Lee J Simpson

Maggie, Gab and Roy went and played/experienced our game today. There were a few glitched unfortunately which we didn't expect. We had a few problems with Twitter for some reason, even though we done a lot of testing with it. I was sending tweets to them with information and clues while they were playing the game which didn't seem to consistently come through. I think it might have been something to do with the internet signal because we didn't test it throughout the whole game environment. Other than the Twitter issues, everything seemed to go fine and to plan.

Overall, Maggie Gab and Roy seemed to be very impressed with what we had created. We had a little chat with them later to get a bit of feed back which we could use in further development. Roy was really impressed with our use of the QR codes. He really liked how we had added our own custom touches to them which he had never seen before. I was quite apprised by that because he seems to use QR codes a lot with the work he does. Maggie really liked our use, understanding and professionalism of technology. She said that it really came across that we knew what we were doing. I think you could definitely see that in the final results of our production. She said that there was some content that really capturing and cool! She also said that we it we good to see some more human elements or somehow personify the voice of the Twitter account. I think that would be something good to take into account for future development.

Game day is coming up! We only have a few more days until Maggie, Gab and Roy are going to experience the result of all out hard work! I have almost finished all the stuff I need to do. My logo and poster designs are all done. The format for all the QR codes are finished, all I am waiting on now is some final content to link them to.

Ben has created some really awesome videos! I think he has done well to capture the feelings we want the game player to experience in the game. There are a few teasers bellow you can check out and see for yourself! ( I can't find the embed come on the new YouTube UI, so there is only are links).

Things seem to be moving along nicely. I think we are getting a lot of work done and making some good progress. The only slight issue we have as a group is that one of the members seem to fading out. Tom doesn't seem to be very interested in what we are doing any more, which means that there is not a lot of contribution from him. The group is working on fine without him and I think that we have decided not rely on him too much because he is not often around. We have sat down and figured out the production roles we need to create the game, so we divided them out between just the four of us. It's too hard to include Tom because he is never at uni working with us, which means that he is never up to speed. I personally think that he has no idea what we are doing. The rest of the group wants to do well with the project, so we have decided that we will each take on extra work to get the job done.

I've finished designing the logos for the Activist and the Government! I'm really happy with what I've come up with and the rest of the group seem to agree. I have use the same basic format for both of the images because they are both going to be used in similar ways.

The Activists:

This is the logo I came up with for the Activists. I wanted to create a symbol that some how represented the activities and movements of the the Activists. Seems they are a group that rally and protest against the Government I decided to create a symbol of resistance. In one of my earlier blog posts, I mentioned the researched and inspiration I used to create the logo. I think the composition of the will work well when used with the QR codes.

The Government:

I'm really happy with the work we got done today. Jared and I just sat down in the morning and hacked away at piecing the story together with the game. We came up with tasks for each of the clues and so on, which took quite a bit of time. I think it was good that just the two of us did that task because too much input would have just slowed us down.

As we were going through the game, I kept note of all the posters and QR code I'm going to have to design. There is a bit of work to be done but Once I have a template for the posters and the content for the QR code, things should be sweet. I started to design symbols for the Government side and the Activists side, which can then be used in the QR codes and website/blogs. They can also be used in the posters so that the origin of the poster can be identified.

I have done a bit of research into fists and wings for the Activists symbol. I need to portray the image of resistance and freedom, through the symbol.

My job in the group is to do all the design for the poster and image content. That job involves the designing of symbols, logos, QR codes and poster art. I quite like this job because I really love graphic design, and I want to put some of the stuff I learnt from the design project to use.

So far I have designed the logos for the Government side and the Activists...

THE GOVERNMENT:

I wanted to try and symbolise aspects from the sides in the design of their logos. For the Government, I wanted something that would show power, authority and rank. In the process of coming up with the design concept, I played around with the letter 'G' because I wanted to see if I could turn it into some kind of symbol. These are a few of the first ideas I had.

I also wanted to play around with symbols which kind of represent the activities of the Government... The eye (below) represents the idea that the Government is always watching over their test realities. I never took this image into Illustrator to play around with it, but I still liked the idea a lot because I liked the idea of the Government seeing everything.

Another option I explored was the symbolism of the military and rank. I got some inspiration from some symbols from a game called Mass Effect. I played around with the image (below) of the star having the rank stripes in it. I thought that it showed a lot of authority with a touch of power. I then took the idea and worked it into an exclamation mark.

THE ACTIVISTS:

For the Activist logo, I wanted to use images and symbols of freedom, but at the same time I had conficting ideas of resistance battle. I think I had to balance the concept between images of freedom and resistance fighting. I got a few ideas from rock bands such as Rage Against the Machine and Rise Against who use strong activism symbols to represent themselves. I really liked the image of a fist pumping in the air which Rise Against use. I did a few sketches of fists and played around with the idea of wings as well.

THE FINAL DESIGNS:

I have been playing around with QR codes to see how much non active area there is for me to play around with. I want to place logos or some kind of art within the area so that you are able to see if the code is from the Activists or the Government. I quite like the idea of taking technology from our real life reality and giving it a new meaning from the realities we are creating. By having our real life reality as a 'experimental reality,' can recreate the meaning of objects and things that surround us.

Today went really well... Stuff seems to be getting more on track now because we managed to get a good progress for developing the story and the journey at the same time for our game. Like I had said before, I thought we were getting too caught up on creating back stories for all the realities which kept getting more and more compilcated. Each time we tried to solve a problem or hole in the story, we just created a whole lot more.

Like I said the process is going good and the ideas are coming together well. The story we have is about 'the reality' which is suffering from 'the event' which resulted in reality collapse. The 'government' of that reality then created multiply test realities which were all planted with a test solutuion to see if it could prevent 'the event.' The main reality will then move into the reality which survies the event and 'delete' it's test subjects. While all this is going on, there are activist in the main reality who are trying to warn the surviving test reality that they are going to be taken over. 

The goal of the game is to go gather evidence which leads the player onto discover that they need to close up the portal to the main reality, to prevent the invasion.

We started today on creating our realities today which seemed to go quite well because everyone was contributing well. We have slightly moved off our original idea and into a different direction so that we can create deeper realities and worlds. I like the ideas that are coming forward and everyone seems really into it which is creating a great flow. The only worry I'm having at the moment is that we are kind of getting too distracted from the narrative we are going to use in the game. Some of the stuff we are coming up with is quite deep which might not always be relevant or used in the game. I guess I want to make sure we don't get to distracted from the journey of the game.

After a lot of discussion, we finally put a pen to paper so that we could map out a timeline and plan for the reality. That really helped because it visually showed us what was going on, which was good because I think a few of us were getting confused. I like our new idea for the realities we are creating, and I think we have smoothed out all the loop holes which were screwing up the continuity. Tomorrow we are all going to set down together and take on different parts to write while we are at the same place. I think that will work better than us writing it at home because we can bounce ideas off each other.

I'm not too sure how the old group dynamics are going at the moment. There are four of us that are really into our approach to our concepts and how we come up with them. I think the general feeling within the group is not to rush too fast into one idea, and to have a look around at what we are coming up with.

There is one person in our group that wants to go all technical and build some AR technology which I guess is not so much what this project is about. I think it's more about coming up with AR realities and how we can interact and bridge between them, more that coming up with the tech to view it. Given the time we have, I think it is more realistic to use the technology that is already out there, rather than try and create it ourselves. I personally see a lot of headaches and problems in the process of trying to conceptualise and create some physical AR tech in the amount of time we have. I think we have to be more focused on the game or journey we are trying to create (which is the main part of the project).

I did like the idea of the technology the person came up with, but I think we should focus more on what the project is about. He hasn't really contributed any other ideas because I think he feels that he's not on the same page... Maybe a solution would be for him to turn up on time and work with us. The core of our group is working well, and we are turning up on time and doing work, and are able to speak together. I think we have more of a right to control the direction of our project and ideas if we are the ones there, doing the work.

New project this week... Should be an awesome one by the look of it. It's all about creating a new reality in another medium such as a digital one. We have to create some kind of game, which jumps across, multiple physical and digital realities. I'm really looking forward to working with some augmented reality ideas because I think it has such a big, up and coming future.

I have formed a group with four other people of which a few of them I normally work with. The other two members are new which I think is good for the group because I think it will bring a fresh set of ideas and new approaches. I wasn't really planning on working with them at the beginning but then I thought it might be a good idea to take the risk and try the combination. I think the group has great dynamics so it should be interesting to see how everything works out.

We have started to come up with ideas and concepts, but we are not taking a fast approach to it. We don't want to rush straight into our first idea and maybe miss out on some other cool concepts. One idea we have been working on, which is still quite broad, is doing some in relation to the old St. James theatre. We haven't approached it in a narrow way, but more in an open-minded way of direction. Currently we are thinking of ways we could use the St. James in different ways, whether it's some old concert hall where the ghosts of deceased bands play, or it being the home to some whole new reality. The kind of realities, which we have been thinking about, is ones which run in parallel to our physical one. We might somehow link it into the recently renewed street surrounding the St. James. It could be something like the work has awoken and unsettled the world of that reality which now wants to retaliate.

Fabrication is going well! I went and used the laser cutter today. I was lucky because I thought there would be a big line for it, but everyone was still doing there designs on Illustrator which I had already done. It didn't take too long to cut everything out, it just took a bit to figure out the right settings for my card so that the laser cut through it nicely. I bought two sheets of card from Gordon Harris which was a lot cheaper that buying some big sheets of MDF board.

I thought that I was going to have a few problems with my Illustrator file format because I remember James saying that the file had to be saved in a certain way for the laser cutter computer to read it. I turned out that I saved everything the right way which made things faster because I had to fix someone eles's file because they had saved it wrong and put the net on the wrong template.

Today I went into uni and discovered that the rapid prototype lab is open this week, but Olaf (the guy who runs it is away). I was told that I can use the laser cutter if I can find a tutor or someone who knows how to use it. So today, all day I've been working on designing my nets on Illustrator so that I can cut out my package with the laser cutter. This is going to make things a lot more easier and precise which means in a nice clean cut result.

The designs are looking good on Illustrator, I just have to make sure that I have enough of each component in my net. The great thing about using the laser cutter is that I will have almost no wastage of material because I can place each component very close to each other on the net. Bellow is a copy of the Illustrator net which I will use with the laser cutter. I have made the stroke slightly bigger in this image because the stroke (0.1) which the cutter requires will be too small to see.

I just need to do a bit of research on how to use the laser cutter because I have never used one before. I did have a tutorial on it in last week of uni but I think I need to know more specifically about it. I am going to have to work out how much power I have to set the laser to so that it cuts right through it, but doesn't burn it too much.