Back in the good ol days

They didn’t want it! Well, they did, but they didn’t do anything with it for ages, so we stole it back (AHAA). Based on their original idea, we have now created…www.lunchometer.co.uk

Let me tell you a little bit about it…

Everybody likes lunch, but it’s a minefield out there. What’s needed is an easy method, preferably built in flash and colourised in earthy tones, for rating and sharing your favourite lunch spots. Lo and behold, from the fingers of tech emeritus flash wizard Adam Vernon flew graphs of spellbinding beauty…

It’s just a bit of fun, but we think it’s a nice way to do a little bit of office bonding, maybe give the new kid/senior C# developer advice on where to eat, and embed a little something cool on your blog without even breaking a sweat.

All you need to do is go to the Lunchometer creation-o-matic, specify a name and your area and start entering in your haunts! If you like, you can then copy the embed code and paste it anywhere you enjoy pasting HTML.

Here is the Thought Den Creative Director/senior hairstyle guru Ben Templeton’s one about lovely Stokes Croft:

As you can see, Biblos came out on top, mainly due to their bad boy portions, extreme tastiness and proximity to the office, with the French Patisserie coming in a close second.

A few of our good friends have had a pop as well:

Scott at Play Nicely clearly loving the work of slightly-out-the-way, Edward Lear themed Runcible Spoon.

Dave Tidman over at Kerve in Bath, collaborators on projects for JD and Soutern Comfort, obviously feeling the Nando’s portion love!

Whereas Hannah Flynn from Tate, for whom we made this lovely game, gives you a little rundown of what you can get around their neck of Millbank, LDN.

You may have also noticed the little ‘settings’ fork and spanner in the top right. Click on it. Go on! You can use these functions to discount certain ratings categories (if you don’t care about proximity, for example) and see how this effects the rankings. You can also change the graph to a more horizontal alignment, turn off the auto sorting or even make that Lunchometer full screen! MADNESS. Feeling hungry? Create your own Lunchometer right here!

24 hours. One theme.  Some people. Their mission: make a game.

That’s about it really. No stifling rules on programming language, group size, games mechanics or the like. The games don’t have to be screen based, and the attendees don’t have to be in the games industry. What results is a rather lovely hodge-podge of talents, working styles, crazy ideas and heavy drinking.

Arriving on Friday evening, after a brief round of “I am X, I do Y and my favourite game is Dragon Ball Z” (not originally a game, but the pun doesn’t work otherwise, pedant) we split off into teams. The two Thought Denners in attendance, Technical Director Dan Course and Studio Manager/misc George Rowe were two facets of ‘Team Disco’, a six headed hydra also including sound designer/father Owen, film maker/Mohawk enthusiast Sy, script writer/games designer/sarcasm aficionado James and illustrator/dinosaur impersonator Nat (who also wrote a blog post about this).

Team Disco in full effect: misc, sound, develop, film, program and draw

Ben Rhinehart of Mutant Labs, who are part-organisers of the Explay festival, then proclaimed the Jam’s theme to be ‘mirror’. While we reflected on this (ho-ho) we were also treated to the first of Jam’s amazing meals, a home cooked Indian feast.

Curry + beer = ideas

Much post curry brain storming ensued, with different coloured pens and post it notes in full effect, and after a couple of hours of solid synapse bashing we had whittled our ideas down to a streamlined game of disco themed British Bulldog with Medusa and vampires which happened in a temporal cycle of light and dark, with a dating element that also used Chat Roulette and AR…

We quickly adjourned to the pub before our idea got anymore out of hand, where we discovered another team were working on EXACTLY the same idea (well, it had Medusa in it). What to do?

Saturday dawned, and we discovered James had been up all night with our idea spelled out in scrabble pieces, a common practice in the game script writing paradigm. Fortunately, it turned out that our original idea was an exact anagram of ‘turn-based game that’s a bit like Frogger with bugs, but they have mirrors and are being attacked by an angry kid with a magnifying glass’. Who knew?

The place was starting to look like a morning at Thought Den

With the final idea down on paper, another amazing meal, and late comer George arriving with a mirror ball, the stage was set for some serious game creation action. James and Dan cracked on with creating the game in Unity (which Dan had never used before), while Nat started drawing some lovingly detailed bugs and Owen attempted to create the loudest laser/klaxon noise he possibly could. Film maker Sy decided to document the whole game creation process and managed to create a great five minute snapshot of the event:

What was the resulting product? Well, I think Nat described it very well in her blog post on the day:

You are a bug trying to reach the discarded sandwich, but a kid with a magnifying glass stands between you and the gingham paradise, trying to fry you to a crisp (with an entertaining fizzling sound, thanks Owen) It’s a tactical multiplayer, each turn a player moves forward a small distance and positions their mirror anywhere in a circular radius around them, once all the players have moved you hit a button and the kid with the magnifying glass randomly spawns and sends out a ray of sunshine-death which can either hit a bug directly or bounce off another bug’s mirror and potentially hit a rival. The first to the sandwich wins.

It’s not exactly ready for release, but what do you expect in one day? We had a lot of fun making it! You can play it here: http://us.thoughtden.co.uk/GamesJam/

Some quote highlights from Team Disco:

“But I supplied the graphics to you beautifully?”
“Yes, but what YOU fail to remember is that I am massively incompetent”

“Guys, you know how our game is like Frogger but with bugs? Would anyone be offended if we call it Bugger?” [Bugger was later contracted to Buggr to make it well currentz]

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Our rival teams created some fantastic little games in their time. Team Mirrornaut created ‘Mirrornaut’, a side scrolling 8-bit platformer programmed in C Sharp. It’s a bit like Canabalt but with a button to swap to a mirror image of the level. The character also looks like he has an awesome afro, though I think that is just the Team Disco influence and it’s actually a helmet. The graphics are really cool, as is Nick Dymond’s soundtrack, and the whole game is very polished.

Team ‘Late’, as they were dubbed in the DropBox race to the finish, decided to show off and create two games in the 24 hours. One was an iOS app for two players created in GameSalad, based on reading mirror images of words, and could quite easily have been submitted to the app store at the end and gone on to international acclaim. Their second game was a 3D affair, where you play Jason (of Argonauts fame) who must fend off the deadly gaze of loads of attacking gorgons; it left us both awe-struck and a little scared of David from Echoic’s “Medusa, give me back my fleece!” sound effects (though I don’t think they remember the story of the myth quite correctly!)

The Bristol Game Jam was a fantastic event, and we met a lot of great people who do and love similar things to ourselves. A massive thank you has to go to Debbie Connor and Tomas Rawlings of Aurochs digital for their hard work in organising the Jam, everybody who attended and contributed, Korash, Ben and Ella from Explay, Debbie’s neighbour for the amazing food and Lethal Bizzle for providing the post jam entertainment (seriously).

Thought Den wants you!

We are a digital studio based in the heart of Bristol’s thriving creative quarter, Stokes Croft, known for Banksy pieces, Tesco riots and the musical grub-stop Canteen. We like it here! Our small and committed team build rich websites, design addictive games and developing cutting-edge technology for the likes of Jack Daniels, Southern Comfort, JVC, Tate and the BBC. The internet is brilliant but there’s a lot of crap up there and it’s our job to add some sparkle and fun.

We are looking for an enthusiastic graduate with an eye for design who isn’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Successful applicants will become part of the team, gaining front-line experience in a highly creative environment on projects for well known brands.

Skills must include at least two of the following :
- graphic design
- video editing
- animation
- illustration
- mobile development
- CSS & HTML

The unpaid internship will be a minimum of 2 weeks. Expenses can be covered depending on awesomeness of applicant. Perks include cake, Magic Roll and swanky coffee.

Please send a CV and covering letter to george.rowe@thoughtden.co.uk stating why you think you are the right person for the job.
Applications close on October 5th and the position will start October 10th

So, we have just come back from a very exciting meeting about the first ever Bristol leg of the Extended Play Games Jam! Don’t know what it is? Read on, intrepid traveller…

The Extended Play Games Jam is a ‘hack-a-thon’ where a team of random creative/programmy/interested people come together and try and smash together a wicked good game out of the milieu of their minds, computers, beer and pizza in only 24 hours. It is a subset of the already pretty cool Extended Play Festival, held this year on November 3^rd-5th

The teams are given an overarching ‘theme’ which is only revealed at the beginning of the challenge, so it’s a little like (insert TV gameshow simile) gone mad! These games are then taken to the Extended Play festival itself, where people ooh and aah at how amazing/crap something is when made in only 24 hours. There might also be a prize, but by then someone had brought out mini rolls so we stopped taking notes…

Sounds good ey? For the first time ever this year they are running ‘pre’ events in (at the time of writing only Bristol and Plymouth, but hopefully others) which will again be 24 hours to rub together and create something cool at satellite sites on October 1st. These pre events will be live linked by Skype/Google+, enabling all manner of idea stealing and e-flirting fun.

Given the rich heritage of games development peeps in our fine city (Mobile Pie, Red Wasp Design and Mubaloo were all also at the meeting, amongst others) there was a general consensus that Bristol are going to SMASH this competition into West Country winning chunks.

We are also particularly excited by the idea that 29 creatives and just one developer will turn up, and what sort of games will manifest from the resulting 3000 mood boards (mood board bingo anyone?) But it’s also a great opportunity to get together with some of our local colleagues and have a few beers and a laugh.

Coming? See you on the games floor…

If you want get involved with one of the existing pre-Games Jam Jams:

Bristol – Pervasive Media Studio, Bristol
Contact: Tomas Rawlings - tomas.rawlings@redwaspdesign.com

Plymouth – Plymouth College of Art, Tavistock Place, Plymouth PL4 8AT
Contact: Dan Stubbs – dan@explay.co.uk

Or if you want to organise your own:  ben@explay.co.uk

Nick Clegg!

On Tuesday 26th April 2011, Nick Clegg came down to be involved in a discussion on the creative and digital industries in Bristol. Seems like we’re important or summink

After turning up… a little late (may have been something to do with the riots outside) he was answering questions focusing on “what’s involved with making Bristol a powerhouse comparable to places such as California, Silicon Valley”. Obviously no small task but the responses which focussed mostly around the government having ‘no money’ and ‘do it yourself pals’ were eloquently put across.

Nick Clegg speaking in Bristol

In the end the time seemed to rush away so very quickly and soon he was hastily escorted from the premises.

Next time, it’d be great to hear his thoughts on support for setting up businesses, new online privacy laws with Facebook, the digital rights bill or even if he’s got Angry Birds installed on his phone?

Either way, thanks for the visit, glad you wanted to talk! Who wouldn’t want to chat to this gormless looking pair…

Ben and Dan

The event was designed to carry out a public consultation using play. So, no never-ending online forms, questionnaires with leading questions and ratty ladies in the street. Basically, get a load of people together, tell them to think about what the space around means to them, then go out and draw it in fun light shapes. Which… was really fun!

Here’s some of team PM Studio’s pics from tracinglight.co.uk,

Smokers

Watershed cinema

It was also a pretty jammy’ night, a great chance to chat with great Bristol artists, business people & photographers. Never mind heading to the golf course for business, Thought Den do it next to the bar, create some art and do research on new media practices too. Bloody brilliant.

Here’s some more things other groups made, and to find out more, contact Tine Bech

Cloud Computing came to the rescue! We thought our original provision would be sufficient, but it wasn’t, so now the MP3s are hosted on a dedicated whatsit up in the cloud somewhere and are screaming down the thingamajiggers faster than mustard. This is what they say “Cloud Files from The Rackspace Cloud is an offering which allows users to store data on the Rackspace infrastructure, from 1 byte to 5 Gigbytes.”

Subtlemob site

The Twittersphere is slowly catching on, so all you tweeters make sure you use the hashtag #subtlemob and spread the word. We’ve still got London, Bristol and Liverpool coming up. Download the audio file, grab partner and get on board for a magic piece of crowd theatre.

And as Dan Course himself said after the pioneering Bristol subtlemob earlier this year “Suddenly the world seemed rosier, I was wrapped up in a bubble for 20 minutes, and, um, fell in love with a complete stranger…”

We now can’t wait for this weekend. The whole of Bristol will be descending to play at igFest. This is the 2nd year running and it’s already over-booked again!

Check it all out at http://igfest.org/

Beef did have an awesome moving in party last night with plenty plenty plenty of drink and all cool people from Bristol. As with all good parties, there were a few funny rude drawings & messages left on all the white-boards this morning I image they’ve got one spare now… =)

The sexy awards night showcases the best in the South West’s talent through a wide spectrum of Media categories.

I found some of the best pieces were, Scayrecrow a dark and twisted animation that scared the cr*p out of me in the screening.

Moose Hunt, which let loose ripples of giggling from all tables as Simon from Simon Games meandered through the New forest with nothing but a moose costume on….

Finally, we were honored to be the guests for the University of the West of England‘s table, red-wine included. It’s was very warming to see all their School of Art, Media and Design staff talking so passionately about their job roles. Lots of chatting about how they’re making their MA the best, discussions about maximizing students employability and the direction of their courses. Even better however is how much fun they all are, comments about ‘interesting’ Satin dresses, the 2 course Dean and school photos… What goes on tour, stays on tour.

Let’s see what Thought Den can win on their own next year!