Mungeon Update
Mungeon Progress
I. Mungeon Production Schedule
II. Mungeon Project Overview
III. Mungeon Dungeon Asset Doc
IV. Mungeon Avatar Doc
Feel free to leave comments on the Wiki itself if you find time to have a read.
January 27, 2008
April 17, 2007
Call Paul Thesis Proposal Outline
April 10, 2007
Absurd Designs
Absurd Designs for Class
The Bionic Apple Picker, Toy Dog Purse, and Stilt o Wheels
The Bionic Apple Picker- What can speed up that apple picking job of yours? Bionic Arms, thats what.
Toy Dog Purse- I got a Toy Poodle, and she's getting her head caught in my purse's. Why not put a porthole in that Gucci bag? Stylish anddddddddddddddddd dog friendly.
Stilt-O-Wheels- The Newest fad for Venice Beach freaks.
Rocket Kite- For big kids (not large-old) with bad knees Having trouble running and getting that kite up? Not a windy day? Get that kite up in the air- WITH ROCKETS.
PBJ Robot- I'm sick of getting sticking jelly on my hands. I wish I had a robot to make my sandwhiches for me! Well, here you go.
DYI Acupuncture- Company insurance doesn't cover non-traditional medicines? Don't have time to study acupuncture and get a license? Are you a sadist with leg cramps? Then pop a few needles in the pre-located holes and relieve the pain!
Painting Assistant- Do you have no talent in art? Well, you don't need any. Not when you have an automatic arm guiding your inner Rembrandt.
Off Kilter Clones- For helping with chores you don't want to do. Clone yourself. Why not? Maybe.
Genetic Screening PDA- Skip the Genetic Counselor, find out what possible genetic combinations you and your partner are capable of. Who knows, you might end up saving some time and money by getting a divorce or breaking up.
Genetic PDA Detail
March 18, 2007
Thesis Prep- Schedule
February 12, 2007
Thesis Mad Lib
I am designing a mobile guide to Los Angeles because I want to demonstrate how to access information about a particular part of Los Angeles in order to provide an audience with the experience of ubiquitious information gathering.
OR
I am making this mobile guide to Los Angeles because I want to show whether a phone service could provide a temporary solution to the sluggishness of mobile internet connectionsor in order to help the viewer understand that they can access information at any time.
OR
I am researching Los Angeles because I want to find out whether I can provide users with a historical, informational, and cultural portrait of Los Angeles through the eyes of a native in order to help my listeners find out that Los Angeles is one of the greatest cities on Earth.
January 24, 2007
Week 3- Thesis Prep Ideas
1. An area of interest you’ve identified:
Journey of the Self, Heroes, Los Angeles Traffic, Forgotten Los Angeles
2. A couple of questions (stated in the form of a question) and opportunities suggested by your area of interest – what do you (or a potential viewer) want or need to know about this area?
A) What is a hero? How is a hero defined in interactive media, today? Is it different from that of literature and film? Can game heroes be inspiring the same way literary, cinematic and television heroes can be? Can they be as heroic as today’s heroes: mothers, fathers, politicians, artists, musicians etc?
B) Is Los Angeles traffic a solveable problem? What will happen when Los Angeles Traffic will become unsustainable? Will we ever get a metro? How will the city handle this? Who is working on the solution right now?
C) With the expansion of Los Angeles eastward and northward, what will happen to the city center as we know it? Where is the Los Angeles city center today? Will areas of Los Angeles continue to be buried and forgotten like Bunker Hill, Angeleno Heights, Temple-Beaudry?
3. Identify a method or process that can be used to explore your question.
A) Examination of all relevant heroes from interactive media. Research the Hero’s Journey- relate it to game heroes and game design. After coming to a conclusion, design a game with a hero worth looking up to.
B) Examination of all policy being done about Los Angeles Traffic. Research on the history of the Freeway system. Examination of Population growth and car selling done in LA county.
C) Examination of all gentrification going on in Los Angeles- examination of major migration of Los Angelenos towards Valencia, Victorville and Apple Valley.
4. One to three actual topics or subjects that address your interests/questions.
A) Literature- The Hero’s Journey
Biographies- Real Heroes: Churchill, Lincoln, FDR, Pope John Paul II, Moses
Games: Identify Relevant Heroes, create some gauge
B) Newspapers, Public Policy Meetings, LADOT (Los Angeles Department of Traffic), SigAlert
C) Newspapers, Real Estate Guides, Library Research on old Los Angeles
5. Pair your topics with a genre and an audience: Not just “a game” but the type of game and the type of player you envision.
A) This project could easily be a research paper, an exhibit, or a game that strives to have a "hero" worth looking up to.
B) I imagine this project being a software appliaction that uses real time traffic information. Possible methods of interaction would be altering the flow of traffic, and re-tooling routes of emergencies on the freeways.
C) This project could be an exhibit coupling video, pictures, and constructed kit of Los Angeles. I'd like the user to be able to physically interact with the project as well- utilizing digging tools, magnyfying glasses, gnobs and a variety of doo-hickeys to explore the subject. The more hands-on the better.
6. Commit to a term (participant, viewer, player, reader, user, audience) that you will use throughout the project.
User
October 12, 2006
Bag Man Interface
A shoddy attempt. But I like some of the Functionality- sort of like Flickr.
September 6, 2006
Sketches- Defining an Entry Point and the land through the aqueduct
Entry Point
The LA River to an Aqueduct in Valencia
The Aqueduct
The Land
Some Evil- BUms/Trolls under the 2 Freeway (Glendale/Echo Park)
September 4, 2006
532- World Building Assignment- First Step
So these past two weeks I've been thinking about what excited me as a child. Mainly, magical beasts and fantastical archiecturally impossible castles. I picked up a great Beastiary by Borges and a best of MC Escher book- which both played a role in the creation of the movie Labyrinth. Everything came flooding back- fond memories of Basilisks and Mandrigoras as well as David Bowie in glamtastic tights.
I'll cut to the chase now, when I was a kid- I desperately wanted to visit these worlds. I would check out the same 5 castle books week after week in the summer, and imagine myself roaming their halls and questing with valiant heroes. And I've decided, I wanted to go back.
I envision my time in my world as a travel log much like Gulliver's Travels- where I visit several enchanted lands, where I will be sending letters back from. Just like Gulliver, I will act as a cartographer and armchair anthropologist.
Of course, every mystical realm needs a rabbit hole to enter from. The world has been thorougly explored and only the absurd can satisfy my reasons for escaping the regular absurdity of everyday life.
My point of entry to my first land, is the Los Angeles river which runs a block away from my house. Follow it north long enough, and you'll end up in Valencia. Whenever my family drove up to Magic Mountain in Valencia, we would pass this long aqueduct that would wind into the hills. I always wanted to a) slide down the aqueduct and b) crawl inside a giant tube on the top of the mountain.
I imagine if I did so now, I'd end up in the first of my lands. With water being an important resource in this town, I could easily see how its heavily guarded passageways could also be a heavily guarded entrance to unknown places. Why not? If a door in a random office hallway lead to John Malkovich's head- then a strange aqueduct can lead vertiably anywhere.
My unamed realm is a large valley. One that the San Joachim Valley would look like without water syphoned from outside sources. Before the land was sequestered off for farming, it would undergo extremem seasonal changes. From a desert in the summer to a marshy swamp like land in the winter and spring. Aquatic Animals and fish would bury themselves in the ground, and hibernate throughout the summer and fall only to appear at first flooding in the spring time.
In this valley roam large Ostrich like creatures- 20 meters high. On their backs people live in tents. During their day, the people come down from the creatures back and tend to daily life. At night they climb back on, and sleep soundly as the giant birds pasture.
I've drawn a few mock-ups which I will post tommorow- my camera battery is dead.
February 27, 2006
Ron Burgundy Bot
http://www.pandorabots.com/pandora/talk?botid=ea6beed84e36542a
I decided to model a bot after my favourite anchor man: Ron Burgundy. I figured because he pretty much is a robot (in terms of having a one track sort of mind) that he'd make a decent chat bot.
With that said, I've filled his database with several of his more famous witticisms. After a line or two the usual ALICE bot parameters take hold, however that doesn't mean Ron's out of character. Most the after conversation becomes something you might believe Ron Burgundy to say. In other words, he talks like a moron.
In terms of the design process behind creating the Ron Burgundy bot I felt most challenged with trying to keep conversation threads going. For example, after you ask him "how are you", he'll tell you. You might inquire about Greek Gods afterwards (you'll see), he'll reply and then.... staleness. Where does one go? This is the most challenging aspect of the project. Stil, Ron works more or less.
I have to say that Pandora Bot, with its limitation, is a remarkable piece of software for a n00b like me. In terms of this changing the face of NPC interaction in games- I would have to say that we are at a plateau. At the most, NPCs can be like alice prompting us to ask them questions. However, they won't be able to come to us and start a conversation- which would lead to a more realistic type of NPC- someone you might believe for a second is coming to you for help or something. As it works in games- NPCs are there for the player to garner information from and perhaps use to accomplish a goal. They don't necessarily need to be belivable- but when written correctly and smartly they can be quite endearing aka the Green Tentacle from Day of the Tentacle.
Still, as at the moment were at a wall.
October 14, 2005
Video Prototyping Brainstorm Ideas
Video Prototype Ideas
Team 1- Jorge, Paul and Mike B.
Mike Brazil likes pizza
1) Ubiquitious Cameras
- Couples in Relationships- Commuter Relationship Cameras
- Stalking through remote activated cameras (embedded in your partner's clothing)
2) In/Out GAme communication devices
- You can communicate with people within a game world from the outside
- Ex. World Of Warcraft- u can send a message to someone's cell phone from in the game
-Ex send them video
3) Two Way Television
- Cameras within TV and the broadcasters can SEE YOU (as well as you see them)
- Video Conferencing on a MAINSTREAM LEVEL
4) Appliances that respond to you
- Bed that makes itself
- Toothpaste that re-caps itself
- Stoves that cook whatever you want (like in Pee Wee's Playhouse)
5) Game systems that track your head movements and adjusts the camera accordingly
- B4 game starts it maps your eye locations (kind of like the Eye Toy)
6) Genetic Data PDAs
- Store data about yourself inside your body's cell
- Special devices (like PDAs) are used to transmit data about urself to banks, credit card companies, people ur interested in dating (like a genetic compatibility list)
October 11, 2005
Neat Research on Games at our own Annenberg School of Communications
http://ascweb.usc.edu/asc.php?pageID=333
I just learned this was going on just down Fig on Adams. It's great to see some critical studies research on gaming! I'd love to find a way for us IMD peeps to collaborate.
September 2, 2005
Reflections on Expo 2005 and large global gatherings in general
Scott mentioned the ridiculously long lines for different exhibits at the World Expo. I wonder how often people from different nations used part of that time to get to know each other. It'd be interesting to know if and how language barriers were transversed.
The reason I bring this idea up is that from my own experience it was often difficult to reach out and talk with strangers, let alone people from different countries. As a teenager, I attended World Youth Day in France in 1997 and Rome in 2000. [World Youth Day is a week long global pilgrimage of Catholic Youth that culminates with an evening with the pope.] Something I regret is not taking the time to talk to people from other countries. The opportunity was ample. There were usually herds of people walking from one gathering to the next. In particular, Rome was often at a standstill and it took several hours to reach each destination. I distinctly remembering being next to a group of Japanese pilgrims for two hours and not speaking a word to them.
At the time I blamed my shyness on language barriers, but it was most likely my immaturity as a teenager that kept me and the other American pilgrims I traveled with from iniating conversation with others. We didn't have a problem with other English speaking pilgrims from the UK and Canada. Perhaps, we were also a bit arrogant.
Regardless, I imagine mobile technology addressing these issues in the future. As Jorge posted, there are ways we could use mobile tech to help people a) kill the wait time in lines and b) communicate with each other through a common medium. Perhaps, it could be a game. Some sort of digital treasure hunt?
Interesting to think about. I wonder if Disney would jump on something like that to combat that wait time for the re-modleled Space Mountain.
August 29, 2005
The Bill of Player's Rights
I read this article on Gamasutra this morning entitled the "Bill of Player's Rights" by Ernest Adams. Of course, he is specifically referring to electronic gaming. It makes for an interesting read on some design decisions that should be thought over when creating a video game.
In particular, I gave a hearty "hear hear" after reading this section:
"The Right to Make Decisions. There's a carnival game called “Whack-a-Mole.” You stand in front of a table with a lot of round holes in it, and at irregular intervals a mechanical mole pops up at random from one of the holes. You have to hit it with a big rubber mallet before it disappears again. You get points for every mole you hit, and the game ends when you have missed a certain number of them. There's no decision-making at all. That might be OK as a three-minute, one-dollar game for little kids, but as a video game, it won't do.
The right to make decisions is related to Sid Meier's definition of gameplay as “a series of interesting choices.” Personally I think his definition is a bit too vague, but if a game is nothing but a series of physical challenges with no decision-making, it's lame. It takes almost no design effort to incorporate some decision-making into a game. With “Whack-a-Mole,” all you have to do is make some moles worth more points than others; then the player has to decide whether the optimal strategy is to wait for the high-value moles to be sure of getting one, or whack away at everything and risk missing the valuable ones. "
How many games are designed with the mantra: And if they collect 'x' number of items, they can unlock a game art gallery? *Cough, cough- Robots for Console/PC" Interesting decisions and rewards are essential to games.
The Bill of Player's Rights is also a more refined musing on game design than the Gamer's Manifesto. Still, the Gamer's Manifesto has some decent points regardless of its crudeness. Its funny too, in a juvenile sorta way..