The online game 1066 won a BIMA last Thursday (19th Nov 2009) for Best Online Game, The BIMA awards  ‘celebrate the work of the UK digital creative industry’. As previously blogged we were responsible for creating over 270 animated assets in just over 2-weeks. Preloaded did all the creative and site development, and we created the Norman, Viking, Saxon and Villager character animation elements. We are very proud to be part of its success, the quality of the game speaks for itself in terms of the gaming results:

Since launching in May 2009, the game has received an overwhelmingly positive response from both the gaming community and online press.

The project has received no marketing budget, simply relying on the audience and community to seed and share between themselves. The traffic to date is testament to the quality of the game and the compelling nature of the content.

The Multi-player mode plays a large part in the distribution mechanic of the game and this is reflected in the continued and sustained and growth in traffic and game-play duration.

Effectiveness

> Number 1 search result in google for ’1066′
> Current total game-plays standing at over 5 million
> Average game duration over 25 minutes

And the reviews:

“If half the Proper Wargames released each year showed as much imagination, style and spirit as 1066 the genre would be in a far healthier state”

Tim Stone – rockpapershotgun.com

“Pleasing to play and pleasing to the eye. Check it out.”

Brian Ashcroft – kotaku.com

Things have been pretty busy here over Sliced Bread recently, and we are please to announce one of a favourites projects 1066 The Game has now launched. In partnership with Preloaded we created over 270 animated assets in just over 2-weeks. Preloaded did all the creative and site development, and we created the Norman, Viking, Saxon and Villager character animation elements.

Preloaded have created the web-based 1066 The Game to coincide with Channel 4′s 1066 documentaries. 1066 The Game puts the player into the muddy boots of the English, the Vikings and the Normans, to play through the actual battle situations of Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings.

Using historically accurate troop formations, battle styles, troop makeup and featuring a voice-over by Sir Ian Holm, 1066 The Game is educational and battle strategy gaming at its very best.

To give the user a full game ‘simulation’ experience it needed a sufficient library of character sequences to make it work. Preloaded pre-planned them and we considered the best approach in getting them delivered in the timeframe. We did this by creating a generic character, then modelling and animating bespoke assets for each character trait, there was also a requirement to create a horse for the Norman soldiers. We devised a working pipeline that allowed us to manage all the game requirements from build to animation, and then finally to render. We also needed to consider the correct historically accurate shields, weapons, helmets the soldiers used. Using the render layers in Maya, we were able to turn on/ off the required elements after the animation move had been completed. All the sequences were rendered as vector for Flash.

Pre-planning pipelines and considering the best approach  is integral within any animated production. This is because once you are committed to production it is very difficult to go back and re-think the approach, timeframes for online projects seem to be a lot tighter than TV or film. We were very fortunate in this particular production that the ‘nice-to-haves’ (i.e. different ways of  the soldiers being killed) were also able to be delivered.