Donna's Ebucs 3d

Did some variations on the oblong fellow... Not as may as Iain though. :o

vQuick 3d

a bunch of quick models i'll spend more time on them after the weekend!
-Iain

Ebuc Assets

Here is an example of what you can do with the photoshop document I'm about to load onto google docs. Everything's on a different layer so you need to look at which number you want and go to that layer.

I've kept the bodies as simple shapes at this stage, I think it works well though and will make it easier for modeling. Feel free to edit the file, make changes, and add in any other ideas you have.

The miscellaneous things are a bit crap right now but I was getting tired and just made them up as I went along. But I was thinking, maybe these can only be unlocked after completing some task, and then you are only allowed to wear one at a time as they give you special "powers" eg. shoes make you faster, hitler moustache turns you into a bastard, whatever.

I'll work on improving the images and maybe we could upload them to the website and make a better way of putting your character together? I'll also start looking at different expressions for the ebucs as the facial animations are possibly going to be 2D?

I'm sure I had more to say but that's quitE Enough for now!

-Donna

Some of the changeable options we could have when user creates their ebuc. Sorry it's not great quality, I'm working on a photoshop version right now that I will put on google docs so you can move everything around and experiment with different options.

-Donna

Trampoline

Animation to follow.

Whats happening??

Im under the influence that the job roles of the group are getting slightly blurred with a lot of people designing,modelling and animating their own Ebucs. Am i just out of the loop, are people working together??

The google docs isnt being used, unless for some reason you all dont have access. But if you do please start, itl allow everyone to keep track of the projects progress a lot easier by seeing what others have been getting up to.

If anyone could let me know what is actually happening it would be much appreciated


Mark

Did some of a walk cycle...

It looks a bit wonky when it snaps back, a few frames are missing.

thought update

got this from a chat with andy, game power - (what drives you to play the game / what does the player get out of it eg civilisation gives you the feeling of controlling a civilisation, the sims you controll their lifestyle... )

they seemed to like the ida of a tamagochi thing, so nurturing the ebuc growing it...

ideas from this meet,

using the ebuc website to network, maybe finding people who have created similar ebucs or crufts style competition / race / fights...

Donna's idea - have the ebuc on one symbol. introduce another symbol for water or any other affecting element. so if the ebuc walked towards the water you could take it away / make it chase the water or chase the ebuc with something elce.

to have individual ebucs - each base character has a set of different eyes / legs / mouths which you can choose a combination of at the start. we could just model all the eventual outcomes for one set instead of programming flash to edit 3d stuff.

Music - have a generic riff for any mood, as the ebuc gets angry / frustrated turn up the distortion, as it gets happy / satisfied fade into acoustic. - this could be done by recording each level and a transition phase or does anyone know of flash being able to distort it's own audio?

things we need to get started on:

back story behind where the ebucs have come from

logistics of how the whole thing would work together

audio - background music

foly stuff

a set of base characters - design

changeable design things (eyes...)

3d - at least one of them with all the changes

animated

papervision

a set of affecting objects (water, fire, tredmill...)

website - symbol download

competition area

networking / meeting area

story stuff

about...

also, for the final hand in we're never going to get the whole thing working so different things working independantly and some mock up's need to be done.

say...

a short animation of a competition

a run through of the networking thing

at least 1 character working in flash with an affecting object

a short animation of a bunch of other affecting things and characters

I know their must be more but it has fled my mind.

- Iain

It's Alive!

-Iain

Broken Box Ebuc

Unfinished ebuc Model... not sure if its built to be animated, maybe James can give it a once over .

Website Ideas

???

GRAPH PAPER
CHALKBOARD

I like the idea of either a blackboard or graph paper website? What does everyone else think?

-Suzanne

Google Docs

The google docs thing is up and running guys (currently an empty folder). I have give everyone both viewing and editing rights to the folder so anything uploaded can be "tampered" with by everyone. If anyone has any problems using it contact.......someone who knows how to use it because its new to me too =P

first attempt at ebucs

Some ebuc idea sketches

-Donna

more play!

-Iain

Some Ebuc Sketches

Any you like or feel hopelessly disappointed in?

Quick mock up

likie / no likie? (not final models, just thoughts)

- Iain

Ebuc Symbol Designs

What do you think?

These are really aimed at the initial designs Matt came up with, though I couldn't remember exactly what they looked like, so it's something of an approximation.

papervision collisin detection

been looking through some stuff about papervision and flartoolkit, remembered something about not knowing how to do collision detection in 3d space with the papervision stuff.
check this out! source code!
http://blog.frankula.com/?p=39
not read through it yet, really doubt ill get it but maybe it'll help :D
-Iain

Ebuc Evolution

This is an idea I had on how the ebucs could evolve. Say you start of with one really simple one, in the picture it's a circle. To reproduce it creates a copy of it's self like bacteria. I'd give it a 50/50 chance of either creating a perfect copy or creating a slightly different one. In the picture the difference is in the form of adding a point.

If you were to leave them to multiply by them selves the 50/50 chance would stand and an individual chosen at random from the group would copy it's self, the picture shows the development over 5 generations to all the possible outcomes. So chances are the group you end up with would be fairly dull (the red on the left being the most dull and the blue to the right being more exotic).
We could introduce different ways of affecting
1 - the individual that will reproduce
2 - the chance that the reproduction will create a slightly different offspring.
so you can push the development of the ebucs in the direction you want, like selective breeding.

Or we could go down the rout of cross breeding, I've not thought into that yet, it looked more complicated, but could be cool!

- Iain

Job Roles - Revised

Iain - 3D and 2, Textures....

James- Sound, Animation

Mark - Admin, Minutes,Development Diary.

Kenneth - Environment,

Matt - Programming, (everything)

Olympia - Promo Design

ine

Donna - Character Design

Suzanne- Interface and Website Design

Thinking of having between 3 - 5 species of Characters. Each species have their own environment.

The website is going to be used to download symbols and the game engine. We could also include the back stories of characters on there, as well as development artwork.

Just a little play

- Iain

Change of heart

The idea has been changed folks...as oppsed to the interactive history tour guide of not win, we are doing EBUCs. From what i picked up its basically an AR tamagotchi. Matt has put some thought into this and im sure he will disagree on my take on this. As you have all probably seen from Kenneths pictures the characters are going to be quite simple shapes, each with a different backstory and blah de blah. The job roles for everyone hasnt changed as far as i know....but we are going to have to have a full team meeting (emphasis on full >_<) to discuss this idea further and maybe bring some more ideas to the table. If i have missed anything let me know because i was really hungover at the meeting earlier!!


Your fearless leader

Mark

My take on the Ebuks

Storyline (so far)

Hello people,
I took up where James left and did some research on Dundee hauntings.
I found this very useful website. Plenty of referencing material there. There's a lot of ghost stories around Dundee and many sites we could use, some of them relatively close to the city center like RSS Discovery, Tay Bridge and Bell Street Car Park. Only reason I mention this is because I was slightly concerned about having players run from one corner of the city to the other. I personally wouldn't mind, but many players might not be as motivated.


In any case, the idea so far is to

1. tell the story of the city through the ghosts and their personal stories

2. have a guide character to connect all the individual characters together


I was thinking something along the lines of Another Code's "D", a sidekick who is definitely not the protagonist (that will be the player) but acts as a bridge between him/the real world and the ghosts/the alternative reality, offering insight and guidance and making the game and the story easier to follow.

My idea was to make the guide a ghost as well, possibly a previous researcher (so that the player can identify/sympathize with him) who lost his life exploring the same things as the player. His death was sudden and he has no memory of it. In order to rest in peace he needs to know, so he's urging the player to follow into his footsteps and solve the mystery in his place.

Leaving the guide's story somewhat vague, we could have different endings depending on the player's choices and what clues they decide to follow. The guide could have been snatched by the cannibal family, for example, or murdered by a fellow researcher who wanted to claim his work for himself or even just had an accident.

I can go as far as to suggest a story within the story, for example an imaginary underground cult who hid clues about their secret HQ in various historical places, Angels & Demons style. But that may be a bit too complicated, so I leave it up to the rest of the team to decide just how deep a scenario we want.


As for ghost designs, here's some inspiration.


The story is still in early stages, so please tell me what you think so far and if this is going with your own vision for the game.

~Olympia

Update

Is everyone cool with the idea of a website to promote the game? I have started to design a template and I'm wondering how everyone feels about a name for the site? Should I just host it free on blogger or wordpress or we could purchase a domain, for example www.ghosthuntdundee.co.uk costs 2.97 for the year? If we purchase a domain I can host it from my account for free. Also there is more scope for a cooler web design with your own domain!

I really like the design below.

http://disney.go.com/disneyvideos/liveaction/hauntedmansion/main.html

example

Not sure if anyone has seen this yet but it seems like the kinda thing we're trying to do - except maybe not. but anyway...!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4667QBf0bU4

-donna

Dundee History

So following the meeting we had today that excluded Matt and Olympia (sorry I can't spell your name) we have reached a clearer concept and direction in regards to the game. The 'game' will be based around the history of Landmarks in Dundee.

As I understand it, the concept is as follows; Users will access our application via their iPhone, the application will direct them to a landmark where we have placed a symbol. When they view the symbol through their iPhone a character we have designed will explain some aspect of history to the user and then give them the choice to view a selection of different locations (i.e. A physical location, URL or a node) that then gives the user a number of locations they can visit, rather than just one. This will mean that the narrative will not be completely linear, but will provide the user with a new experience every time he uses the application. The narrative could be a riddle that needs to be solved or that the user is rewarded when they reach the end (or punished, depending on how they end).

If I have missed anything please feel free to correct me.

Matt and Olympia, if you guys don't really like the sound of this tell us or have thought of a more exciting way to use the technology please tell us and we can change this if we all agree on it. If you do, please do so now because we need to get on with developing the game itself now rather than just the concept if we actually want to get something done.

Roles:

Iain: General 3D & 2D work, can help with sound. History Research.

James: Character Animation & Sound Design. History Research.

Mark: Keeping Development Diary, Organizing meetings and keeping minutes . History Research.

Donna: General Art Stuff & History Research.

Kenneth: 3D work, can try and help with programming if Matt want me to. History Research.

Matt: Programming and ??

Olympia: Art work & Storyline.

Suzanne: Interface design. General art work.

Again feel free to edit your roles as you wish, and if you are unhappy with anything say so.

Kenneth

Mock-Up

I now realize it's not too helpful in illustrating how the game would work...

On job roles

We have found a direction with the latest game idea (correct me if I'm wrong), so its time to think about the team roles. As far as I understand, we should have these set up by/on Monday or at least as soon as possible.

So, what are your thoughts on the subject?

~Olympia

Game Concepts

It looks like these are the main ideas that have popped up so far, vote for your fav ones then at the next meeting we can look into how do-able the top ones are.

Puzzle - maze
screwball...

drum kit, music stuff...

cam shooter, zombie shooter style thing...

portal view thing, fatal frame style...

gps based map discovery / puzzle....

- Donna, Iain, Olympia

just had another idea. this could be gps based depending on the scale. going on from the portal view thing, 'possessed objects'. maybe when you point the cam at the object a ghost / spirit / thing appears above it. this allows for the development of a story line.... is anyone else getting a buzz from this idea?

- Donna, Iain, Olympia (and co)

Availability

Thought it might be a good idea for us all to post our availability for the week so we can arrange meetings more easily. So here's mine...

Mon: After 3

Tue: free all day

Wed: between 10 and 2.30

Thurs: anytime except between 1-3

Fri: before 11, between 12 and 2, after 5

Working all weekend

Will be able to come to this weeks meeting though (fri 5th)

Crit week: only free monday & tuesday

-Donna

* * *

My schedule is unfortunately changing every week, but I'll make sure to update it for everyone.
For now its:

Mon: after 5
Tue: before 1, after 5
Wed: after 10, before 5.30
Thur: after 4
Fri: after 5

Sat & Sun: usually here, not this weekend though

~Olympia

* * *

Mon: all day
Tue: all day
Wed: from 10
Thurs: anytime except 1-3
Fri: mayhem! - 12-2 4/5 onwards

- Iain

* * *

Mon : all day
Tues : after 1
Wed : all day
Thurs : after 11
Fri : After 3

Im here every weekend.

- Mark

***

Mon: after 4

Thurs: after 11

Frid: after 3

- Suzanne

***

Tues: All day

Web: All day

Thur: 10-11, 1-2, after 4

Friday: Any time except between 2 - 3

Kenneth

I have had a couple of ideas for the AR, but nothing to extreme as I didn't know what our limitations would be.

1. A interactive puzzle game - For this I had the idea that we can set up a small area with obstacles (that can be moved to make the puzzle easier or more difficult) to which shapes can be placed around. There is a starting area and a finish line essentially. The idea is to place shapes around a grid from the start to the finish, once done the starting shape is a character of some sort which follows the shapes (most likely to be arrows), the character follows these to the finish line.

2. Twister with a twist - I was thinking that we could get a Twister game mat, and in each circle there is a shape, you essentially play the game of Twister but as a body part fills the shape a peculiar sound is played. Thought this would be good as it brings an old game and gives it a modern feel. Can play around with the idea and see what happens.

3. Going with idea of the drum sounds that we were shown, I like the idea of trying to make it more of a full band. Guitars, drums, and bass.

4. As shown with the zombie shooter, is there anyway we can come up with other concepts involving this sort of thing. For example, is it possible to make a racing game or (I am not a fan of football) but have like a football pitch with plays and interacts with two controllers?

That is all I can really think of at the moment, but I will have a thought for other ideas.

James

Stuff

For those who wanted to take a look at my design document, here it is.
Artwork can be found here and here. More artwork here.


Feel free to edit this post and add your own links. I think it'd be nice to have everyone's design documents, artwork, past projects etc in one place for reference.

~Olympia

Just a thought

I dunno if its doable at our level, but I was also thinking of a full art installation, essentially a room with different AR markers around to generate imaginary objects that you can only see through a portable device screen (like in the zombie shooter).

Imagine an adventure game like Fatal Frame, only you can actually walk into the room and interact with things in real time. Being able to see supernatural elements and ghosts through the screen only (like a real life Camera Obscura) would make for a great horror experience.

Take a look here (0:48) to see what I mean.

Again, that's just an idea. Being students and poor, I'm not sure if we can actually do anything like this but its fun to think about.

~Olympia

making it our own.

Yup. So I presume you’ve done if not loads, some research into this strange, magic thing called augmented reality, I’ve got some more nice tutorials, but most need adobe flex, or flash builder, or for you to be a master in action script. To make the interactive software I made before there was loads of tweaking, rework and amending of a augmented reality cs4 template. Which is pretty easy actually to edit. All we need is something to replace another. So if you can think of it like this


Person> Square Marker > Webcam > Computer > monitor > Insert what you want here > Computer > Monitor > Person…


I hope that makes sense.. and if it doesn’t, then your not playing enough pokemon.
Ive gone and uploaded the file to mediafire


Heres the link:


http://www.mediafire.com/?tke5d5vxv5w


I don’t want to sound big headed, but I don’t think I can explain how it works (the fla) over the interwebs, so next time we get together, ill show you how it works.
but simply. The fla, has nothing. The .fla is only existant to export it as a .swf.
so searching the .fla for things will be pointless… theres no code or anything, just 4 sounds…


ahhh cant explain but the action script files target the .fla so you need to open the .as’s to edit on what you wanna do.. makes no sense, but ill show you.
For example, if you want a 3d model youd open a new .as and import the model into there, like an image into html, then target the .fla to export it into a viewable way


And that’s the meaning of life.


Matt.

Antidote to the couch potato...

I've been having a look at some of the existing AR games for iphone etc. and it seems like pretty much all of them involve the user having to move around in some way so we could maybe try to have that as a part of our theme, fitting in nicely with the suggested themes.

The graphics are totally kak for a lot of them but maybe this is because its only recently taking off?

Anyway I had a look at "Invizimals" and "Ghostwire" among others which involve using the iphone as a tracking device with "compass and accelerometer". I have no idea if we would be able to do anything remotely like this but it's just an idea to get people off their asses and moving about.

Also, if incorporating augmented reality into something like Foursquare is possible, would we be able to do anything like that on a smaller scale?

Sorry if this is all very far fetched or doesn't make sense, I've been working on an animation for a few hours straight now and I'm going a bit insane.

-Donna

Some interesting reading

Just to make sure we've covered the basics, here's the Wikipedia article on augmented reality and a tutorial in Flash CS4, for some insight into the design process and the code.


On a different note, I'm personally still very interested in implementing some narrative in the project. It doesn't have to be a story, per se. Nor something completely vague and artsy. There are many possibilities. Here's an example of experimental storytelling using symbolic language:"a series of web-based artworks that mix the personal lives of the authors and political and social commentary with the mythical texts of the Bible."
For educational purposes, here's some thoughts on games, interactive experiences, their limitations and their potential, from the same authors.

~Olympia

AR Zombie Shooter

Hologaphy

not totally relevant but its a pretty cool concept all the same...

- Kenneth

Thoughts on things

Does this look like anything to any one? Just a thought! it came from this:



- Iain

The Blog has Begun...

Please post all your Ideas here so everyone can keep up to date.....

and if anyone wants to change the css, feel free ^_^

http://yossarianj.blogspot.com/ <--- My blog, has some of the art work from last semester on it, if your intrested