Jul
19
Designing my own ARG (post-mortem)
So this summer I am teaching at the Academic Talent Development Program (ATDP), hosted by UC Berkeley, as usual. And as usual, the class meets MWF, with one Friday falling on July 4th. The program's policy is to cancel the July 4th session and make it up at a later date. I was struggling to think of something fun for our class to do at this make-up session, since the computer lab we are usually assigned would be unavailable.
Originally I wanted to take them on a field trip, but the only viable candidate (the San Jose Tech Museum) was prohibitively far away. So instead, I came up with the seemed-sane-at-the-time idea of designing an alternate reality game for the students to play, revolving around the UC Berkeley campus. The class would be split up into groups of 4-6, each led by a TA, and given a laptop from ATDP's mobile computer lab for accessing the online portion.
It took me about two to three weeks to come up with the entire game, from the puzzles to storyline to actually planting online hooks and goals. I looked at some existing ARGs for inspiration, but for the most part I think the game is fairly original (at least I think so -- I admit I did not do very much indepth research).
The day before yesterday (07/18) was the make-up session where the game actually took place and I was relatively pleased with the results. In general, I think the puzzles might have been a little on the tougher side, but that did not stop a couple groups from steamrolling through it anyway.
Some notes on the process of designing TAJA (TIC And Java Adventure -- the instructor of the Java class wanted his class to do it too, since he was afflicted with the same make-up day woes as us)...
Continue reading "Designing my own ARG (post-mortem)"...
posted at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | design, games, internet
Jul
8
Elevator Park
Finally. :P Elevator Park.
This was my final project for CTIN 544. Basically I just had this idea for a maze of elevators, with famous characters running amok within... and whenever you encountered said famous person, you'd hear their theme song, only it'd be "elevator muzak" style. I originally used this idea for the "movie map" assignment, but because what I came up with was so completely lackluster compared to the original concept (which I really liked), I revamped the whole thing and made it my final project, since the last assignment's instructions were kind of free-for-all.
I was pleased with it, but didn't have time to do stick figures (had little blocks) and had a bizarre bug with some of the Rider logic.
After the semester was over, I vowed to remedy these things and finally got around it. So I fixed the bug (had to rewrite allllll my Rider logic in order to pin it down, grargh) and put in some extremely mediocre walking stick figures, so now it's at a state in which I don't mind posting it. There's still some weird behavior with Riders, but very few and far between now... and not quite worth tracking down. >_<
Considering I don't know jack about animating in Flash (or... in anything else, for that matter), I'm relatively satisfied with what I learned. x_X (Thanks Brandi, for helping me figure out what I was doing wrong with multiple animations in one movie clip. :x )
For the record, I did not do the music arrangements... my friend Sam Pierce did, incidentally the same guy who does the WoW machinima that I've plugged previously.
posted at 11:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | ctin 544, flash, music
Jul
5
Air Hockey Robot
Robot that can play air hockey.
Good defender, not so good at offense. But the most interesting thing was how it plays completely differently from a human. Because a human would be moving their paddle back and forth depending on where the puck is... that's just how we work. But you can see that the robot automatically moves its paddle across to the other side from the puck, just because it knows it's going to be after it bounces off the wall.
posted at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | ai, robotics, video
Jun
26
is.god anyone?
Holy %&#$.
Web regulators Thursday voted to allow the creation of thousands of new domain names, from .paris to .Pepsi, in one of the biggest shake-ups in Internet history, a French web official said.
Under the new system, the web's 1.3 billion users would be able from 2009 to buy an unlimited number of generic addresses based on common words, brands or company names, cities or proper names.
Internet body approves domain name big bang.
That's going to be just insane...
posted at 8:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | internet
Jun
11
Game Designer Wishes
Um, I haven't actually read it yet (wanted to plug it first), but it's probably enlightening! Article at 1up.com...
Three Wishes: Game Genie Grants Developers Their Hearts' Desires.
"Dear developer," our offer went, "if you could, at the wave of a magic wand, overcome some technological hurdle in game development, what would it be? And more important, what would it allow you to do that you can't do today? Ultimately, this is about you making the games you want to make. You can make one wish, or you can make three." Seventeen prominent gamemakers wished away, and in the process, revealed what troubles they face today as well as the trajectory the medium might take tomorrow.
[edit] Actually not as fantastic as I thought it would be, though still a decent read. Too many of the developers wanted brain-imaginings-to-reality tools (come on... who doesn't want that...).
But leave it up to Will Wright to want something as mundane (?) as perfect pathfinding. O.o
