The Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries made its mark at EGX 2019 last week, presenting playable games and simulators from its staff and students.
EGX (formerly Eurogamer Expo) is the UK's premier video games trade fair, organised by Gamer Network. This year's edition – running 17–20 October 2019 – was a golden opportunity for the Faculty to showcase its research and innovation activities. The creative outputs address many societal challenges such as democracy and inclusion, health and wellbeing and sustainability and environment. Here's what was shown at the expo.
Featured games
Venison
Venison is a playable hunting and ecology simulator with AI characters. The player as a Wildchild – a forest native – that has to prolong the life of the environment.
Shush!!!
Shush!!! was developed by a staff team for this year's GameJam. The player controls Isabel, a historian searching for the long lost manuscript 'Five Generations Hence' in the abandoned house of late author and librarian Lillian B. Horace. Isabel must navigate the house, find the manuscript, and escape while avoiding Lillian's ghost.
Armoured Onslaught
Armoured Onslaught is the brainchild of Portsmouth-based indie company Team Hot Stuff. It's an explosive blend of top-down shooter and tower defence, requiring players to make use of strategy and skill to fight their way through relentless hordes of deadly foes. Available on Steam.
Featured simulators
2D Volumetric Global Illumination Lighting System
A team of final-year BSc (Hons) Computer Games Technology students created a technical demo of a 2D Volumetric Global Illumination Lighting System. It uses real-time global illumination techniques to produce dynamic, customisable volumetric lighting for 2D scenes.
Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boat (RHIB)
The RHIB project operates using a 3-degrees-of-freedom motion platform, with replica control console. This advanced simular was a collaboration between School of Creative Technologies students, Novatech and Petty Officer Neil Sutton of the Royal Navy. It will explore the use of force feedback in powerboat training and potentially allow the Royal Navy Reserves and users to assess the RHIB's performance in action.
Find out more about the other work our students, staff and researchers do by visiting the School of Creative Technologies page.