As this year’s Make Something Unreal competition enters the metaphorical big toe of its final leg, all four surviving student teams are under tremendous pressure to produce results.
That’s not to say they didn’t crest this week bearing bold and beautiful UDK prototypes, because all four did. But now there are barely two days left to implement some of the myriad changes and fixes suggested to them during regular visits fromindustry envoys. Two days to ensure that their work meets professional standards.
Two days to nail down something that won’t implode spectacularly in the face of Peter Molyneux on Sunday.
For Dead Shark Triplepunch, that meant elucidating the genetic twist to their first-person future-basketball sim. Tobias and team will need to convince Sunday’s panel that Epigenesis‘ seed-based scoring system isn’t a tacked-on compromise made to appease the Wellcome Trust scientists on the show floor today, but rather a source of strategic depth in their game:
The clamour of industry gurus persuaded Kairos Games to take a deep breath, reach into the chest of their 3D platformer and have a fiddle around with its vital organs. Polymorph is to have its very own Zelda Navi-style guide – a bluebottle previously confined to the tutorial who will now lead players through both of the game’s existing levels:
When I found Mendel’s Farm designers Static Games this morning, they’d managed to implement save states and lock down their HUD after “several redesigns”. Experiments in cell shading in the poultry (though not paltry) management game were ongoing:
And theBeingsteam worked to get a whole second level up and running in time for judging.Gaurav Pant, who’s spent much of the week playing PR man, tied back his hair. That’s apparently when the real work begins:
Elsewhere we caught up with Football Manager mastermind Miles Jacobson, congratulated him on an April Fools’ Day well executed, and asked him what he thought of this year’s contestants:
Jeremy’s at Gadget Show Live, and won’t be made to leave til Sunday. Find out what all this is about at the Make Something Unreal Live tab.