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April 27, 2003

Director's platform

My revised brainstorm of what I'd like to see in a SANCTUARY prototype around Groover and Switch.

The aim of the platform is to demonstrate the fun and potential of the concept whilst building as little as possible.

Inspiration from Akio Morita, co-founder SONY

As a manager, marketer and brander, Morita brought Western ways to Japan and Japanese ways to the world. When the “pocket-sized” transistor radio Sony first developed turned out to be too large for a man’s shirt pocket, Morita sent salesmen out in shirts with specially-made deeper pockets.

The following uses terms explained in the Glossary.

PERFORMANCE FUNCTIONALITY

Certain functionality is desirable for performing the re-mixable film experience

  • Flexible CONTROLLER LAYER mapping - groove tracks playable from multiple input devices
    • Keyboard
    • Mouse
    • MIDI controller (e.g. Oxygen 8)
    • Game input (e.g. joystick)
    • Motion tracker (e.g. webcam)
    • Pressure sensor (e.g. dance mat)

  • Invisible interface - hide/reveal interface elements in the PRESENTATION LAYER, but not "fake" cinema elements.
  • Dual monitor support - display interface elements on a separate monitor
  • Adjustable Tempo - variable playback rate which can be set by typing in a value or tapping a key
  • Groove autoplay - playback of the current groove with a single key
  • Asset library - browse and load capability to select assets from disk or online (via a cache mechanism)
  • Ability to edit/replace assets in off-the-shelf applications like Flash and Final Cut Pro.
  • Client/server messaging. Facility for GROOVER to receive and send control events as XML via the network.
  • Access to "easy" EFFECTS like Flash standard functionality

    • Pan
    • Zoom
    • Rotate
    • Skew

  • Ability to limit playback of any asset based on it being triggered at the appropriate time (the right Note). This is optional. A set of default events will be triggerable despite success/failure of rhythm game.
  • Variable level of difficulty setting. Ability to fuzzy match controller events to Notes with a varying degree of accuracy to help rhythm-impaired users.
  • Scoring capability based on success in matching the groove track with input.
  • Each groove contains conditional logic to switch to a new groove based on success/failure to match the groove.
  • Migration path to port (Flash) Groover prototype to a higher performance engine (e.g. Director, Virtools, Renderware).
  • Asset compatibility with Arkaos (e.g. Flash text assets)

Posted by .M. at April 27, 2003 03:38 PM
Comments

I think that's a good statement of what's wanted.

I think most it is dooable in flash; maybe with some custom extensions (using FlashAssist PRO) to handle things like the controller input.

I certainly think that an inital prototype could include playback, fuzzy controller event matching, scoring, etc, all triggering flash assets.

I did some basic searching on client-server stuff in flash; that's well dealt with here :

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flashcom/articles/minesweeper02.html

standard sockets are also dealt with :

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mobile/articles/flashassist_05.html

So I'm not to worried with about the comms, or building something in C++ to deal with MIDI and other events and communicating with it. Dance mats and other peripherals (like the eyetoy) may be a little optimistic for a first prototype.

Not so sure about how Arkaos handles text assets, so unable to comment on that piece.

MR

Posted by: MikeR at September 24, 2003 06:46 PM

Arkaos supports Flash movies with dynamic text fields (i.e. you can populate new strings into an animation at run-time from a dynamic source). Any Flash assets we use in the prototype, if created in the Arkaos friendly way, can be dual purpose. Which would be nice.

Posted by: .M. at September 24, 2003 06:51 PM


Bin the previous comment about flash assit pro. It only works on Pocket PCs.

MR

Posted by: Miker at September 24, 2003 06:58 PM


So the strings in the flash movies are just for display (ie, strings you see) or for more ?

This is probably more of an issue with authoring for the flash assets being controlled by the prototype rather than the prototype itself, I believe (correct me if wrong)

Posted by: Miker at September 24, 2003 07:03 PM


BTW, I like the idea of making a socket based C++ application that can talk to Flash, Arkaos and other things via other sockets, MIDI, and other methods. That way there is a central messaging system (for things like gamepad control as well as interfacing to other apps) right off the bat, rather than trying to shoehorn one in later.

Posted by: Miker at September 24, 2003 07:22 PM

Sounds good. It's also something that is ownable in the true sense and lightweight enough to adapt to how things evolve.

I'd be happy for now to define a standard control set based on the full PS2 gamepad and concentrate on a comfy set of four buttons/keys/whatever to play with.

Posted by: .M. at September 24, 2003 07:48 PM


I'm actually worried about doing a gamepad interface in flash. After some checking, the way I think it would have to work would be to have the gamepad interface in a standalone app, then use a socket to send messages to flash (where they are received by a socket).

The latencies involved in that process mean that it might not work well, but perhaps the thing is to try it and see what happens.

Posted by: Miker at September 25, 2003 11:44 AM


Flash studio pro adds some stuff to allow joystick access :

http://www.multidmedia.com/software/flashstudio/

Posted by: Miker at September 25, 2003 11:56 AM

From the Groover Flash prototype, we've learnt that the latency in Flash makes it unsuitable for any form of rhythm game.

Posted by: .M. at April 27, 2004 05:55 PM
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