Thursday, October 11, 2007

Johannes:

Post-Exhibition post

It's all over now... We came, we saw and WE CONQUERED! At least as far as I'm concerned. Here's a little rear view glimpse of todays exhibition:

The exhibition started at 9:00 but our group met up at 8:30 in order to plan the day and in worse case scenario fix malfunctioning equipment. We've had problems with the Wall Frame each time we inserted the batteries once we've removed them. So in order to avoid this problem we let the batteries remain in the Wall Frame during the night. We've also had problems with short range on the wireless connection. This problem was solved with some sellotape on the wall. None of these earlier problems caused any headaches today and everything went as smooth as it possibly could. The Wall Frame and program worked great the whole twelve hours the exhibition lasted (the exhibition closed at 21:00).

Needless to say it has been a long day with not so much to do. There were alot of visitors and most of them tried out our Sound Memo (as the official title of the game is) and most of them found it enjoyable, some weren't impressed at all while others really loved the game and played it more than once and even had internal tournaments among themselves. To see these people laugh and have a good time with our game rally gave me (and probably the rest of the group) a real energy boost. Especially adults found our game amusing thanks to it's simplicity. Everyone have at one time in their life played traditional Memory. The twist of our game made that old game interesting again.

We also had our projects evaluated and got feedback from Björn Renner and Petter Warnsberg. I was a little concerned that they would say that we hadnt tried enough since our game is based on pretty basic technology and was controlled by a program made in JavaScript which hardly qualifies as an advanced programming language. Luckily I was wrong. They both found the idea interesting and liked the simplicity of it. Petter actually thought that it was an achievement to program the game in JS, which is nice to hear.

While Björn and Petter went from booth to booth we also recorded a video of the entire exhibition field which will be edited and sent to the Hyper Island students in Stockholm, so that they can experience some of our technology as well.

To round things off. The exhibition was a success for us since everything worked fine the whole day and there were alot of people that really enjoyed playing our game. Tomorrow we will have som final evaluation of the module and then it's off the next module called "Concept and Development". New module, new groups and whole new challenges.

Kasper Kuijpers has a strong finger as he presses one of the sound panels on the Wall Frame

Some visitors test their sound memory skills. The black thing on the wall is the wireless receiver
Alva Nachenius test the game. The program running the game is visible on the laptop. It keeps track of which panels have already been taken as well as counts points, tries and presses on taken panels.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Filip:

the final adjustments

Tommorow is the day of the exhibition and almost the last day for this module, on Friday we will make a group evaluation. The day started with that Johannes changed batteries for the soundmemo and instead of AAA we now using AA batteries. After that we installed my big nice speaker that my friendly cousin burrowed out to me. We checked the sound and turned out good. We had thoughts to have a white fabric along one of our walls but it was hard to put it up, we are not allowed to use the walls the way we want, they are protected of some law because they are so old and important.


We have uploaded some pics to see our final product.





I'm playing our game here VS Johannes (he is to good for this game)

18 squares. Before the game start up the sounds get randomized. It's a two or one player game. It's like the card game Memory put instead of cards and pictures we have use sounds and squares.

I guess this is my last message on this blog.

Have a nice day! Filip Redelius

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Max:

Båtman Begins


We have been working in the exhibition hall Båtmanskasernen today and trying to figure out how to put up our wall without using nails. We ended up with a solution where we use chains connected from the wall to a beam in the ceiling, and it looked really good.
We had one problem though: when the wall was up it stopped working. Johannes assumed that we needed new batteries in order for the wireless connection to function, so we will try new batteries tomorrow and hopefully it will start working again.

We have also done a bunch of other stuff today; Cecilia have finished some illustrated instructions so it will be as easy as possible to understand the game, Filip have started working on a flyer with some info about our idea with this project, I have been collecting some more sounds to use with the wall, Johannes have been writing the magazine article for the Stockholm group and Susanna have been pretty busy with the exhibiton crew.

Tomorrow is the deadline for functional prototype. Woo-hah!

Monday, October 8, 2007

Celia:

Substantially

Today at 17.00 we had a deadline for the first draft of the magazine article we’re going to write for group six in Stockholm. Johannes and Filip have been working on it during the day. They also attached the buttons on the wall with nail.

Susanna and I have been working with putting the logotype on the wall. At first we tried to paint it right on with a brush, but then we got a tip from our coursemate Niklas who said it would be much easier to make a stencil and stamp the letters. So we decided to make stencils of styrofoam, it turned out ok.

Johannes made a completely new version of the java script during the weekend to fix some difficulties we had with the programming. We are pretty much finished with the wall, which feels great.

When the first draft is done we’re about to go to “Båtsmanskasernen” and find out how to put up our wall. The building is national monument protected (Q) so we can’t put any nails or similar. But as we changed our location in the building we will probably be able to use something that’s already put up before.

It feels like everything is under control, so I don’t think there’s any problem to make the remaining deadlines.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Filip:

A final prototype

Hello!
It´s Filip here
Reporting live from Hyper Island

The Sound memo is ready except to polish some of the fine corners. The group have worked well and next week we don't need to concentrate on the game anymore. It feels really good!
Today we did some experiment on how the connectors would be like, the connectors that are under the buttons. First we tried out to glue coins but that didn't work very well because the material was to soft so if you tried to take the coin away it was done very easy. So instead we used foil and tape. It turned out very well and after some clicks with the handflate it still worked. So right now we hope it will be functional all day at the exhibition. If not we will have some tools their so we can fix it instantly. On Monday I hope we have uploaded some pictures on the sound memo so you could see how it looks!

Have a good weekend!

Greetings
Filip Redelius

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Johannes:

SWEET

I'm referring to one of the words we got during the warm-up week: SWEET. That's how everything feels right now. The project is running so smoothly that it's hard to avoid smiling when thinking of it. Todays round-up looks something like this: Max and I went shopping... again. We bought the wooden material we were going to use for the buttons on the Wall Frame. Me and Max (mostly me) used a saw to cut them into the right size and Susanna and Cecilia painted them. This means that the Wall Frame is close to be completed! Tjo!

The Wall Frame with the electronics in place

Cecilia and Susanna paints the Wall Frame. Check out the color of the "buttons". Neat, huh!


The program that will control the memory game was initially supposed to be written in Flash (using Action Script 3.0). Filip gets more and more convinced that he won't be able to make it since the scripting was harder to learn than he initially thought. I haven't had the time to sit down with him as much as I would like. Currently it seems like we're going to use the back-up program i wrote in JavaScript to run the game on the exhibition. Personally I haven't given up on Flash yet. Now that the Wall Frame is almost done I can focus more on the program.

Screenshot of the graphically very basic JavaScript program as it looks right now


Nothing much to report regarding the exhibition today. Instead I can mention the deadline of the Magazine Brief we had today. We compiled some information about our project and mailed to the Stockholm group that will write the article on our project. Perhaps you who read this is a member of group 4 STO?

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Anonymous:

Progress!

Today we could see a great progress with our work! Max have collected all our sounds and recorded some own for the scores, Johannes, Filip and Cecilia has been working with the wall, and the technically part is solved! Our wall is in function! :) I think everyone was pretty reliefed with that, It is always fun to see something built up. But still, we have more work to do!
Earlier today, Cecilia and I went to Flügger and bought some nice paint. Now we need to design it good-looking. Tomorrow will be our big design-day, when we are going to put it all together, paint it, and maybe it will be in function and ready! Johannes and Max will go shopping the last things we need to our wall. We have a deadline for the magazine brief tomorrow, and we have started to write on that. I have also been working with the exhibitioncrew and we have finally got sponsorship from Printfabriken! We had huge problems there for a while, and now I feel so reliefed! Tomorrow our posters and flyers will be printed, and then we can put them up all over Karlskrona. We will also send out invitation-emails to important people and companies we would like to meet at our exhibition. I am starting to see what it all will turn out to, and I think this is going to be really good! :)

Today we had another group follow up, which was good. I think we learn more and more each time. I think everyone feels better afterwards.