Interactive Multimedia Authoring

INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING TASKS

WHAT YOU NEED TO PUT ON YOUR “AQUARIUM” BLOG:

·        Your team’s time plan  – team work

·        Final evaluation of your work and how your team worked together, follow this guide:

1.       Write comments for each paragraph heading, explaining who completed the task, and what you thought of the work. (Write in more detail when you comment on what you did, as opposed to what your team member did. If you shared a task be specific about the quantity of the work you did):

Research of images for graphics production

Research of information for general production

Research/locate/select sounds

Ideas generation

Production of timeplan

Production of any team planning documentation (storyboards etc.)

Writing of team reports/documentation/blog items

Production of graphics

Flash – making movieclips

Flash – scripting

2.       Give an opinion on what you thought of the final outcome, what is good and what could be improved and why.

3.       Comment on how you think your team’s final outcome works as a piece of interactive media. It was intended to be interactive, fun, informative …etc. Does it meet these needs? Is the artefact easy to use? Do the sound effects used re-enforce user interaction? Is it produced in a way that can be easily interacted with on the client’s tablet? 

A bit about the aquarium 

The National Marine Aquarium is located in the city of Plymouth, England. The aquarium is located in the Sutton Harbour, next to the Barbican, and was opened in May 1998. It happens to be the largest aquarium in the UK with over 50 interesting tanks including three enormous ecosystem displays. The mission statement of the National Marine Aquarium is Driving Marine Conservation through Engagement -  It is dedicated to it’s charitable aims of research, conservation and education. Educating people on sea life and how what things we do effect the sea creatures environment is very important to the Aquarium, there is an educational website called Just Add H20.

Add H20 is a partnership between the National Marine Aquarium, The University of Plymouth, Plymouth City Council, PMSP and MAP. There aim is to enable as many children and young people as possible to opportunities to discover and learn through the inspiring marine environment

What the client wanted -
A family friendly game
Suitable and playable for smaller children
Educational or Helping raise awareness about pollution

Ideas generation -
Mind Map

Our 3 game idea's
Idea One -We will design a fish tank based on or like one of the aquariums, the game is simple, littler and trash will fall down or float onto the screen along with fish food, you have to click on the trash to get rid of it, one litter = +1, but if you click on the fishes food you lose a point = -1 you will have a time frame to get as many points as possible.

Idea two - This game idea is based on the android game with the Cat or Dog and click different button will do different things we thought we could make something similar by making a octopus for example if you click on its tentical it will curl up, by clicking on a feed button it will give the octopus a Jar to open or a crab encased in a block of ice the octopus will have to work out how to get the food and a little animation will play of ether one. 

Idea three -
There is a fish in a tank you have to make the fish happy in order for it to grow you can make the fish happy by feeding it, giving it the right ecosystem, making the tank the right temperature as the fish grows it moves on to the next tank until it is released into the wild again.

When making our Game we will take into consideration legal requirements (copy right) and also the family audience it will be shown to.

We have agreed that our Preferred idea is Idea number 2
This is a quick sketch of the lay out and some of the things we will include.

 First concept

We thought this sketch of the octopus looked too aggressive and scary for children so Charlie came up with a new sketch one she thought the kids would like more.  

Octopus Interactive Game

Our idea for the game on the android tablet is based on the free app on the android market – called “Talking Tom Cat 2”

Our game will be based on an octopus in a tank that will interact with the young and old while entertaining and will give information and facts. It will be both visually entertaining and fun.

Its not a game as such, but will be simple to use, fun, cute and addictive.

By simply clicking on the octopus or menu-bar visitors will get to know more about its life and interesting facts.

Visitors that are unable to read can feed, touch the octopus, make its tentacles curl up and other cool stuff. 

Text boxes will pop up that are short precise but contain interesting facts that will be designed to keep the audience entertained with a cute voice-over.

The octopus will be based on the idiosyncrasies of the one in the aquarium. We aim to model the game by watching and learning and speaking to those who know Kioko best.

Octopus’s are usually portrayed as scary but we became fond of her and impressed by how intelligent she is.

We would like to gather those stories and portray her character to the visitors.

The Game

We started by brainstorming game concepts.

Kioko left a lasting impression and we decided we wanted to use her.

We initially thought of a simulator but it was decided it was too much coding, too much work and too complex for the time-frame.

We started exploring interactive ideas and agreed to simplify the idea of the simulator to something along the lines of the Talking Tom Cat app. Users find the app amusing and addictive – there is no target audience which makes it inclusive.

We’ve done some rough concepts of fish tanks and a basic octopus appearances but we will need time to fully study Kioko to make our animation as much like her as possible.

We intend to include sound effects for example when she moves it will have a swishing background noise or bubbles.

To make it accessible to all our octopus will play ball games, open jars or play hide and seek with the visitors.

Visually the octopus in the aquarium is not that impressive but our game will help visitors move past her plain appearance to her complex and interesting character.

We hope by portraying her character accurately and by giving her an improved electronic image visitors will return to see their smart aquatic new friend and want to know more.  

Feedback from the client -
Over all I think the client liked our idea these are are few things she pointed out or asked us to include
To make our game more educational we added a questions to our idea, rather then it being an interactive game, to see the animation of the octopus you have to answer a question about it first.
We where going to use a voice over of the questions, because of the noise level of the aquarium we where told it probably wasn't a good idea.
 
Questions for out game.
Out of these 3 questions and answers bellow one will randomly be picked. This is so the questions aren’t always the same and the audience won’t get bored if they play it again.

Feeding
Question 1.1 -
Out of these three answers, what do I eat?
Jellyfish
Seaweed
Crabs *

Question 1.2
Why does the aquarium give me challenges when feeding me?
So I don’t get bored and have something to do*
So I don’t eat my food too quickly
So that people can see how smart I am
Question 1.3
What do I use to open clams shells when eating?
My tentacles
My beak *
My suckers

Hiding
 Question 2.1
How do I protect myself in the wild?
Hide from predators or things i think are dangerous in a small dark space.*
Attack the predator with my suckers
I would swim far away

Question 2.2
 why do i hide in small spaces?
To protect myself from predators*
I like to sleep there
I like the darkness

Question 2.3
 Other than hiding how else can i protect myself in the wild?
Cloud the water around me*
Make myself really big
Bite them with my beak

Suckers 
Question 3.1
How many suckers does an octopus have on each arm?
About 240 suckers*
About 100 suckers
About 50  suckers

Question 3.2
In the aquarium, what do i use my suckers for?
Sticking to the glass & opening things.*
Catching my pray in the water.
To clean the glass

Question 3.3
How many suckers do i have all together?
Around 1,920*
Around 2,500
Around  1,500

Stretching
Question 4.1
How many bones do i have in my body?
0*
8
16
Question 4.2
Why can i change my size?
I am mostly mussel*
I have no bones
To protect myself in the wild
Question 4.3

How long can i grow to?
I can grow up to 20 feet*
I can grow up to 15 feet
I can grow up to 25 feet

Scripting for a scroll background
var leftArrow:Boolean = false;
var rightArrow:Boolean = false;
var upArrow:Boolean = false;
var downArrow:Boolean = false;
var space:Boolean = false;

stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, keyPressedDown);
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, keyPressedUp);
stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, myEnterFrame);

// listening to keyboard and changing the value of some variables when key pressed
function keyPressedDown(myevent:KeyboardEvent):void {
    //if key is pressed do command
    if (myevent.keyCode==Keyboard.LEFT) {
        leftArrow = true;
    }
    //if key is pressed do command
    if (myevent.keyCode==Keyboard.RIGHT) {
        rightArrow = true;
    }
    if (myevent.keyCode==Keyboard.SPACE) {
        space = true;
    }
}

// listening to key board and changing the value of some variables when key pressed
function keyPressedUp(myevent:KeyboardEvent):void {
    //if key is pressed do command
    if (myevent.keyCode==Keyboard.LEFT) {
        leftArrow = false;
    }
    //if key is pressed do command
    if (myevent.keyCode==Keyboard.RIGHT) {
        rightArrow = false;
    }
    if (myevent.keyCode==Keyboard.SPACE) {
        space = false;
    }
}

function myEnterFrame (event:Event) {
    //if the leftArrow variable is true
    if (leftArrow) {
        if (myLoop.currentFrame ==1) {
            myLoop.gotoAndStop(myLoop.totalFrames);
        } else {
            myLoop.prevFrame();
        }
    }
    //if the rightArrow variable is true
    if (rightArrow) {
        if (myLoop.currentFrame == myLoop.totalFrames) {
            myLoop.gotoAndStop(1);
        } else {
            myLoop.nextFrame();
        }
    }
}

28th of febuary
I spent today looking for sound effects for out game
Bubbles -
I thought the start of this would be a good sound, we would need to cut it down a lot.
This is just an example of sound i would like to inclue, we would need to find a sound that is royalty free or pay for the rights of something.

Print screens of work on game -

This is a print screen of my work in progress at this point I was putting questions and answers. Putting in the coding to make the questions work properly and the animation played when you got the right answer, At this point there was no animations so i was using basic graphic to check that things where working for example a red box would move across the screen if the coding was working as it should, I would then swap the graphic when Charlie had finished creating it. 

I personally think that the questions look out of place and there is too much blue on blue. The question box needs to be changed to make it look more appealing to the eye.

The layout of the questions was change so it's in a bubble instead of sitting on the background I prefer this layout a lot I think it looks nicer and it doesn't look out of place, The idea behind the bubble was to hide the octopus in the background. The octopus animations where added rather then shapes it's starting to come together although some of the animations are too short and some of them incomplete. The colour of the text was changed too. 

Who did what 

In our team Charlie did some research, the animations and background graphics and made a sound file. 

I did the coding with help from Marnie, I also made the flash file created the questions and did the research and some of the blog work.

Our group had a lot of problems with Martin leaving our group not doing any work, this put a lot of pressure on Charlie and I. Despite this I think Charlie and I worked well together and worked hard to get the work finished.