IDAT204 - Digital Organism
Ahh back to university, and no better way to start it than with a spiffing flash project. The idea of the first project is to create a "Digital Organism" utilising some form of artificial intelligence. As im quite a technical person I jumped straight to the brief and its details: "consider a truly time-based, multidimensional, interactive problem. A life form needs to feed and be fed, sleep, move, multiply, expel waste etc. It will be sensitive to certain conditions and have a life expectancy." Reading this I instantly thought that we would be producing some sort of Tamagotchi, but it then goes on to how cartoony characters arent allowed, damn.
As we are working in groups of two, I discussed some brief project ideas with Paul Bird about what sort of lifeform ideas we could use; ranging from something as small as a cell to the extent of a galaxy. Because each project we do is also an artpiece it has to have some sort of hidden meaning behind it all, so Paul came up with a cracking idea of creating a planet as the organism. I'm sure youre thinking "How do you look after a planet?" but when it comes down to it, we all look after the planet every day. For example look in your kitchen! most people recycle plastic bottles and cardboard, not to mention the chatter on the TV about global warming.
Interaction IdeasNow that we have our idea sorted, we have had to think up some nifty ideas as to how you could attend to the planet in a Tamagotchi style environment. The brief clearly states we should not be using any sort of button, so using initiative we had to turn to different input methods to get around this.
- Mouse
- Keyboard
- Microphone
- Webcam
- Live Feeds (RSS, XML etc)
These are just a few input methods we could use for the project, but they are all the most commonly used peripherals used on a home computer. Also conveniently all of these devices are compatible with Flash, so utilising values from these sources should not be a problem whatsoever.
Concept MockupWith a little tinkering around in photoshop, heres a rough idea of how I want the planets to look when the product reaches its final piece. As you can see the planet has several different states, ranging from modern day imagery to an ice age state.
These different states will progressively apply to the planet if it isnt looked after properly. Earlier I listed several different types of inputs which can be used to create conditions to affect the planet. For example it could be made possible that the weather is brought in from an RSS feed, which can be applied to the planet to change its state (eg heavy rain rises the water level). To counter this a user-controlled input could be used to either help along this change, or to reverse the effects.
States In-depthAs mentioned previously the planet will go through a series of states; depending on how the user has looked after his/her planet. On the planet environment there will be some sort of iconindication as to what 'condition' the planet is currently in. Along with this icon indicator, maybe some sort of description box to tell the user what he/she has done wrong, and how to reverse it.
From left to right:
- Healthy State - The starting state of the planet, everything is healthy and in its ideal state.
- Frozen State - If the planet is left too long unattended the clouds thin out and the planet slows down. This causes the planet to drop in temperature and freeze over.
- Flooded State - If you spend too much time messing around with the planet, it gets too warm and the ice caps melt; leading to a global flooding.
- Desolated State - If you leave the planet way too long after the frozen state the planet goes into total desolation where it cannot be revived.
Along with these different statuses, there are a couple of screen elements on the screen which are not attached to the planet. Earlier on I mentioned how buttons shouldn't really be used, so instead of the traditional press-and-happen functionality, a roll-over method could be used in exactly the same way.
From left to right:
- Information Button - Upon rolling over this icon a small information box will appear, telling the user some basic info about the planets current state.
- Microphone Indicator - This icon will appear on-screen when microphone input is required. By doing this the user will have more of an idea when to use all the different peripherals to interact with the planet.
In flash there are no real 3D elements to work with, so to make the planet look 3D we will have to use some user-perception trickery to create the illusion that the planet is spinning. By using some layer-masking it is possible to create a simple, yet effective spinning planet.
Planning & Production
Before the coding can take place, there needs to be some ground level rules set for the behaviour of the planet. These behaviours are the transitions between the different planet states, and how to recuperate back to the original state (if possible).
This graph shows the different processes on what our planet organism will go through. Most of the planet stages are on a timer, so if you fail to look after your planet, it will eventually die.
For an additional work blog visit paulbird-idat204.blogspot.com.