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Events Industry

Australian Rover Challenge 2024: A Recollection

Australian Rover Challenge 2024: A Recollection

Ahh, another year, another Australian Rover Challenge (ARCh); every March many universities descend upon Adelaide from far and wide to attend and compete in ARCh. This year was no different and once again we were there to celebrate alongside the many teams in attendance. The talent we walked into while there was astronomical and it’s no wonder its such a popular event, bringing in hundreds of people each year with many schools making a trip yearly to see the teams and their rovers; and now us as well.

This is our 3rd year in attendance at ARCh and it is something we look forward to each year, with many from the public and the teams themselves checking out what we and Roving Rovers have been up to over the past year.

Join us in a short journey going through our involvement in ARCh 2024 and where you will find us now that it is all said and done!

This year we decided to shift the starting position of Roving Rovers, instead of being in the Shackleton Crater we were to the side and above a cliff leading down into the crater.

Furthermore we kept it so players were still able to enter the crater through the use of lava tubes. Enabling players to experience more interesting terrain while still staying true to the lunar experience.

In the interest of maintaining a spoiler free blog here I am simply going to list the next few updates below without giving away too much information.

  • Included the 2024 University of Adelaide rover
  • A new narrative with more environmental engagement
  • Updates to the control of the rover, making it a much easier and nicer experience for players

Overall we were able to update and improve Roving Rovers to be more entertaining and an easier experience for those who aren’t super familiar with games, especially driving based games.

As a bit of a late introduction, if you’re unsure what the Australian Rover Challenge is then I’ll give a quick explanation below.

Every year students at various Universities will create teams made up from various disciplines giving them all the knowledge of how to build and program a lunar rover. Teams can use and upgrade upon the design of the Rovers used in previous challenges or come up with a new design, though they have to follow some strict guidelines to follow. Teams are told about the different challenges and goals for the challenge so that they can practise and problem solve; making their rover the most efficient at various tasks.

A majority of the teams are from Australian Universities, however last year they had their first international team from Poland – Project Scorpio – and this year, the second from Bangladesh – Team Atlas – With both performing their national anthems for us at the ending ceremony!

For more in depth information go give their website (https://set.adelaide.edu.au/atcsr/australian-rover-challenge/) a quick visit, but the challenges they compete in are:

  • Post Landing Task
  • Excavation & Construction Task
  • Space Resources Task
  • Mapping & Autonomous Task

This year was even more grand than the last, especially at a new location. But the winners definitely deserved their places.

  • 1st place goes to Projekt Scorpio
  • 2nd place goes to Monash’s Nova Rover
  • 3rd place goes to UQ Space

It was great to see all the differences between rovers and all the progress that’s been made and the effort everyone has put into the event and the team’s dedication to their rovers.

Keep a close eye out and you might find a familiar rover appearing in Roving Rovers 👀👀.

With that being all said and done, how did Roving Rovers go at Arch?

Firstly, thankyou for asking and secondly it went fantastic!

Although there were less people just wandering through this year, we still had quite a few people coming and checking it out, including a few school groups. Roving Rovers is a great introduction to the Australian Rover Challenge for the younger audiences, as they are able to try out the different challenges before watching the teams attempt the challenges in real time. We also had many of the teams come through and check out the game, as most had heard of Roving Rovers but never tested or watched any gameplay and so this was their first time playing or watching their teammates play.

As stated above we also had a digital version of the University of Adelaide’s rover and many; who had never controlled their own rover, were absolutely thrilled to be able to finally manoeuvre and attempt the challenge for themselves with their own rover.

Overall the experience was fantastic as always and it’s great to support all the hardwork and dedication that all the teams have put into their Rovers. We are looking forward to next year and are eager to see who takes the trophy in 2025!

You can find Roving Rovers HERE 

And can keep up to date with its development through multiple channels!

Catch ya on the lunar side!

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Industry

Our Placement Program: Cultivating the Future of Video games in South Australia

Our Placement Program: Cultivating the Future of Video games in South Australia

As students we didn’t quite get the opportunities we wanted with placements, but once we started Mini Mammoth Games we decided to change that! Come through and discover how we here at Mini Mammoth Games are cultivating the future talent of the South Australian games industry.

During our study at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment many of us founders were able to participate in their placement program, enabling us to go out and experience the opportunities of seeing how our skills could be applied to real life jobs. Unfortunately there weren’t many, if any, game development studios that opened their doors to placements; something that we found to be disappointing and didn’t feel relevant or productive.

Therefore when we sat down to create a placement program we focused on what we would have liked and benefited from. This enabled us to make a few decisions immediately as to what we should focus on:

  • Make a fun and unserious game
  • Full experience – design, development and distribution
  • Creating the marketing
  • Receiving and analysing the results of their marketing
  • Scope of projects

This worked out quite well and did help a lot with students’ understanding of scope, specifically for small hyper casual mobile games. This was something that we struggled with when we first started making games at MMG and is something that we have also noticed when working with placements.

Feel free to have a look at the games that the placements from 2023 made!

With the program being a success at AIE we decided to increase our reach and extend the offer to other universities. Starting with our friends over at Flinders University, next was the University of Adelaide and last but not least; the University of South Australia.

This is also amongst the various work experience and one of placements from either high schools or other tertiary education institutes that we did not yet have much contact with.

Doing this allows us to have a constant rotation of placement groups throughout the entire year, enabling us to give valuable experience to as many students as possible.

One of our placements from Flinders University, Adam, had this to say about his experience with us:

“It was a rewarding journey, in which I was encouraged to experiment, learn, and have fun every step of the way. I am thankful to Mini Mammoth Games for the opportunity, continuous support, and mentorship. Being exposed to the entire development process, from pitch to launch, has given me confidence that I now have knowledge and skills to contribute to the video games industry.”

Through our ‘Quality, Quickly’ process we are able to get placements to experience the full scope of development and marketing. Once they have developed their game we get them to create both image and video creatives to help market their game over the course of a week. Once completed we then provide the results and analytics to the students, allowing them to see which creative attracted the viewer’s attention best and the reaction of players to their game.

Our goal is to make the video games industry more accessible in South Australia; with such a tight knit community it can often be intimidating and a little off putting to those trying to get their foot in the door.

If you’re interested in taking part as a placement or on behalf of your students, please email us through contact@minimammothgames.com or go through our contact form. Furthermore, we often take placements in groups as this allows them to work as a team with a designer, programmer and artist; a minimum of 3 but we do take larger groups if needed. We are open to working with those who can’t build a full group, however that will be determined on a case by case basis and depending on our current and schedule placements.

We will be continuing our placement program for the foreseeable future and we would love to help you and others become more prepared for the industry!

With our former and current placements giving us positive feedback we are intent on continuing this so that students can get the best opportunities available. We have partnered with multiple educational institutes to reach as many students as possible and will continue to reach out to more throughout the entire state.

Categories
Events Industry Prototypes

Exhibiting At THE Museum of Discovery

Roving Rovers at the Museum of Discovery

As many of you have heard, here at Mini Mammoth Games we have a Hard Sci-fi lunar management sim under development, Roving Rovers! In December of 2022 we introduced ourselves to Lisa Bailey from the University of South Australia who runs the MOD. Which opened up a great opportunity we had been looking for, a month long exhibition for the public. This would not only open Roving Rovers up to being played by many different people, but also allow us to get first hand feedback and analytics to help guide on-going development.

With an exciting month-long exhibition ahead of us we thought it was only fitting to host a Launch Party. We could then celebrate the wider games industry,as well as connect with space industry professionals from across the state. With the help of the MOD staff we were able to pull off a great night, with an excellent spread of food and drink choices in the very comfortable and welcoming Gould Gallery.

The night went off without a hitch, everyone was able to find the Gallery and we filled most of the main hall., With our game accessible in an adjacent room, everyone was able to mingle and see what the fuss was all about. We were also blessed to have some great speakers that talked about the idea and conception of Roving Rovers. Thank you to Cameron Mackness from Flinders University, Andreas Antoniades from Saber Astronautics and John Culton from the Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources (ATCSR). Their endless support of Mini Mammoth Games and Roving Rovers has been a big help with the project and its development so far.

At the exhibition we decided to show off multiple versions of Roving Rovers, showing how the game has evolved over its development . Starting in late 2021 alongside Flinders University and some of their students, we were able to create a small but enjoyable demo that did an ok job at showcasing the 2022 Australian Rover Challenge. With such a welcoming and encouraging response to the demo we decided to continue to develop Roving Rovers further and so we prepared an update for the Space Forum event later that year. In 2023 we once again worked with (ATCSR) to create a more accurate rover demo while adding in some of the participating team’s rovers used in the physical challenge.

All of these versions of the game were available to play with at our exhibition, as well as a few posters providing context as to why there were multiple versions of the same game and explaining the history of the project. We were also allowed to have Mini Mammoth Games staff members manning the exhibition and working from the space, allowing those who visited to ask more in depth questions and learn more about it’s on-going development.

Alongside multiple builds of Roving Rovers we were tracking analytics from the most recent build. These were also displayed  to those who visited the exhibit. We used this event as a way to see how players engage and interact with the rover builder to complete various terrain challenges. With the exhibition open to the public for 20 days we had a staggering 649 sessions, over 61 hours of total playtime with an average of 5 minutes and 45 seconds per player. We did have someone play for a total time of 53 minutes, more than 10 times longer than the average. Players who did play for an extended amount of time enjoyed the rover builder the most and would spend a large portion of their time fiddling with the designs.

 

Having developers present allowed us to also observe how players would interact with the game between the various builds. From our observations players really enjoyed the rover builder, but wished to have more firm directions/quests like the 2 Australian Rover Challenge builds had.

Our experience with the MOD was fantastic and with over 600 distinct sessions of Roving Rovers it was effective at reaching a large audience. Furthermore, with the MOD allowing developers to work there during its opening hours we were also able to interact and watch those who played the game, which expedited our feedback process.

We would like to thank the MOD. for inviting us to use their space, and all the help and support they provided over the month we were set up there. It was an invaluable experience and we would highly recommend it to any developers given the opportunity.

Thank you to everyone who helped us get to this point and we appreciate all the support!

Click on the buttons bellow to keep up to date and to learn more about Roving Rovers!