Morgan Gray – Vanadium Games

mmm… Coffee!

19/06/201917/06/2019
by Morgan Gray

When you walk into a coffee shop, you are faced with huge boards with a whole host of options to choose from. There are many types of coffee to choose from, however this choice shouldn’t distract you from your day.

When I’m working for Vanadium Games I love to drink coffee; there are many different types of coffee suitable for all different occasions. Coffee is not just a drink, it is a hobby, and one we will only scratch the surface of in this blog post.

The first and purest form is the espresso. This is a shot of pure coffee, perfect for a quick drink at any time in the day. You can usually choose between a single or double shot: decide this purely on how thirsty you are. Many great ideas have originated from an espresso – including many ideas regarding Vanadium Games.

An image of a cup of espresso — A fresh concentrated cup of espresso

If what you desire is a longer experience then what you need may be an Americano – a softer version of the espresso lengthened with hot water. You can enjoy this straight or with a dash of milk. This can help you sustain long periods of work, important when coding!

An image of an Americano — A perfect lengthened Americano

You may desire a more creamy experience… in which case what you want is a latte. This is the perfect blend of the aforementioned espresso and creamy milk. This is available in a variety of strengths, making it suitable for everyone and all different roles within Vanadium Games: despite being a game studio, we do much more than just coding!

An image of a creamy latte — A creamy latte…

If you wish for more of a treat then you may desire a cappuccino. This is a beautifully creaming milk with some espresso, sprinkled with chocolate flakes. A calm and comfortable way relax after a long hard days work; go on, you deserve it.

An image of a cappuccino — A rewarding cappuccino

If perhaps you wish for something shorter, maybe the Cortado is for you. This is a quick shot of espresso and textured milk and some chains including Costa serve this with a heart on top.

An image of a beautiful love heart that you might find on top of a Cortado — A beautiful love heart that you might find on top of a Cortado

Finally, there is the flat white: this elusive drink is simply a latte with a little higher concentration of milk. This doesn’t just taste fantastic, it also looks beautiful. Baristas across the world put their artistic license to work to keep you on your toes with every changing designs; perhaps one day these will inspire you to create something innovative, as with us and every other business it all starts with an idea and a committed group of people.

An image of a beautiful looking coffee — A beautiful looking coffee

Whatever the occasion there is always a coffee for the occasion. This beautiful beverage comes in many different forms, meaning that there is always something, no matter what you are doing.

Blog

Vanadium Games Day

17/04/201917/04/2019
by Morgan Gray

On the 15th April, Josh & I met up for Vanadium Games Day where we focused on making progress of Kedian Interspace. The main aim of this was to decide on some of the key aspects in person.

Vanadium Games has already given us some great experiences including exhibiting our project at Coolest Projects. In our second game, we are learning a number of new principles in our project including our online account system and in-game currency.

An image of Josh & Morgan — Josh & Morgan who attended Vanadium Games Day

We produced a large amount of concept art for our new game Kedian Interspace and are now beginning to create the final sprites and tiles. There are a large variety of different assets which we hope will create an engaging, multilevel game.

An image of Morgan planning the look of turrets — Morgan planning the style of the turrets for Kedian Interspace

We have decided to make an accounts system to allow users to sync game data between different devices – Josh was developing the system using PHP and had to overcome many challenges such as encrypting and hashing confidential data.

An image of Josh programming the Kedian Interspace accounts system — Josh working on an accounts system for Kedian Interspace

In conclusion, the 14th of April was a brilliant day where we managed to get lots of work done for Kedian Interspace. Follow our social media accounts (Instagram, Twitter and Facebook) to keep updated and to be the first to know when the first betas come out!

Blog

The New Logo

09/03/201909/03/2019
by Morgan Gray

As you may have noticed, Vanadium Games has recently introduced a new logo as we felt that our old logo did not represent our company very well and the red and blue colours were hard to read at a distance.

Our old logo

The inspiration for our new logo began by brainstorming what it should represent: we decided the most important things to signify were the element Vanadium, our namesake, as well as the fact that we make games.

The first idea we produced was a ‘V’ linking to the word Vanadium, encircled by a ring with two dots on it to represent Vanadium’s outer electron shell. We also included our strap line ‘Elevating the World of Gaming’.

The first revision of our logo

After reviewing our logo, we decided that we needed to add something to our logo to represent that we are a games studio. We eventually settled on the idea of using a controller in the centre of the ring. As well as this, we tried adding multiple rings.

The second revision

We concluded that the extra ring was too chaotic and the controller didn’t fit our taste as it seemed too generic and stereotypical.

Moving onward, we decided a different game production related symbol. Eventually, we settled on a cog which linked closely to the development aspect of our company.

The third revision

At this point, we were beginning to like how the logo was turning out. Despite this, we still wanted to incorporate the ‘V’ into the logo, so we decided to make the cog the outside of the logo and enclose the rest of the content within.

The fourth revision

This was the result of our new idea and it was getting very close to something we were happy with. We just had a few small issues, including the size of the teeth on the cog (which were too small) and the fact that the icon consisted of three colours (when most icons today use only two).

The fifth revision

After correcting these small issues, we really liked our design. We decided that changing the purple colour to a different colour could make the logo more vibrant and provide a better contrast ratio to the grey background, making it easier to read.

The sixth and final revision

Finally, after making all our amendments, we reached this and are really happy with how it turned out – we believe that the logo represents our company well and is visually appealing. We feel that it is much better than our old one.

Blog

Coolest Projects 2019

04/03/201904/03/2019
by Morgan Gray

On Saturday 3rd March, Vanadium Games attended Coolest Projects 2019 at the Sharp Project in Manchester. This was a national event where young creators came together to exhibit their digital projects. The exhibition, which was open to the public, allowed creators to meet people similar to themselves, as well as show off their creations to many members of the public.

The Vanadium Games team at Coolest Projects UK

We presented our game The Stacks at this event which many people loved – it was fantastic showing people our creation and watching the smiles on their faces as the descended through the stacks. We updated our social media accounts throughout the day – especially Twitter – and received many likes and retweets, including one from Raspberry Pi.

A photo of our stand at Coolest Projects UK, showing The Stacks — Our stand at Coolest Projects UK

The event was hosted by Maddie Moat and Greg Foot, who presented two amazing presentations about science on Mt Everest in the highest lab in the world and how Lego bricks are made. It was really interesting to learn about how science isn’t all in laboratories: scientists have the opportunities to travel the world and sometimes even go beyond our small planet.

Attendees watching a presentation at Coolest Projects UK

Overall, the event was one to be remembered. We had a great time amongst the gathering of over 120 participants and 500 attendees and will take part again next year if we can. It was a great opportunity to showcase our work with like-minded people, whilst also inspiring us to continue our development of future games.

An image of the Coolest Projects logo

Bimonthly Newsletter

Monthly Review – October

02/11/201802/11/2018
by Morgan Gray

In other news, Vanadium Games has been growing as a company, completing administrative tasks and allowing us to grow and flourish. Plans for Tapping Tournament are still in the pipeline, however this is likely to be delayed until a later date.

The Stacks has improved drastically over the last month, with many bug fixes and changes including support for more languages and speeding up the game exponentially instead of in a linear fashion.
The game is available as a public beta on both Apple and Android, so if you want to help test our game, you can join our testing programme.
If you don’t want to join, it is going to be fully available very soon – we are currently in the final steps.
The Stacks is also available online at our website.

You can also find updates and news on our blog.

We have begun the development of Trolley Dash, a new game within which a player will navigate around a shop while collecting items on a shopping list.

Some of the features of Trolley Dash which been implemented so far include:

An intricate supermarket layout with a variety of different storage areas as well as a realistic floor, all with an incredible 16-bit texture.
An assortment of shelves with different products and shapes located all around the supermarket.
A player controller which allows the various player models to be navigated around the shop.
A randomly-generated shopping list which tells the player what items they are required to purchase in order to complete the round.

Despite all this great progress, Trolley Dash still has a great deal of bugs to be ironed out and many features which require to be implemented.

Blog

Starting Young

26/08/201826/08/2018
by Morgan Gray

Starting out with business is very important as this is how people manage to live luxury lives, retire young and go on many holidays. If you have an idea, pursue it!

Take loom bands – these simple elastic bands formed a huge craze. These were incredibly simple to make and made their creators a fortune. Even with just a software or game idea, pursue it! Many business ideas fail the first time around, however, if you pursue your idea enough, it will eventually work. You may be familiar with the phrase ‘If you throw enough mud, some of it will stick’. Think outside the box as any idea can work. Someone somewhere will be likely to want your product!

If your product costs money to produce you can also get investors to help you start up, although this will mean they take some of your profits. However, a good deal will still have you in the bulk of the money. You don’t want a bad deal, such as in real estate deals which have been struck with the person who is making the deal is taking fifty percent profits.

mmm… Coffee!

Vanadium Games Day

The New Logo

Coolest Projects 2019

October Newsletter

In Other News…

Trolley Dash

From the Marketing Manager

Starting Young