Saturday, June 18, 2011

My work on project stickman & the magic key.

During week 9, Mr.Owen, the multimedia course tutor asked all of the 4 groups to work on a functional prototype of the games that are being developed. Each group would present their own prototype and demonstrate how it works to the rest of the class. The presentation was due on Thursday 16th july which is my mother's birthday, (happy birthday mama!!).

While Mohammed had been working on the scripts, I had put on the designer hat for a day( EDIT, 5th july: or so I thought!!). We chose to work on book 2's box puzzle; I took the initial stage design done by Abbas, and added the polytechnic logo and slogan, some texts, and added the yellow note with the hint it along with the pixelated Mr.Pencil.
Abbas' drawing.

I thought hey..stickman isn't anti-gravity! We need a ladder.

Added a notebook lines background, Drew the ladder, poly logo, added "plain body" and "exit".

Even more upgrades. Added the timer, the hint an Mr.pencil.





A closer look at the hint and timer, I feel there's something wrong with the description.


Fatima's stickman felt lifeless, he dident have any facial features. so I gave him a face expression which I think is similar to our english tutor Ms. Alyson's "the look". Drew/grew him some hair. and yeah..look at his pants.

stickman in all of his glory and epicness!! look at his pants! NOTE: this is not how the final stickman will look like, I just did this 4 the sake of....stickman's existence!!

As the sound designer for the project, my task was to gather sound effects for every part of the game, and come up with a background music. Having had some experience messing around with music and some music theory, I thought  that I should give it a go and attempt to compose a theme song, and an opening sound effect for our animated logo. I've been using Mix craft 5 to compose using the keyboard, along with a cool plugin called peach. Peach allows me to compose using 8-bit sounds, pretty cool huh?


Finding the right instruments can be a hard task..


                         G4 productions opening
                      
                          I know it sounds too cinematic, but I think it will work!


                  
                        The main theme demo.
                   
   This is just a quick demo, anyone with ears will notice rhythmic inconsistency in the drums,  that's because nothing was pre-programmed, everything was done by hand, actually, both hands' index and middle fingers. Hopefully a final ful length version will be composed, and ideas of a score for the whole game is being thought of.





Thursday came and a stickman demo was nowhere to be found, yet. Despite the fact that I've informed my fellow G4 members, we were only able to compile a working demo seconds prior to our turn to present. Luckily, we weren't the only group with that problem, even though Mr.Owen (who looked in raged) had set the time for each group ( first group would start at 11.:15am, 5 minutes each), it appeared as if all groups at the time were just beginning to put everything together just like us, G4 productions. The reason for our lateness was because we picked the hardest puzzle to mockup, Mohammed had underestimated the coding techniques required such as gravity, therefore, we had a problem getting the whole game to work. stickman wasn't even playable, he couldn't move, he was stuck!

Giving orders can be fun. especially when your orders are followed!! I liked when our drupal teacher, Rox, said something  like that slogan below so I thought we should use it: "just do it". Too bad some shoes company called Nike have already been doing it.

In the end, we were able to bring everything together on time, Mohammed had fixed the codes, Fatima did the main menu and our logo animation , Abbas worked on polishing up the logo's animation, while I brought in the G4 short opening anthem, and the game's theme song demo.


Even though things went by very fast, I was astonished by the way we functioned, how each member had a specific role in the team, and how all of our work came together in an awesome manner! I thought to my self: if I were to do all of this on my own, it would take much time, thank god for teamwork! long live G4 productions! Viva la G4!

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Interactive Story book flash files + video

Hi Mr.Owen, I know I'm late but here there are anyway
the flash file with the Main.as on 4shared, and the video on youtube. ^_^

Flash file:
http://www.4shared.com/file/lk6QL5Fq/Khalid_A_Majeed_-_Interactive_.html



Video:

Friday, June 3, 2011

Short evaluation essay on cloud operating systems for English communications^^


Cloud computing has emerged in the last couple of years as an essential technology for the Web 2.0, offering services we all come to know and utilize in our daily lives, such as: web based email services like Yahoo! and Gmail, images and file uploads, music, videos, news and many more. Among these great services is a young service that has applied the Cloud concept in bolder way, it is called ‘Cloud-operating system’. The aim of this short essay is compare and evaluate two websites “EyeOS” and ”Glide” that offer service.

In terms of visuals, the two web applications simulate a computer desktop in which the user can interact with just as he/she would with an actual operating system. In one hand, Glide’s interface is modernized and more visually appealing, in the other hands, EyeOS’s interface is much more user friendly. One reason being the the fact that upload and download buttons are easily found in EyeOs, while it is harder to find them in Glide.

In spite of being visually appealing, these two apps suffer from serious issues. EyeOS is not a cross-browser web application, making it unreliable when used in computers that have their own built in browser, or that use browsers that have issues with EyeOS. Glide also suffers in terms of reliability because it is a flash based application, therefore, it needs a frequently updated flash player installed in the user’s computer as well as a broadband connection.

In conclusion, despite the fact that both cloud operating systems have advantages and disadvantages to them, I, for one, would not rely on a cloud OS that relies on a technology that  is demanding and bandwidth consuming, in this case, Glide. In the contrary, EyeOS does not rely on flash and is, despite its issues, less likely to have accessibility and compatibility problems