Week 5 update

Journal update:

We got together on Monday thanksgiving. Yes on thanksgiving. Thank you very much. We brainstormed pretty intensively. We can proudly say it DID pay off. We came up with an idea that impressed most of us. It seemed promising. We worked hard to invent a second concept, but we struggled to invent something else that was equally good and drastically different. For now we have decided to focus on this one good idea we've landed and fully develop it.

After the brainstorming session we delegated tasks to our team members as follows:

Jason: blog update and presentation preparation.
Danny: presentation slides
Michael: Sketches
Paul: functional description of our concept
Mark: conceptual description of our concept

(we had planned under the impression that an in lab presentation was due this wednesday in week 6 until we recently received Ken Zupan's email notifying us otherwise.)

Below are the details of our project:
- Funtional aspect
- Conceptual aspect
- Brainstorm map
- Sketches
(We are currently waiting for other members of the team to finish their portion, which will be updated on here as soon as it is available.)

Functional Aspect:

- Users with different cultural and language backgrounds collaborate with one another to solve group puzzles using only body language and signs.

- Randomly connects people from all over the world.

- Will be presented using a two dimensional platforming game.

- To be implemented in Flash.

- Users can select a limited number of signs from a collection of many before starting their puzzle. These signs along with avatar emotions and gestures will act as the only means of communication. The limited number of signs will introduce a level of difficulty forcing users to intelligently select their set of signs as these decisions can greatly impact their ability to communicate later on.

- Emotion is presented through the avatar either with dynamically changing facial expressions or a floating text-bubble like form hovering over the avatar's head.

- The goal is to explore the possibilities of breaking cultural, language, and physical barriers by immersing users in a virtual world where language is non-existent and communication has taken a very basic, visual, and universal form.

- Compatible with PCs and Macs.

Conceptual Description:

Elevator Pitch:

Our project is a computer game in which randomly matched players work together to solve puzzles, bringing forth a discussion about the idea of collaboration beyond language and cultural barriers.

Experience Properties:

Experience: In the game, every player is unable to talk using verbal or written means. This makes the experience different every time a party of players attempt to solve a puzzle. The experience the players will have will depend on the how they work together as a team. The experience that players can have will range from amusement to anger or frustration.

Sensory Input: The user will be responding to the images, characters and environmental elements on the screen. In terms of input, the player will be using their keyboard and mouse in order to interact with the game’s environment and players.

Action: The game itself is a puzzle/adventure game in similar style to that of Super Mario Bros. where a party of up to 4-5 players work together to solve puzzles. It allows the users to play a game from their computers where in the end will raise a discussion about collaboration and how we can collaborate with others beyond language and cultural barriers.

Context: The context of the game is about play, while the same time cultural and social.

Week 4 update

So for week 4 we've got a few brain storming sessions as well as the mentor meeting presentation prep we did in class on wednesday.















This is a photographic documentation of a simple brainstorming session we did.

http://www.sfu.ca/~jtshen/iat402/week4/PDF_allnighters2.pdf

(The above is the link to our week 4 presentation slides.)