Flash Application

This again, was a part of the "Entertainment Computing" module at UCLAN as part of the computer games development course that I'm doing. The brief was to make either an interactive slideshow application, using flash and in specific, actionscript 2, or in the case of some of the game development students in the module, a game using the same language and application. I decided to make a small game. This was my first time using actionscript and flash, and coming from c++ the actionscript wasn't so bad, if not a bit buggy and a bit "out of your control", I also had some trouble getting the hang of the CS3 interface, but after reading some guides about how to use it, I soon managed to start on the application and get some work done. I decided that a simple point and click shooting game would be a nice little project for my first game using actionscript and flash, I also tried to target the graphics and gameplay at my target audience (about late teens to early twenties, probably male, though it doesn't really matter) by making it bright and colourful with some nice animations. To be specific, it was an alien themed game, where aliens are trying to escape area 51, and you have to stop them by using your double barrel shotgun. Work went along pretty fast, and I managed to get most of the features that I wanted into the game, the only thing that I couldn't was outputting a score to the screen, it seems like there is little documentation for flash (or no-where near as much as c++, and not anywhere near as comprehensive). Though all in all, I found it quite fun to do once I got the hang of it.

Facebook Application - Evaluation

In summary, I think that the app design would have had good potential, and I think that the idea in itself was good, it's just a shame that due to technical difficulties it never got off the ground. We had some positive feedback of some of our friends saying that they would like to give the app a go after we finished making it. So it's just a real shame that it never got together, I must admit though, I wouldn't want to try and do something like this again, I dislike PHP quite a bit, it just doesn't sit right with me for some reason, and the FBML language was just horrible, of course, these are my personal opinions and there are obviously people out there who make plenty of money and some decent apps using it, maybe if I took some time at my own pace and managed to find some half decent guides and references, it might make a bit more sense, but not this time.

Facebook Application - Launch

Unfortunately due to the fact that we never managed to get the application finished or working, we could not really have a launch, though as far as I can work out, the errors where definitely due to the host that we where using at the time, because even the test application that you get with the facebook API wouldn't work properly, and I had a look at someone else who had managed to get some basic code working, and the API was definitely hooked up right, to be honest it's a bit of a mystery, and I wouldn't say that I was great at PHP in the first place. Still we tried very hard to get the thing up and running in time and had some very positive feedback on the idea from friends on the course. I think if I was to do this again, I'd definitely have to try and find an alternative webhost, though to be honest, I am definitely not a fan of PHP or FBML, neither are particularly my strong points coding wise, and I think there are some definite compatibility issues between them and different browsers. At some point in the future, I hope that the web coding standards get stricter and all browsers start using the same flavours of html etc.

Facebook Assignment - Implementation

The implementation of the program was very difficult, because the facebook API was very difficult to link into a website, and also the webhost that I was using, was adding extra code to the file on the fly, which meant that even the most basic test program wasn't working. Also there doesn't seem to be as much information on the facebook mark up language (FBML) as is really necessary. So unfortunately the development process was full of difficulties, and it never really got off the ground. We did get quite a bit of artwork done on the other hand, and where quite pleased with the results of the artwork. It was a shame that we didn't, manage to get it off the ground, as I feel that the app could have turned out good, as I thought that the concept was a good idea. We did also try to get the 2D plartformer a go, but soon discovered the limitations of sharendipity as a development platform, and decided pretty quickly that it would be a bad idea to go ahead with development using that app, as we wouldn't have been able to launch it as our own app and would have had to have do it through their service. Also, the game mechanics would have been pretty limited, and it would have been hard to do anything like what we really wanted to. I think given some time and a decent host, the "cabbit mayhem" smiley sending app wouldn't have gone as bad as it went, but sometimes things out of your control just stop things from working.

Facebook Assignment - Design

We have been given an assignment, as part of the "Entertainment Computing" course at UCLAN, the brief that we where given, was to make an application on facebook, that would be fun or useful. At the beginning of the design process we had two different ideas, they where quite different, but revolving around the same theme. The theme was, some kind of colourful application, which was easy to use and fun, so that many people of different computing experience could use it with ease. The first idea that we had was going to be a small 2D platformer, made using an app on facebook which you can use to build small games, called sharendipity, but unfortunately, the application was not really suitable for making . The other idea that we had was a smiley sending application, that would be small and easy to use. We decided to go with the smiley sending app, as we thought that it would be a lot easier to use, and would probably end up being more popular because it would have a lot of re-use potential, as people wouldn't finish the game and not play it again, whilst they might with the sharendipity app. So we decided to build on the "cabbit mayhem" smiley sending application. We wanted the application to be small and easy to use, but as fun as possible, with bright and eye catching smiley designs. The app would be used by people to send small messages over facebook with added emotion to the messages, so some of the "feeling" that can be easily lost in text, can be put back in, such as sarcasm, and silly comments.

Podcast Assignment

The podcast was done for the Entertainment Computing module at UClan, it was made by me (Daniel Hill), Andrew Telford, and Kieran Liptrot.
The initial ideas that we had for the podacast where about different personality changes on the internet and how these are often very different to how people would react or act in real life, in places such as forums, instant messaging, social networking sites such as myspace and facebook, and comments on sites such as youtube. We also decided to cover how people communicating over the internet or on mobile phones is degrading the understanding of the English language, and teaching children bad grammar and spelling from an early age.
In the changes in personality section we tried to cover some of the most common forms of personality change, such as trolling, which is when people say aggressive or abusive things to get a reaction from someone, or merely misinform people because they think it's funny. We also tried to cover people trying to act more intellectual, or superior than what they really are, a good example would be some comments on youtube, for things that someone has made or have performed in, people will often criticise it unjustly, instead of giving it useful
constructive criticism.

The final point that we talked about, which was bad grammar being learned due to text speak, I think that this is a real problem in today's society. Kids from an early age are using mobile phones and messaging programs to talk to each other, and as understandable as it is to use some abbreviations whilst texting, due to the fact that longer text's cost more money, kids are starting to use this in everyday life instead of where it makes sense. There have been many cases of children using text speak in exams, instead of correct English. You could argue though that this is the way that the English language is evolving, as you should note that it has changed immensely since Shakespeare's day. Whether this is a positive or not, is yet to be seen, and I'm sure many English teachers across the country, would be very annoyed at the thought of the English language evolving this way.

We each took part in making the Podcast in different respects, Andy made the pictures for the podcast and encoded the podcast to mp4, as I didn't have the tools to do that, I recorded the audio, made the RSS feed, and put the images together in Windows Movie Maker with some help from Andy and Kieran, Kieran helped with ideas, and made useful comments about how we where doing things.

In conclusion, I thought making the podcast was surprisingly easy and hastle free, the only pain was getting the RSS feed to work as many of the RSS feed generators didn't seem to work very well, and finding a hosting site big enough to upload the files, as the files ended up being quite large, and most sites have a 5mb upload limit, which was quite annoying. But generally it was quite fun, but not something that I'd want to do in my spare time.

Slideshow Assignment

This was our latest assignment in the entertainment computing module of the Games Development degree that I'm doing. We were told to make an interactive photo album (preferably on windows movie maker) with something to do with "All work no play".

Me and the group I was in, agreed that the pub is a typical place for students to hang out after a tough days studying (hopefully), and we picked a good one, we went to the ship inn, which has loads of games, all teh one's you'd expect to find in a pub, and some different more unusual ones, like "Guitar Hero" and a fooseball table. So we thought that it would be a perfect place to shoot some photo's realating to the subject matter :).

So, onto how I made the slideshow, as I mentioned, I made it in windows movie maker, it's a pretty easy program to use, I decided that the length of the switches between photo's was way to long on the default setting, so I made the switches quite a bit shorter. I also made some basic screen wipes (fades and ONE star wipe, so it didn't get overboard) . I decided that the outing followed a flow of event's, so I tried to keep them as close how it happend as possible, because I feel that it flows better that way. We also kind of used some stop frame animation techniques, but not in any major way, just one or two photo's of the same scene taken in close time to each other. We decided on taking some interesting (in my opinion) shots of us playing pool, the point of view shots from the viewpoint of the cue, and they were quite fun to take, and I liked how they turned out. I decided on the name of the slideshow from "The Shining" thought it was quite apt really, because I'd agree, if you don't take some time to relax every now and then, hopefully you won't become a axe wielding maniac, but you might get over stressed, and that's never a good thing.

My favourite scene would be the last one, maybe a little over acted considering we only had one pint each, but you have to try and tell a bit of a story I suppose. My least favourite scene is probably the guitar hero one, at least with me and Andy, neither of us really play the game, because we both play real guitar, but we enjoyed it anyway I suppose.

In conclusion, I feel we covered the subject matter pretty well, that's definately how we would (and were) relax in our time off from Uni, and I'm quite happy with how the slideshow turned out, that was the first time I've ever used Windows Movie Maker, and if I ever need to, (or get another assignment) I think I'd be able to make something that's pretty decent.