projects in the fields of animation, video, media technology, infomedia and of course games. The following games are nominated:

• BugAttack
• Dedo del Titulo
• Mammon
• The Lounge
• War of the Worms

The gala evening program will feature a presentation of all nominated projects. The winners in each category receive a media cube. Afterwards all nominated projects are set up for tryout.

Title: mediengala08
Location: RaiffeisenForum, Europaplatz 1a, 4020 Linz
Link out: Click here
Start Time: 20:00
Date: 2008-11-14
End Time: 23:45

After serious redesign, the new GLab celebrated its re-opening party yesterday. Around thirty people came to see the lab improvements such as new synthetic leather chairs, a new carpet to cover the once orange (!) floor, new furniture and network architecture and – not to forget – the all new wall and ceiling color: ultramarine blue. You can see the lab (before the actual opening) on the interactive 3D panorama at the .

The evening was started by two short speeches of Roman Divotkey  and Jeremiah Diephuis who also opened the buffet. After that, several student projects from the past semesters were shown to the interested crowd which consisted not only of master-students with computer games major but also of students with other majors and from the bachelor’s program.

Later on a big part of the crowd moved to one of the nearby computer labs to indulge in this semester’s first Gamers Night. Not less than 24 players filled a private Team Fortress 2 server and fought for about 3 hours for the domination of control points or tried to steal the other team’s objectives.

After all the GLab opening was a huge success. The Gamers Nights will of course continue in a bi-weekly schedule with the next showdown on November 5, 2008 at 18:30.

Here are some pictures of yesterday’s event.

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The GLab will be holding a presentation at a subotron lecture on November 15 about computer games education in Austria. The presentation will show how game development and game design are taught in the Digital Media program in Hagenberg.

Also a broad range of companies in the field of game development and other universities will explain their strategies to the audience. If this caught your attention we’d be happy to see you there. The event starts at 18:00, there is no admission fee.

Title: subotron – Ausbildungsplatz Österreich
Location: subotron, Museumsquartier Wien
Link out: http://www.subotron.com/772-sa-151108-subotron-electric-meeting-ausbildungsplatz-oesterreich-2008/
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2008-11-15
End Time: 22:00

Here are some (chronological but otherwise random) impressions of our visit to the Games Convention 2008 in Leipzig.

It was a great time, we got to see a lot of new and interesting games and technologies and some of us even had the chance to attend the Games Convention Developers Conference (GCDC). Expect more about this soon but first – the pictures. You will also notice a few images showing the GC Freestyle Campsite and the Video Games Live Concert. Enjoy!

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