Public Release – Final Updates

Right now, we’re rushing to put some final polish on the game for release on Wednesday, November 30th. The key problems that we’ve been having is essentially that we created the actual duck graphics as vector files, and placing sixty of those little guys on the screen at once seems to be a little more than Flash can handle.

After consulting around the studio with individuals a little more familiar with Flash than our team, our belief is that reducing the vectors will significantly increase performance.

So right now, Christian and Karratti are planning to just rasterize the files, and redo the layers in flash with PNGs, so that the bitmap images will be static, and not require as much memory. If that all works the way it should, then we should see an immediate reduction in “chugging.”

Otherwise, things are looking really good. We’re excited for the public release, and look forward to seeing our game being played by museum guests!

Playtesting at the Museum

This is just a video of some of the tech guys playing with Aquaducks after the presentations are over and everyone’s pretty much left. (I kind of lagged behind on a hunch – Karratti) Seems like they’re having a good time.

Post-Mortem – Final Presentation and Reactions

And after a long night of final tweaks, game testing, little adjustments, final compiling, and all kind of extra stuff that finally burned us out at about 4AM, we’ve got a complete and finished game. After an excellent presentation that seemed to garner a very favorable response, the client seemed exceptionally pleased by the final product.

While we were still initially worried that the game might be a little too abstract for the museum, we were pleased to find that the addictive gameplay and unique presentation won over any real criticisms that they might have had. There were a few minor adjustments that the client asked about, but for the most part, they were things that we had initially thought about, including adjustments to the water bar.

(As an aside, the water bar had been one of our chief concerns, primarily because we needed a chance to see the game played in action before we could get an actual bead on the right depletion rate. Hopefully that data can be accumulated as the game is tested over the next few weeks.)

As the chips fell, the client was quite happy with the product, and chose to accept the game, and will be displaying it in a rotating patter with other exhibits over the next few weeks. We’ll have to go in and take a look to see how it’s received by the general public.

So good job everyone, and congratulations on a finished and published game!

A Mathematical Concern

Currently, we can move our shots from one screen to another. The balloons move fine. The problem that we’re currently dealing with, however, is that the game plays more like a version of digital shuffleboard than of shooting balloons out of a slingshot. So, it’s kind of back to “the drawing board,” but this time we’re hoping to implant a new system directly into the new game.

Pace and Jorge have been cracking the math together as quickly as they can, but the chief concern is that the two screens on the far end,(especially the one on the far right), are not going to be able to translate their launches as easily as the screen in the center, which may not make the game as fun for them.

Hopefully, though, we’ll be able to work out the math. Otherwise, we may have to make some sacrifices in order to create an actual deliverable.

Narrowing Down the Design

After debating and arguing and laughing and crying over the past couple of hours, we’ve now narrowed down the scope of our game significantly. (Or, it may be more accurate to say that we’ve narrowed down exactly what we’re going to make – I would say that the actual scope was fairly narrow from the beginning, and that it’s remained fairly unchanged since the beginning.)

We’ve decided to go whole-hog with the “shooting gallery” theme, and use the wild west-era style midway games as our base. The cities will become targets moving slowly across the screen. The gallery itself will be made of wood, and we’re hoping to make it feel as much as possible like a pioneer-ish device. Though, we’ll still be launching water balloons.

One thing that we realized, though, was that if we were to cut off one side of the main screen or the other, we’d end up giving the two edges an unfair disadvantage. Our remedy, however, came as we looked through the pictures that Jorge had taken, and realized that the screen was designed for an actual SIX touchscreens below, so we could put any extra information and score stats on the far left side, and no one would be cut off at all.

In any case, that’s what we’re looking for, and what we’re gearing towards. Things are progressing well, and we’re looking to be on track.

The Client-Server System Works!

Well, props to Pace and Jorge, we’ve got a server working, using a mix of Flash and Actionscript. Being that this was one of the most difficult challenges that we were anticipating, it’s actually a pretty huge relief that this part has been figured out. Hopefully, as we move forward, we’ll be able to improve on this sufficiently enough to emulate exactly what we’re trying to do.

Again, props guys – You really slammed that out fast. I added a video of me trying to catch the movement from one computer to another, but I was never quite fast enough. But still, you get the idea.

We Rocked This Pitch!

Today, we did our pitch for the clients at the Natural History Museum, and it seemed to go quite well. The board seemed to enjoy our concept, even offering several suggestions that may be implemented into the game to make it stronger. We were careful to caveat our statements, explaining that while we are very enthusiastic about this concept, we’re tentative about our excitement, specifically because we’re not sure exactly how it might fit within the research that has been done, as well as within the hardware parameters that we’re still unsure of.

We did get to look at the server room, but without a tech on-hand to answer our questions, we’re really only left with knowing that, “Yes, there is a Server Room,” which isn’t extremely helpful. Ms. Menlove, however, has assured us that we’ll have the technical specs soon, so that we can expect those soon.

In addition, Pace and Jorge have begun server tests in anticipation of the actual specs, and have been successful in creating a flash-based server transfer of information packets. Things look promising, and we should have more details soon! So, we’re in good shape for now, and things look good!

[EDIT: I'm also going to include the pictures that Jorge took of the actual installation as a reference for us. While the sketch is all well and good, it's much better to have a real sense of what we're working with as opposed to a practically blind "Artistic Rendition." So, thank you Jorge!]

Meeting With Robin Rothfeder

As we’re still waiting for research data from the Museum, we’ve decided to enlist some outside help. Wwith the help of Charlie Mimnaugh, Jesse Ferrero and I (Karratti) met with Robin Rothfeder from the Environmental Humanities department. Being that neither of us really know much about water conservation, he was happy to fill us in.

He talked chiefly about the use of water in Utah, including how water is distributed. 80% generally goes to agriculture, with the other 20% being distributed to commercial, residential, and industrial applications. There were two specific items that surprised me, personally.

The first is that the most prominant water waste in Utah is by farmers flooding their crops, because if they don’t use the water that they’re given, then the next year they will not be provided as much. Because of the way that water regulations are set, that extra water is simply wasted instead of utilized for other purposes. (A dumb regulation, but that’s the way that things currently stand.)

Secondly, Utah has some of the cheapest water prices in the nation, despite being the second-driest state in the nation (after Nevada). This makes very little sense, because it encourages extra water use. When something costs more, it is psychologically considered to be of more value, (or at least, that’s what my entire lack of psychological knowledge is telling me), so if water cost more, people would be more inclined to not waste as much, and would consider their water use more conscientiously.

His personal recommendations were to model a revamped system after the water treatment systems of cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas, but I doubt that our game is going to go as deep as that. (We’re using slingshots, after all…)

All in all, it was an excellent discussion, and I was very grateful for the information. I’ll definitely make sure that Robin gets a Special Thanks on our game at the very least.

Client & Brainstorming

Today we met with our newest client, Director of Exhibits at the Utah Natural History Museum, Becky Menlove. She explained that a game had been commissioned for use in an installation for water and energy conservation to be ready for the museum’s opening on the 17th of November. Unfortunately, despite having two companies working towards that goal, the game that came from this idea was a little too complicated, and didn’t really work as an exhibit the way that they had wanted it to.

She talked about several goals and ideas that she hoped the game would impress upon players:

- Thinking about your personal impact on the future.
- Envisioning, and shaping that future.
- Individual choices and their effects.
- “My choices count.”
- We never work alone.
- Our visitors should shape the world.
- Population will double in 40 years, which will drastically affect the way that water is distributed in Utah.

The chief concern that we’re looking to address is the platform that we’ll be working on. The installation has five small mounted touch screens that face a large screen being projected from behind the users. (I’ll include my amazing artist’s rendition of what was described – Karratti)

Ms. Menlove didn’t have any specifics for the hardware or software or any other kind of ware that we might have wanted, but she did mention that the original “previous” game had used a client-server system, so we’re going to assume that the computers are networked in some way that we can utilize.

After the presentation, our group came together looking to brainstorm some ideas. Though we all had several interesting ideas, the one that seemed to stick with most of us was a slingshot idea where the visitors would launch water balloons (representing water) at targets that would represent cities or areas that needed it.

Obviously, without the specifications of everything, much of this is likely subject to change, but we’ll be hoping to implement at least some version of this idea. We’re looking to pitch the game on Wednesday, where we’ll be able to get some of the specifications to figure out whether this (awesome) idea is feasible.

Say Hello To The Aquaducks!

Well, with a new prototype comes a new team, a new project, and a new blog. After very little deliberation, the team has been named “The Aqua Ducks,” in light of our project being focused on Water Conservation in the Utah Museum of Natural History. The team will consist of:

Jorge Elola – Engineer
Christine Olonquevitch – Artist
Pace Sims – Engineer
Christian Munoz – Artist
Brandon Karratti – Producer

I’ll be sure to put the bios up on the “About” Page later, but for now, this is our first post, and we’ll be updating things as they come. Pitch will be on Wednesday.