Presentation

After days without sleep, constant preparations and plenty of practice, we presented our project to a panel of college lecturers. It went OK, we had it well revised so we filled up the full 15 minutes with all aspects of the project. From what the narrative(story) is, to how it will look, how it will sound, right up to how the user will interact with it.
Our new member, Ding Hao, joined our group on monday so he took the duties of Audio which allows Fionn to focus on the Hardware & Interaction aspects of the project.
Overall, it went OK. The lecturers had several questions afterwards of course. A few were about the story, clearing up what the backstory is in relation to the user. But most questions were about the game mechanics. Looking back on it, we can understand now that we may have over looked this area. How the user will play the game (using senses to regain senses?), how each task/test is structured, and how will the narrative will move forward with theses tasks/tests?, were some of the main questions asked of us.
This of course means we now take on-board these questions, and also advice given to us, take a step back and develop our games central mechanics. Watch this space...

The Moodboard we did today ;D

Cool new computer interface

Spotted this online, Project Cobra, a flexable interactive screen. No need for buttons!
If we had it in the project wouldnt that be cool? ...wishful thinking.
Heres a link:

Project Cobra

Related video link: The Rubber Hand Illusion

Great video about one way you can fool the brain:

 The Rubber Hand Illusion - Horizon: Is Seeing Believing? - BBC Two

Further research (Narrative & Interaction)

Similarities to our narrative in this movie Demolition Man, where the hero and the villain are frozen and then woken up in the future in very different surroundings:

Idiocracy, where a man is frozen and then wakes up in the future where everyone has de-volved to complete idiots, leaving him the smartest man on the planet:

Le Loto les Saveurs (the tasting lotto) is a french game where the player must guess the flavour by tasting:

Les Loto les Odeurs (the smelling lotto) is a similar game but here the player must use smell to guess:

Similarities again to our narrative in the superb animated tv series Futurama, where fry is accidently frozen and wakes in the year 3000 to a very different world:

Mock Project Presentation

4/11/10 - Last Wednesday, we did a mock presentation of our project to the class, went O.K. But after running through it, we can see lots of room for improvement for the real thing. Such as:

Visuals - We had very little visuals prepared on the day, apart from a rough mood-board, so we will need a lot more for the real thing next wednesday! As our narrative has the game set in a futuristic laboratory, we would have visuals such as laboratory environments and equipment, advanced computers with flashing LED lights and monitors, clean and sanitary walls and surfaces, whites, grays and blacks, etc...

Audio - We have ambiance and sounds in in mind that would match the visuals. Such as beeping computers, running hard-drives, lab equipment dripping and gurgling, vocals from the computer "personality", background/ outside sounds, and possibly subtle music from a radio or something. Again, we didnt have these on today, but will need them at the actual presentation so as to give an idea of how our game will sound.

Also need more research in the areas of our narrative, similar projects, and possible technology or similar set-ups. As well as sketches on how the physical aspects of the game will look (the users position in it or other elements of the game).

Lastly, after the feedback given and questions asked after our presentation, we think that some more evaluation on how the user will interact with the game from the beginning is needed. If they have no senses from the beginning, how will they interact with it? Will look into it...

Temporary Logo - Project: Non-Sense

Playing around with our new senses-based game idea, so trying to come up with a decent logo to use for the next while. For the moment its called "Non-Sense" so heres a try-out:

Idea Developed farther...

Today (28th) we met up again to discuss the elements still missing from our new idea. We spitballed some ideas on backstory, interaction, audio and so this is what the idea came to by the end of the meeting:
The idea is basically that the user is a customer in a shopping centre during a town blackout. Outside, there is some sort of emergency or crisis and so you and others are in a hurry to stockpile supplies from this shop. The power is out in the town so you cannot see, but a customer shopping console near the door still has power and so will guide you to the items you need to the best of the ability. Some of its circuits are out though so you will have use what senses you have to work your way around and find those items.

Thats our basic back-story and narrative so far. At this point it would be heavy on audio as we actually have no visuals in mind but will have to incorporate as both audio and visuals are essential to the project. The sounds would be sound effects and noises of your surrounds in the shop, such as things being dropped or moved, footsteps, voices nearby, doors banging, coins dropping, etc. This, along with the darkness meant that we settled on an adult audience (18+) as it may be a little scary for children. May have external sounds of outside the building so as to add to the importance of the users job an situation.
We also thought of maybe having some lights to illuminate certain things or maybe guide the user to certain spots.

By the end of the meeting, we realised we were missing some important elements. We needed more visuals, it cant be ALL darkness or else it would have nothing visually interesting. We also needed to look at the computer interection area of the piece more. We want to make an interactive Multimedia project, not an interactive art project! So we are going to look at these more in depth and hopefully have them ironed out for the next meet-up!

Change of plans...

On the 27th October, we met up to discuss research and our thoughts on the project. After looking it over, we had a general consensus that our idea had to change. Our original idea (Interactive Spy Movie), we felt was too ambitious. Even having a few different story-arcs would mean considerable filming/ animation, programming and scripting. We had also seen this idea used and done so many times before in interactive movies, role playing games and role playing books and unless we could bring something considerably new and exciting to it, it would be more of the same. So, we shelved it. Maybe not forever, who knows? we might pick it up again another time? but for now it shall remain archived away in some old dusty warehouse somewhere...

So! Our new idea, is an expansion of Fionn's original idea of the restriction some human senses (Eg. sight, smell, hearing) and use of others to solve puzzles and games. We thought of maybe putting someone in a room where they must use a sense to work out what an object is. For example, if the room is dark, the user must use touch or smell to work out that the object in front of them is a lemon by smelling it or touching it(we don't want to encourage tasting because some people might be allergic, don't want people to die on us!).
Next, we played with the idea of a large scale Snakes & Ladders-type game where the user rolls a dice and progresses places while having to work out objects on where they land, in order to progress places or be sent back places. We didn't really look at this any farther.
We then settled back on our initial idea of a sense-based game set in an enclosed room where the user must work out objects. Once we had pretty much decided what the new idea was going to be, we looked at what was missing from it. First, it had no narrative, the user needs a goal or drive to motivate them into playing it, as well as having purpose and place within their environment. This also meant we needed some sort of theme or story to the overall piece, without it the user will not be interested enough to play it. Also, we needed the user to come away from the project with something, a message or feeling or even the motivation to play it again. So, we noted all this and decided to look into this and hopefully have ideas for these things at our next meeting.

Early role playing games (computer)

Was told about an early RPG/ Role Playing Game called Phantasm which was released some time in the late 70s on the Atari 2600 computer. As we are aiming at a narrative where the user makes choices and dictates which direction the story goes, it is only right to mention role playing computer games as there have been so many of them over the years. So heres a quick video link example of one of the first, Phantasm:

Phantasm Atari 2600 Homebrew review

Spy Research

Bit late posting here seening as we have had a few meetings since the last post, but hey, hectic times! So anyways, on the 21st October we met up to discuss our interactive spy movie more in depth and share some research. We had gathered a wealth of movies, programmes and games to research, all of which were spy-related. As we wanted to splice together different genres and themes through the story arcs, we wanted to look at different genres of spy movies, such as comedy, thriller, action and spoof. Here are some of them:

James Bond - Dr.No trailer

Casino Royale trailer

OSS117: Lost in Rio trailer

The Bourne Identity trailer

Top Secret! trailer

Salt trailer

A few spy themed programmes:

Chuck Season 1 promo

Burn Notice Season 1 promo

24 Season 8 promo

And a few games:

Alpha Protocol game trailer

Heavy Rain game trailer

Hitman Blood Money game trailer

Assassins Creed 2 game trailer

Also found a link to something similar to our project, in the vein of interactive movies. 13th Streets "Last Call - The First Interactive Movie" is a german horror movie watched by viewers in a cinema but, using a database which recognizes viewers mobile phone numbers and voice recognition, the viewers can direct the character on-screen at certain points, when asked. this allows the viewers to directly interact with what they are watching. Heres a link to a promo video:

13th Streets Last Call - The First Interactive Movie

After the meeting, we then pitched our idea to the rest of the class so we could get some feedback and possible recommendations for research and inspiration. Few good movies were recommended which were noted for research.

And so it began...

Today we had our first proper meeting after forming the group, all members present! We discussed topics from the last time we spoke on how we think the narrative will be structured. Spoke about possibly having several different genres spliced into it by having each story-arc the user chooses, themed. For example, a particular route may be comedy driven, or another may be horror driven, depending on which choices the user makes.
For the moment, we have settled on an overall theme for the story of a spy/espionage adventure. At the beginning, the user will be "recruited" by an elusive agency who will give them a mission to complete, but how they complete it, is up to them. This allows for the user to make their own choices and experience their own adventure, while at the same time having a set goal to achieve and an ending to reach. They may reach this ending, or may end their story entirely different.

So once we finished brainstorming on these ideas, we decided to set out some tasks to do before our next meeting next week. First up was research: we all had to go forth and find sources of inspiration in things related to our current theme. So that meant having to watch some spy movies such as the Bond movies, Bourne movies, etc, and some spy programmes such as Chuck and Burn Notice (Oh woe is life!). Also, we had to try find stuff online and maybe some books related to our theme. We also did not want to limit ourselves just yet so if anyone found any interesting unrelated stuff, that was good too! Our ideas may change after all. So this, along with notes and any inspired ideas were to be brought to the next meeting where we could share and brainstorm further.
Till next week!:)