Posts Tagged → design
Revisit: IPC Reading: Visual Intelligence
I love this quickie from my ITP class!
November 5th, 2007 in “the TECH of Jen Grier”:
Phantom limbs… a strange concept I haven’t thought of since my old studies in meditation and the supernatural. The idea that your brain has such a part in conceiving senses as opposed to a direct route of feeling from what you to touch to what you know is definitely a disturbing thought. It all seems to happen too quickly for that to be true.
The “bunny taps” really got me. The premise is that you can tap two points across a distance on your body – say your arm – and feel a tap between those points, as if the sensation “hopped” across the distance. This happens with fairly quick taps. It’s a fascinating phenomenon of sensation.
Friend Code!
Just to ride on the recent DS/WarioWare high, I finally got Tim to bring my wireless router back to me so I could download all of those Ninsoft games.
My friend-code is 2751 3945 0117 and my nickname is Jenothy. Please give me yours so we can start sharing games and whatnot!
P.S.: I accidentally tasted Bitter Yuck! spray this week. Yes, the spray that is intended for CATS. I’ve never tasted something so horrible and so difficult to get the taste out of my mouth. Yuck for serious! I can’t believe it doesn’t work on my cats. Perhaps I should make a microgame about it as a catharsis.
WarioWare D.I.Y. Love
I’ve become engrossed with this game/tool. I blazed through all of the tutorials, including the advanced “Assembly Dojo”, and have almost finished all of the freelance jobs. As much as I just enjoy doing it, I wanted to see more whiz-bang moments for completing the tutorials and jobs. Seeing a new record/song in the store didn’t really feel like enough. I felt like there was so much more content in the previous WarioWare games. Yes, it’s slighly unfair because this is chock full of tools for making and sharing, but I don’t have any buddies to share with yet. As a single-player experience, I was expecting more to happen (without making my own game) for these smart ancillary tasks.
Perhaps it will open up once I’ve submitted my own totally fresh “In Wonder” game. (Liquid wouldn’t fit.) I’ve also gotten into the habit of making extremely detailed sprites, which makes me wonder if I actually have some kind of artistic talent. I’ve always thought about getting a small tablet, but I never felt justified in doing so. I’m lucky to have many artists in my life, even for personal projects, but WarioWare asks you to make art – now! – so I’ve tried. And tweaked. And become obsessed with my limited palette. And patterns. And how to make the right shadow using the comic tools (screentones, if you know what I mean). I slowly went from the I-don’t-care-about-art-Player who would deliberately make a blob and two spots for a face to recreating Pikachu and Ghastly for two of the last jobs in the last batch. Accurately (as far as 32×32 or 64×64 pixels will allow me, I forget how big those were). With shading and perspective.
I’ll see if I can post pictures tomorrow. I’m really proud of them, to say the least.
Oh, about the actual game making: I have started my first all-me, no-tutorial game. It’s in a semi-realistic style. I was thinking about making sad/serious minigames. For this one, it’s a boy, alone in his barely-lit room, looking depressed. I was going to make the start command “Contemplate Futility” or something along those lines (the above has too many characters and wouldn’t fit). The music is already simple/ultra sad. I’m not sure what the action is, or if there should be nothing (no in-game response) to do. Just… the direct command, to the player, to empathize. I think that’s a shocking change from the usual lighthearted and quirky tone of microgames.
Can you make a stunning emotional experience in 4 seconds or less? …Why not?
Revisit: Observing in NYC: Part II
I forgot that there was a second part to my previous TECH post!
September 22nd, 2007 in “the TECH of Jen Grier”:
Tom and I returned to Whole Foods for a second round of observation. We wanted to look into viable options for improving the system already in place for checking-out.
What I realized that was not readily apparent before:
- There are two sides! The express-lane side has five lanes while the regular checkout lane side only has four.
- The “regular speed” side was much more patient and calm. They also seemed to understand the system much better, and were generally a bit more oriented than their express counterparts.
- I was able to sneak an overhead video of the express lane! It’s a little horrible, but perhaps it’ll give some additional perspective.
I observed both this past Thursday. You can see my results for that day on GoogleDocs.
My statistical summary of both days follows:
Average Confidence Level: 2.147
People who looked at the hanging LCD: 85/109 (78.0%)
People who looked at the sign with information on the register locations: 2/89 (2.25%)
People who looked to a staffperson for help: 35/89 (39.33%)
People who looked at the blinking register lights: 45/109 (41.28%)
Was the person disoriented with the location of the register?: 43/109 (29.45%)
Did the staff person ask the customer to take their turn?: 14/52 (26.92%)Tom summed it up in this PDF. Some height adjustments and better use of the LCD and colors were big on our list, along with better directions for customers to the registers.
Overall, this study reminded me that even the most fabulous technology doesn’t amount to much without serious design study. I’m glad we had a chance to check this place out!
Revisit: Why Canst Thou Save Thine Game?
Sometimes, my ire gets the best of me. I’m still frustrated by this problem despite the two years or so that have passed since then.
February 29th, 2008 on “Interaction Faction”:
I own a DS Lite. It’s a great little portable system, with tons of cool titles like Contact and New Super Mario Bros., yet there is a fundamental problem with many of these games.
Why, good people, am I unable to SAVE at any point in the game on a PORTABLE device?
What developer has the nerve to overlook this seemingly necessary feature of a gaming environment in which power off can occur at notably unexpected times? Where shorter play time is inherent to one’s commute?
Please don’t get me wrong – I can take a good Wario Ware fix like the next gamer, but is that my only option?
Let’s look at a fairly complex game with, absolutely, the ability to save at nearly any point: Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Any turn in which you had character control, you could immediately save and power down, no questions asked, and arrive at the very same place in battle. Did I mention that saving is always possible outside of battle as well?
The leads me, naturally, to approach the DS as another system more likely to stay home than travel for fear that I play on my weekly commute, get through a small, yet worthwhile chunk of game, but find myself unable to save when I must depart and re-engage the world we live in. Futility at its finest.
Game developers, I beg you, PLEASE implement a save function at any time. Yes, I’ll leave out cutscenes if you throw it on every non-battle menu. We can even negotiate what time of battle engagement, if you like. For other genres, this is not yet standard!
Raise your portable system of choice high! Fight to save your game whenever you feel empowered to!
Revisiting/Learning
I suppose there comes a time when every Master’s degree-wielding warrior wants to take their thesis and burn it to a crisp. I think I may be beyond that point, though, so a revisit may be in order.
My thesis was an audio engine that used Flash, Javascript, and Java all at once… on one page! Essentially, there was a very smart Java library that I wanted to use, but I wasn’t savvy enough to port it into Flash. On the one side, it was better for Flash – no slow-downs due to processing my crazy sound layering/grouping/composition demands, but on the other… well, let’s say that testing wasn’t pleasant. It eventually worked, but it’s not ideal to have multiple conduits between your game and the sound that sound be occurring at about the same time.
In other words, I felt like my thesis was scrappable not long after I completed it. In the future, I don’t know if I want to gear an audio engine like the one I am envisioning towards Flash or, well… Unity.
Yes, Unity. I’m trying to pick that language up in my “spare” time. There’s a possibility that a certain artist I know will create gorgeous 3D objects if I make a game that is ready to receive it. I know this is possible in Flash, but I’m already seeing full-screen 3D browser games in Unity that have me floored. Gorgeous rendering… in a browser. I almost can’t handle it.
In a totally different area of my brain, I also completed an undergraduate thesis in Greek music theory a few years ago. I think it’s worth looking over that for some usefulness, too.
