The "Problomatic" Puzle

As Mike has already said the puzzle proved to much trouble to put in the finished patch, as we realised a more simplistic working patch is better than a non working "technical showpiece". however here is a couple of screen dumps showing how much jitter processing was involved in it, hence the reason it slowed down the entire patch. with a little more time i think we could of solved it. but in the end it was sensible to leave it out.

Redone Videos

These are the finshed videos we have used in the patch...they are much cut down and simplified versions of the orignal files, as we felt there was far too much information on the screen...as we had text in three different places. despite being mixed to a relatively low resolution, max sometimes still struggles to play the files. however it does eventually sort itself out.

Update - Mike Kilby

I spent all of Wed night and Thursday trying to fix Dave's puzzle patch to work with mine. There was an unforseen problem in slotting Dave's patch into the quiz patch, as the quiz pztch chose random questions and answers based on charm name/index, whereas Dave's patch just had a random nuber generator (1 - 4). There were other problems too using the xfade object, this just didn't work properly, despite working with the other videos in the charm patch, I still haven't worked out why. We also found that the puzzle was taking some time to load as the image was being broken up into 144 tiles and randomised, so this was inevitable really.

Anyway, in the end I just removed the patch and we've decided to keep it simple with a basic quiz. I also removed the instructions page and added large & legible instructions to the interface so the user can follow the steps as they go along, rather than reading it all at the start then trying to remember it!

Mike C's audio stuff now works very well too after some de-bugging on mine & Mike C's part.

We got some really helpful feedback from Rob on Friday about the audio and text. Ash is working again on cutting down text and sorting out a voiceover for the opening patch. Mike C is adding some more sounds to the quiz patch, and finding some audio to add to the background for the home page and charms page.

New Text & Charms Video By Ashley Bennett

This week I took on board what advice the rotunda museum staff had to offer and began working on a refined version of the text.

The old version of the text was bulky and contained words to difficult for young people to read so these needed to be replaced.

This week was really a means of ironing out bugs in the patch which the two Mike's did a great job of. Due to this we found out that some things worked & others didn't.

One thing that didn't work was the instructions window which we ended up replacing for a short video of the Charms.





This is the video that replaced the instructions text.

Feedback - Mike Kilby

Bit gutted that our patch didn't load properly on Rob's laptop, but we found afterwards that our patch loaded fine on 3 other computers so I'm thinking maybe Rob hasn't got the Quicktime software required to load portable network graphics files into the Max pict.ctrl objects...

Anyway, we've listened to the feeedback on what we did manage to show the museum staff, and we're going to make the following changes to our patch:

1) A better defined colour scheme - the red background looks nice but gives no imporession of good catch so we're going to use the Quiz background image. We've already done this and there's some things that don't look quite right so this might need some adjustments.

2) Simpler text - this was the most emphasised problem, that the text on the charms was way too long and had some big words in that kids might not understand, the same goes for some of the quiz questions/answers. Ash is working on getting this fixed.

3) Voiceovers - These were also quite long with some big words again (one or two of which were mispronounced), so Ash is going to re-record them this week.

4) Video/image copyrights. Dave is working on getting some other footage as we've looked at the BBC policies and they're not too kind! It shouldn't be too much work as two of the videos are compiled mainly with royalty-free images anyway.

That's it in terms of feedback, but there are a few little bugs that me and Mike C are working on getting ironed out. We want to go in towards the end of this week to test our patch works properly with the Lemur.

Max Logic (Quiz, charms page & fades) - Mike Kilby

Just thought I'd write a bit about the other visual aspects and some other concepts that I maybe should have explained earlier on! (oops)

As a group we've decided that the best way to give the user a feeling of accomplishment is to have a visual indication of how well they are doing in the quiz. We decided this should be in the form of a boat moving across the bottom of the screen. After searching hard for a way to do this with jitter I ended up going the slider route instead.


Over the last 4 days I've been working on the quiz patch and I have accomplished the logic behind the quiz by loading .txt files into coll objects and then selecting questions/answers from those coll objects by charm type and a random number between 1 & 4 (as there are 4 questions for each charm).

The first image here shows the randomiser patch.









This image shows the coll objects with randmoiser inputs. The outputs from these patches go to message boxes which are displayed on the quiz UI.






I was going to take the above approach for the charms page too, but it wasn't really necessary as there were only 4 sets of texts (one for each charm) and I wanted to use a fade effect too so I used comment boxes instead. I was able to alter the alpha channel using a line object to fade the text in and out. I wanted to do the same for the images/videos too but it wasn't quite so simple. I've had to use the jit.xfade object to merge (crossfade) between the 4 charms videos. \the videos are loaded in automatically with a loadbang and the name of the file (e.g. seahorse.mov).

More Interface - Mike Kilby

Just to show some further development of the interface. I'm having real problems with getting a .txt file to load into the comment box whilst preserving line breaks and punctuation, so I think I'm going to have to load in 4 text boxes and use the alpha channel to fade them in and out.

I've asked Ash if he could do some more simplified text as there's too much at the moment. Looking forward to getting all of the audio, video and interface pulled together tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

Interface design - Mike Kilby

OK, I've spent the last few days pushing the ideas about which we discussed last week in our group and I've tried to make the interface cover all of the points we want to hit on whilst still being manageable and easy to use. It's coming together, although there's still quite a bit to do! Here's some screenshots:


Here is the background image for the quiz section
- this will fit behind the GUI frame & the quiz
questions will be laid over the top. This is in keeping with our 'good catch' theme. The idea is that there will be an image of a small fishing boat which will move across the screen each time a question is answered correctly. Mike C has done audio which will create an ambience which is intended to match the weather in each part of the image. As the boat prgresses the weather gets better and the stormy sounds ease off until finally the quiz is completed and the boat reaches the sandy beach where a cutscene of a large fishing haul will be played with a congratulatory message.

This is the back frame and some of the interface starting to come together, although it's not that great I'm having to be realistic in terms of time as I've still got to design all of the quiz logic, the interfaces for the other two screens (charms, and instructions), fisnish the fade effects on the text & images, and compose background music for 4 different charms!

Mike Chase - Audio Examples

Example of one of the voiceovers

Example of the soundscape running through each of it's 5 stages

Mike Chase - Voiceovers

We've been into the studio to record voiceovers of about 60 seconds long with information about each charm.

Ash read the information he had gathered while I recorded them.

I have edited these down into 4 individual .wav files, one for each of the charms. These will be played whilst videos or images of the charms are on the screen. There will also be text which will be a diluted version of what is said in the voiceover.

I have made a seperate patch in max mixing between the different voiceovers and I have then incorporated this as a subpatcher in my main audio patch.

Info/Quiz by Ashley Bennett

Yesterday I finished with writing up the instructions on how to work the lemur and the information for the different charms. This info will be displayed throughout the installation and will educate the user on the specific charms. With the information complete I was able to finish off the quiz questions (game element of the installation). There are 4 simple questions for each charm which the user will interact/answer with by selecting the colored buttons (red,green or blue) on the lemur. Some of the information on the charms looks to be bulky so I will be cutting it down to make it more presentable.  

Question Time/Sneak Peek - Ashley Bennett

Heres a sneak peek at some of the questions that will be on the quiz. They are in basic form at the moment but this is so you can get the general idea of the simplicity of the quiz.

Good Harvest Rituals - David Hunting

Here are two videos showing two very different rituals to encourage a good harvest. more details to follow.

Starting Video - David Hunting

Heres the first video i put together, its a bit long and needs refining but i wanted to show an usual way of fishing...that would interest people. i have also found some interesting harvesting rituals that i am going to put together, in regards to our charms i feel its important to convey the lengths people will go to to ensure a good harvest / catch...more to follow

Audio Soundscape - Michael Chase

I've started some work on a soundscape based on stormy and rough seas representing old time fishing boats.

So far I've created a max patch that will play one of ten SFX at randomly generated time intervals. These will also be placed randomly in the stereo field to make it more effective.

The content will include Creaking wood, Thunder Claps, Big Splashes etc.

The background to this will be a convincing rain loop

Ideas - Mike Kilby

Had a couple of ideas today that involve jitter so I thought I'd write them down:

1) For introductory instructions which will be on the screen before user input, I thought it might be a good idea to have a visual to show how to use the controls. We could make a video of a hand with finger pointing moving left/right over a sheet of paper, then we could use chromakeing to get rid of the background.

2) After each quiz question, there could be a visual of a fishing boat moving across the bottom of the screen. The boat moves if the question is answered correctly, and when the boat reaches the right hand side of the screen, the user's learning experience is complete.

Plan - Mike Kilby

We've decided on a rough plan and who's doing what as follows:

Ash- Research on charm collection, make 4 questions for each charm.
Dave - Locate & compile some video clips related to good catch/good harvest.
Mike C - Start work on audio for confirmation/mouseover etc sounds and background music.
Mike K - Quiz code (randomiser).

Towards the end of this week I hope to have the coding for the Quiz complete and start to look at Interface design.

As a team we have already decided on the rough elements but we plan to all help eachother and have involvement in all areas to make sure that the different sections slot together properly.

Group Presentation

Well here we go, the second presentation, a bit more ragged than the first but its hard to present to an empty room. As said we have changed our set of charms, this has led to us redesigning the structure we intend to use - watch this space though!!!

Research - Ashley Bennett

Yesterday I had some free time on my hands so I decided to gather as much information as possible on the 'Good Catch' charm selection. It proved to be a difficult task but I got there in the end.

The information found will be edited and incorporated into the installation in the form of a short quiz (4 to 5 questions). The quiz will be based on the information found on each charm.

Here are some of the web links I used for my research:

http://england.prm.ox.ac.uk/englishness-sailors-charm.html

http://www.villagesilversmith.net/Ammonite.ivnu