Unit62

Task 1:

Find two examples of work from each of the following categories:


Interactivity,sound and motion added to web pages:

http://www.gpotato.com/ has an interactive show reel promoting the games they have on their site, it moves by itself on a timer, but you can also click on some buttons to get the one you want.

http://www.mono-1.com/monoface/main.html has a bunch of different faces that you can mix and match with a click of your mouse, you can change the eyes, mouth, nose, head and shoulders individually to make some really funny results.

 Animation for output to videotape or streaming web movies: 

Youtube videos could be an example of this because they are streamed on the internet and the have a time bar which you can click on to select a certain part of the video you want to see thus giving the viewer interactivity.

Presentations, training materials or interactive touchscreen kiosks that provide instant information for exhibition visitors:

We found a Photoshop magazine that had a free CD that you got upon purchase, the Cd had 2+ video tutorials, 100 ink Photoshop brushes and 40 stock images, we also found some Xbox 360 magazines which had free CD,s with them that gave you a couple of playable demos, some footage of new upcoming games and interviews with different game companies talking about their new releases.

Aquarium Game Concept

Idea Summary 
Our first idea has a simple concept. We wanted our audience to explore and find certain objects. We came up with the idea that the player is controlling a robotic submarine that would pick up rubbish and unwanted items. For example, a piece of plastic would be hiding within some rocks or a some oil floating around. Once these object were clicked on, a small post note would pop up with a simple descirption of the item and why its harmful to the marine environment.

Our next idea had the same idea as PacMan. A machine would roam around a certain area eating all the rubbish it could find. At the end of the level the player would see what he/she collected and would have a description of all the items. We wanted to use the similar PacMan theme to it as most children these days already know what it is and would easily get the hang of the game.

Our final idea has come features taken from our previous concepts.
We wanted the player to be a helpful turtle. This turtle would be based in a side scrolling game with an underwater background. We wanted this turtle to grab incoming rubbish to help save the marine life. Desciption of each item would be presented at the beginning and end.

Summary of what the client wants
After our visit to the Aquarium we could straight away see that the client wanted an appealing educational game than would show children the effect of pollution on underwater life. We noticed how there are a fair few famous animals in the aquarium, such as the turtle - which led to be our main character. She emphasised on the idea of involving local sea life and things related to Plymouth itself. It's often assumed that the ocean is dull, but this is not the case, we saw a large variety of sea creatures all living in water sourced from the South West.

Feedback From Client 
For this Unit we were tasked to prepare a presentation to be shown to our client our local aquarium, were we demonstrate our main idea. We demonstrated our idea and she liked it as a whole, but she did point out some areas that we could improve on. We also got some helpful advice from her at an educational note.

• She mentioned that we lacked informative facts for the game
• We should overview how the fish get freed
• Should take a more detailed look into sound design and implementing more interactivity to our game
• Give the audience a wider choice of characters to choose
• Possibly add a high score system

Ideas generation
After much research, evaluation and interviews with other pupils and young children at the aquarium, we finally came to a conclusion of what our game would be.
Through interviewing both children and parents at the aquarium, we asked "Is there anything unique in this aquarium?" Nearly 100% said "Yes, the blind turtle called snorkel!" This gave the game it's main character. We choose the turtle because its a unqie symbol for the aquarium and also a fimiliar animal for the audience.
We wanted to go ahead with a side scrolling background and the turtle would move up and down.
The game would consist of shooting bubbles from the turtle to destroy and get rid of all the rubbish from the marine world. The more harmful waste destroyed, the more points you'd recieve. You also need to help fellow marine wildlife inorder to gather more fish e.g. fish stuck in oil or 6 pack beer holder. The educational part will be involved at the beginning and end. We wanted to give small short pieces of information before they played and after.
There would be a 2 minute timer to limite their play.
We would also include a tutorial on how to play for the even younger audience.
The design look would be a clean, cartoon style. very child friendly and easy to understand.

Target Audience
When visiting the aquarium we notice children both genders from ages 4+ were enjoying the facilitie. There we also parents who supervised the children but weren't really participating in events or games within the building.



Team Plan Jordan:
Character Creation/Design
Background Graphics
Overall Graphics
Sea life Research

Max:
Scripting
Team Management
Compiler

Alex:
Concepting
Sound
Animation

Time Plan:
Week One - Graphics and importing to flash for testing
Week Two - Scripting and implementing some graphics
Week Three - Scripting & Fixing bugs
Week Four - More graphics & Scripting
Week Five - Sound & Animation
Week Six - Compiling and final tweaks

JAY I HAVE THE TURTLE AND POSSIBLY THE FISH BUT THEY'RE FLASH FILES AND I CAN'T OPEN THEM BECAUSE I DONT HAVE FLASH >-< I DON'T HAVE THE OIL CAN EITHER. I WILL PUT THE FLASH FILES ON MY MEMORY STICK AND BRING THEM IN ON MONDAY ^_^








This is the Plastic Bag enemy I created in flash, I drew it in this style because of the target audience being young. I wanted something that would be fun and easy to recognise. 













Research of images for graphics production:

 Myself and Jordan researched images for the the production of our graphics.

Research of information for general production:

We all took part in researching the Aquarium and other sources for ideas to help create our game. 

Research/locate/select sounds:

 Jordan took care of looking for sounds for the game.

 Ideas generation:

We all took part in ideas generation for our game, we pitched a few base ideas to eachother and then added to them, in the end we settled for our turtle troubles idea.

Production of timeplan:

Max created the timeplan. I feel that max took into consideration of the time we had and created an effective time plan.

Production of any team planning documentation (storyboards etc.):

We all colaborated to create a storyboard, I created the turtle graphic that is being used in our game along with the plastic bag, whereas Jordan created the oil can and the trapped fish. Max created the title screen and i did a rough sketch of the game screen, Jordan then took the sketch onto photoshop and made it more cartoonish and child friendly. Jordan also created the help menu and Max created the game over screen which displays your score.

 

Writing of team reports/documentation/blog items:

We all added stuff to our team blog.

Production of graphics:

I created the turtle and plastic bag graphics and Jordan created the trapped fish and oil can graphics.

Flash – making movieclips:

Max took care of making the movieclips.

Flash – scripting:

Max did pretty much all of the scripting, I tried to help him when I could but I don't think I really understood most of it or contributed all that much.


 I think that overall the game turned out quite well, we had few bumps in the road mostly to do with the scripting though i think Max handled it really well. I feel that our ideas came together really well and complemented eachother, which i think is what makes our game so good we never had any conflict within the group we all got along well and helped eachother out. The only big problem we really encountered was that the client pointed out we didn't have any facts so the game wasn't educational, though our intention was teaching the kids through the game itself, by cleaning up the ocean and freeing fish we were teaching children to be mindful of the ocean and to apreactiate it and what it has to offer.