Final Draft

Hi everyone,
I have completed all the changes to the presentation and have it sent to Caroline. So hopefully we will know in the next week or so whether we get the go ahead. I need you's all to get back to me about when you's can meet up, cheers..... Fingers crossed!!

Feedback

Myself and Tunde met with Caroline today and had a meeting about the presentation, there were a few mistakes in the presentation I have got feedback and am going to try and make all the changes tonight or early in the morning to get it back to her so we can get the go ahead. We need to start to using this blog and break down exactly what is needed for this script. We will have to have a meeting and break it up into sections and we can then all take certain pieces, then at least we can put together the first draft of the script!! I can't stress enough how much we need to have this part at least done before christmas...

Because there is a lot in it and we are still behind everyone else. Please start blogging and let me know if you's are even looking at this??

Hi Sammy

I have not looked at the blog I didn't see the post, sorry! I would not have been able to anyway but apologies for not replying. I have emailed Caroline the presentation and am planning on meeting up with her tomorrow to get some feedback!! Probably around 11, so any1 who could make it can you let me know

cheers
Paul

Meeting Saturday

Hi guys
Seen as we are all in on Saturday for our exam I was just thinking we should meet for a little bit. I just want to go ahead in doing all my designs over christmas and I've no software at home so I will be starting them next week in college. Could you all let me know if that is okay to meet?
Also we have two weeks when we are back to piece together the script so we need to get a start on it asap. I just want to see which ideas you's think I should go with and that we all like. :)

Thanks

Presentation

Hi guys, I have everyones slides now and am in the process of putting it all together. Neo I'm not going to put the 5 steps you have because I don't think its necessary for the slides. If we were presenting it, it would be perfect but since we are not I not going to put it in.. Is that ok??

Presentation

Hey guys, I was just on to Paul there, and he was talking to Caroline today. The presentation is cancelled tomorrow, and quite possibly cancelled altogether, due to adverse weather conditions, and the fact that we have not met since Friday 26th Nov because of these conditions. Its unfortunate that we could not go ahead with it tomorrow.

So, what's happening now... We have to send Caroline the flash presentation, and will then give feedback to us if we need any changes made to it. The presentation will then be sent around to the rest of the lectures, where they either give us the go ahead, or not..

What we do... is make a word document with your bullet points that you would be talking about in the presentation, ie, Tunde-Audio etc. And email those points as a word document to Paul, he is making the flash presentation to forward. Also, remember to attach any important files that you would use in the presentation, Sammy, attach images. Tunde, attach audio clips, if you were using them. Everybody Understand?? If not contact someone in the group, but it should be very straight forward.

Thanks guys, unfortunate that we couldn't present, but put a lot of effort into your slides and bullet points, we can still do it, we may be at a disadvantage not being able to stand in front of lecturers and properly explain our idea, but if we have a very impressive presentation, it will do all the talking for us!

Meeting

Hi guys, I just had a meeting with Caroline there. The weather has completely thrown us all over the place, but we really need to be doing some research ad work at home. The presentation is still going ahead on wednesday so far, Depending on how the weather is tomorrow everyone try get up tomorrow. If it is bad in the morning that is fine because if its bad I won't be able to get up myself and Caroline is aware of that fact so don't risk anything to get up.

Just so we are clear, who is doing what in the presentation:

James; introduction (give a brief outline of the project, for example what the idea is, the fact that it is a year in DKIT college and there will be a result at the end, the ideas that relate to the college, its problems that students encounter on a daily basis etc.

Sammy; look and feel, mock-ups of characters pics of what the settings will be like, explain that they are going to be aimated versions of the pictures that you have taking, maybe look into a little animation for the characters etc. You seemed t ave a fair grasp as to what you are going to say anyway today.

Tunde; audio, audio that is commonly used within little games. Some sound effects that students around the college would recognize. Take a few examples of the games that we have mentioned and explore the different sounds/audio that you could incorporate into them.

Paul; I am going to talk about the different forms of interaction that we could use e.g. web cams, keyboards etc. I will also discuss the reason behind why we are going multiplayer and collaborative and what the survey has revealed.

Neo; Programming, I know you have looked into all the different ways of programming. Discuss the fact that you are making a game in code over the xmas and will try gain as much knowledge and that we all have to do it so you will have some help.

James; conclusion, talk about the fact that we feel the game will be good fun as all the students and staff can relate t it, we believe it will be a success because... Time line, blogs twitter discuss the script a little bit too, explain when we plan to do it etc..

Does everyone agree to that?? Everyone please comment so I know that you have all seen this post. So everyone, taking the weather out of the equation, have your slides more or less ready to go for tomorrow. I have the template made in flash so its just a case of lobbing them on.. If people can't get to college tomorrow it will be fine, as I said above Caroline is aware of this fact that people can't make it up, especially myself and James as we live the furthest and there will be a plan B put into action. But can everyone let me knoe if they will be able to get up or not either this evening or very early in the morning so I can let Caroline know please, thanks?? But for now just take it that the presentation is going ahead on Wednesday!! Ok??

For Monday

Hi guys, as you know I made it up to college on tuesday and had a meeting with Caroline. The presentation is now on this wednesday. We are doing a mock presentation to Caroline on monday so we've all got an extra week to research more into the idea and into our own parts of the presentation. We will present to her and get feedback so we can change/alter what ever she says is wrong on tuesday and have it ready for wednesday. I will be try get into college tomorrow so if any of you's can make it in it would be great, we can have a meeting and maybe start putting some slides together. Myself and neo got the survey's filled out by all of the students. I still have to go through them and work out the percentages, I will have that done by monday so please evrybody upload your progress onto the blog so everyone can see how you are getting on...!!

Wedensday Presentation

Lads, are we still going ahead wedensday? The buses are canceled and the weather is predicted to get worse. Please let me know whatis happening. I am writing up my bit for presentation today but I don't know if I will have a way in.

Survey

Hi Guys, I have the Survey's Printed now and all. Here is the content as to what the questions are??

Survey
3rd Year Multimedia

Do you find Parking in DKIT Satisfactory??

Yes No Its ok

Would you log on to facebook everyday in the College??

Yes No Not on Facebook

In Carrolls, do you struggle to find the rooms??

Yes No

Which would you visit more often, StarBucks or the Canteen??

StarBucks Canteen

Name one hinderence/Problem tha DKIT students encounter everyday??
(e.g. Parking etc.)

..........................................................................................................


The last question is the one that we are going to use the feedback from the most, I currently am looking at the different interactions online and some of it is really interesting, Tunde I agree with you the web cam looks as if it is definitely possible to do, I think that it would be a really interesting method of interactions with our games. I will keep looking up different forms of interaction and everyone research the part of the presentation that you presented the last time, yea??

Guys these are my mock ups of various characters. I'm still unsure of which way to go so I'd appreciate a little feedback off you all, let me know your opinions. Thanks

Webcam interaction

I was looking at ways we can interact with a webcam and i came across this link.
http://www.adsinteractive.eu/news/webcam-interaction-over-the-web/

Getting the Idea Nailed Down

Hi everyone, today we really got somewhere developing the idea. We are getting close to getting a concrete decision on our narrative. Tonight everybody is researching about the different games within our project and is to come up with three of thier own.
They are to consider:

-The look and feel to the game
-The main idea behind the game
-The location
-Whether its collaborative/multiplayer and reasons why

And also if Sammy, James Neo research what makes a game good and keeps a user interested. while myself and Tunde will research into different types of interactions..??

What do you's think??

Brainstorming

Hi everyone I was talking to caroline today and we are going to have a meeting with her tomorrow. I cancelled the meeting today just because we have not got a chance to meet since our last meeting with her. We are meeting at 1 tomorrow, the hole group try be there because we are really behind and have to really get cracking to catch up.... We are going to go into a room and brainstorm using the board. We have to come up with a narrative. We came up with the theme of a game show, that does not have to be a concrete decision either as we are still at the beginning of the brainstorming process, so if anybody has any other good ideas think about them more tonight and say them tomorrow..

If we decide to stay with the theme of a game show the next thing we need to do is to come up with a narrative. A beginning a middle and an end to our story. Tonight we should all be brainstorming about issues and elements of our everyday life as we are who we plan who we plan to aim our projects at. Just be thinking about what's current and what is popular among our age group. We don't have to even consider how to turn it into a game, we just have to get a theme that we can base a game around. Maybe have a look at a few game shows that are different to your normal game shows. Just generate different ideas in your head and will be flying tomorrow. I really just think that we have to seriously start doing a good bit of work to get this idea moving..

If any ideas post them up here and we can start discussing them tonight!!!

Narrative

Hi guys, Firstly we are meeting Caroline at 4 o clock on monday so everybody make themselves available. We have decided that we are going to go ahead with the narrative of a game show. Tis broadens the possibilities of what direction we can take, for the meeting we have to have the story-line of our gameshow. A beginning middle and end Because our target audience is students our age, we need to have a story that is current and popular to keep our users interested and engaged.

We are not to think of the game itself or the physical aspect of it yet, just the storyline in which we want to use. Has any-one any ideas??

Storyboard

hi guys~
do you have something about our storyboard yet~? our game seems like something about team-work, competition, challenge, visual impact or something like that. i have some video games like that. first one is the strike 1945, it is a arc game with high difficulty and can play with 2 people. another one is like the wow, a team beat one boss. they will have tank to suffer the attack and wizard to have magic attack, priest to heal them and maybe some other dps. that just an idea about that. do you have some other idea about that yet~?

Project Manager

Hi guys as you know for this week only I am project manager. I would like us all to meet Monday after college to discuss what we have done over the weekend and to chat about our plan of action. Monday @ 4 in Starbucks. Il text you all to remind you. If you cannot make it please contact me and I'll arrange something else.

Look for Inspriation...

Hey guys, as you have heard, we need to go back to the drawing board for an idea, so i went back through the notes from weeks passed and decided to post up links to websites with interesting projects.

We have Caroline for our supervisor, and we are meeting up with her within the next week, I want everybody to get at least 5 brilliant/weird/wacky/interesting/stupid/funny/Original.... ANYTHING, just something that interests you, it can be a theme or a hobby, anything, just come back in next week with 5 links to projects.

Here are some to get us started:

http://www.pixelsumo.com/ (wacky/interesting Projects)

http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/the-pool (use of light in a game)

http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/sound-interjection-yuri-suzuki (drawing colours and sounds)

http://www.pixelsumo.com/post/reactable-mobile

http://jklabs.net/projects/visualscratch/chirp.html (Audio and Visuals, using a turntable)

http://www.6emeia.com/ (Urban, Street art)

http://notsonoisy.com/ (Interesting Projects)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYk0I5lY9Tg (worlds largest drum machine)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv8kNTH-KDY (Spray paint)

These are just a few to get us loking at different idea's, even is u draw nothing from the idea's, maybe you will get something from the theme, or something from the graphics or the style.

Preparation for tomorrow

Ok, well we know we are going to be aked how our project differs from Audio Space and also DJ Band. We have to all be prepared for the questions.

Audio Space: Floor emotion is based on feelings and through audio and visual techniques the user will express these. Our project will not allow the user to create their own audio as we are creating the sequences. The user interaction is to chose one of them by selecting a emotion. Also, we do not want to have our display in a room for the exhibition. We would like to have it out in the open for people to watch and want to interact with.

DJ Band: It differs to DJ Band because our sequence dictates the tempo/speed the user moves. The combination of our audio and our visuals will create this expierance of the users chosen emotion.

That is example of answer, if you want to tweak it or beef it out please blog it so we are all in tune!

Final Parts for Presentation

Hi everyone, it was only me and Neo at the meeting today, the presentation has to be on the machine by 5 tomorrow, so what everybody has to do for tomorrow is what I said yesterday, no matter what everybody has to elaborate on their speech from last week and have everything they want on the presentation in bullet point form, also anyone that wants graphics/images will have to bring them in with them tomorrow.

One more thing, James do you fancy coming to our class at 9 in the morning, the four of us are there and Kieran is letting us work on our presentation, and i'm not being bad but I think Tunde James And Sammy are going to have to miss audio.. Me and Neo are off at 1 for the day and we really really need to get this nailed early in the day so we can practice and make any changes..

What do you's think??

Presentation

Hi everyone, i don't know if you have seen the email. Our presentation is at 25 past 12. We are the second last group. I don't know whether that is a good thing or a bad thing... but it is what it is, I have been looking at this flash presentation and it seems to be more difficult to do than I thought. I'll keep at it, but for tomorrow everybody storyboard what you want on your slides, even do it on paper because the font, colour etc all have to be the same throughout the hole thing. Any graphics you need, design/Download them for tomorrow. We need to get a good start on this tomorrow. I'd even like to have it done tomorrow so we can be tweeking it on tuesday.

One more thing, I think that the visuals slide to our presentation is still way too weak, so for tomorrow if everyone researches 1 mood and visuals that correspond with it, will take 15minutes, and bring in an example of it(Even just a jpg)..

Mock Presentations (roles etc.)

Today we finalized the finishing touches on the roles for the mock presentation on the 4/11/10.

James= He is going to read out the sentence that we have constructed as a group on what our project is/going to be in one sentence. He is also going to give the introduction and a brief run through what our project is.

Sammy= She is going to come in then and go through the feeling/emotions theme to our project. What way we are planning on basing the project around this theme and some mediums in which we are going to use to portray this.

Tunde= Since Sammy has been working very closely with Tunde because audio is the main way in which our user will experience the theme of feelings, he will be the next speaker. He will describe the work and research we have done to make a user feel emotions and certain moods through audio.

Paul= I will then come on and describe the hardware, how it is going to be built? How it is going to look? And, what materials will be used in the making of it. I will also mention the visuals that we are planning on using, there is still some decisions open for debate on the way we are going to do this. We have numerous ideas of implementing emotions through visuals. To be decided later!

Neo=Neo will then come on describe the technical side of our projects. The way in which the switches will work and the way in which the audio will be interactive to the user. How the user will interact with the audio through the sequence method that we have designed.

We will meet tomorrow from 11 to 12 and put together a little powerpoint presentation and practice by presenting it to another group in our class..

Mock Presentation

This Thursday is our mock presentations are on. We must follow the list of deliverables that our on our brief, we plan to split the presentation up into 5 different sections so we can all speak about what our project is and talk about the different areas that we are all planning on working on individually. Some of the deliverables include gantt charts etc...

We have to meet up before wednesdays class so when do ya's want to meet up?? Like what suits everyone, i'm easy!!

Development of the Idea

Our idea has come along a lot since we first came up with it a few days ago.

The slant we decided to put on it to make it more original was to base the concept of our idea around the theme of feelings. In the first week our lecturers asked us what do we want the user to feel, with this idea the user can feel whatever they want to feel (they can choose from a selection of feelings for example angry, sad, happy etc). We plan to convey these feelings by letting the user interact with different genre's of audio/music i.e. heavy metal for angry etc.

How is the project going to work??

Well for example taking the genre of Happy, and that the user has decided to play the drums from our instrumental floor, a happy song (upbeat and relaxing) would be playing in the background. However the song would be minus the drum element that we would have subtracted from the song, we will take the complete drum part to the song and slice it up into small segments (parts), we will then encode all of these segments into a sequence that the user would have to reproduce by physically standing on the drum section of our instrumental floor and stepping on the parts of the drum that light up to keep the sequence going and the song flowing.

If it is the happy genre that is selected, the song/sequence would be nice and slow and easy to keep the happy feeling flowing. We will explore a lot more feelings that can be expressed through this means. For example if the user wants to feel energetic/active we could have a nice fast paced song and a rapid moving sequence to make the user move quickly.

We will research this area a lot more and see what else we can incorporate in. We are excited about this new idea and feel strongly that it is original enough to get the go ahead from our presentations, with a bit of luck...!!

New Member / Roles within the group

Today, a new member joined our group, WELCOME SAMMY! :)

and with this new entry to the group, we have also been thinking about group project roles, and after meeting, we have decided upon our roles:

James - Project Manager / All-rounder

Paul - Concept Development / Graphics/ Programmer

Tunde - Audio

Neo - Programmer

Sammy - Interaction Design

These group roles will give us a clear indication of how we ourselves will go about creating the project. Also, I set up a forum for us to privately chat.... http://floormotion.forummotions.com/forum.htm

Who, What, Why, How???

Our instrumental floor now has feelings! we based our new idea around feelings so that the user has more of an involvement emotionally to the project, we feel this adds a greater spin on the idea, and allows it to develop more personally with each individual. We have been researching constantly since the change of our idea at this late time. but we have a solid idea of where we are heading now...

Who? - The project its aimed at people who want to express feelings through music, wether they are musically experienced or not. And the age group we have on it is, 13+ (because we felt that any age younger would not be able to experience or understand the emotive side of the project).

What? - The User will be interacting with audio sounds, through a sequence, and expressing their feelings through sounds

Why? - we aim to create a unique experience (that hopefully a user will want to use) by expressing emotion through interactive audio.

How? - Right now we are not worrying about this part of the project and will comeback to it, after presentations, but to give a short insight to the project... We will be using an interactive floor idea, with musical instruments. These instruments will be active through touch, and since its o the ground, the user will be interacting with it through there feet. They can choose an emotion to use to coincide with each instrument, just for example, angry, they will be playing a fast beat, sad, they will be playing a slow beat etc.

That is what we have come up with in the space of literally 2 days, so I think good progress, we will post up mockups of the design as soon as we can, but for now, let your imagination wonder.

New Idea

After extensive research previous to this idea, we seemed to get caught out by our supervisor's at every corner that we took, so we decided to take a step back, and look at the project from a user and outsiders point of view. After doing some research on different projects, Paul came up with a great idea, having found inspiration from a film.... The idea was to have a floor that the user could interact with and turn it into different musical instruments... I thought, "GENIOUS". We were not getting good feedback through our other project and found that there were a lot of loose ends with the project, that not many members of the group could get to grips with or understand. Myself and Paul, met up this morning and went through the fundamental plot of the new idea he had in mind, and after he explained it, I was on board, so from now on, we will be working on a (currently untitled project) interactive instrumental floor.

The floor will be aimed at people who have no musical expirience, and no interest in learning how to play an instrument, but just want to have fun with different sounds. You do not have to know how to play it (of course it would help), but just experiment around with different sounds of the instruments under your feet (or you could get down on your knee's and play).

We will be designing how the floor looks using Adobe workstations (perhaps Photoshop/Illustrator), and have contacts if in case any construction is needed to build anything. Of course we are going to try create less hassle then anything else, but worst case scenario... we do have people. We have talked about what material the floor will be constructed out of, and we have settled on a plastic sheet, with the instruments printed onto it.

After, the first (mini) meeting we had today, we decided to stick to this idea, as time was becoming late in terms of project and presentation times. But at the same time, it is something we as a group are interested in doing. We are looking forward to getting on with this project. After researching it this morning, I could find anything that was related to what we want to do (then again the web is a big place), so for this reason, I am happy to be participating in something that hasnt been tried many times before...

Twitter

I just set up a twitter account for us at

http://twitter.com/Loopz_dkit

Putting Our Spin On Our Idea

James I was checking out completely different ideas that you can interact with audio, I was searching the internet and came up with the idea of kinda using the idea that we had originally, but instead of a touch screen put it on the floor.... Not exactly what we planned originally we can explore different things/ways of putting stuff down, we can incorporate visuals too, check out these links. I got the idea from the film big, check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KosJK_ZMMu0 and here is a link to a page that is exploring the idea even further http://www.gesturetek.com/gesturefx/introduction.php?gclid=CNy4ipqF8aQCFQ_-2AodjyYx2Q. I think we could do something really cool if we mixed both, what do ya think??

Logo

In our recent meeting, we were discussing the design and interface design of our project, all group members will be working closely together to get the look and feel of the design correct, and rightfully reflecting the aim and idea of the project. We discussed the logo design of the project, this will have to be made as soon as the we get the go ahead from our supervisor's as to promote and 'sell' the project, and as to give it a sort of "Brand" feeling. We were thinking that, since the name of the project (so far) is Loopz, it will have a kind of spiral or circular feeling (is what I'm thinking anyway). Some colour schemes I am looking at, at the moment are, Grey, Blue, Yellow. Obviously these will not be the defined final colours that will be used but thats just my idea so far, and things are liable to change in these early days, as I said, we still havn't got the go ahead for the project. But, Soon..........

Group Meetings

Our last class, we decided that our meetings would take place before the wednesday class. we have yet to decide when the time will be, but all of us are still researching our idea's and keeping each other informed of our progress with their part of the project, be it promotion, research etc. we are all doing our part. Our project will be aimed at people who know nothing about music, our project will hopefully ecourage them to have fun with different sounds and audio. We are trying to envisage how we will finally implement this, possibly a game, or a simple sequence, either way we are exploring a multitude of different ways of how a user may be attracted to using this final project, and how they will interact with it.

I have been delegated the role of project manager, while the other roles of who will take on audio, visuals, programming have yet to be properly assigned, we will all be helping each other in these areas.

While researching this morning, I thought I would throw up a few images so that people have a bit of an idea of what our group wants to do...

Recent inspiration

Show this in class yesterday by the lecturer, this is a similar idea to the one our group want to implement, which I found was great inspiration, check out this website, for an idea of what is ahead for us, also check the vid: http://www.beatbearing.co.uk/

Loopz

This is the first post of the DkIT CM3 Project Loopz. Loopz is an interactive audio piece that aims to inspire the user to have fun and enjoy audio sounds. The Group Consists of James Butterly, Tunde Esho, Paul Genockey and Chenhao Pang.

Our idea, is aimed at people who don't know anything about music and wish to mess around in a creative way to get a better understanding of sounds and structure