Fis Exhibition 2011 photos!!!

Its been a few months since the Fis exhibition now but looking back from a new prospective year in DkIT we decided to post some photos of our project and group over the 3-day exhibition, gathered from different sources over the summer.
Thanks to Baiba Engele, Rochelle Lazaro, Claire O'Neill and Jamie Callaghan for the pics!:)

Helping out the rival groups!:)

3rd years group photo (Some missing)

Fionn Larkin on project booth duty.

Eamonn Cahill & Liza Wang on booth duty (Good times!)

Final day of exhibition - Fis 11 cake!

Consoling the rivals from Osoreru.

Project booth before decoration and roof added.

Eamonn Cahill having fun!

Fionn Larkin after a long day at the booth...

Hopefully will have more photos of the exhibition uploaded soon so stay tuned! :)

Ready for the comiing Fis Exhibition

New poster!!!

Above: New Non-Sense poster

Guide character video screenshot!

Above: Guide scientist character screenshot from video

(Actress - Baiba Engele)

Above: Main characters lineup

New soldier design

Above: New soldier design

Project poster

Above: Poster for project Non-Sense.

UCS Vs The Ra'Var Empire: Game on!

A return to progress...

After the christmas period, things became a little slack and very little was done, all for different reasons. However, once we began work on our project script a few weeks back, things began to get moving again. Every now and then, creativity just needs a little kick in the right direction. Thankfully, we had a few meetings on what we wanted to happen and we worked on some practical work to get the creative juices going again. No body likes writing up massive essays and so for the script, we decided to split it up into areas relating to our project roles, therefore, nobody would have to write about something they know nothing about! Once we did that, it was only a matter of time before we built up a sizable script, detailing all aspects of the planned project, some of which can now be found on this here blog!
With the script now complete and handed in for correction, we now have a detailed plan laid out ahead of us and we can now get down to work on actually building the damn thing! So hopefully we will post more on our progress as Project: Non-Sense begins to take shape. Until the, have a look at the bounty of information here on the blog and get to know the universe you will be playing in ...Sorry, saving. Get ready to kick some Na'Var butt!:)

Eye tests - Colour test using red/green

Heres a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpltcPNy-tc

Heres an image:

New semester, new ideas...

After a much needed knees-up over the christmas holidays, we're ready to go again! With thestart of the new semester, we have some new ideas to disscuss and inspiration found over the festive season to share with the rest of the group. We have a good back-story written up to explain the different characters and groups in the game, as well the history to explain the reasons behind they're actions.
Next up, we plan to draw up some concept art for the characters and game environment, as well as looking at the coding needed to perform actions within the game. The first part of our games script is also planned to be completed by the end of next week.
Unfortunately no pretty visuals to present here on the blog so far, but hey, stick around and you wont be dissappointed!:)

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.