The Murray Hall Community Trust led project ‘SHIELD Sandwell’ will be officially launching the project on the 23rd May promoting their new service for young people across Sandwell who require support relating to mental health problems.
You can check out the SHIELD site at www.myshieldsandwell.org
Its a very sad day. Ambient Studios has closed its doors. Normally we’d respectfully pass on our sadness via Twitter and chalk up yet another UK based studio on the pixel scrap heap, but Ambient Studios was one we really kept an eye on and not just because of its flagship game ‘Death Inc.’.
We stumbled across Ambient Studios via Kickstarter a few months back and was blown away by the amount of support they were receiving from the games industry for Death Inc. (check out the video below), and more impressively the flood of creativity presented via their blog on how the game was being developed. Anything from images, renders and our favourite being paper crafting of buildings and furniture really added to the following experience as they processed very openly the creation of Death Inc. Being transparent in an industry which prides and needs to be secretive is something very refreshing. If there’s one byproduct of Kickstarter, its the openness required by fund raisers to get the backing they need.
Unfortunately, Ambient didn’t manage to hit their target in time, but this didn’t stop them from giving up the fight. Shortly after they released a paid for open Alpha, which we bought into, with one of the perks being able to name a character in the game. The more you contributed, the more you had an influence on the final game.
However, cashflow is king in any business and no matter how funky or amazing your product, keeping the ship afloat is ‘the’ most important thing and sadly business is always difficult and painful, especially in the software industry as banks are less inclined to provide loans on software development.
We received our refund today for our contribution to Death Inc. It’s regrettable that things didn’t go so well for them, however its certainly a very noble thing to do when faced with closure.
We wish everyone at Ambient Studios the very best and hope your dreams eventually come true.
Last year we worked with a number of apprentices to develop their skills and experiences. One of them, now progressed on to university, started working with Unity3D immediately. Here’s a look at one of his first projects with us >
After much scratching of beards and pondering, we finally invested in the amazing Leap Motion finger powered digital everything… However, it’s original shipping date of around May 2013, Leap has been pushed back to sometime in July to help with last minute tweaks, polishes and final hugs. See >THIS< for more info. Rage aside… Mainly because we wanna try out this badboy out, we’re totally committed to this technology if it makes true on its promise of changing our lives. No pressure.
We are behind you. ^_^
*cat image found using the search term > screaming animal
Final Image provided by > There can be only one cat screaming
Unity3D has an amazingly talented community of developers working hard to create a wide range of wonderful new toys to play with via the games development platform.
We’ve played around with many of these assets, investing in products which have become natural fits into in our projects. We’ve developed projects internally, just to experiment with these tools to work on new concepts and ideas without the worry of investing time and resources into creating platforms from the ground up. In this post we present some of the products which stand out from the crowd.
Continue reading “Unity Assets We Love: Part One” »
Early stage render.
We’re working our socks off on the development of a new game designed to help young people who suffer from mental health issues. The service, entitled ‘SHIELD’, is exclusive to young people in the Sandwell borough of the Black Country and brings together a number of experienced organisations who specialise in helping support young people.
The game will become a central part of the process of engaging young people as well as informing those who want to learn more about the multitude of problems young people may face as they grow up.
‘myshieldsandwell.org‘ was launched at the beginning of April to help guide young people to the right sources of help as well as bring together volunteers and future partners as the service grows over the next two years and will host the webplayer version of the game with further access via partnership centres across Sandwell.
We’re very proud to be a part of the project and will start to provide updates on the games development as it evolves.
The site was developed using Word Press and the game is being developed using Unity3D.
We’re certainly going to be keeping our eyes on this new device for future developments. One of our partners are awaiting delivery of theirs and based on their feedback we may invest in one.
Today saw the launch of a new service led by Murray Hall Community Trust and partners Krunch, The Children’s Society and commissioned by Sandwell MBC to support young people with social and wellbeing issues across the Sandwell borough for the next two years.
Entitled ‘SHIELD’, the project aims to provide a wide range of services to engage and support young people aged between 10 and 25 who may be suffering from a variety of issues as well as providing support and advice to anyone worried about a friend or family member.
3dnative has been commissioned to develop the new website myshieldsandwell.org and develop a new game to support the communication between workers and young people in difficult and complex issues.
The new game will be launched in July 2013 and will only be available to young people in the Sandwell area due to the restrictions of the project.
