Rolocule Games wants to make fun games, according to them

Quote
"Rolocule's mission is to entertain universally, by blending technology with art and creating most enjoyable experience for everyone and strongly believes that art and technology often creates magic"

Founded by the EA return game programmer Rohit Gupta & his longtime friend & business partner Anuj Tandon, in Pune sometime last year. Super Badminton is their 2nd game for the I-Phone & I-Pad the 1st being "Touch Squash World Championship 2009".

Not many people will know that badminton has roots in our very own Pune & Super Badminton is the first badminton game for the I-Phone & I-Pad. Thus it is apt that a Pune based game company should make this game.

In their Short stint as game developers, Rolocule have managed to get a host of people interested & playing their games, all over the world literally.Also they happen to produce great racquets sports games which are listed amongst the best of best & the top five.

Touch Squash was downloded in more than 70 countries, Super Badminton did even better as it was downloaded at 4.99 dollars more than 200 times in 2 days and that was 2 weeks back, all OUTSIDE India.

It also rocketed to the hot games category on Apple Apps listing & covered by a dozen international publications. The reviews have been good to great & the Rolocule team has worked double time to bring out an gameplay upgrade and HD version for the I-Pad.

Rolocule has many games planned out & whats even better is they make games of international standards.

Incidentaly Rohit stint at EA-working on the SIMS games & their strong technological background has made this possible. One of things that we lack in India, particularly in the area of game development is game engine development & game programming.

For both their games, Rolocule team used their proprietary game engine which again allows the company to create the kind of games that has high standards. Most indian companies into game development, either use a 3d engine from Torque or 2d engines from Popcap or YOYO.

The good thing about companies like Rolocule Games is their willingness to take a chance in India to make their kind of games, as we in India dont BUY our games & the non-existense of a supportive ecosystem for game development companies.

'Seamedu Animation & Arts' heartiest wishes to them & a prayer that they continue to make the kind of games which are fun for them to make as much it is fun for us(Gamers) to Play

@Harold

Small town students do well in 3d Animation, gaming & Vfx

                                                                                                                  

There is something about the students from small towns, something special.

The kids from bigger cities have all the advantages & a lot of guidance from their schools, colleges, peers & parents which is not the case with kids from smaller towns.

A colleague recently told me that it is the smaller town students who are the main artists in his animation studio & it will be the same for many years. The well to do & bigger city kids are not that keen on something like animation for some unknown reason. This is very true & across most studios in the country most of them will be from the smaller towns.

This is my own personal experience too.

Over the last 6 months 3 of our students have been working on an I-phone game .These 3 students completed their diploma in 3D animation & specialization with Seamedu Animation & Arts. Immediately after the completion of their course they were selected for internships based upon their performance & their interviews conducted by a game development company at the Seamedu campus.

These 3 students are now working with the game company.

It is a long story told in brief, but these students who come from a Ichalkaranji got started into animation because of their passion for the medium, but as always there are hurdles in ones path. They joined a local institute which got them started but couldn’t do more than that. Then they came to our school in Pune and for a year’s time struggled it out.

The problems were many, lack of exposure to the larger world, language barriers as the medium of learning in animation is English, financial troubles etc. But the six of them who came down to Pune came out shining thru all the challenges.

As they say lady luck favours the brave, today 2 of these six students have done a project in Bangalore which returned back their fees spent on learning & the other three of them have just finished designing a game of international standards.

We have students from all across Maharashtra, but it has been my observation over the last 10 years or so spent in animation that it is not the most talented that matters in animation, but the most persistent of them wins.

The small town students have a definite edge at least when it comes to making a career in the animation medium, as they are not only persistive but also have the raw talent needed to suceed. 

Pravin Kamble, Sandeep Shinde, Suraj Ranbhare now working with Rolocule Games

Footnote

The 3 Seamedu Animation & Arts students Pravin Kamble(Character Rigging Artist), Sandeep Shinde,(Character Modeling) Suraj Ranbhare(Environment & Lighting artist) have finished making a sports game for  Rolocule Games on the I-Phone available on the Apple App store.

'Seamedu Animation & Arts' ties up 'Rolocule Games' as Knowledge partner

Anuj Tandon, Harold Raichur, Rohit Gupta announce the Tie-Up

                                                                                                                  
Seamedu Animation & Arts the leading Animation, Game Design & VFX training based institute in Pune has been offering game design courses since 2008. With an serious objective of raising the standards of game design & development education Seamedu is going one step further by joining hands with ‘Rolocule Games’ company as their Knowledge partners.

With this partnership the Seamedu Game Design course will get enhanced to international standards & for the very First time in India a high end course like “Game Programming with OPENGL” will be offered to the students with C/C++ skills & eager to learn game engine design & programming in India. Seamedu is introducing two, yearlong full time courses starting in mid August, namely Game design & Game Programming in OPENGL.

In December 2009 Mr. Rohit Gupta & Mr. Anuj Tandon the Founders of Rolocule Games visited Seamedu Animation & Arts in search of 3d artists to work on their latest sports game. They selected 3 students to work on their project, which now stands completed & their game ready to be published on Apple Apps store.

As an institute involved in new age careers Seamedu Animation & Arts has always been at the forefront in Pune to create awareness among parents and youngsters in order to bring about a change in their mindset for Animation , Gaming & Vfx.”We hope to keep on raising this bar so that Game development companies in India can receive highly trained talents.

Mr. Rohit Gupta (Founder, CEO and programming fanatic Rolocule Games) says “The matter of fact is that Indian gaming industry is not even remotely close to international gaming industry either in terms of the growth or the quality of games developed. The differentiators is the education. There is a lot of talent in India but no direction when it comes to game development. We, at Rolocule Games, feel that it is our moral responsibility to take the Indian gaming industry on the world map, and with our strong technical know-how and experience in the industry, wish to make an actual "meaningful" contribution in the growth of this industry. The right education will define the future. We are excited about this partnership with Seamedu Animation & Arts."

About Rolocule:
Founded in 2010, Rolocule Games is a game development studio located in Pune, India. Rolocule develops and publishes interactive entertainment software for current and next generation platforms.

Rolocule’s Achievments : They have already published their first sports Squash Game with Apple Apps last year. Providing a glimpse in its sales numbers Rolocule announced that close to 200,000 people worldwide have downloaded Touch Squash and it has been downloaded in over 70 countries worldwide.

With this tie-up both Seamedu Animation & Arts and Rolocule Games hope to bring the critical knowhow for the students of Pune & India to receive training in Game design & development.

For those interested in knowing more about the courses in “Diploma in Game Design” & “Diploma in Game Programming in OPENGL” can call - 1800-209-1929 (Toll free)

or kindly log on to:

www.idanimations.com     www.seamedu.com
www.rolocule.com 

Good times are here for the Pune & India's Game education

Board Game(2nd Prototype) by Seamedu Game Design batch

Game design takes time, the reasons being that every game has to go thru multiple stages of ideation,  game design which is not about the graphics(that comes later) but the game play and how to make the game concept a playable one. Then comes the UE or User Experience & graphics of the game, where cards, tokens & other elements of the games are created . Finally comes the testing-it is here that the game actually gets made & to be broken again & then remade.

Not wanting to make it sound complex, but that's how it is & this post is a take on the latest stage of the board game that our first game design batch created.

'Egyptian Myth'(you can read more about the 1st prototype of 'Egyptian Myth' on Animation Xpress here) started out as a concept which over the last 8 months has changed to come to a stage( also called prototype) that not only it can be played well, it can also gone thru so many test that we can think of approaching a publisher to license the game.

The 2nd prototype of the 'Egyptian Myth' is done after close to 3months of iterations, it has been tested more than 40 times by players from the age of 7 to the age of 50. All have liked it, enjoyed the concept & the game play, have given valuable suggestions & have ensured that we can be proud of our achievement.

Attached are the pictures of the latest prototype

Board Game Design (1st batch- Diploma in Game Design)

Board Game Design(1st batch- Diploma in Game Design)

Board Game Design (1st batch -Diploma in Game Design)

Egyptian Myth Game Being played & Tested at Seamedu-Id

Egyptian Myth Game Being played & Tested at Seamedu-Id

Egyptian Myth Game Being played & Tested at Seamedu-Id

The game is in the final stages where the Graphics, User Expereince & fine tuning of the game is being conducted. The graphic design of the game is being changed to it final look as this post is being written.

One think that  Seamedu Animation & Arts and the Game Batch are very lucky that  close to 6 industry experts with huge game design experience who have play tested 'Egyptian Myth' .Their expertise and huge amount of inputs made sure that we & the game have become better game analysts & designers.

Once that is done we intend to see it take it further, so next stop will be trying to find someone who can publish this game.

It might be a school project but it definitely is for all those who have played board games & dont mind another concept.

But there is one huge difference, all the games we typically play in India are the games made by international game designers and publishers

that's about to change, dont you think so.

Game Meet 2010- Workshop on Game Design & Fun in Games

Seamedu-Id Animation & Arts

Game Meet 2010

24th May

Session- Workshop on Game Design & Fun in Games

Conducted by Mr Atul Manohar(MDes-IIT ), Mr Shantanu Kulkarni ( MDes-IISc) & Mr Mayuresh Shirolkar  ( Architect & Dramatist )

The session was more than one could have expected  & it was righly so considering that some of the best brains with loads of expereince in multiple spheres were present to take the game design aspirants thru a whole new expereince.

Every participant was able to participate & some of them came from Persistent systems, Tech Mahindra, Symantec & the likes.It would be hard to describe the more than 5 hours of fun in this blog, but you can definitely get a fair bit of the expereince with the videos shot of the entire session.

You will have to be pateint as this is only the 1st video followed by 14 more, but have no doubts you will get more than you wanted. Not only there three experts are masters of their craft, they are great FUB makers and all the participants were ready to extend the entire session to complete the session.

For those who would like a first hand report from those who were thate can read it Game Design & Fun in Games by Ms Swela Sharma a programmer & game player who attended all the sessions .

here are some pics too

Participants discussing their Game Ideas at Game Meet 2010

Atul Manohar ( IIT-MDes)

Mr Shantanu Kulkarni (IISc-MDes)

Mr Mayresh Shirolkar (Architect & Dramatist)

 

 

 

Participants expressing themselves at Game Meet 2010

For those who are looking out for the next event on Gameing in Pune can look forward to GameStorm-organised by MCCIA & the game industy. The event has been postponed to July 2010 this year to accommodate more participants. More news coming regarding GameStorm in June.

Bye

Game Meet 2010- Online Game Development by Bhushan Samant (Playssium Technologies)

Seameudu-Id Animation & Arts
Game Meet 2010

Session -Online Game Development
by- Mr Bhushan Samant- Playssium Technologies (Pune)

This was the third session following the 1st session on Game Design  by Rohit Gupta (Rolocule Games)& 2nd session on  Game Programming, by Girish Dhakephalkar of Shoonya , both of which was covered in the previous blogs.

The session on "Online Game Development" by Bhushan was a session of details. With over 19 years of expereince in multiple domains, which included 6 years in the US, doing research with TJ Watson research centre  of IBM.

All present were able to see the smaller aspects of game development, which most sessions are never able to carry as they are not the most glamourous one. Bushan has a very simple point of view and and with an equal simplicity he was able to talk on the details of without complicating or getting too technical.

A detailed coverage of the session by Ms Shwela Sharma is available here

The details of the next session on Game Design Workshop, to be conducted by Atul Manohar, IIT & Mr Shantanu Kulkarni IISc will be covered in a later post.

till then enjoy

Visit us at www.idanimations.com for more details on Game Design & Development Courses

Game Meet 2010- Session on Game Programming by Girish Dhakephalkar

Girish Dhakephalkar- Shoonya Game Technologies Pvt Ltd

Session- Game Programming
10th April

Girish Dhakephalkar-Shoonya Games

The session on Game Programming was impressive for one big reason----------Most Non-programming students also understood what Girish had to say, because he said it in a very simple fashion.

The reports by the students on the details of the entire session is available to read & download HERE



The videos of the session was too heavy for one single file, so its been cut up & placed on You Tube. All you serious wannabe game programmers can watch it HERE

Pls do go thru all the videos, you will be surprised to find a lot of your concepts about game programming and the role it plays in modern day game making will be cleared.

Q&A with Girish

Some very interesting questions were asked, which reflected a knowledgeable crowd & those really serious to learn game design & development . The Q& A went on for more than an hour.

You can see more pics of the event Here

The penultimate Session & Workshop for Game Meet 2010 is scheduled for the Saturday-24th of April,

It will be conducted by Game UI experts , Mr Atul Manohar, M Des, IIT Mumbai & Mr Shantanu Kulkarni, M Des IISc Banglore.

A case study of an existing game will be conducted hand-on with the audience folowed by a practical demo on the finer aspects of designing the UI ( User Interface)  for a game.

Hope to see you at this session

 NOTE
The details of the session on "Online Game Development" conducted by Mr Bhushan Samant from Plassium Technologies will be added shortly 

Seamedu-Id
Pune

Game Meet 2010- Breif on Game Design session by Rohit Gupta(Rolocule Studios)

Report By Shwela Sharma 

“Just play. Have fun. Enjoy the game.”- A famous quote by Michael Jordan, which pretty much implies to every game in the world. 

Game Design Session-Rohit Gupta

A first-time-held session on Game Design by Rohit Gupta of Rolocule Games had a similar insight.

                A reason why the term “Game Design” came into existence was the question – how to make a game “fun”? It was an hour’s session, beautifully planned to make Pune's gamers understand the concept of Game Design. It might be easy to play a game and give a verdict whether or not, the game was worth playing. But, when it comes to making a game, it takes an expert’s eye to design it; keeping in mind the needs of the end-user the players.

                Rohit, who has a high selling game (175000 downloads on Apple I-Tunes) of Touch Squash to his credit that he made for iPhone, said that the real essence of game is designing. Without that, a game is full of data but no interaction. Beautiful graphics may target eyes, or beautiful sounds may target ears; but, a game design targets the entire nervous system. it is what we feel like when we play a game, the Joy, Anger, Excitement, energy, the win & lose situations & the ability to score.

Rohit also mentioned a new language of game design – MDA, which would be lingua franca amongst game designers across the world.As of now in India we still have not progressed to understanding games , so far we have been only building part of games. But with MDA driven process we will be able to evaluate existing games to make better games.This is how it is being done in most game devloping countries.

MDA – Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics, dissects the entire game under three categories essentially - Objects and Rules, Behaviour and Experience/Emotions. These terminologies are for better understanding of any game.

                                Mechanics (Objects & Rules) are particular components of the game at the level of data representation and algorithms.

                                Dynamics (Behaviour) are the run time behavior of the mechanics acting on the player inputs and each other’s outputs.

                                Aesthetics (Experience) are desirable emotional responses evoked in the player while interacting with the game system.

                When it comes to designing, a designer needs to define fun. Research says that there are around 8 kinds of fun that can be defined:

1.       Sensation – Games as sense pleasure

2.       Fantasy – Games as make-believe

3.       Narrative – Games as drama

4.       Challenge – Games as obstacle

5.       Fellowship – Games as social framework

6.       Discovery – Games as uncharted territory

7.       Experience – Games as self-discovery

8.       Submission – Games as pastime

Also, there are tools defined that help build a game design. That’s called Formal Abstract Design Tools (FADT). It’s basically a common sense that one requires. But, these can also be defined in technical terms as:

                Intention: How to keep a player invested to the game?

                Perceived Consequence: How should a game react to player’s actions?

                Story: How should a game go forward – should it be player-driven or designer-driven?

In short, it is the rules on which a game can be developed, in way the comoon sense of making good games.

These obscure terms may now come to light as Rolocule studios and Seamedu-Id Animation & Arts institute come together with such sessions which give insight to the real game-making world. It was a great initiative and a well-managed session, and I am looking forward to more of these in future.

 Enjoy

Note- Continuing with the series of seminars on Game design & Development , Next seminar will be conducted by Hard Core game Programmer "Girish Dhakephalker"  from "Shoonya Game Technologies Pvt Ltd"

Game Meet ---------------Update

For many years now there has been this big debate in the animation & gaming industry , about the difference between games and films. The people working in these diverse fields know what the differences are and why these two streams are different. The confusion has been amongst the so call animation training institutes, who offer both animation and game courses.
For some reasons, they keep saying that creating animation is the same as developing games, which is not true. The confusion is also there because ,some of the software tools, such as Photoshop, Flash & 3d tools like Max or Maya are used in the development of both Animation films & Games. Another reason is that we have a history of making films (not animation films), thus they believe that labeling everything under animation films makes it easy to explain.
The result has been that most students either join a wrong animation program or learn all the software believing that in this way they will be able to make a carrier in both Games & Animation

With the Game meet, our attempt is to educate all the game enthusiasts & players about Game design & Development carriers.
Our goal is to, provide valid proof that to make games one has to be a gamer first & secondly he has to learn the process involved in making games. The sessions will clearly showcase the carrier opportunities in game development & talk about the various skill sets needed for people from different streams to succeed in this field.

This will be the first time that, a large no of young game development professional from Rolocule Games (ex EA), Plassium, Shoonya Games ('Realtime Worlds'Dundee Scotland) , UI design experts from IIT & IIsc.

These experts have the expereince of having worked with game franchises like 'The Sims', Xbox 360 exclusive – Crackdown (http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/c/crackdown/) and the Electronic Arts published Action MMOG - All Points Bulletin (APB – www.apb.com), will interact with you all.

The speakers include Game professionals who have worked with ,  IIT & IIsc UI design Professionals , Online Game Experts & Educators.

Read more about the Game Professional Speaking at the Game Meet

For registrations visit 'www.idanimations.com' or mail to 'vrushali@idanimations.com'

Game Meet @Id

Small Wonders: People --------from the Game industry

A month or so back,  I received a email from this gentleman(if game professional can be called that) regarding his interest in some art work on our site, so I invited him over to visit Id.

This gentleman (Indian by birth), working in the game industry in Chicago, has been staying in Pune developing an online game for schools from Chicago. Before that we had briefly met at Asifa IAD (Pune) in 2007, which is annually held at MCCIA, when he had visited our stall on digital Painting.

I took him thru the school & we had a fairly long discussion on various topics related & unrelated to Games. Thus a small visit ended up going on for more than 3 hours. needless to say the exchange was interesting & engaging.

He also showed us, the online game he was developing, one of the reason why he was interested in the our art work as he was looking for artists to work for his game. The scale & scope of the online game he had developed, built on the flash platform was huge & & I told him so.

I don’t know much about Chicago, but the kind of game which helped students had huge scope in India and a lots of people would definitely be interested in his game. Also I liked the way the game looked, both in design & Play.

I had also shown him the board game ’Egyptian Myth’, which was designed by our students and he mentioned while leaving that he would like to come & play the game sometime.

Which he did in a week’s time, where again after playing the game we talked about his experience playing the game and some more other talk. As he was leaving he fished out a book on Realtime Rendering & a Casio digital camera which he quietly passed into my hands. He wanted the students to use the camera to take reference pictures for texturing & artwork development.

It’s pretty unusual for someone who you met just once, to gift you so thoughtfully, thus i had no qualms in accepting it and it is definitely being used in the school.

But that was not all, the next day i received a detailed review of the Board Game ‘Egyptian Myth’ which he had played the previous evening.

All i could say is

Thanks Deepak

Check out games made by Deepak (http://www.kongregate.com/games/enupgames/cabol)

& his site where he gives some tips on making flash based games (www.enupgames.com)

Jitins Session-----Student Reviews--------Part III

 Review –Dinesh

Some things that i learnt in this session was

1. Being in the industry its important to have a better understanding of the process. So that it makes life simpler when planning towards making the decision on choosing the right job in terms of position.
2. A before hand understanding of it helps in comparing and understanding the knowledge skills and job requirement.
3. So after this short session I have used It to determine and finalize my decision on deciding make path
4. it helped me that I do have the understanding and the knowledge and other skills that are needed as a technical artist.
I always had a question in my mind how much and what all understanding and knowledge I need in order to get into a potion as a technical artist, now i know.

Thanks to Jitin Sir

Review -Sudarshan

It was a curious session for everyone, because many people from us are interested in gaming industry. May be this was a strong reason why people attended that looooooooong session.
It was a necessary session for the newcomers in the industry.

If I have to start talking about it i will start from Jitin sir. He was a person who made things very easy for people. He kept it in informal format so everyone can participate in it.
The crowd was full with the gaming and non-gaming people but he kept every one connected.
The most important thing for me was he was not talking about the industry boom, scope for much more time. He spent his maximum time to tell how they work, how the industry works.
He explained about his core team. He shared his experience with us. He became one of us & maybe that's the reason people loved that session & attended it from heart.

His way of answering was also good. He tried to answer each & every question which came in front of him in easy way.It was not a session only about gaming; it was about the team work, professionalism.He made his sincere effort to tell us everything which is appreciable.

It was a golden opportunity for Id people to have Jitin. The session was so influencing that many of us were ready to run towards Ubisoft to give the interview.He made a good impression of gaming industry in non gaming people.

Overall it was a great session.

Q&A with Jitin,Producer-Ubisoft,Pune----------Part II

Q. how much technical knowledge in general about computers and its working do u need to get in as a technical artist

A. yes u need a good understanding of computers and its working and other concepts of 3d in order to get in as technical artist.
Your concepts on 3d Computer graphics should be clear in order to get in and also a rough understanding of languages would be better


Q. if I want to go in as a level designer would a mod be the right thing I should put in in my portfolio.

A. yes and in fact that’s what u should have in hand if u really want to go in as a level designer


Q. if I am going as a level designer and instead of a mod I do a small cinematic sequence in any game engine / create something that shows that I have a better understanding of the working of game engines and also to show that I have all my concepts clear and can adapt and update myself would it be counted

A. Thats what it is correct, if you are looking to go in as a level designer then u need to have the concepts and understanding clear on the front since every one works on different platform, so u need to adapt accordingly

and also we can say that level designer and a technical artist can be the same in sense that both are related


Q. Can u just clear out the blurred line between observation and Details

A. Can u tell me which is the recent game that u have played (me Assassins creed ) can u tell me have u tried to model it, thats what it is if u would have modeled it u would have understood the meaning of details that u are missing in there.

Jitin Rao (Producer) Ubisoft (Pune) Session At Id-----------Part I

Mr Jithin Rao, Producer with Ubisoft,Pune held an in depth daylong session on Game Development & Game design process at Id. Ubisoft as you all know is the third largest developer & Publisher of games in the world. Some of the games that we Indian know well are Prince of Persia & Assassins creed, but other than that Ubisoft has

the topics was specific to game development in general & not limited to Game Design only. The interaction which lasted the entire day was divided into 2 parts. The pre Lunch session consisted the introduction of the game development process followed at Ubisoft. It was here that most of the students came to understand the connect between what they are learning at Id & what happens in the video game development company like Ubisoft.

The session covered the stages of game development, starting with the game idea, the no of iterations, the approval process, the initial concept design, pitching of the idea, the prototype and then the final go for further development with the approval from the research team , the marketing team and the project in-charge.
The role of the individual talents in the entire game development team was also a revelation to the students. Jithin himself a producer, who had just shipped “100 all time favourite board games” for the DS console took the students thru each role in detail. The job profiles of an Art Director & Concept artist, the difference between Game Play Designer & A Game Play Programmer, the job of a technical artist and the various jobs under the 2d & 3d talents were discussed in detail.

The students got to listen to information which only a studio can know.
Post Lunch was the Q & a session, This is where the students who were well prepared threw all their knowledge at a company who have made games like Prince of Persia & Assassins creed. A lot of the questions were in relation to the game play of the games these students played, touching upon the art, techniques and the engineering of these game.

Mr Jithin, unlike lots of techies has a knack for clear & interesting conversation, thus every question was answered in detail with a lot of examples from the very games. Some of the engineering students had queries on AI, Game Mechanics, Physics & effects in games and each was able to learn more .
Some of the questions & their answers along with a brief review will be posted in the next post.