Coming Together - Tom Clarkson

Been a very busy patching session the last few days, very confusing at times with very simple maths. Here is an example of what the conditions look like at our final question (Paul drew up the diagram)

 

This designed up in a patch has been the most confusing thing ever, but it's starting to come together with some newly found max objects. Hope all goes well tomorrow!

The "splash page" (as I like to call it) is working fine after a few number of issues but all seems good with testing so far. The only thing left after the game patch is complete is linking them together and hoping all works well.

Quiz Questions - Ian

I have written the multiple choice questions for the quiz section of the project. Each charm has 3 questions, each question has a choice of 4 possible answers. It was quite hard to make 3 questions up for some of the charms.

Audio Mixing - Ian

I used Pro-Tools (My DAW of choice for mixing!) to mix the recorded audio of the sea, seagulls and Paul's Voice Over and the audio for the "Video" part of the project is now complete, after a bit of feedback from Paul I lowered the sea and seagulls in the mix.  I had also included excerpts from the "Theme from Jaws", but we decided against using this for this part.

Hopefully it can be included somewhere, because I think it's a brilliant tune!!  Perhaps we could use it on the quiz for a wrong answer???  The question then becomes what to use for a correct answer?

I am not sure what sounds are needed for the game section yet.  We have a meeting tomorrow, and I will ask the team for their views.

I have included links to some previews of some of the audio for your listening pleasure!! 

Bollan Bone

Cowrie Shells

Design of Fisherman Character - Paul

Not sure whether to include the hat and pipe yet :)    But he is shaping up nicely.  Next stage is to design some fish and a net..

Paul

Sound Recording Photographs - Ian

My mobile phone shoots video in a strange format, so while I figure out a way of converting it here are a couple of photographs.  At least my phone takes still images in JPG format!!!!

I have had a listen to the audio I captured, and it is quite good.  My experiment with "Pitching" didn't work as I had hoped, but the audio is probably the pick of the bunch

Stage One of Animation Drawing - Paul

Heres The first stage of my scene. (The surroundings) Ignore the over spill on the sides of the stage this will not be shown when published. I am now working on the main focus of the animation including, The fisherman, The shark, The boat and the fish.

Signing Out, Paul

An Update On our Installation

Audio Recording - Ian

I spent several hours trying to record audio for the insatallation.  On Saturday, I took a drive around Marine Drive, my intention was to record seagull sounds. |However, not only were the levels of traffic too high as to not get a good recording, but there didn't seem to be many seagulls!  The few that were there were unusually quiet!  It then went to The Spa to record waves crashing against the sea wall, I thought that this would be a good location as there is little traffic.  Unfortunately, the tide was going out and recording was abandoned for the day.

A quick check on the times of high tide saw me heading down to The Spa again on Sunday.  I arrived at about 12:30 a full hour before high tide.  I walked further along from The Spa, to where the South Bay Pool used to be, and identified several good spots to record.  I made quite a few recordings ranging from a little over 2 minutes to over 5 minutes in duration, which is more than enough for this project.  I also experimented with "pitching" the tripod the recorder was mounted on to simulate the pitch and roll of a boat on the sea.

I have not had chance to listen to what I recorded in any depth yet, so I don't know if my experiments worked or not.  Sound files and photographs to follow.......

Pitch & Initial Feedback

Paul

Working on the background image, in Adobe Flash CS4, for the game. Drawn the sky and the sea, and a small blurred building in the background. Going to work on the boat next.

Gathering Information - Paul

Today I rang the Scarborough Museums Trust to confirm the exact locations that each 5 charms were collected at. The woman who i spoke to was unable to give me this information herself, So has passed on Ian Reads Email for me to ask him. Hopefully i will know the exact finding location of each five charms soon so I can begin to create the opening video with the globe in the corner of this locating the home of these charms.

I have also been touching up on my animation using photo shop so I can soon begin the animated video for the game.

Paul

Interactive Displays @ Rotunda Museum - Ian

I looked at 3 of the interactive displays at The Rotunda Museum on Wednesday, although I have to say that the third one wasn’t really interactive.

The first display was a touch-screen pedestal , there were two parts, first of all there was the “Erosion Game”  In this game you had to select the correct route of action to pretect your town/village.  There were different scenarios with a multiple choice of solutions.  For example, A small town with an unlimited budget on the top of a sandstone cliff needed protection from the effects of wave erosion.  Once an answer was selected the cliff was erroded until you selected the correct answer.  Various objects fell into the sea, and if the house fell into the sea......

The animation was slick, and I found the game both easy and enjoyable to play.  The last scenario had no correct answer, and, I found this a little annoying, as there was quite a wait for the house to fall, although this might have only been a few seconds it seemed a lot longer.

The second part of this display concentrated on “The Holbeck Hall” this comprised of press clippings relating to the hotel falling into the sea on the south side of Scarborough.  I found this brought back memories, as I was one of those standing on the cliifs watching, with hundreds of other people.

The second display I viewed was “Gristhorpe Man”  The glass case was the home of a skeleton, and an animated head spoke to the viewer by way of a handset, not unlike a telephone.  The dialog was amusing in parts as well as informative.  It transpires that Bradford University established where he had lived by means of his teeth, and they could also tell that his level of fitness and general health were good.  They also determined that he was about 60 when he died.

The last display I viewed was the inteactive dinosaur coast line.  I did not see much of this as there was a large crowd taking part in the activity.  My vision was hampered because of the height of the display, and I lost interest pretty quickly.  I think the activity went on too long, I could only imagine that had I been a ten year old, how frustrating it would have been with perhaps 20 other children waiting for my turn.  Although it has to be said that at such an age I would probably been able to see what others were doing on the screen.

There were other displays, which had telephone type handsets for listening to the audio whilst viewing the acompanying screen.  I though the displays I used were well thought out and interesting.  I am sure the other displays were equally fascinating.

Critique Of The Rotunda Museum - Paul Hollingsworth

The Museum had some great installations for the public to use, some of which was very modern technology. The information provided about each installation was very detailed. The 3 touch screen installations I think were the most educational displays in the museum, the reason for this is because the quiz that it gave you to complete actually made you apart of the installation and it was down to you to get each question correct in order to save the houses from floods. I think the big touch screen installation in which you created your own dinosaur land, was a very nice feature but only for children, I did not feel it was very educating. I enjoyed the sound beam that they had projecting into my ears as I entered a room. It was good to see this sort of technology being used.

The installations are mainly designed for one persons at a time, which could be very frustrating if theres a big group of people trying to access it at once. With our project there will be just one person controlling the touch screen, but the big screen above will ensure other people can see what is going on. Also the voice recordings on the phones went on for quite a long duration, I found that after a minute or so I began to lose interest and linking into what I said before, only one person can hear this at a time.
The dinosaur touch screen was very interactive and looked really good, but the installation itself is not very educational and therefore it seems almost a waste of technology to just have a game where you place objects around a bit of land and didnt actually gain any information from it.
Furthermore, there was alot of writing on some of the displays which a majority of people would not take the time to stand and read it all. This is why in our installation I think it will be best to just play a voice over instead of having lots of writing for users to read.

I learnt alot from looking at the installations already homed in the Rotunda museum and it has inspired me in the design of our installation. I will make sure that the information given about my charms is accurate and just enough for the user to know and not overload them with too much detail. I also think it is very important for the user to feel involved with the installation for them to learn something from it. Therefore I think a game or quiz is the best way to attract users and for them to interact with it.

Paul