Daresbury Point
Greenwood Drive
Manor Park
Runcorn, Cheshire
WA7 1UG
We are delighted to announce that d3t has reached the finals of this year’s Halton Business Awards – Innovation in Health and Wellbeing category.
The winners will be announced at a gala dinner which will be held at the Select Security Stadium in Widnes on May 12.
Good luck to everyone who has made it to the finals!
d3t is proud to have worked for RealtimeUK in a consultative capacity to offer technical support to their team as part of its development of the Amazon Lumberyard tech demo which they delivered for GDC17.
d3t Operations Director Noel Austin said, “Lumberyard is clearly a powerful engine. The new voxel based global illumination system in particular works really well. Having source code meant we could dig in and fully investigate problems. Many thanks to the RealtimeUK team who have made this project a real pleasure to work on.”
The Amazon Lumberyard tech demo premiered at GDC 2017, and you can view it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g06nPgnWsQ
To learn more about Amazon Lumberyard, visit https://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard/.
We are delighted to announce that our Technical Director, Andy Booth, has been named on Develop’s 30 Under 30 List 2017.
The list highlights outstanding women and men in the games industry under the age of thirty. With nominations from around the world and from all areas of game development, the competition is tough. Individuals are recognised for their contribution to the industry and if you make it onto the list, in the words of Develop, ‘You’ve made an impact and you’re making the games industry a better place’.
Andy has been with d3t from the outset and has played a pivotal role in the growth of the company. He was appointed Technical Director in June 2015 and has grown a committed team. He is a technically brilliant programmer who adapts to different languages, engines, technologies and platforms at lightning speed. Andy is also a superb mentor, who shares his knowledge and demonstrates total commitment to his craft.
In the last 12 months, d3t has won the Develop Awards for Creative Outsourcer: Visual and Development and the Cheshire Business Awards: Business of the Year.
And we are only too delighted to add Andy’s achievement to our accolades.
Congratulations Andy – well deserved!
Keri Booth joined our award-winning team as Admin Assistant on 30th January 2017 and tells us more about herself, and working at d3t.
What’s your background?
My main experience is in administration and marketing predominantly in the construction industry. I worked as a marketing assistant for North Midland Construction (NMC) for almost 10 years where I gained knowledge and experience in different aspects of marketing and administration.
Why d3t?
d3t have grown over the years and are a company that strives for the best whilst creating a great place to work. The type of work d3t do is of great interest to me and I really wanted to bring my existing skills here and learn new ones while also being part of an award winning successful company, which has a great future ahead.
What was the recruitment process like?
After my interview it didn’t take long for my offer letter to come through which I happily accepted. I then received information from my new line manager on what to expect in my first few weeks of working at d3t, which was really helpful!
Interesting facts we should know?
I love video games and have been playing them for as long as I can remember, so having the opportunity to work in an industry that helps to develops games is really exciting.
When I’m not playing games I’m probably thinking about where to travel to next. I love seeing different places and enjoy spending time outdoors hiking up mountains – the higher the better!
Dementia UK’s Time for a Cuppa initiative runs every year from 1st – 8th March and this year we decided to run our own Time for a Cuppa morning to support the important work carried out by Dementia UK and their specialist Admiral Nurses.
Many thanks to all d3t team members who baked such fabulous biscuits and helped organise our first Time for a Cuppa.
We are delighted to have collected £72.38 and look forward to getting involved again next year.
Find out more about Dementia UK.
Nearly everything is digital. However when you bump into someone interesting at GDC but it’s in a lift and the meeting only lasts 30 seconds, there is nothing better than having a business card to hand.
There are endless opportunities to meet interesting people at GDC. Pre-arranged meetings, chance meetings, visits to Expo booths, after-conference parties, and even just by checking out the name badges of the person sat next to you in a lecture. Business cards are traditional, but still very effective and a great ice-breaker.
Going one step further, printed marketing materials such as brochures and flyers are useful to have with you if you are serious about getting a message across.
We’re all there trying to do business in one form or another, so before you lock the door and head for the airport, make sure you have your business cards with you.
From all at d3t, have a great GDC17.
San Franciscan weather is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Sun, rain, fog, cold, cool, warm, hot, shade, pools of sunshine; you name it.
San Francisco is a great city whatever the weather, but if you don’t have the right clothing it’s a lot more difficult to make the most of your time there.
The conference centre is, as you would expect, pretty much perfect. Consistent, air-conditioned spaces without windows mean you can’t really go wrong. Outside, however, it’s the sheer variance that can catch people out.
Walking down to the conference centre in the morning it can be positively cool, especially if the marine layer of sea fog hasn’t cleared. Even when the sun is shining, there is a pronounced difference in temperature between areas in shadow and those in the sunlight. Taking a lunchtime break in the Yerba Buena Gardens can be incredibly hot, and you can guarantee all the patches of shade under the trees will have been claimed by those in the know. Walking back to your hotel at the end of the day when the weather is fine can be a very warm experience, but as the sun is occluded by the skyscrapers, the temperature starts to fall very quickly.
So have options – t-shirt or shirt, light jumper or sweatshirt, and a lightweight waterproof coat. Shorts might seem a good idea after a glance out of the window, but you might find yourself feeling the cold before 1000 and after 1800. As mentioned yesterday, having a bag that you can keep your excess items in during the day makes a lot of sense.
Take a hat, my favourite Fjällräven cap always comes with me. For a jacket I have a Karrimor Elite Phantom which is excellent for keeping dry but is still compact. It’s warm enough when it’s cold, but also has zip vents to keep cool when it’s wet and warm.
Don’t forget sunglasses, and sun block as well. It might only be March, but hopefully the sun will be shining on the #gamedev community next week.
OK it sounds simple, right? – Don’t forget your laptop. It’s a good starting point, but we would recommend you put a bit of thought into your electronic equipment selection before you cram your 17” portable workstation into your hand luggage. There are lots of things to consider, but here are a few we find particularly important:
We’re all developers here and we know we get anxious when more than a few metres away from our laptops, but it’s something worth thinking about. I would recommend taking the right tool for the job. For me a 12” Retina MacBook is perfect. It’s good enough for taking meeting notes, hooking up to projectors and screens for presentations. It’s small enough to work on a tray table on the plane. The battery easily lasts for a work-day. It’s very light. It’s not cheap, but it’s not ridiculously expensive if something untoward happens. Personally I choose to have Parallels installed for the times I need something Windows-related during presentations (and it’s also handy if you are a SharePoint user and need local copies of all your files).
As a reasonably-priced alternative it’s also worth considering something like a Microsoft Surface Pro 2. You can pick a decent pre-owned one up for around £300 on eBay, and the i5 version with 4GB RAM is pretty usable. The battery life can be a little underwhelming, so I have added a ‘Power’ cover which not only provides a massively increased battery capacity, but is also more rigid than the standard ‘Type’ cover. Because this is my ‘go absolutely anywhere’ device, it’s also protected by a UAG ruggedized case.
Both of these devices are great travelling companions, and there are other benefits to having good battery life – it’s always a good idea to make sure your laptop isn’t flat when you go through airport security, in case you are asked to switch it on. With these two devices I can forget to charge them the night before the trip and generally be confident there will always be enough charge to keep me going.
Have a reliable VPN client installed before you leave, so you can connect to your corporate network and RDP to your desktop should you find you need access to that vital document that (for some reason) isn’t in your Dropbox.
So, if you’re going to be doing live meeting-room hands-on VR demos with a HTC Vive and the latest build of your game you were desperately downloading over the hotel’s free Wi-Fi the night before, then you might need to take a beast of a machine with you. If you’re not, give yourself a break and take something more suited to the job in hand.
Either way, don’t forget to take your charger and US/UK adapter!
Today we are delighted to announce the launch of our 2D and 3D Art Services, which will complement the existing software engineering and programming services for which we have gained our international reputation.
We have proved to be an invaluable partner when providing engineering services to our clients throughout the whole development lifecycle across multiple sectors including games, simulation, serious games, and interactive experiences.
We will now do the same with Art Services.
Our Art Services include concept art, pre-production and prototyping, to full production, covering 2D, UI, 3D, character design, and modelling. Everything we do is underpinned by attention to detail and overall quality across the board.
This is a very exciting time for d3t as we mirror our engineering business with an art business made up of the best of UK creative talent.