IDAT 106: Plymopoly - Environmental & Contextual Aspects

In our current group work, the game is based on the Monopoly idea, but adapted to suit commerce in a real-life environment, with a vision to boost commerce in the area, and to increase the use of QR codes for delivering promotions. As our project takes place in the city, ideas pulled from the original game had to be adapted to suit retail so then delivery of promotions can be delivered effectively, and also to add an aspect to the game where both gameplay and specially-created offers are used.

Most of the time, the Plymopoly game takes place in shopping and commercial areas, which is a mixed environment because the main areas in the city are indoors and outdoors, and also have varying degrees of footfall, which depends on many factors such as weather, economic and other events that take place at the same time, such as student nights that take place occasionally in Drake Circus.

Drake Circus has an estimated 74 stores, whilst the main shopping districts of New George Street, Armada Way and side street Cornwall Street have an estimated 150 stores and businesses. Together, they make up about 224 shops and businesses inside the main city centre districts. Drake Circus is inside, whilst New George Street and Armada Way are mostly outside, with the latter having an inside section below Sainsbury's.

The online environment depends on how the connectivity is affected, and how reliable it is. Because of the mobile nature of the game, connectivity is required, and the game would not work if connectivity is not available, so 3G and available Wi-fi is a major pre-requisite for participation as it needs to access the internet to read QR codes, update the status of properties and register leader board statistics. Also, a working camera built-in to the device is also required because the project relies on QR codes and applications that support QR code capturing. The websites that are going to be used in the project are optimised for smaller screens and will use less bandwidth, so then the project will be accessible to all, especially those that don't have an extensive mobile internet plan.

The game will take place in an environment where the amount of people movement is expected to be high, particularly in central areas. As nothing but QR codes and handheld devices (i.e. smartphones) are involved, there are no obstacles in regards to equipment placement that will occur in the project. The most tech-savvy are likely to be the biggest users of the project, although it will be expected that casual smartphone users would also take part as well.

(Main group blog about the project is at http://www.thelockwood.co.uk/idat209/. This posting will also be cross-posted there for collation with related postings.)

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.

Back to work: things to come

It's been quite a while since I've done an update, but rest assured, I had been busy working on the essay for IDAT108 and the phonics game for SOFT131 (both of which are now complete and are being submitted as of the date of publishing), in addition to starting off the IDAT107 animatic. Christmas has been very good, and although I do miss those homemade chili con carnes and quality Indian takeaways (although I'm pretty sure that somewhere in Plymouth could fill in the gap), I'm glad to be back to uni for many things which will be interesting, and talking of which, there are a lot of things to come, including, but not limited to:

• Bumper video for IDAT107 after the animatic
• Life-sized board game project for IDAT106, crossover with Year 2s
• Beginning work on 3D
• Practicals in IDAT108
• Custom Flash game for IDAT102 (the racing game was just a taster)
• ...and much more

Also, I will start sailing soon, every Wednesday (since there is now a huge gap between SOFT131 on Tuesdays and IDAT107 on Thursdays) and some Saturdays. Looks like 2011 is set to be very eventful and interesting at the same time.

IDAT 106: Addressable Technologies (crossover with IDAT101 for the research part of the blogging)

For my assignment, I chose to look into addressable technologies. Addressable technologies, depending on one's definition, is a technology that sends information to the receiving end (such as a computer or another central monitoring system. Although there are many uses for addressable technologies, the most prominent use of addressable technologies in a practical application are fire alarms, in which most buildings of the University have. In my application for IDAT101, the installation will make good use of it for influencing the ambient lighting and possibly a video screen behind the DJ booth.

Link to research: http://bit.ly/idat106research

IDAT 106: Fun with Terminal

Today, we are having fun with one feature that has only arrived on the Mac 10 years ago but featured on UNIX and Linux for decades, Terminal. We are doing many things on Terminal, such as changing directories, communicating with other computers via echo with IP addresses, and learning that we can use it for when we start to work on Arduino cards - programmable boards that can be used for anything, but I'm not too sure if it can do the same things as what iOS apps can do at the moment, we'll have to see...

IDAT 106: The weird and wonderful world of RSS

Today, we have found many interesting, weird and unusual RSS feeds. I have found one about beer and fail images (you know, those ones that illustrate failure in unusual circumstances and funny stuff), which I didn't know they actually existed!

IDAT 101, IDAT 102, IDAT 107, IDAT 108, SOFT 131, IDAT 106 and sailing

Last week, we was busy at work on many things ready for more stuff to come: IDAT 102 saw us looking more into CSS, IDAT 101 saw us starting to think about public spaces (our group's example was again the nightclub scenario), IDAT 108's lecture turned into a quiz about computer history and the seminar saw another debate; this time it was about our favourite social network, Facebook (all of us, like myself, were pretty much pro, so an anti-argument was very difficult), whilst IDAT 106 was different in the other weeks that the Y2s weren't there, so instead we looked more into the use of Processing and a prosumer HDV camera until the fire alarm saw us evacuating the Babbage building (our domain for most of the time) and disrupting the session for more than 20 minutes, until we finally returned. IDAT 107 was cancelled last week, but we will be doing more with Adobe Illustrator in the coming weeks until we move onto the next bit. SOFT 131's tutorial started last week to a hot room in the Smeaton Building when we then started to explore the world of NetBeans and PHP on Windows Server 2003 workstations, courtesy of Lord Sugar's Viglen (like most of the Windows PCs in the University are). This weekend, I went sailing in Roadford Lake with the Sailing and Powerboat Club (Sailpower) and it was such a good experience, until the tent got damp! That's all folks, more will be coming soon!

IDAT 101, IDAT 108, SOFT 131 and IDAT 106: the 411 on everything!

As the week progresses on, I have some more news for you:

IDAT 101 saw us learn more about the industry and about the usage of spaces for projects (in our case, interactive disco in the form of a sequencer pad in a club environment), whilst IDAT 108 saw us learn more about what a computer was before the ones we know today existed (it was in fact a person, believe it or not!). SOFT 131 featured more about HTML, holidays in Kenya and India and more to come in this module.

Finally, in IDAT 106, we got to play on the Wiimotes, in which thanks in part to Nintendo's uncanny (considering that they like proprietary stuff very much) decision to use Bluetooth for connectivity, we can do anything with them, even control digital art projects!

That's all folks!