Sunday, April 30, 2006

Assignment 2: Low-fi Prototype

Any problems viewing the prototype here? You can go to this link http://student.ci.qut.edu.au/~n4810546/kib210/lowfiproto.swf


 

Friday, April 28, 2006

Assignment 2: Designing Low-fi Prototype

Design process for Flash prototype:
1) Need to design a challenging maze - do a search on the internet to look at some images of mazes
2) Search for suitable sound effects and background music
3) Program action script for Flash game
4) Main mechanics should be "working" in this low fidelity prototype. Main mechanics should be "working" so that it can be tested during the play testing phase. How can the respondents tell you what the problems are when they can't play the game.

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1)The Maze:

I did a search on the internet to find a suitable maze to use in my flash game. I found this image at http://sinai.critter.net/gallery/blakat-maze.gif and it looked challenging.

Majority of the images of mazes that I came across were either too childish, too simple or too complicated. But I soon realised that there is a flaw in the maze's design. There isn't any way to complete this maze as it is only filled with lots of dead ends. So, I tweaked the design of the maze a little; creating not 1 but 2 paths that leads to the finish line.


Here is an image of the modified maze:

And here is a guide; a game cheat if you will:

2) Sound effects and music
Here are some fabulous website that have sample sound effects for me to preview and download.
A set of 13 different sound effects were used in the game. I used sounds that ranged from the funny to the plain annoying. Whenever the player's cursor touches the walls of the maze, it would trigger a random sound from this set of 13.

As for the background music, I came across Steven Cravis's compositions on the internet and liked his music a lot. The duration of his compositions range from a minute to about 5 minutes so I do not need to shorten his music to fit the game prototype. Piano melodies by this composer from San Francisco are pleasant and is "built to inspire reflection and hope". So I decided to choose one of my favourites called "Through the Kaleidoscope" and use that as the background music for my prototype. Steven Cravis' recordings are mainly contemporary instrumental pieces which shift between solo piano pieces and multilayered electronic compositions.
Here is a link that allows you to preview or even download samples of his music.

3)Action script
With the help of Cameron Owens whose knowledge in action script is simply amazing, I managed to program the action script for the following functions:
- Red ball to follow the movement of the cursor (Must not trail the cursor. There shouldn't be a delay.
- Play random sound from the set of 13 sound effects whenever the cursor touches the walls and game restarts
The following action script as to be placed on a separate layer; not on the same layer as the images etc.

Actionscript placed on the maze button

Screenshots of the low-fidelity prototype:


 

Thursday, April 27, 2006


Assignment 2: Out of the Box prototype demo - Sound Web
Click on the image to view an enlarged version of the storyboard for the video demo.

  • Reflections

This game can be made even more challenging with the use of a blindfold. The person who is holding onto the stick would be the one blindfolded. Because this was the first time they were playing this activity, the blind fold was not used as it would have been to difficult for beginners. It was interesting to see how these participants went about playing this activity as a group.


 

Sunday, April 23, 2006

Assignment 2: Project Management

This is the first time I have to write up a project management plan and I have no clue how to go about doing it. So I looked up for some examples on the net and here are some of the links:
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080104/project.html
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/programadmin/mega/megaiii.htm
http://www.wm.edu/mast/pdffiles/project_plan.pdf

Luckily for me, I found an example of a project management plan from QUT IT students. So after looking through all the examples and combining elements that are required for this assignment, this is the outline of my report:

Executive Summary
1.0 Introduction
1.1 Project Background
1.2 Purpose and objectives
1.3 Project Success Criteria
1.4 Scope, Inclusions and Exclusions
1.5 Dependencies and Assumptions
1.6 Constraints
1.7 Benefits for completion of project
1.8 Evolution of the Plan
1.9 Quality of products
2.0 Project Team
2.1 Client Liaison
2.2 Internal Structure and Individual roles
2.3 Project Task Management
3.0 Risk Management
4.0 Project activities and production timeline
4.1 Estimate activity duration
4.2 Identify project activities
4.2.1 Processed focused schedule
4.2.2 Project Milestones and Deliverables
4.2.3 Gantt Charts
4.3 Shape of project and methodologies
5.0 Creative Development
5.1 Sound/music art environments
5.2 Chosen 3 sound/music art environments
5.2.1 Audio Map
5.2.2 Roomful of Strings
5.2.3 The Room
5.2.4 Storyboards of 3 sound/music art environments
5.2.4.1 Audio map
5.2.4.2 Roomful of Strings
5.2.4.3 The Room
5.3 Prototyping
5.3.1 Out of the box - Sound Web
5.3.2 In the box - Labyrinth
6.0 Feasibility
6.1 Needs analysis (generic)
6.2 Needs analysis for "Sound Web" (Out of the box design)
6.3 Needs analysis for "Labyrinth" (In the box design)
7.0 Cost Benefit analysis
7.1 Balanced benefit case
7.1.1 Customer perspective
7.1.2 Financial perspective
7.1.3 Internal Process perspective
7.1.4 Organisational learning perspective
8.0 Testing and Evaluation
9.0 Refinements to prototype
10.0 Conclusion
References
Appendix

My Project management checklist


 

Monday, April 17, 2006

Assignment 2: Storyboards for prototypes





 

Friday, April 14, 2006

Assignment 2: Brainstorming sketches













Click on these images to view mindmaps for both In and Out of the box prototypes.


Click on image to enlarge.





Click on image to enlarge.
Note that these were based on the Conductor idea which was conceptualised during the first phase of this project (please refer to entry posted on the March 29, 2006 called Design Variations). But this idea was scraped later on and the out of the box prototype became a smaller physical realised version of the Roomful of strings idea.


 

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Assignment 2: Storyboards for the chosen 3 Sound/music art environments









 

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Assignment 2: Brainstorming sketches

Click on image to enlarge.




I got my inspirations from the following links and some of the links mentioned earlier (March 15, 2006 - Examples of interactive art)

The Theatre of Sounds by Garamond
http://www.garamond.it/index.php?risorsa=theatre_presentation

Interactive Sound Environment (1999 - 2000) by Somaya Langley
http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/web/biogs/P000565b.htm

makomoo.com
http://www.makomoo.com/ITP/work.shtml

MattMontag.com
http://www.mattmontag.com/musicalcomposition.php

Stresspuppy.net
http://www.stresspuppy.net/portfolio/sound/index.html

Padded Perception
http://www.volkmarklien.com/installations/pad_per.html

 

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Tutorial exercise: Needs Analysis

What is in a needs analysis?

Client - Who is the possible client?
eg it could be an art installation for an exhibition
A game for a gaming company
Installation for medical research?

Location- Where is it held? Held at a The Block?

Audience - Who is your target audience? Demographics?

Materials needed - What are the materials needed to build/create prototype?

Expertise - Who would you need to help you with the prototype?
eg. People specialising in IT, software developers, sound engineers

Funding - Overall budget
Labour costs, costs of materials, other expenses


 

 

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