Stop motion uniqueness

7.2

Also, I forgot to link this weeks ago when I first saw it so hope that everyone hasn't seen it yet, but check this out:



Stop motion music! Pretty neat idea :D That must have taken a LOT of planning and I admire the skill of execution and the unique idea.

Project progression

7.1/13

Just a minor update, I've made a minor prototype with the new concept, and the results are far more pleasing, illustrating the concept better. Follow this linky:

http://eps.id.au/pandor/v1.swf

The balancing act itself hasn't changed since the last prototype but I'm dedicating a lot more time to that tomorrow, but there is some basic gameplay added to this, such as finishing when you fall and etc, so a lot of the game code has been added (it's now more of a matter of adding cosmetics to the gameplay, such as restarting when you lose). There's also the task of adding all my sound files ahead, and more level designs (or whether things will be randomised, and just get more frequent as the player progresses, much like my last group project Cloud Keeper).

Project 2 Outline

7/13

So here it is: the long awaited rock-solid project outline! Honestly I've had it for a while now but have been busy checking whether the concept would actually work. The project so far as been a series of ups and downs, sometimes the concept seems solid and other times it slips into non-sensical madness.

But anyways, I've decided to go with the balancing act game. The project concept goes as follows:

"Ever close your eyes while walking to find your sense of balance and perspective is completely thrown off? One of your major sensory inputs has suddenly vanished, and you are left with the feel of the ground beneath your feet and the sounds surrounding you to comprehend balance, and incoming obstacles. Frightening concept to say the least. My project attempts to examine how one would cope in a world without vision, in a safe simulator, as a project for blind awareness."

Originally, the concept was to use a simple white line on the screen to abstractly represent one's sense of perspective and balance. The first iteration of prototyping and testing created this monster:

http://eps.id.au/pandor/test1.swf

Now I know what you're thinking. "That's the most awful coding ever!", and I agree, but for now it's given me a sense of what the game needs: embodiment.

So the second design iteration has produced this as a layout:
Now the player has a sense of where he or she is, and also a shallow sense of perspective. The footstep animations are less abstract and make more sense in terms of representing footsteps.


So that's about where I'm up to, playing with this design in flash and modifying some sound files to be used in the game.

Next project

6/13

So apparently I'm still having some issues getting my last project uploaded, my lovely boyfriend failed to tell me that there are some current issues with getting it working, but either way, onto project 2!

So I have a collective two weeks to get this out after starting a little late from the lag from the last project, but I think the ideas I'm going for are more about hashing out a good design rather than heavy coding, which I'll enjoy far more. Here are my current ideas I'm choosing between:

1. Small Flash game based on using the right and left audio channels to balance a person from a first person perspective. The story goes that you're a person walking down the street and suddenly you go blind (who knows why, you just do), and all you get is a "sense" of balance, which is illustrated using a white horizontal line. The user will use the mouse to make sure that line does not tip too far in a certain direction, and also listen for oncoming noises like traffic and other pedestrians to see whether they need to overbalance in another direction to avoid the obstacle. If they do not, they take damage, indicated by a red flash where the damage was taken.

2. ToiletDoor.com. One of the oldest forms of forum is the back of the toilet door. Most people who have had to use a toilet in a public place will know that for some reason, there's this allure to reading other people's stuff *anonymously* and responding around it, kind of like a discussion map almost. Our current internet forums don't allow such freedom with posting, requiring sign ups and an alias, and also a very tightly logical layout. A good example is Group Hug , except there is no replying (but the kind of stuff you see on this site you also see on toilet doors. So I'm going for that kind of anonymous.

So those are one of the projects I want to follow, I really like both ideas so choosing one is going to be really hard (and of course I can always save one for another project). I feel like choice one will be easier to code but require a bit more research and leg work (walking around blindfolded? lol) which could also be fun, but the toiletdoor.com idea is also brilliant because there really isn't much else out there that is like it. The only other remotely close example would be some of the flash multi-user whiteboards out there, though I'm having trouble finding a link to the good one right now (you can see other people drawing and it updates live. There's about 15 different whiteboards going and I think that number increases depending on the number of users, though I could be wrong). The only issue with the multi-user whiteboard is people can draw over your drawings and no text input makes communication near to impossible unless you have a graphics tablet, so I'm planning to expand on the idea by forcing people to "reserve" real estate on the page and typing to that area, and then people replying get to choose a spot around it.

But today's challenge is to choose between the two ideas, and get started with concept research and planning.

Supanova Pop Culture Expo, Melbourne

5/13

So I went on break from work for a little while after the last assignments so my posting lately has been a little light. However, I do have a couple of more posts to make so you should see some more content over the next couple of days.

The last assignment is now complete and has been handed in, but I haven't uploaded it to my webspace yet, will do when I'm on my own computer.

What I do want to talk about today is the Melbourne 2008 Supanova expo. One of my housemates wanted to go because of some awesome Stargate movie pre-screener, and didn't have anyone to go with (you need a partner to go there, unless you want to get glomped by scary Cosplay people). The weekend 'Supafan' pass cost $40, and that got you access to the Friday night prescreener, Saturday and Sunday. Now, to be honest, I was expecting just a lot of cliche` anime screenings, anime fanboys/girls everywhere, and generally a pretty boring outfit if you didn't like anime. However, it turns out that it's a really interesting event for your general internet loving nerd and even professional in the area of film making/artistry. Appearances included actors from the Stargate and Firefly series, voice actors (some of the likes who did some work on World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade), and comic artists (not quite from Marvel but those who are always aspiring to be). In the commercial sector (all the stalls selling their geeky apparel and replica BSG dolls), they had the must-have for any geeky convention, the Stormtroopers, who patrolled around getting photos with people. There was even a Doctor Who fan club sign up stall, if that illustrates just how geeky this convention was. Even better were the tables packed full of people playing Magic The Gathering. Yeah, we felt fairly normal after seeing that.

So the first night the three of us went to see the Stargate SG1 film prescreening. We got awesome seats right up front, and watched the event beforehand, which was a Master's session for comic art. I don't remember who they were but one specialised in zombies, and the other in the female figure. So basically they drew and were projected onto the big screen and the crowd got to interview them. One of the most useful pieces of advice was this:

"Never stop being a student. And I don't mean stay at university or whatever, I mean never stop learning, because it's an evolving industry."

Probably in more words than that, but it struck me as being the core of multimedia: you stop learning, and you fall behind. So I really enjoyed the words of wisdom from these guys.

So we got awesome seats, and the Master's session had just ended. The lovely executives from Fox Studios demanded that the audience be vacated, and all recording equipment to be left out of the theatre. We ended up near the back because people were already lining up out front, gg. As many disgruntled people in the line mentioned, "It's been on torrent for days now", "we already saw it on Youtube". Funnier than that is the recording equipment was taken for a 30 second trailer for the new X Files film, not for the Stargate prescreener. Go figure. All in all, the Stargate film was really a glorified extended episode of the usual thing, and I'm not really all that into it anyway (I do like Atlantis though, far better character development).

The second day I sadly missed because I completely overslept, which is sad because Spike Spencer (voice actor, did some work on WoW:TBC) would have been really interesting to see, and Michael Winslow (another voice actor) sounded really entertaining. Oh well, atleast I got to see Winslow try Singstar.

So we all ended up going for the last day, the highlight of the Sunday was the interviews with actors from the likes of Stargate and Firefly (if you haven't seen Firefly, it's most definitely worth a watch). Jewel Staite was one of these interviewees, mainly renown for her role as Kaylee Frye in the Firefly series. It was interesting to hear about their interests before they acted on a sci-fi series, and how it has shaped who they are now. More interesting than that was the look on those poor fanboys' faces when they realised their beloved Kaylee is nothing like her sci-fi counterpart (ie, the most common question was "Do you visit forums", which the flat answer is usually "No, I have a life!"). Fantastic. Teryl Rothery from Stargate SG-1 was really interesting too, she plays such a serious role on Stargate but her flamboyance came out during the interview.

There were also screenings other than anime screenings which was to my liking. I've never seen Pure Pwnage on a large flat screen TV before, it makes the experience much better!

I really wish I'd got to see more while I was there, but even with the few things I did see, it was totally worth going to, even mainly for the interviews. Also, thank god there weren't too many scary Cosplayers.

Site structure, information flow, and other terribly boring stuff

4/13

Late for blogging day again! We can all thank Blizzard for enticing me to play World of Warcraft for patch 2.4, which while I should have anticipated this, swallowed my whole Wednesday.

But anyway, back to the important part of the project: The Guts. Yup, how data is going to flow through the veins of this website and allow my lovely users to efficiently find the information they need. Oh and also to make them see how fun and happy this film festival is going to be.

So after evaluating the current site at www.hraff.org.au, I decided that trying to access information on this site is like climbing through a crawlspace with multiple deadends, thus forcing you to try crawl back out. Backwards.

My solution to this is basically to shallow out the hierarchy, if that makes sense. That means maybe only three clicks to the information you need, and not ten with pointless animations in between. Also to not hide away film previews in the program guide, because they really are the main selling point for this film festival.

Just as a side note, I'm being awfully critical today because today is Zero Punctuation day (yay!). If you haven't seen Zero Punctuation before, see the latest game review here. The reviews are blindingly honest and generally absolutely hilarious.

So back to my site structure, here's a little something about how I'm going to try organise the information:

The home page will, like the current site, have a lot of buttons (I've reduced the number of them to necessity but still at least 6). Nothing new, but it's the way information is connected now that I hope to change. The long curved lines indicate that some categories will link back to other related information, such as the info on each city will link to the program guide for that city, making information far more accessible in a variety of formats. Why have information linking to other information? Because for example, clicking on Sydney may give your user information about the stalls and festivities there, but then your user may want to get the program guide from there. So without the link, it's *two* clicks to the guide rather than one. That's the theory I'm going by anyway.

The other change made to the structure versus the old layout is not needing to choose a city when you first open the website. Why? It's totally pointless for the kind of information available. Information such as trailers for the movies shouldn't require you to choose your city, and in reality, don't. In fact, I'm going to put them right there on the first page, links to trailers, because that's really the entire selling point of the whole festival, as mentioned earlier. While the layout and such should be bright and cheery, it doesn't mean that the issues being dealt with aren't heavy and still deserve an emotional response (it's a human rights festival! You can't change that). So in essence, I'm going for fun and happy but NOT frivolous. That, in itself, is a major challenge.

So currently all that's left is to finish constructing the site (frame is up, but css needs some work), test over the weekend on some family and friends, and other miscellaneous volunteers, and voila!

Will report back with a link to the site when it's in beta stage.

Game on @ ACMI

3/13

Turns out I missed posting day yesterday, but that was so I could write about my experience at the Game On exhibition at ACMI, which I had the pleasure of seeing this evening (just got in the door from seeing it).

The collection the curators had pulled together was amazing, some of this stuff I'd never even heard of let alone seen with my own eyes before. Firstly, one of the highlights was the arcade room at the entry. There were some really old school games in there, some of Taito's originals (yes, even *before* Bubble Bobble, which mind you was there but on a console). The machine that amazed me the most was the Space Invaders console which actually reflected the screen onto the viewing area, which had a multilayer backdrop (like, sky was far away and ground was closer). This I had not seen before, and my lovely game-loving boyfriend who came along had exclaimed that while he had seen the reflection technique used to increase the size of the screen, he had not seen it to project the game onto a colourful background.

It was a little disappointing to see some of the displays not working correctly, such as the Pong game not serving on P2's side, and many others shut down. The vast variety of other (and even multiple) consoles available made up for this though.

Some of the controls used in some of the exhibitions was beyond comprehension from a modern game design perspective. If anyone saw the Mecha game, they'd know exactly what I mean. Has anyone seen the kind of controls that are often depicted in mecha animations? Like, the dual joystick things? That's how you controlled this game, not to mention the myriad of other crazy buttons you had to work out how to use. To learn how to play properly, you'd have to read a novel-thick manual just to work out how to walk the damn thing properly. Even crazier than that (yes, it gets crazier) was the Train game. This game had train controls, and you had to get braking/acceleration right, and stopping at platforms. We got the most joy from throttling the control back and forth and seeing the little picture of people falling over come up.

I'd say the most popular games were Guitar Hero (hey, who wouldn't want to show off to those around you how to blitz a song in the bonus category on hard), and both the Wii consoles with Wii Sports and Sonic and Mario at the Olympics. To be honest, Sonic and Mario at the Olympics was a bit of a let down in my personal opinion. I don't ever think a Wii party game should require more than two panels of control explanations, let alone the eight that most of the games required. Also, despite having the buttons available on the remote and nunchuck, most party games are far more fun if they don't require actually using them (see: Wii Tennis).

The exhibition was overall really interesting and there was some really obscure stuff to see, even the number of consoles blew me away. I'd never have expected so many versions of the Nintendo, ever. The main issue with the exhibition was some consoles not working/games frozen (the number of Xbox consoles frozen was astronomical). Most definitely worth seeing, I'd allow at least three hours to see everything.