(Click on the images above to view a larger version).
Key people: Gill, Dani & Dick from Watershed. Today was exciting – the first day of the residency. Met with Dani at 9sih and set-up the room. Ali and I spent the morning talking through how we would manage the next few days, about the work that we had been doing before and how these fit together.
Pretty quickly we established where to start – and with un-erring optimism set out to design the GPS lay out. Using the Mobile Bristol Editor we drew out the spaces in which we wanted to operate, downloaded it on to the iPAQ. It worked first time! We walked round the Habourside while the iPAQ via the GPS tracked us on the screen. The idea that this complex technology could come together so easily seems so surprising…
Day one of the residency flew by, the second day however has been tougher. Linking the Flash interface proved more difficult than the GPS aspect of the game. Ali has been a complete star and at the last minute he worked out how to do it - we now have the beginnings of a very basic first prototype.
The structure of the game is evolving as we discuss different techniques to encourage people to want to participate. We have been thinking about a system of rewards for and competition between players. So far the consensus is that the simplest and most instantly recognisable mechanism for scoring is time-based one. This way we can hide time bonuses and pitfalls and create a scoreboard of top times
What a brilliant day! This morning we started to make the game playable, adding all the mechanisms that make it interesting and engaging… It has been a complete turnaround from yesterday when at points the whole task seemed very daunting.
Ali and I had lunch with Tom, John (both from Hewlett Packard) and Cliff (from the University of Bristol) where we quizzed them about technical details. Spoke to Tom Clark, the benefactor of this development residency, who seemed to be very positive and happy about the direction it is taking.
Later on in the day John came over and demonstrated different ways of connecting GPS devices to iPAQs and discussed the pros and cons of each method. The best bit of today was last thing when we tested the draft prototype – and it worked perfectly!! Ali has done a really great job and was an excellent person to work with: v. chilled out, creative and knowledgeable.
Today was good. Have spent most of the day trying to describe the game to different people… with varying success: the best way to understand it is to actually try playing it. There is still lots to do and an important part of tomorrow will involve visualising this structure so that people can try out the prototype.
Am really enjoying the Watershed-vibe – lots of interesting people congregating in one place! Inbetween getting intimidated by the Flash Actionscript Dick introduced me to lots of people, including Nathan, Matt and Guy from the ‘Jungulator’. Attended an excellent Super 8 event in the evening called ‘Cineformation’. Had a drunken conversation with Nick, Cathy and Dick which ranged from the exciting permutations of digital art to the football scores!
Last day of the residency. This has been a brilliant opportunity, and
really great fun too! It has been such a success – I have now got a fully
functioning prototype, that I can play with and develop.
I spent today experimenting with the structure – which bits could I safely
delete with out the whole thing breaking? I always find that this method
is the best way to learn – by pulling something apart and then trying
to re-construct
it. Obviously I made lots of back-up copies (just incase), but it didn’t
stop the experience being a white-knuckle ride: as in ‘oops, have I accidently
removed
the most important element of the whole game?’ and then, more importantly:
‘hmm, now where exactly did I store that back up copy!?!’