This is my example however the original design was found from (CHIN2OFF - Deviant Art) and interpreted for my project. It was exactly what I was looking for, so it makes sense to recycle it to suit my needs. I give the guy credit! Took ages to make! - will be better with the interactivity and kinetic movement though.
The intro page will use the above question mark, which is built up of facts and consequences of downloading. After greater research into the area, I found that interactive text has more of an effect on the users Long Term Memory, meaning next time they go to download, perhaps this will trigger a memory of the website. The question mark is only in JPEG format at this time, but I am currently in the process of exporting into After Effects to begin the kinetic stage of development. I hope to have this completed by the end of this week, and then a final layout page.
Next week I'm off to take photographs for the Homepage background. The homepage will be built up of tiny images of teenagers holding up their favourite song, film or Television title, as though a photograph for a criminal. I feel this will get across the importance of the matter to my desired market. If you'd like to see a site which uses a similar (not exact) idea see here: but ignore the sexy old man! http://www.workingelement.com/#/site/our-work/still
Looking forward to this weeks PRP sessions, just to nail down what I'm actually going to do about wording the project I have in mind. He's an overview of my plans so far.
I'd like to consider the ways in which interactivity has improved (if it has) in schools and how students find working with interactive educational products in their academic studies. What subjects is it used in? What does the government put in for funding interactive products in schools? what products are used? How are they used? are there stronger products developed for specific subjects and is this having an effect on that subjects results?
I'd like to know where these developers are and whether they use online services or software type products in their work.
Possible title for PRP:
Can interactive products aid the education of primary school students?
I'd like to create and test artefacts within a school environment, both my own and others product development.
The Copyright Protection Society is starting a public information campaign that illustrates and explains what file sharing is, when and why it is illegal and also the consequences of being involved with this illegal activity. - need to ensure this is ALL included in content. Perhaps a page per item? Aimed at public, so needs to have a clear and understandable set of info for all.
Produce a micro-website that consists of five distinct pages and includes wellformed accessible WC3 validating css/xhtml and includes at least one interactive element. - interactive element, could be really clever here and create something which really involves and attracts the user. I've already considered some kinetic typography for the first page to capture the viewer, because admitedly, its not something which enthrals a viewer reading stacks of text.
My new Favourite site:
http://www.incredibox.fr/
For the site, I would like to use a character (or two) to represent the average downloader. This may invoke a more positive response to the awareness, and make the site more fun for a range of ages.
Been thinking somewhat over the weekend. We all love the effects of having fast broadband speeds, but surely there have been poor effects as well. Broadband must have made companies millions of pounds and saved excessive amounts of time over the past several years, however it also means that files can be transferred much faster, resulting in loss of sales due to the fact that music, television can be downloaded much faster than driving to the nearest town.
"Shared content on one network was worth about £12 billion per year according to the research commissioned by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP)."
"Creative industries provide about 8% of British GDP. Digital copying of their products resulted in the estimated loss of 4,000 jobs in 2004."
"It claimed that 70% of those aged 15 to 24 do not feel guilt about downloading music for free from the Internet and 61% of the age group do not feel they should have to pay for the music they listen to, according to a recent survey." -
Perhaps the last quote is one which catches my attention for this project. We have not been given an age group to aim the site at, perhaps on a whole? However, I feel the most important are those aged between 15-24. Attitude towards file sharing and its effects on peoples lives is clearly not something that one thinks about when illegal downloading. But it is effecting jobs and careers everywhere, and this is something that needs to change and be made clear to those guilty.
Just found an article on the site above, stating that from 2007 - 2008 the total downloads of download software such as Limewire, moved towards torrent software, because of the more advanced searching capabilities, safety from viruses and speed.
"Unsurprisingly, P2P applications are more frequently installed on home computers versus PCs at the workplace. Nevertheless, almost one out of five PCs at work (18%) have at least one P2P application installed. For home computer this is little over 1 in three (36%)"
It is clear that there is competition between these developers to become the hosts for these illegal downloads. Of course it is not anything to do with these companies, because they only create the software and don't offer downloads themselves, just the ability to download these hosted torrents, however there continuous updates, must trouble the people concerned with law enforcing illegal downloads :
"Up until today, LimeWire’s BitTorrent functionality has been rather limited, especially compared to the full-featured BitTorrent clients such as uTorrent, Transmission and Vuze. However, this is all about to change according to the LimeWire team.
LimeWire’s lead developer Sam Berlin told TorrentFreak that they’ve done a complete overhaul of their BitTorrent implementation. The newest release is already available in Beta and now uses Arvid Norberg’s Libtorrent under the hood, which is a significant improvement."
CASE:
"STOCKHOLM — A Swedish appeals court on Tuesday overturned a landmark file sharing ruling that forced an Internet service provider to reveal an Internet user's identity to five publishers. The ruling was the first one to be rendered on the basis of Sweden's new so-called "Ipred" law, which came into effect April 1 and gives copyright holders the right to require Internet service providers to reveal details of users who share files, paving the way for legal action. The five publishers had sued the Ephone Internet service provider in order to obtain the IP address of a server which stocked 27 audio books to which they held the rights. The Stockholm court of appeals said in its ruling that it had not been proven that the server was accessible to the public at large. The court's chief judge had to intervene for the decision to be rendered because the court's four other judges were split on the affair. In June, a lower court had ordered Ephone to reveal the identity of the person whose computer was connected to the IP address concerned. Swedish Internet users have significantly cut down on illegal downloading since the Ipred law came into effect. The practice was so widespread that overall Internet traffic has plunged by 30 to 40 percent since the law came into force. Ipred has been lauded by the music, film and video games industries but staunchly criticised by the Pirate Party, which wants to legalise Internet file sharing and beef up web privacy." -http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gHgZHQUJAgcIYNuG3OEOmCw4r-7Q
Sweden's approach to scaring the community with court cases and real life situations into punishment seems to have an effect.
The Independent, who released and article found here : http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/illegal-downloading-what-happens-if-youre-caught-1736013.html, describes the effects of illegal downloading and how it can effect you legally. Some good points:
- "distributing unauthorised files is a fine of up to £5,000 or six months' imprisonment" - "Crown Court, which has the power to impose an unlimited fine and up to 10 years' imprisonment." - "In some US states the online infringement of copyrighted music can be punished by up to three years' jail and £150,000 in fines." - "You wouldn't go into a record shop and run off with a bag of CDs, the executives complain."
The British version appears to be called "digital britain", and is set up to crack down and protect the entertainment economy.
"While this debate has run back and forth for years, the Government has done little more than keep a watching brief, neither coming to the rescue of the music and film business by enforcing sanctions against illegal downloaders nor offering an amnesty to the guilty. That changed last month with a report from Digital Britain, an organisation set up by the Government to ensure that the nation exploits the internet to its full economic capacity. Launched last year, its aim was to establish a pattern for digital growth in the UK economy.
One of the biggest challenges Digital Britain had to look at was how to balance the interests of the internet user and the industries. The Government now promises to crack down on illegal file-sharing and supports sending warning letters to those making illegal downloads of music and films. Ofcom will also be allowed to release the identities of serial infringers to make it easier for music and film companies to sue them. Lord Carter, the communications minister, said: "We think online piracy is wrong. Creative companies, rights owners and individuals have a right to protection. We wish to put in place a legal framework that provides those protections."
I've been unwell for the most of this last week, but I've had a look around at some interesting articles to build an understanding of where to go with this project into copyright. Because it's becoming such a serious matter does this mean the content will have to be directed formally towards an audience to achieve a desired effect? Well lets find out. The video above takes on some interesting points about how copyright is becoming more and more strict.
Now the project itself is directed towards the area of file sharing, something the government has decided it will be cracking down on (funnily enough since the recession came), copyrighted material being transfered peer to peer, or file shared. I find some interesting articles on the front of one of these sites that supply material on their server.
I found an article here (http://isohunt.com/ - Sunday 18th October 2009) describing, in full, a new torrent and file sharing system, developed by this highly illegal file sharing site.
"With a short review at Torrentfreak and a mention in my interview with BBC, I'm excited to finally announcing a public preview of our spinoff project Hexagon.cc ! We have spent 2 years developing this, and I assure you this will change the way you think of a BitTorrent site and file sharing.
How is Hexagon different? The biggest conceptual change is everything is shared within groups you can join and create yourself. These groups can be public, based on interests or made by independent bands, film makers, game studios, etc. for promotional purposes. They can also be made private, so you can very easily and comfortably invite your friends to a private group for sharing your private videos and such. You can do this on Youtube and similar sites, but with BitTorrent, you can share any type of file and not only video, and there's no restriction on file format or size (as much as you can seed). In Hexagon groups, you can also share both torrents as well as flash videos so you get the best of both worlds. This blend of BT and flash video sharing is an unique first.
Another big feature of Hexagon is organization. We've seen through the rise of sharing on BitTorrent, volume of spam rises with its popularity. We've addressed this on isoHunt with comments and rating powered by you, but on Hexagon we've taken organization and spam control to a whole new level technically. Hexagon is (currently) invite only, so if a spammer gets in somehow and start inviting other spammers and creating other accounts, we can chain ban such with relative ease. Hexagon have also taken a very sophisticated approach to files organization. Besides tags now commonly found on many sites, Hexagon did away with the traditional "Videos", "Audio", etc. general categorization and instead, you can label or link your torrent posts with Semantic Web resources. For example, a firefox 3.5 torrent should associate to the Firefox resource, and under the Firefox resource you can easily browse all torrents in association for different versions of Firefox. This is a definite first for any social media site, and goes a long way in organizing the huge volume of torrents being shared.
Hexagon.cc is currently open for more users to stress test the system. We would very much appreciate your feedback as we continue to add new features and improve the site!"
From the bold points outlined, Hexagon appears to be a legal and intellectual way of sharing LEGAL files over the Internet. My worry is, through the recent court cases of its sister site and route of this article Isohunt, there may be another file sharing site on its way which has more powerful capabilities, meaning the Government will again have to update their systems to tackle - resulting in more tax consuming technology.
If you want to check out more on isohunt and there cases look on there twitter - http://twitter.com/isohunt
Also we were required to visit the site Piratebay and find out about how they have been cracked down upon since the stricter regime on filesharing.
"A trial began in Norway on Monday in which the entertainment industry wants a major service provider to block access to The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent search engine.
Norwegian operator Telenor refused to block access to the site in June after it received a petition for a temporary injunction from a group of copyright holders, including the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.
Telenor maintains it will preserve access to The Pirate Bay barring a court order. Under Norwegian law, a service provider is not responsible for illegal activities enabled by providing Internet access, Telenor contends. The trial, in the district court for Asker and Bærum, is expected to last five days, according to a court official.
The Pirate Bay is a search engine and tracker for torrents, which are small files that enable the download of data from multiple sources on a peer-to-peer file-sharing system. The content is not stored by The Pirate Bay but instead on individual users' PCs around the world.
After legal trouble in its home country of Sweden, The Pirate Bay's operators have now distributed the servers that run the site around the world, although ISPs are easily able to block access to the domain.
The Pirate Bay -- one of the most popular BitTorrent sites -- has been a frequent target for the entertainment industry, with lawsuits filed other countries such as Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands.
In Denmark, some operators block The Pirate Bay while others don't, while in Italy efforts to block the site failed. A Netherlands court recently fined three men associated with The Pirate Bay for failing to block access to the site, but the case is on appeal.
(Mikael Ricknäs in Stockholm contributed to this report)" - http://www.pcworld.com/article/173468/in_norway_group_takes_the_pirate_bay_to_court.html
Finally, my Flash game is finished. The design is as I wanted and I'm well happy with the rotation. However, there are some problems with coin collection ann impact whenb under platforms! O well I'm well happy with it:)
You'll have to visit maeda to see it becuase the upload thing wont work again. Argh.
The game was designed to act as a Flash version of the popular I Phone App, Rolando.
Flash Game Evaluation.
Roller is a platform game designed at anyone who wishes to play around with an interesting and attractive interface. The aim of the game is to collect the coins and destroy the enemies, before making your way to the end of the platforms.
The game idea routed from a platform game on the I Phone, Rolando, which involves the user controlling characters towards a goal. I basically wanted to try and recreate a version that could be used on a basic computer, hence the use of Flash. I’ve always been interested in games that brag beautifully considered design, so Roller is designed to look good as well as work well. There were problems on the way to achieving this though.
The initial scripting came from tutorials online, most of which were found on Mr Sun Studios. This gave me the detailed coding experience to allow me to see what was happening throughout my code and how I could amend this to create a game which met all the standards I set out to achieve. The first problem developed when I created a Photoshop background to act as the stage. I needed the background to move along the opposite way to the character, so it appeared as though it was leaving this part of the level behind. Simply placing the background on the page meant that the only thing I could achieve was the background moving along with the character. I solved this by converting the background to a movie clip and then adding the following to my code:
I found that -860 was the precise value for the background to move left and right accurately and remain in the same static position. If this value hadn’t been precise, the background components such as the houses would move position on the stage and would’nt be on platforms like I wanted.
Towards the end of the project, I felt very frustrated that I had not been able to make the character rotate like I had originally planned at the start of my project. With some help, I was able to create a rotation which runs perfectly. This was achieved by adding the following code:
However, by setting the value high to run smoothly, it meant that the coins were difficult to collect. I have been unable to figure out how to change this, and so disappointed at the final piece’s function.
When comparing the Flash idea I had at the beginning of the project, I’m very happy with the final result. The design and appearance of the final piece looks and feels professional. The functionabilty however, could use some improvement so that the coins can be collected more freely, and the glitchy jumps become smoother.
Sorted:)
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
maeda.ads.ntu.ac.uk -----> Midland Musicians!
Here's the final designs for my Midland Musicians pages, which will change slightly towards the end of the project. I now need help creating my sessions, as I'm having difficulty logging on to the users individual pages. Seeing Simon about this later. But anyway heres the pages:
Login page. The login page will take the user directly to the Homepage, which will hold the script for showing the users profiles. The user then can route off from these areas to the other peoples profiles to view their images, comments and information.
Home Page. As you can see there is no data in here at the moment, as the sessions page needs to be changed for the info to be shown. The links are fine, but I'm just having trouble showing the data in a way I want it to display :)
Members, Bands and Venues Pages. These are all the same, displaying information about all of the desired topics. So all my members are shown with details I have chosen to dsiplay in the php.
Graphics The graphics used on this game are simple yet effective, using bright, vivid colours. The character lacks detail, however the simplicity and changing forms when the user directs him or jumps, is a clever way of varying the interaction.
Game play The game itself involves the character collecting coloured orbs, to allow the platforms to move. This may be something I consider when creating my game, making the environment interactive; to allow the user to change the way they interact with the different elements. A weakness of the game is that there are no enemies to destroy, it’s simply a “get to the goal” styled game.
Sound The game has a range of sounds. The music in the background is typical of a game like this, and the interaction sounds i.e. when the user collects an orb or enters the water are similar to platform games I’ve played on previous occasions.
Animation Aside from the interaction there are also a number of animated graphics. The orbs bounce, the waves sway and the clouds move across the sky. This seems a good way to develop the game more professionally.
Overall I think the game has potential, and could be interesting with some small changes to the environmental and game play aspects. The lack of enemies and difficulty is something which needs to be amended, as it’s really hard to get killed, unless under water for over five seconds. Something’s I’d like to use in my game are the animated aspects, which clearly offer the user with a more exciting and developed looking game.
Indiana Jones. Graphics In comparison to the last game, the graphics are of a similar standard. The character itself is simple and uses a basic animation to move the legs as the user presses keys on the keyboard. The interface is clearly designed to flow through the levels with a clear understanding. The stone walls and floors, and Egyptian images, show the theme of the game successfully.
Game Play The aim of the game is again to reach the goal. This is done by changing the environment, and so uses a similar way of programming as the previous game. There are problems though, when the bricks move up and down, even if they are up and safe, any contact will result in the user being hurt and loosing lives. The same is evident with the spikes, which are hard to avoid when falling through small gaps (shown above).
Sound Because it’s a licensed game, the creator has used the theme music from the Indiana Jones game. The other sounds are when the user hits an object which is fatal to the character.
Animation The animation in this game isn’t as exciting as you may expect. The lever is the only real object that the user can interact with, something which may be considered in future development. There is a good animation when the user hits a fatal object, where the screen changes colour.
Overall The game is dull and boring, lacking in the parts of Flash game that we have come to love, such as animated backgrounds. The interface and game play are simple, but the user knows exactly what to do. Some of the levels are poor and there appears to be no change in the difficulty of levels.
Right then, I've been thinking over the weekend about some possible ideas for an interactice Flash game.
The original idea that I came up with was to create a Flash game similar to the concepts of a wii fit board, but using the mouse as the controller. This would be useful for a game such as slope skiing or a football heading game similar to those found on the wii console.
However, I have now changed this to link in with a specific themed approach. I will use the event of London 2012 olympics and create multiple events using different control techniques. This will include the 100m, long jump, swimming and javelin. This way the user will have a range of different options for the type of event they would like to do. The game could have daily high scores, which will allow the user to gain points for the medals they are awarded.
So, I have the restaurant, and have just quickly drafted a logo which I will use for the site. I'm looking to achieve a contemporary and simple style to the page, to portray the type of setting and food the restaurant bases itself upon.
