Week 9 - Adventuring in Design

Since this weeks guest lecturer mentioned Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), I thought that instead of drawing a cartoon like I usually do, I would post this picture of a miniature conversion I had made. It was made to resemble a "Yuan-ti Abomination" (snake man) from D&D. Starting with a headless torso and arms, all it takes is modelling putty and imagination.

Lecture 9

This week we had another guest lecturer, who is a game designer. They started off talking about how they played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Long ago, I had played D&D, although I was always the Dungeon Master. Part of the reason I never got drawn into playing World of Warcraft was the fact that there is no place for a Dungeon Master in that game. So in that respect, I could identify with what the lecturer was saying. My group used to be heroic adventurers. However, I did, on time, have a group that wanted to be all evil. I couldn't handle that group. I learnt long ago that not everyone wants to play a game the same way I do. I consider that one of the marks of a good game is that it can handle many different play styles effectively (and fairly). I used to also play various boardgames a lot, as well as computer games. I consider the best games to be the ones that enhance social interactions.

As an aside, I used to frequent the site http://boardgamegeek.com, as I do like board games. Although I mainly looked at that site to examine the rules of various games, since they could be discerned from various reviews. I always considered it interesting to see how simple rules could effectively simulate certain conditions/events, and what was it that made some games more popular. In some ways, early computer games had to be simple to fit within the limited resources available at that time. These days, the speed of downloadable data and networking is the primary limit. But even though vast complexity can now be afforded, simple approaches are still of great value, since you will always have your bottlenecks of one kind or another. I bought the board game 'Tsuro', since it's so simple, even my friend who seems to always be half drunk at diner parties can play it. Now that's a bottleneck :P :D

The guest lecturer also seemed to be someone focused on enhancing social interactions, with role play type games like Zombie Apocalypse (http://zombie-arg.com). Scoot (http://scootagency.com), which she also developed, is strongly focused on active real time location play. We were told that we should check out both Ingress (http://www.ingress.com) and Shadow Cities (http://www.shadowcities.com), since they are more 'tech current' games that follow a similar vein. From what I could see, these games are still both embryonic compared to how I would like things to eventually be. The smartphones should be able to be used as a looking glass into another world, utilising the camera with superimposed graphics. But I can't see that this is yet being done. When google glass becomes a fixture in the market, this needs to be rectified. I consider Google to be ahead of the game with their focus on virtual maps. After all, if you want to blend virtual elements into the real world, then the real world needs to be perfectly represented in the virtual world too. And as I've said repeatedly before, VR/AR is the developmental and designing area that I would like to be eventually apart of. I can see a world where there are no real world billboards, since they exist in the virtual world instead, and show material appropriate to each individual viewer. I can even see a world where graffiti is virtual. This is why I see little distinction between 'games' and 'interactive entertainment'. High level games will more become lifestyle choices (and I don't necessarily mean in the same way as those who are already fixated on MMO's).

I'll just going to sum up the rest of the lecture very briefly:

• More reinforcement about iteration of design.
• If you develop good code/systems/methods, re-use them, and build upon them.
• Always be aware of context. Examine all the factors that may impinge on a design.
• Keep awareness of new and developing technologies.

The  lecturer finished with a slide mentioning 'shifting boundaries', which I agree with. But the boundary between 'self' and 'character' were mentioned. I myself don't consider that to be a boundary that ever shifts. People are always themselves; it's only how others perceive them that is a 'character'.

Group Project 2 - Future Echo's (Week 3 of 4)

One of my preliminary drawings.

As mentioned last time, the story behind our group project is an apocalyptic future where tainted air requires the use of gas masks. There are very few buildings that filter air, making gas masks a constant necessity.

In this weeks tutorial session, I felt like my group actually were fully functioning as a team. Even the group member who I expected little from, they pulled out a working flash sample of gas mask world. It appears that in another subjects group, he has non-functioning team mates, and is doing the bulk of the work. While I still don't think that excuses him from not participating much in this group, at least there is some understanding now. I now think that the comments that they had made weeks earlier were born out of stress rather than real apathy. When working as a group, communication is key. Yet despite some turn around, I still don't feel that there is enough communication from everyone. However, we are meeting tomorrow (Monday).

Another preliminary drawing.

I spent a lot of time yesterday re-adjusting frames of a video, to make it look a little more 'drawn', and make it seem as though being viewed out of a gas mask. Even though it's only quite short, and the adjustments were simple, it was still 450 frames! But it is meant to be the ending of our short video, so I thought it was worthwhile doing so as to put the viewer into our created world for the climax (such that it is). There is still so much work to do. I need to have what drawings I want to use completed today. I'm relying on a couple of my other team mates to assemble all the material, so they need to have the time to do that. Also, we need at least a little time to make adjustments.

Even with a team member saying that they will do half the pictures, the number of pictures so far between us do not seem like enough, especially since there is little animation associated with them. Also, the other team member said that they had taken lots of pictures to act as background. As of yet, I've not been sent anything. I will do my best to complete the end section of the story that was given to me, but at this stage I'm not entirely confident about a unified end product.

Another team members drawings for gas mask world. Appreciated, but not 'finished' enough for my own liking. Some pen work over the pencil would make a huge difference.

Not wanting to spend precious time drawing backgrounds, I told the group to just take photos (or download pictures). I wanted to transform them so that they didn't look quite so photo-like. After all, they have to suit the drawn characters. At first I used a 'cartoon' effect, but that just didn't look so good. I tried various effects until I came to the 'gloom' effect, which did the job that I wanted. Also, considering the gloomy story for our project, it seemed doubly appropriate. For outdoor settings, I also added a 'fog' effect on top so as to further give the impression of unclean air. If others are not sending pictures to me to transform, then I hope they are doing it themselves.

Sample modified photo. It has been given the 'gloom' effect. Most pictures will be black & white

I didn't take too much notice of other groups in this weeks tutorial session, except for one that seemed to have done a great job and were half way through. Considering their presentation for the first project, I am not surprised. But I'll be reporting on all groups next week. I'll leave it at that for now.