Final Presentation and Summary

Our Final presentation day has dawned on us again, and though it wasnt as smooth going as i might have liked we have finally got everything working and running together. Our exhibition had to be standalone this time round, and we went to quite a lot of effort to sort out an interesting playing space for the viewers. Our exhibition was styled to look like a bedroom, a place that I felt was relevant to the project as it is a place that most children would have been read bed time stories, and thought up interesting worlds and directly linked to our project through the idea of storytelling and immersing people within a new world. It also directly linked to the content of our game being a dream that a child is having as he sleeps in his bed.

All together we have a Bed which mulitple people can sit on to play or watch the game. We have a large monitor which we dressed up with a curtain rod and curtains to make it look like a window, we have a bedside table with a lamp and a toy train on it as well as our keyboard and mouse that you use to play the game. Slightly seperate from this space is our showreel and feedback forms that we are hoping people will fill out, as the project is still an experiment and we are interested in seeing what people think, what they enjoyed, and what could be improved on more.


I was really impressed with alot of the 3D modelling that Nick did for this project as it was really cool to have some of our own models used in the game engine. He put in a lot of hard work to get these done, and though wasnt in studio as much of the rest of us, he more than pulled his weight while working from home, He also put together our final show reel which i thought looked really amazing.

I think it is good that everything came together again at the end and I am feeling really quite pleased with the way everything worked out. I think it is important to note that this project would not have been as successful if  we were missing even one part of the team, and even though we had our hiccups, each and every person was crucial to the success of this project.

Good Work Everybody!

Coding Time!

Oh Joy...

One thing that is important to note about our group. None of us, not one person likes to program. It is something we all struggle with, and not something any of us particularly enjoy. However when it comes to using Unity3d ( the game engine we decided to build our game on), it turns out a great deal of coding is needed to accomplish any small task.  Me and Tim were assigned the roles to work in unity, and between the two of us i feel like we have accomplished really quite a lot considering our skill level as coders.

We have both learnt a lot about unity's programming script, and i felt that certain things got easier as we went along. We did find ourselves constantly returning to the Unity Answers forums to ask for help with a number of situations but with our final product now complete I feel like in the time frame we have taken a giant leap in terms what i originally felt i could accomplish. Obviously there are a few bugs in the game that we havnt been able to get rid of as the coding to solve the issue is well over either of our heads, and would probably need some serious help in order to fix them.

Overall after seeing all the things that we have accomplished I am quite proud of the work that we have done putting everything together.

GOOD JOB TIM!

Group Dynamic Issues

Recently there have been a few issues with Lucy and myself over both some really small issues, and one or two larger ones as well. Apparently after coming back from China I have been a little too dominant in the leadership role which I can understand, but I plainly put it down to trying to get as much work done now as our deadlines are getting closer, so I am pushing people to try and get things done, but also pushing myself to get things done as well. Apparently Lucy has been feeling a lot of tension over a lot of what she has been writing for the game not being used at all, and is causing her not only a great deal of stress but i think she is getting really quite angry about it. The only problem with this is that she doesn't tell anyone about it until it gets to the point where she lashes out. This becomes an issue, when we arent doing anything to change that purely because we dont know how she feels, or that what we are doing is affecting her this way. After checking her blogs this was slightly more apparent, but without communication it is very difficult to know what is going on.

While I was away, Lucy took charge of the group and obviously became more dominant, but now that I am back she has backed off from that and let me take the role. I was unaware at the time that she had been in a leadership role, as i assumed that because everyone was in such a bad space, no one had taken charge and things had gone pear shaped.

I realise that I may not be the perfect leader for the group and I am trying my best not to confuse my own oppinions with that of the groups but at times, like everyone else, i do make mistakes. I find this is a little more common when tutors randomly show up and I feel like I am put on the spot a bit to try and come up with something to say. It just means that i really need to make sure i think a little more about how everyone might be feeling when discussing the group. Again though a key component to this is communication and knowing how everyone feels, if nobody puts things out in the open how am i supposed to make a fair call on that. Im not a mind reader.

I felt at times that Lucy was a little bit immature about how she reacted to some of the decisions that were being made by the group. Not everything someone writes gets used 100% of the time and if it doesnt get used because the majority of the group doesnt like it then it is probably for the best, i felt at times that she would really throw a tantrum when things didnt go entirely her way, i think that at times she forgets that we are working on a group project and we all have goals that we want to accomplish from it.

I have nothing against people stepping up to take a leadership role, in fact i feel i encouraged it fairly well right at the beginning of the project, but in order to be a leader there needs to be good communication with everyone, and you need to be able to make a call that works best for everybody. Communication is really not one of  Lucy's strong points. She is however very efficient in terms of time management and organisation, she always draws out timeframes in which things need to be accomplished by. Personally i think she fits alot better into the role of an organiser than that of a leader, purely because i feel that good communication is one of the most important things about taking on that role.

Post Feedback

One thing that was refreshing to come back to was the amount of drawing that people had done in terms of creating characters for our world. These provided great help in establishing the feel for our world and our story. Apparently though according to the tutors we need to stop focusing quite so much on the game side of things and work more towards our main question, which is "Can you use games as a method of story telling".
We already know from our research and through previous experience gaming that this was true, but needed to elaborate a bit more on this. This is where our project really took a change for the better in my oppinion. We stopped trying to make a game that told a story, but became more focused on the way in which games told stories. This gave us a greater understanding about how story telling was achieved in games and gave us an idea for our final project, an experiment that tested the different methods and tools that were used within a game, and how effective they were for achieving both enjoyment through gameplay, and enjoyment of the storyline.

Back Again!

After arriving back in New Zealand, I found that a lot had changed since I had left. The story we had previously chosen to start had been scrapped and all the work leading up to that point was now reasonably pointless. Instead we had a new story, very different and rather dark and twisted. Though the concept had changed in terms of actual progress not much had been done in the 3 weeks I was away in terms of moving forward from where we were when I left, in fact we were basically in the same place, only with a different story. I didnt mind this too much, but no one was really able to completely explain this new concept to me at all, maybe due to some miscommunication amongst the group. I guess from this point I started to become a little more pushy to try and get people to break apart the story for me not only so that I could understand what it was that we were doing and in turn needed to be done, but also so the group was more clear in what we we were doing.

The overall morale of the group seemed pretty low when I arrived back and basically none of them were really all that motivated to get anything done. (This isn't a stab at the group, just an observation). This really made moving on from the point we were at very difficult because I dont think any roles had been assigned in concrete and  I question if anyone really knew what it was they were needed to do. It felt really disorganised and a quite unpleasant atmosphere for the group.

It was at this point I felt like I needed to put back on my leadership hat and try and fix some of the immediate problems I saw around me, firstly by establishing what exactly our story was about, and how we planned on telling it.

Off to China

I feel a little guilty running off to china at this point after only just coming up with a solid idea for a game framework. Basically we came up with the idea to create a world that was harsh and cold, a winter wasteland. This world was a world without the heat of flame, and because of this we decided to create a very limited art style using only a  monochromatic art style until the fire was introduced. Basically the story was about an adventurer that left his tribe to seek a legend, tales told of a mysterious light at the top of a mountain holding the power to both bring life and destroy it.

Im hoping that now that this story has been established, though it felt a bit rushed, will mean that we can all start focusing on designing and building the game up. Below is one of the concept drawings I did for the game.

I still feel a little worried as nobody has really taken much of a leadership role in the group, and I'm worried that because of this I feel there is a chance that things may change quite dramatically after I leave if someone decides to step up to that role and change things around. We'll just have to see though, for now I'm taking a holiday!

Storyline Struggles

As a larger group of 5 people coming up with an idea that everybody agrees on is particularly difficult. Everyone has so many very different ideas on what they want this game to be makes the whole thing very difficult.A number of ideas that get put forward either one or more people generally poses a strong dislike for the idea or want something different. One idea like this is the idea of making a horror game based on a story that is made to frighten and scare the player, an idea that I am really not keen on. I basically see the horror genre as too much of an easy way out in terms of story not only in games, but films especially. Not to mention recently they are being over done with games like Amnesia: The dark descent and Slender captivating a huge number of people. Unfortunately for me a number of the group want to pursue the idea so I may have to bite the bullet in order for us to make a solid decision.

The main problem we are finding though is that no one is making any solid decisions, I have suggested compromises to the horror story by incorporating horror elements into any new ideas I put forward, but people seem rather hell bent on keeping the game based solely on scaring the player, of course with a bit of story underneath. I am just worried that with a horror based game we will become to focused on scaring the player and not put in enough effort into actually exploring the project which is narrative and storytelling through games. Never the less the group seems to be stuck in this stage of deciding on a story and nothing is really getting done, its starting to get frustrating and with my trip to china quickly approaching I would really like to have a solid story sorted out so that we can just get on with making the game itself.

Meeting's with tutor's at this point really don't seem to be helping all that much, as because we don't have a solid idea about what we are doing, the new suggestions and advice they give whilst being both conflicting and very different tend to just send us back into indecision and trying to please not only everyone in the group but the tutors that will be assessing us as well. The whole situation gets a little stressful at times and I just hope things will sort themselves out before too long.

Starting the Project

Well according to the pitch we made, this semesters project is "An exploration of storytelling through a game". This means we are going to look at which ways are effectively used for storytelling in games, and some ways that generally don't go so well. For me a huge part of making a good game is whether or not it has a good story. A lot of modern games tend to focus on gimmicks or fast paced, adrenaline pumped action, with very little contextual details actually explored in the game environment but instead a bunch of pointless missions to make your way to a certain area and kill some major character. DULL.

Our exploration is to look at how storytelling in games is important not only in the content of the story that makes it so good, but also in the way that it is told. In turn with out game we plan to explore different methods of telling certain parts of the story to explore the methods used and find their strengths and weaknesses, but also create a story that is enjoyable to discover and play through. Lucy is in charge of story writing but we have brainstormed a few ideas already and decided on the setting that we would like to have the game in being a winter wasteland. A cold, harsh environment that causes hardship and strife amongst the hardened inhabitants.

We have brainstormed a few ideas of what we want the story to be like, and there seem to be a number of very different ideas on what we want to see in the game. Everyone is putting forward ideas and we are all probably going to have to make some compromises to put a final story together.

We've started looking into a bunch of Indie games that have been made previously that explore new and innovative ways of both playing the game but also telling a story. We chose indie games because I feel they are often the games that test the boundaries more than your average commercial game company does, because they have more freedom in a sense than other companies. On the list of Indie games that we have looked at, these titles have really interested me specifically.

The main game that interested me was Bastion. Bastion is a fantastic adventure about a boy that wakes up after a terrible calamity ravages his world. This game immediately stood out to me with the fantastic narration that progresses the story in the game so very well,  below is a video of the introduction to the game to give you some form of idea about what I mean.

The use of narrative is driven in a way by the actions the character takes but also is informative in the sense that it provides hints and clues as to where the player needs to go, but also creates background to the world for example when the kid finds a memento from a girl he used to fancy. Normally the player wouldn't have known this fact from just finding a collectable, but the narrator adds that extra layer of depth which is really fantastic. I would really like to have something similar done with the game that we create to really strengthen the story.

An Exploration Of Storytelling

This semester we're looking to have a bit of fun with our project as this semester we get to pitch our own idea's for what we want to do for the semester. The group met up and discussed a number of ideas for the project. We looked at doing a film or web series, as well as creating a physical art piece, but eventually we settled on the idea that we all wanted to make a game.

Now immediately ideas started flying around about what we could potentially do with our project but we still had to pitch everything to the tutors, so I set about writing out our pitch form. Pitching a project in itself isnt actually as easy as it sounds, It obviously wasn't as simple as "For our project we want to make a game, this is a basic storyline, these are the roles we'll take and then bam!"  The whole thing involved constantly talking to a number of tutors to find out what was needed in the pitch form and what they thought could improve the pitch and make the project fit more easily within the course. Well after everything was done, we then had to pitch our idea to the class, this was supposedly to find people that wanted to  join in the project. I felt a bit bad when doing this as the project had been planned using the same group from last semester and a number of people were really keen on joining in the project. For a pitch it seemed more like just explaining what we were going to do rather than opening it up to other people to come and join us, which sort of defeated the purpose of the pitch for me really.

We got everything approved and Nick Hudgson has joined the team as our lead 3D modeller and animator. Lucy will be in charge of storyline and script writing, Edrian will be in charge of concept art and Art Style for the game and me and Tim will be in charge of game mechanics as to making the game environments and coding for the game etc.

Usually I tend to take a leadership role with the projects I work on, but this time I specifically took a step back from the leadership role in this one as I have made plans to go and visit my girlfriend in China for 3 weeks in the middle of the semester. I have made a point of mentioning this to the group and they are all happy for me to do this.

IE + IM

Complications

For the past few days we've been trying our absolute best to try and get our coke can Stirling engine running, but have had no such luck. The coke cans have proven to be extremely frustrating to work with as they have proven to warp and split far too easily when trying to work with them, this may be one of the key factors to the huge amounts of friction we get when turning the cranks as well as how taught the balloon is. Friction is one of our worst enemies when working with these engines as well as making sure everything is airtight. These are probably the most frustrating things to have to work against, as any small  amount of friction can stop the engine at any point. Everything has to be extremely precise and extremely smooth and personally I just do not see us being able to achieve this while using such rubbish materials. 

I suggested trying a more reliable set of materials and following a guide we found on youtube, we have started gathering materials to begin construction as soon as possible. I have a lot more faith in these designs as they allow as to achieve the precision we need far easier, as well as the container we will use will already be airtight so we wont have to combat that as much.

The Great Divide

Today, the group has split into two. The rails and switches side, and the engines and power side.Me and Edrian are in charge of building up our engines, a job which looks like will be a lot of fun but will probably be quite tricky.

Lucy and Tim are going to be in charge of switches and rails, so that we once we have our engines up we can really have this whole system up and running. So far we are looking at making our engines from empty coke cans, its a material that I already foresee as potentially having some issues with as they are not made from very strong metal and it doesn't take much to bend and distort the framework. I don't really know all that much about Stirling engines as they are a relative new concept to me, but from what I gather they run on heated air being moved around a container. Lucy seems to have done a bit of research into it though which helped me understand a bit more how they work which was good and I'm sure that that will probably make overcoming any issues we have slightly easier.

As for the rails, Tim and Lucy have looked at creating a sort of pinball rail type design, using 2 wires placed a specific distance apart and link together in an arch underneath. The ball then actually sits on top of the rails and set on an angle rolls toward its destination. Basically we rely on gravity to deliver the messages to their destination but need the engines first to bring the capsules to the top of the rails before they are going anywhere. I have a pretty good idea on how we would do that, basically by using a design not dissimilar to how a bike works. Basically there are 2 gears with a chain attached with the bottom gear being rotated by our engines. Attached to the chain are a number of buckets or cups that our capsules fit into and get lifted up to the top. A pretty simple idea but really our most efficient way of getting the height we need.

New start.

As we get back into working, I realise that this half of the semester we really need to focus on exactly what it is that we want to achieve within the time frame we have. We already know we plan on creating a rail system of some sort which we will us to guide our messages to their destinations, but need to focus on how specifically we are going to do this. 

We have looked at a number of ways of powering our delivery system but still have a number of things left to consider, including the ways in which we are making our network decentralized, how we are going to create the switching system so each message can be sent to the appropriate place and exactly how we are going to construct or create our powering system for these messages.

So far for inspiration we have looked at marble machines, and the rube goldberg devices for inspiration with our rail system. We have also looked at a variety of ways of powering our engines including, rocketry, steam, solar and hydro power to move our capsules from A to B. A number of complications were found with a fair few of these power sources. Firstly with rocketry there was obviously a huge fire hazard, and putting that into practice within a studio environment is not exactly ideal so we decided to scrap that idea but from there we decided to look at how people had generated power in the past and decided to settle with steam and air powered engines. These engines appealed to most of the group as it was a concept not many of us had explored before and seemed like a viable source of getting the power we needed in a way that was not only fun and exciting but reasonably cost effective. Below are a a few of the examples of engines we looked at:

Last day of semester.

Today was hand in, we handed in our film as the first half of our assignment and I felt it was quite a hit with the tutors, as it got the message across that we were trying to achieve.

Im a little worried about the productivity of our group at times, as we do tend to get easily distracted. I know other groups have been having similar problems but that is really no excuse. My goals for the next half of this project is to maintain a consistent work effort with less distractions.

Below is a link to the video:

http://youtu.be/_z5Gu9fsATU

Filming

Well we've finally moved forward and  have got started with the filming!  Up until this point I have felt like our group productivity has been a little bit lacking, particularly with the recent purchase of our graphic tablets. I have found through today's filming that despite having planned out everything through our storyboarding and script a lot of our shots were changed quite dramatically and didn't follow the storyboard much at all. This may have been the lack of collaboration between Edrian, Lucy and myself as it seems there were a number of different ideas that we all had regarding the filming which didn't really come up until we were actually filming. I know a lot of the storyboard is loose and is just a rough outline but without clear direction with what we are doing it can end up being discarded.

On that note however, there was still a good amount of filming done and we sorted out our intro scene and a few of the key dramatisations needed to help push our story along at the beginning. We did find ourselves distracted quite easily being in a more relaxed environment which I think we need to try and avoid in the next few days in order to churn out the rest of this film.

It seems like our group is working really well so far, and I have been enjoying working with everyone, I just think we need a little more direction at times from some of our tutors, from looking round and observing the way other groups were getting on, it seems a number of us are struggling a bit with concepts and just need reassurance when finalising those ideas instead of discarding them and starting over. On the other hand it is nice having Zoe around to talk to on a Monday and we have been utilizing her expertise in the industry in terms of planning out what we were going to do, she had lots of really useful information for us and gave us good direction with where to take our film.

Networks: Planning Our Film

The first stage obviously was to be the planning of our film, at first we were a little unorganised in terms of distributing roles out amongst the group and we sort of floundered about trying to come up with a story where all our ideas fit together rather than choosing the most efficient idea, considering our deadline was drawing closer and we needed something to hand in. Eventually we assigned roles to direct, script write, edit, film and find music  amongst the group and we found we started moving somewhere. Each person was in charge of writing dialogue for their character and I was also tasked with creating a basic run-down of all the events in the film for Lucy to storyboard. Being the director meant I had to collaborate with everyone a lot of the time particularly Edrian and Lucy at the beginning while we were figuring out events and shot types. I also had to tell Tim exactly what sorts of music and audio we would need in the film so that he could begin either composing or sourcing what we needed.

Basically our film is set in a futuristic world just after a giant solar flare/geomagnetic storm has wiped out all electricity. The main focus is on the stories of 3 particular people affected by the loss of electricity and shows the effects that it had on their lives, shown through a number of interviews and dramatisations of events. Our 3 characters include: a facebook addict whom after the flare suffers major withdrawal symptoms and shows her recovery, an online dater that loses contact with his beloved partner that he struggles to talk to in real life, and a representation of the average citizen that relies upon the news and communication companies for information about the happenings of the world and to keep in contact with his sister who tragically dies in an earthquake.

We chose characters that had potential to be quite humorous to our audience and chose to film in the mockumentary style as it allowed us to portray a lot of character as well as the information we needed in a light hearted way whilst still leaving our message quite obvious to make sure it is not forgotten.

Our First Project - 2012

So basically we were thrown right in the deep end with this project, we have been given the task of making something either based on a network (like the internet for example),  that looks into information surrounding a particular network or just creating an entirely new network all together. Personally I like the sound of delving into the creation of a new network or at least alternative networks to the existing networks we have.

My group for this project had been sorted a week beforehand after being sick that Monday and quickly organising a few people to work with out of fear of being stuck with a terrible group if we were given a brief that day, so basically picked out the people I wanted to work with. Those people were : Tim Haines, Lucy Tang, and Edrian Santiago.

We spent the first half of the week planning what we wanted to do and explored all sorts of different networks, things like biological networks like the circulatory system and how the human body is a centralized network where blood flows because of the heart and without the flow of blood our brain wont function and we die, we looked at creating theoretical pump systems placed strategically in the body to create possible "backup hearts". We also looked at pathogens and disease spreading through networks and the concept of chain reactions through the Rube Goldberg machine. We looked at a few examples of the Rube Goldberg devices including the video below.

Most of these ideas though all seemed to lack the potential to last an entire semester and the group as a whole was really struggling to grasp a concept to create for both parts of the semester ( It didn't help that with a lot of the biological networks we all had very little base knowledge surrounding our ideas). Due to this we decided to push aside these ideas and look at the concept  of creating an alternative network system to the current digital and electronic based networks we have at present.

I had been thinking about creating alternatives to the email and digital communication networks we so easily take for granted, that if we had an electrical shortage for some reason, that whole system would be compromised. I was beginning to think of ways of delivering messages that didn't involve electricity, the obvious hydro and solar power thoughts came to mind as well as air flow but also decided to think a little bit out side the box and look into rocket power!

The project however is going to last a whole semester so the first half of it will be based on justifying the alternate network system, through the use of a short film or documentary highlighting the reliance that modern society has on electrical and digital networks and creating a fictional environment in which there are no longer any digital networks.

.....AND WE"RE BACK!

Okay, we're back for the second year of my creative technologies course and going straight into a new project. For those of you that aren't involved with the creative technologies course I have recently created a basic website that will also be showcasing some of my work, this will likely change throughout the course of the year but you are welcome to have a look at it if you follow the link below.

http://creativetechnologies.ac.nz/BCT/2011CLASS/B_Cornelius/BenCornelius.html

We'll keep this short and sweet for now for those of you who have been here before, but for any new viewers, this is basically a blog used to show my projects and thought processes as well as day to day events that occur whilst studying AUT's Bachelor of Creative Technologies Degree. For more info on the degree you can follow this link to find out more.

Enough of that though, lets get to the interesting stuff...