IDAT 106: Large-scale Monopoly-style interactive game and initial ideas

As part of a joint project with the year 2s, we have to produce a large scale interactive version of a popular board game, which incorporates many features whilst at the same time addresses a current situation, where we have an opportunity to change it, be it worldwide or local. For my group, we decided to do a Monopoly-based game where we will set it in our city of Plymouth and use it to brainstorm solutions to the economical problem that the city suffers from, particularly due to the loss of air links owing to a drop in passengers (which later lead to a call to have the runway extended at our local airport), and also because of business going bust with (although in places it's getting better) many places becoming vacant.

This gives us the perfect opportunity to attempt to draw in more commerce to help transform our city through the wonderful medium of IDAT. We are planning to base our game on web technologies and Flash, an interactive platform that is popular for dynamic information and animations, with a view to complete it within 8 weeks before the deadline, which will be due round the spring/summer time.

IDAT 102: The completed result of Flennis!

After days of trying to weave my way through thousands and thousands of code, and then trying other solutions (in terms of pre-existing examples that are similar to what I'm already doing) online, I've then found an excellent solution that worked better than mine. It turned out that the game needed a bit more of a 'hands-on' approach, and the keyboard input didn't work out good for the game, so instead, I've changed to a mouse-based input that works by moving the mouse up and down on the tennis court to move the racket to hit the ball to the opponent. I've also made a few changes to the original design, which mostly involved moving the game's logo to the bottom left of the screen, rather than in the middle, to accommodate the 'Round's up' text, which occurs after either the player or the opponent reaches a score of 5. I've also included a clock at the bottom right-hand side of the court, which uses the system's time as external influence.

Also, the colour of the court has been changed to a warmer shade of green to match the astroturf/grass colour that most tennis courts have, and proper court markings have been added, in addition to a backdrop for the scoreboard to increase legibility of the numbers. I've also decided to ditch the graphical movie clips in favour of ActionScript-generated shapes because I wanted the game to be more lightweight, whilst at the same time maintaining the replay value of the original. As for the rest of the detail, I've done improvements to the game's source code to make it more challenging (smaller ball with a higher score limit, but at a slower FPS than the original to avoid it becoming a 'speed run', where the game is finished quickly without even realising the outcome).

In conclusion, the game came out as a result that I've expected from the start, but at the same time, it improved on what my original specification included.

You can play the game here: www.elnormo91.co.uk/Flennis.html

INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO PLAY: To move the paddle, move the mouse up or down. Try and get the ball behind the opponent to score.

Enjoy!

IDAT 102: Flennis concept drawing

Here's a drawing of my Flash game project so far:

As I've discovered that the collision test points would not be realistic on the handles of the tennis rackets, I decided to remove them, leaving only the upper part of the racket, which is the most obvious point of contact that rackets have when the ball strikes it. However, I don't think that the user would notice as the game is still as addictive as the Pong game was, and still is, in the domain of basic online games worldwide. The custom logo I designed for the game is just a backdrop of the court's astroturf surface, and therefore, does not affect the ball.

IDAT 102: It's pong! No it isn't! It's tennis! No it isn't! It's Flash tennis! Oh yes, in fact, it's Flennis!

As part of an assignment for IDAT102, I decided to go old school with a game that takes the classic side-scrolling table-tennis-based game to another level. As far as I know, I haven't seen any examples of existing Pong games that are themed around actual tennis. Yes, that's right, I've decided to create a game called 'Flennis', which is basically Flash tennis, but maintaining the simplicity and addiction of the classic game that used to grace arcades and homes back in the days before we had PlayStations, Xbox 360s, Nintendo Wiis and the like, but in the time of Atari, its originator, of course. The game uses keyboard control to move the bat up and down to deflect the ball towards the opponent by using collision detection to then make the 'bounce' effect. When the ball hits either the enemy's end or the player's end, the collision detection then registers a score for the enemy and the player, respectively.

At the same time, I'll be combining the look-and-feel of an actual tennis court with the retro look to fit in with the Atari heritage of the game's basis, but also making the game unique in style, and friendly to browser gamers, who like to play games inside their browser because of the convenience that web browsers offer, and the fact that in a work environment, during one's well-earned break, restrictions mean that everything may be restricted to a web browser, provided that Flash and JavaScript are turned on.

IDAT 102: Flash, boxes and things to come

Re-igniting old flames from the times that I've experimented with Flash back at college, we flock to Flash for the next assignment that will be coming up soon: developing a game.

In the meantime, we had a bit of a refresher. We made a box that flies around the screen (the software uses 'the stage' as a metaphor) by using a path. When publishing it to HTML, we discovered that it automatically creates a line of JavaScript that is extensive (not to mention confusing, unless you're fluent in it!) in the code, below the piece of code that references the source file in the same directory. We'll also be soon covering ActionScript 3.0 (I can hear more movie industry metaphors, best boy grip anyone?) during the course of the coming weeks.

IDAT 107: Photoshoppage time

As we soon start to begin another fine assignment, we practiced some tips and tricks to doctoring the ideal image. The ingredients we used for the practical were: one image of a series of skyscrapers, one large HD plasma screen and several starfish.

IDAT 107: Digital signature

During the course of a few weeks, we've been doing some Adobe Illustrator stuff. Part of our assignment is to design a digital signature by using fonts, scaling and colours but without stretching or distorting it.

For my digital signature, I have decided to use the font Myriad Pro because this represents my personality as very creative, clean, modern and minimalistic, which is kind of like Apple Inc.'s usage of the font throughout their products, literature and communication. The Norman part of the signature is emphasised in light-blue because it represents the modern-ness of the world and the Web 2.0 generation, which many people can relate to. Also, the 'A's are set in italic because this adds to the effect of the signature, and also highlights the difference between the double-storey 'A's of regular/bold and the script 'A's of italic/bold-italic.

IDAT 108: Most interesting debate ever? You be the judge

Today's seminar was interesting; we were debating about the morality of guns and whether or not it's either the person or the gun that does the killing. Despite today straying a bit off topic (given that it was supposed to be DAT and not a pro/anti-weapons forum), I came up with interesting points during the debate. Next week will see us starting to get ready for the big type (in other words, the essay!) which will bring back the golden days of writing excellent essays that managed to get me such a high grade in English back in secondary school. There's no doubt that later in the day in IDAT 107 we will get busy with my favourite part of Adobe's wonderful Creative Suite series, Illustrator! That's all for now folks!