#ctec703

Week 4 for InP was mainly based around research for me as other members of my group (Max) worked on creating our program for our next playtest. We spoke to Ben on Monday and he gave us a few things to look into:

One was a board game that focused heavily on roleplaying, creating a narrative between different characters. He wanted to us to have a look at how they controlled the theme of the session which allowed participants freedom but still kept the story from devolving too far into random madness. 

Another example we looked into was work done by a previous BCT student Jenna Gavin. She had two projects that were useful to us as precedent for our idea. Cut And Paste was and interactive work that allowed participants to create a written work by selecting quotes from various authors and adding them to a larger script. Word Wars was another idea that caused players to fight over letters in order to create a longer word,  it showed a competitive take on the collaborative story telling we had been looking into so far.

Finally Ben also briefly mentioned Exquisite Corpse.  Exquisite Corpse is a drawing technique were participants would each draw part of a creature without looking at each others and combine them to create something weird. This idea might be used in our project to create a unique story narrative.

Last weekend Madeline Day, Quentin Quaadgras and I participated in the 48hr game jam held at the University of Auckland.

I have never met so many people who are all interested in the creation of games before, and being able to create and share a quickly pulled together game was a great experience.

As Madeline and Quentin are both programmers, I got to focus on creating the art for the game. I decided on flat illustration as I have had experience with it before.

The game we ended with is called “Ducks” and can be run on Android, Windows and Linux. You can check out and download our game at https://youngwiseone.itch.io/debeakingducks

If you are interested in games and game making, I recommend trying out a gamejam.

Week 1

Weekly Starter

Some notes I took from the readings and videos in the weekly starter:

Aesthetics of Play - Redefining Genres in Gaming - Extra Credits

This video was about the MDA framework, something I’ve become quite familiar with throughout uni. MDA stands for Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics.

Mechanics - The Rules and systems (the math)

Dynamics - Experiential play from the rules

Aesthetics - The reason we play/the feel of the game

A designer will look at the framework from left to right, focusing on the mechanics to help define the dynamics and aesthetics, while a player will go from left to right, playing a game for the aesthetics rather than the mechanics (although good mechanics are important too). 

The video defines 9 different aesthetics:

Sense Pleasure: Games which stimulate our senses

Fantasy: Things we can’t do in real life

Narrative: Drama

Challenge: Obstacles (Not difficulty)

Fellowship: Co-operative games

Competition: Superiority or dominance

Discovery: Uncovering/learning

Expression: To express oneself

Abnegation: as a past time/to disengage from real life

The Art of Game Design: Book of Lenses - Schell Games

This is a book which basically has a bunch of questions you can ask yourself/a group of game designers to help the design process along and make sure you’re achieving what you want with your game. There’s a handy little app which has all the lenses you can go through.

How to think like an Architect: The Design Process - Barry Berkus

I think what I’m taking away from this video is the amount of consideration a space needs in terms of everything and anything that will effect, or use that space. For an architect, he needs to consider where the sun will be at certain times of the day, the view of the water, how the wind will go through, and the noise that will be heard. He also considers how the people will navigate and interact with the space, and considers how the spaces themselves are located in consideration to each other. 

Aotea Square

With the brief focusing on Aotea Square as the installation space, and access to the big screen located there, I had a read through some information online about the space.

Making Connections: A Vibrant Central Civic Space - Auckland Design Manual

According to this design manual, the space is roughly 1.3Ha, with the central area capable of holding up to 20,000 people. Aotea Square, named after Motu Aotea which is the Maori name for Great Barrier Island, is located at the intersection of Queen Street and Greys Ave. It is also a Maori Heritage Site. 

What’s important to Auckland Council is creating a “Sense of Place” within the area.

Observations

I had a little mosey through Aotea Square to find any points of interest for me.

There’s about 4 entrances into Aotea Square; (From top left to right) one from Queen Street, one which extends out to Wellesley St West but also splits off and up to Mayoral Dr, two from Greys Ave, the first stretching out as a long alley way (below) directly to Queen St and the other from the opposite side which makes pedestrians walk through the central space. 

The screen is currently located in front of the large grass area. I believe it is mobile, and has sensors that could be used. The large grass area has a few benches, all located under trees for shelter from the sun. From walking past this place many times in the past, I know a lot of people like to rest in the grass during Summer, although it’s looking rather empty now being Winter. 

This space next to the grass area/screen is definitely a space I’ve seen used by many skateboarders (trust me, I know the picture doesn’t have any skaters). A few people walk past these guys as well, which I’ve always felt a little unsafe, wondering if someone was going to crash into me. 

The central space is a bit crowded currently, with the ice rink smack bang in the middle and also a “night” market occupying the rest of the space. The space is large though, which clearly has access to a lot of power to keep the food stalls and the giant ice rink running. There is a bit of seating spotted on the edges of the space, with a “stage like” space located at the front(?). This space I’ve seen used for protests and other large gatherings. 

The current populous of the space consists of families (especially so due to it being school holidays), people around my age (probably looking to get food), and older people, who generally just walk through the space. 

One note I considered was the large amount of food stores located in the general area. Aotea Square is a great place to sit down and eat food, so this could be something to work with potentially?

Other Readings

In terms of the readings that Ben has given us as an optional look through, I’ve actually read/listened/played most of it for Contexts of Game and Play, and my thoughts are all on these blogs here. I might have a look through to see if there is anything of interest that I missed but otherwise will probably just look through my old blogs to gather my thoughts.

Quick note from Chapter 3 of Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play, Meaningful Play is described as the context and interaction the players have with the game, the decisions and actions they take, which affect the systems of the game, and the way the game communicates the results of their actions, both the instant and long term effect. 

References:

Auckland Council (n.d.). Making Connections: A Vibrant Central Civic Space [ebook] Auckland. Available at: http://content.aucklanddesignmanual.co.nz/resources/case-studies/aotea-square/Documents/Case%20study_Aotea%20Square.pdf [Accessed 20 Jul. 2019].

Barry Berkus (2011) How to think like an Architect: The Design Process [Video File], Retrieved from https://youtu.be/vmHoGicPQQQ

Extra Credits (2012), Aesthetics of Play - Redefining Genres in Gaming - Extra Credits [Video File], Retrieved from https://youtu.be/uepAJ-rqJKA

Salen, K., Tekinbaş, K. S., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT press.

This is a shot of Alleylight inside the Unity Editor. On the right is what the player sees, minus the water texture. On the left is how the scene actually looks, outside the bounds of the screen and with added perspective. In the middle is the island, which is a two-dimensional with a three-dimensional black capsule embedded in it. On the same three-dimensional plane, you’ll see the many vertical bars, each one spawning a specific floating object in a specific direction at random intervals. Each of those objects are also two-dimensional. This was done so that the workflow was easier on the artists, but also because we wanted the artstyle to be simple and understandable, so we made everything two-dimensional. The reason there still is a three-dimensional aspect, however, is purely technical, and partly because I was too lazy to deal with two-dimensional layers when it was just as easy, and perhaps even more organized, to fake layering in three dimensions.

Surrounding the spawners is a large grey border. That border is the “killbox”, and it deletes anything that strays into it. Essentially, this makes sure that anything that floats out of the screen doesn’t continue to exist and slow the app down. Instead, it gets deleted and makes way for new objects to spawn.

Finally, the grey plane behind everything is the “screen” that the water texture is displayed on. It’s translucent, so that the seaweed objects behind it show as if they’re underwater. Again, this was the cheap way to make the water texture layer correctly, in such a way that the island and floating objects appeared above the waterline, and the seaweed appeared below. This also all made for some collision failsafes, as all the collisions between objects are still calculated as if they were three-dimensional (albeit with movement on the Z axis locked, ensuring that objects can’t float into or away from the screen).

Alleylight Interactive is a project about illuminating the dark alleyways around Aotea Square more specifically the one down the side of the Auckland Town Hall and by the entrance to the underground car park. During the evening, this area is essentially pitch black and there is a lot of foot traffic which could make it a potentially unsafe area. We wanted to make this part of Aotea Square less frightening and more accessible to people walking through at night. We want to achieve this by projecting onto the wall of the Town Hall with bright and friendly colours.

Concept

We wanted to make this project because we feel that the walkway is a dangerous area especially during the evening where it is nearly pitch black. We found that more illuminated walkways in urban areas make people feel safer (Sunderstrom,1996) as well as reducing crime rates in those areas (Loewen, 1993). The feelings of uneasiness are something we wish to alleviate with Alleylight as these feelings can cause stress and anxiety especially if you can’t see anything ahead of you (Grillon, 1997).

In my team, I was set at designing all of the art assets for the projection. We originally wanted the art to reflect the Waihorotiu stream which used to run underneath the square itself. Since Aotea square was a bog we could have reflected that by making all of the plant life bleak and muddy but that would conflict with the bright and bubbly theme we wanted to achieve. I also feel that that sort of art style wouldn’t draw many people in as it might not look too inviting and friendly. We decided to go with a colorful and tropical theme with tick borders and high contrast to make the images less busy and clearer when projected onto the textured wall.

Art

First vector designs of a shark and seaweed.

These were the first set of assets that we used for the project which were designed in Adobe Illustrator. The designs were intentionally simple as if they were too complex they would be more difficult to see against the textured wall of the Town Hall. There were some initial problems with the overall aesthetic and design of the objects and my art was different to James and Charles’ art assets. The inconsistency's included the stroke weight around the objects. Those numbers varied between all of the artists which made all of the objects look out of place when presented. The overall designs were well received as they were clear as to what they portrayed. 

Art style inspiration: Kingdom Rush (2011), Scribblenauts (2012), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).

After the critique session, we decided to develop more of a clear art style so James and I researched certain video games which have clear and colourful graphics. We also made the art more consistent by using the same stroke weight in the assets. The art style was also heavily criticized but we wanted Alleylight to still have the crisp and coloruful aesthetic to make sure the dark alley is illuminated. The context of why we chose these objects was that a colourful tropical getaway theme could be more fitting for our idea of making people feel safer as they travel down the alleyway.  

Quinn's drawings of seaweed, bones, wood and fish.

The new objects were first drawn up by Quinn and then I used Adobe Illustrator to make them into vectors. The same sort of theme was decided by James and I because it was quick and simple to accomplish in a short space of time. We also don’t have the skills to make more complex images and we don’t have the funds to hire a professional artist so we made do. In the new images, the stroke weights of the lines across all of the vectors are the same (4 pt) so it is more consistent. The colours were also changed to be much more vibrant as you could hardly see them under the water overlay texture we used. I also made the smaller fish more colourful for the same reasons. The skull is the only image which I don’t really like as it could potentially make people walking by uneasy and that is the opposite of what we are trying to achieve. I could have made the skull more friendly and cartoonish to fit the mood of the project. 

Vectors made from Quinn's drawings.

Teamwork

Overall, the whole team worked well with each other. Using tools such as Facebook Messenger to communicate with each other and transfer files was super simple and helpful. I feel as if Messenger is an underutilized tool for team management as people mainly associate it with Facebook and how its seen as a time waster. But with Messenger, if used correctly as a communication tool you can communicate quicker with your team because everyone has Facebook. I found it useful transferring Adobe Illustrator files to the other members. We were all communicating with each other well which makes the project so much easier for everyone.

I think my skills with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop have improved over the space of this project. I have learnt a lot of key skills with both programs. There is a definite improvement in my ability from my very first vector designs earlier in the project compared to the newer assets. I played around with animating the fish briefly in a GIF format through Photoshop. I have never attempted this process before but it was intuitive in the end. If I had more time I would have liked to make cleaner animations for the fish and seaweed as I would think it would add more character to the project.

A quick GIF of one of the “cool” fish vectors.

There is quite a bit of room for development with this project as it can be expanded to other mediums such as interactive instillation's or for use in alleyways other than the Town Hall alleyway. The overall theme of what is being projected is very flexible and isn't bound to this tropical theme that we have chosen, so there is an amount of creative freedom that comes alongside using Alleylight.

Conclusion

Alleylight Interactive was overall a fun project to be a part of as well all worked coherently as a team and produced a really cool project that worked relativity true to what we wanted to achieve. 

References:

Waihorotiu Stream. (2017). En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 16 October 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waihorotiu_Stream

Sunderstrom, E., Bell, P. A., Busby, P. L. & Asmus, C (1996). ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. Annual Review of Psychology.   http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.47.1.485

Loewen, L., Steel, G., & Suedfeld, P. (1993). Perceived safety from crime in the urban environment. Journal Of Environmental Psychology, 13(4), 323-331. doi:10.1016/s0272-4944(05)80254-3

Grillon, C., Pellowski, M., Merikangas, K. R., & Davis, M. (1997). Darkness facilitates acoustic startle reflex in humans. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 453-460. Crossref, Medline

(2017). Ironhidegames.blob.core.windows.net. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from https://ironhidegames.blob.core.windows.net/upfiles/original/Games/751ffc46-cf39-4b01-ab82-39673627c11c.jpg

(2017). Wired.com. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gamelife/2011/10/scribios.jpg

(2017). Blogs-images.forbes.com. Retrieved 18 October 2017, from https://blogs-images.forbes.com/olliebarder/files/2017/05/zelda_windwaker.jpg

How to Create an Animated .GIF in Photoshop CS5, CS6 & CC How to Create an Animated .GIF in Photoshop CS5, CS6 & CC. (2010). briandalessandro.com. Retrieved 16 October 2017, from http://www.briandalessandro.com/blog/create-an-animated-gif-in-photoshop-cs5/

Today I worked on different ways of texturing the icebergs (hence the replica models). I was playing around with slightly different tones, edge paint distribution and differing levels of surface detail.  As a stylized game, finding a particular look that is simple yet has enough detail is important. As you can see with the large iceberg it has a stylized tone and soft edges, however it is very simple and lacks color variance.

As you can see below there are 3 icebergs, the same base models but minor differences each time. What I learnt from experimenting and iterating with the icebergs was - adding stronger white tones it tends to look less like a ‘rock’ and more like an iceberg.

So out of the 3 icebergs tell me what you guys think below in the comment section, drop a like, subscribe, share and check out my Patreon- Thanks guys!

During the development of Freyburg heroes, I learned a lot about the MDA approach and how its framework and terminology was applied to the design and the development process of the game. Learning about the MDA approach helped me to understand and recognize the different roles that our working concepts had within the framework.

Blogs

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/186778926088/interaction-and-play-the-freyberg-novel

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188487255048/ip-overarching-blog

https://louisreidmoody.tumblr.com/post/188502299548/interaction-and-play-learnings-and-reflection

slides

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OslPwJysci7kltnolerA5stSqL_Ayx1AFvcQE-lp_hs/edit#slide=id.g5d31ec324e_1_41

Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJg-uk-i5GU&feature=youtu.be