12th October, 2008
Here is my finished Dissertation Proposal I submitted by emailing to Geoff Cox, basically outlining the subject and direction of my final year dissertation.
How have the perceived boundaries between virtual worlds and reality become increasingly blurred?
10th October, 2008
I have spent today trying to formulate a more cohesive proposal from Biro spider diagrams, mainly for the dissertation at this stage. However the Dissertation and Final Year Project are going to be closely related so the thoughts at this state apply to both.
Therefore, the general question I have proposed is “How have the perceived boundaries between virtual worlds and reality become increasingly blurred?”
7th October, 2008
Without giving too much away about our Design for Entertainment Systems intentions, I’ve decided to write a little about a topic that came up in our discussions today. Basically, my feelings are that if you want to help give a game that little bit more longevity, the environment or map or whatever should be flexible enough to change randomly every time a player uses it, so that there is never the element of repetativeness. And yet the player is still free to master techniques at achieving their objectives and the designer is still free to control what fundamental elements and challenges exist in the level.
Lots of the best Real-time Strategy games such as the Age of Empires series feature this ability in their multiplayer maps, where water, features and resources are placed at random but still form a coherent and playable map. But none of them utilise this concept quite as deeply as Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim.
4th October, 2008
I’ve finally uploaded some pictures from Loddiswell including a 3 photo panoramic photo merged in photoshop:
Haybails in a rolling field.
3rd October, 2008
It would seem that from 9am onwards, Nigel Barlow is taking every lecture and practical of my day.
Something I spotted in his second session (but only lecture of the day) was the reference to “Computers which don’t look like computers?” links that go to miniature computer motherboard PCBs that run some form of inbuilt operating system. I’d say something like this could have a lot of potential for the games module should we want to build some form of physical installation.
The examples given were Gumstix and Colibri Modules.
I’ve also managed to upload a few more images of times gone onto Flickr. Generally they’re heading for the Traditional Artwork set.
1st October, 2008
The introduction of two different modules was covered today, the 6,000 to 10,000 word Dissertation (PRID301) and the Programming for Entertainment Systems (SOFT 323).
Geoff Cox mentioned that keeping a blog for reflection on the process behind producing the dissertation was a good idea, so I think it is time to start creating a few new Categories and portfolio areas!
Additionally, I really ought to structure my portfolio a bit better so that I can hold a range of some of my industrial level work as well as continue showcasing i-Dat as this site was originally intended.
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