Tuesday, 1 May 2012

Farmyard Balloons initial idea and paper prototype





Here below is my initial idea for my game, and the paper prototype i made so i could test it and see if it worked well. I think my final outcome shows how i used my prototype as a plan for it, and just built up from there.







Wednesday, 21 March 2012

my childrens game evaluation

My finished game came out better than i hoped it would i think. Alot of the coding that i used, i either figured out how to do it myself or researched online for the type of code that i needed to use. My favourite part of it is how simple yet addictive the game can be, from the use of humourus graphics and easy gameplay. What I could improve about my game would be making there more variety on the difficulty of the game; afterwards I looked back at my game and came up with ideas like making the ballons spawn at different positions and making the air pressure go down if you stop pressing the balloons.

I used alot of new coding which i hadnt used before, which alot of it I thought up and wrote it out myself. At times I needed things to happen like when you press the spacebar at certain points the balloon exploads, but at the right point it lets the balloon float away; i solved this by adding an invisible button which holds the code for pressing spacebar. I found out how to do more advanced coding for making a countdown and a scoreboard, which definitely makes the game more challening and fun. I also came up with a way to make a mute button for the music which i added at the end and i think is effective.

overall I think I have learned alot from this unit and it will help me if i want to create more games in the future or anythign using coding, i hope to use what ive learned to make a game in my final major project.

Thursday, 8 March 2012

My childrens game wireframe

Here is the wire frame for the childrens game i created, It is very basic but has the main animations and actionscripts that i will use in the full game, i will add other stuff like my own custom sounds, a sound track and backgrounds; also i will be touching up some of the animations.




My finished childrens game

Here is my completed childrens game, there are a few things i could tweek about it, which i don't know at this time how to do, but this is practically finished.
It is a game called Barnyard Balloons where you must inflate animals then release them at a certain point to send them into the sky. There are five different levels with custom sounds and animations.





More sound evidence


This is a screenshot of garage band which i used to get my soundtrack that i use on my flash game,
i had to try about 10 different versions to get the right level of sound to work with all the other sounds.

Sound editing evidence

Heres a bit of evidence from my sound recording and editing, I used a zoom recorder to record all the sounds ive used in my game. Here is a shot of pig noise that i had someone make and messed around with the effects but ended up sticking with the original sound but turning the volume up because on the game it was quieter than other sounds. I also had to reinact the sound many times to get the right one which i felt was most realistic and wasnt interfeared with any background sounds.
The software i used to record here is Audacity.

Thursday, 12 January 2012

Sound reasearch report


Sound Research

Sound is used within every interactive media product, it gives a sense of atmosphere, creates emotion and immersion. Sounds are needed in media such as films and television to keep the audiences attention and help them feel more indulged in the film. The way that they include these sounds into films is something called Foley. They always film the scenes and keep the original sound for reference, but every sound is added in afterwards. They have to record everything from the sound of clothing as it brushes against each other or the shells of bullets hitting the ground; a lot of these sounds would not be heard on the original recording, but are added into make the audience feel even more like they are within the film to give better viewing experience. All viewers can tell apart the various objects in a picture - an actor, a table the walls of a room, listeners barely ever perceive sound so analytically. They tend to take sound in as a whole, despite its actually being purposely built from many parts.
A lot of music is used in films which help set the atmosphere, sounds that do this is called ambience; this can also give a lot of emotion to the audience. All the sounds have to work with video to give the right feeling across, if its an upsetting scene then the music would go slower and quieter, but as things get happier the tempo builds and the pitch would change. Games use the same ways to keep players interested and focused so they want to play it all the way through. A lot of dialogue is used in film, TV and game to give information across and bring characters to life and you make a real bond with them. The basics of sound are things like pitch and tone. Pitch is how high or low the sound is, which the frequency is measured by the particles that vibrate. Tone is a sound in terms of the quality, pitch, origin and power of the sound. These would be used to create the right sound for what is happening, because sounds are always added on after the filming they have to make sure the sounds are at the right volume for the action that took place. With games they have to think of how the characters would each speak, using the right pitch to make the characters more believable; such as in a game with a dragon that talks, they would need the character to have a deep pitch to the voice and to give them characteristics they change how the talk. Most interactive media uses digital sound instead of analogue, this gives a lot of bonuses; digital files can be copied as many times as possible without the loss of quality, they can also be edited a lot more effectively also vocals are a lot clearer than when played by analogue. Sound is used often in the web, either for streaming purposes or music on adverts or pages. The sound can be found in many different formats, the one mainly used for streaming music such as radio broadcasts would be RealAudio, this is because the audio can be streamed with low bandwidth internet. A lot of music you get nowadays on the internet would be saved as mp3 files, this is because of how small you can compress the files to about a tenth of their original size, still with close to CD quality, because of their small size they are the easiest to download or use in videos etc.