today in class i am currently working on my film website and over the past few days have been creating banner for the different page in my website within photoshop. ive had to restart the website because i started it at home, however i started it in flash cs5 meaning that i coudnt open it on the college computers.

project progress

i am currently doing a project for coursework which is creating a websitefor  a fil and the film that i am making a website for is shaun of the dead. i am cirrently in the middle of geetting the documentation for the website out of the way so that i may start creating the actual website. i am not that far behind on completeing  the documentaion as i dont have that much left to do as its nearly completed.

obj imorting from affter effects to flash

yesterday in class we were given the assignment breif which is to make a film website. today i learned a tad more about flash, like how to import a project created in adobe after effects into flash to make ttranistion 3D animations. the website that is to be created has to be for a spesific film which is Shaun of the Dead. in the first lesson i learnt a little bit about adobe after effects and made a small animation which was used later for a smooth rollover effect in flash (which didnt go so well as i havet finished it yet )

guide to digital communication

ezine article (blog version

Ezine article

In this article i will be using secondary research to inform you on the principles of video technology and how they are used within the interactive media industry. This article will cover three main sections. These sections are; Applications (user generated content, viral marketing), Platforms (World Wide Web , mobile devices) and technology (video  file formats/compression, media players)

Applications

User generated content

User generated content is a phrase that is used to describe information, blogs, videos and other content that a user would be able to upload or put onto a website on the internet. Some of the best examples of websites that rely on user generated content are YouTube, Wikipedia, blogger etc.

There are an increasing number of user generated content websites over recent years. One of the most used of these websites is YouTube .when people are surfing videos on YouTube and they come across a series of videos that they like can subscribe to that users channel. YouTube has a ‘subscribe’ button for this service, where a YouTube user will e notified of when the person they subscribed to uploads more videos. Sometimes if the content that somebody puts onto the web is particularly interesting, said person can become “internet famous”  Being internet famous can mean that somebody can actually earn money from the amount of views on a video or website. Being able to earn money from the amount of views/subscribers gained is mainly done on YouTube. If a YouTube user gains a specific amount of views, say for example for every 500,000 views, then said user can earn money from YouTube. The exact amount depends on a combination of the amount of views and subscribers.

Other that social networking sites and of course YouTube there e is one website that about from all of them. That website is of course Wikipedia. Wikipedia is another website that relies heavily on user generated content. Wikipedia is a website that uses its own specialised software that allows people to create articles and then edit them at any time. Unlike YouTube it is unlikely that anybody would get paid for uploading articles onto Wikipedia as it is a free service, so no matter how many views that the article gets, whoever uploads the content is always going to end up doing it for free.

Viral marketing

Viral marketing is different from traditional marketing as it relies on individuals, like me and you. It is a marketing strategy that does not need a company to try to get its product to our eyes and ears.

Viral marketing is used everywhere you look online, especially if you use your email often. Sometimes when you are looking through your emails you will notice advertisements that get sent into your emails folder. This is a form of viral marketing where it is relying on you to send the email to other email addresses so that word of the advertisement gets round. This is a strategy that is used to spread an advertisement across loads of people in hopes that they will buy that product. Viral marketing is also assisted by the use of user generated content. This is because when a user uploads content on to the internet, there is normally an advertisement that goes along with that content. An example of this is that YouTube has started adding advertisements to the start of videos. This is especially common if a long series of videos has been watched simultaneously. Although advertisements aren’t put onto the less popular videos, however they are put onto the popular videos so when this happens a single advertisement spread around to a number of different people really quickly, with very little input from the organisation that’s advertising their product.

Platforms

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (WWW or the Web) is a system of interlinked hyper text documents that can be accessed via the internet. Using a web/internet browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer) you can view content on WebPages that may contain images, text and videos and you can navigate between these WebPages at any time using Hyperlinks. (Wikipedia. (12, november, 2011)

HyperText Markup Language (HTML is a type of computer language that is used ti create pages that can be posted on the internet or sent via email. Although it may seem complex to most people, it is considered to be a rather simple language that can also be easy to learn. All text, images, videos, graphics and design elements are ‘tagged’ in code which tells the web browser or email program how to display those elements. HTML tags can also provides layout and formatting information so the webpage can look how the designer intended it to look like.( wisegeek. (2011)

A web browser is a software program that interprets the coding of the world wide web in graphic form, displaying the translation rather than coding. This allows anyone to “browse the web” by using simple ‘point and click navigation which also bypasses the need to know commands that are used i software languages but nowadays you don’t even need to know that. When the web is viewed with software other than an internet Brower, the result looks nothing like its graphic form. To view it, right click (if using Windows) on any empty space on a webpage.  This will cause a small popup menu to appear. Choose either; view page source or inspect element in Google chrome, view page source in Mozilla Firefox or simply view source in Microsoft’s internet explorer or in Apples Safari. Doing this will open up either notepad or other os equivalent basic word processing program where the HTML coding will be displayed. Using Google chromes ‘inspect element feature opens a more advance HTML or CSS code viewer which is opened within the actual browser. This program is able to highlight different points of code and do allot more than you can in notepad. For example you can look at different scripts, text images an all sorts of other files used. In order to exit simply point to wars the x in the corner of the window to return to the browser window. (Wise Geek. (2011)

Technology

Digital video compression

Nowadays most digital video is some way or another put onto the internet. Most contractors and other people do this, whether it be professional, for example a documentary, like the one that was shown about the internet and how digital video is used in it or other people, for example vlogs that are uploaded to YouTube.  Image compression is at the core of digital video and can cause some severe confusion. There are several techniques for compressing images.  compressing video relies on file formats, for example MPEG, JPEG intra/interface, DV etc, which uses different  software techniques to  compress the file sizes on digital videos so they can be uploaded to or sent across the internet however video compression can result in loss of quality which the usere will have to accept before carrying on.  (Jeff Sauer. (June 1, 2006)

Digital video file formats

There are multiple file formats that are used in digital video. In this section i will list 3 of the most common file formats and give a definition of the following; .wmv. mp4 and flv.

.WMV

WMV is a Microsoft video format. It stands foe Windows Media video. .mv files are tiny because they are highly compressed. This is one of the smallest sharing formats and is used at the end after editing. It is the most common video file on YouTube.( Lorraine Grula. (2011)

Mp4

Motion Picture Expert Group  4 (mpeg4 or mp4) is an audio and video compression standard that allows for the storage of audio and video files to be streamed over the internet or stored on media such as CDs or DVDs. It is also the standard that is used for broadcast tv.( R.Conan-Davies. (©2006).

Flv

Flash video (flv) is the name of a file format used to deliver video over the the internerusing adobe flash player.  FLV format has quickly established itself as the format of choice for embedded video on the we  and FLV formats are used widely on mainstream video websites, For example websites such as YouTube, Google Video and Yahoo! Video. Flash video can be played freely on web without installing additional codec requirements on most operating systems. You can enjoy Flash video using the widely available adobe Flash Player and web browser plug-in. (SourceTec Software Co., LTD . (2011)

Media players

There are many media players that are used either over the internet and offline that are used to, as their name suggests play media. In this section i will give a definition of the most common media players that are used. The following media players are; windows media player and adobe flash player

Adobe flash player

Adobe flash player delivers multimedia over the internet by using online video streaming technology. Flash player has become the most popular video streaming formats in use today. Much of its popularity is from its relatively high video quality for given bandwidth as well as a user’s ability to receive flash video streaming in a number of ways. This is done by using either third party video players or a number of web browser plug-ins. wisegeek. (2011)

Windows media player

Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices. Editions of Windows Media Player were also released for Mac OS, Mac OS X and Solaris but development of these has since been discontinued. Windows Media Player replaced an earlier application called Media Player, adding features beyond simple video or audio playback. In addition to being a media player, Windows Media Player includes the ability to rip music from and copy music to CDs and also burn music to them. It also includes a feature that allows you to synchronize content with a digital audio player (MP3 player) or other mobile devices, and enable users to purchase or rent music from a number of online music stores. (Wikipedia. (2011).

link to ease in flash mx tutorial

http://www.republicofcode.com/tutorials/flash/tweenclasseasing/

this is a liknk to mae a ease in pages using tween classes in flash

tpday in class i learnt how to make a preloader in flash. a preloader is used in all flash projects whether it be a website or a game. especialy if the project has a huge filesize. the loader is given a variable from 1 to 100% and when its loaded it loads up an image, game or website

wgeb the preloader is done it will bring up this picture:

the actual code for the pre loader was:



flash website creation: Multiswifting

Today in class I made another website using flash only this time, it was done using what is known as multiswift. Multiswift is a method in flash that is used to load up webpages quickly while not actual leaving the current page you are on. Rather than the other method of making websites in flash, multiswiting only uses on layer meaning that pages, background and navigation are saved as SWF (Small Web Format) files which are saved separately from normal flash documents. In order to make the website you start with a file called “background” and to load the next file which would be called, for example navigation, which is the file where the nav buttons will go. The file is loaded using the code: loadMovieNum('navigation.swf',5). This will entire that the navigation bar always stays on top. The pages are loaded in the same way. In order to make the nav buttons work you have to load each page separately. For example to lad pages the code is: button1.onPress = function (){

                loadMovieNum('page1.swf',2)

}.

Using this method is not only easy to do but also greatly reduces the file size of the website so that it will load quickly, even on a slow connection

Review

In this review I will be commenting on how our group was able to work together to come up with our first initial ideas for the website. I will also be writing about what went wrong during the project and then explain why the problem occurred in the first place. I will also be writing about the steps we took to overcome them.

At the start of the project I met Dan burden and Dan Taylor for the first time. We were assigned to make a media rich website for the Business department of the college. For the project, Dan Taylor was in charge of  general organisation, timekeeping and project scope, Dan Burden was put in charge of the coding of the actual website itself, in other words bring interactivity into it and I was in charge of designing the backgrounds, buttons and other icons. The layout of the website was decided by the three of us.

Dan Taylor created a timescale for the project which we then followed. We emailed the client who took while to reply but we were eventually able to meet with them. However when the time came to actually meet with the client, she left before 12:00. Because she had a headache so we were delayed for a little while. Afterward were emailed the client we were able to arrange another appointment and re met a week later. However by that time Dan Taylor was Away and he had a presentation of the alpha version of the website but we couldn’t show her our initial ideas so I and Dan Burden had to improvise on what we had and had to roughly describe what the website was meant to look like. Next we were tasked to actually make the website or a Beta build at least of which was actually completed successfully. Next we were going to create and upload videos for the website but these didn’t come without their problems. The first thing that hindered our progress for recording video was that our client refused point-blank to allow us to film in the actual business department because  apparently it looked rubbish. Then we set out to actually film something as we decided as a group that the best way to go about doing this was to film other parts of the college, for the example the LG. later on we then booked out a camera for the next day but when the next day came, Dan failed to turn up. When this happened I had no idea of what was going on and what we were actually going to film and how long for so I decided to help Dan out by designing icons and buttons for the website as to no waste the time. We eventually were able to film; however it was not for very long and was only some parts around the college. All the footage that was captured was edited by Dan Burden, which was done beyond college hours. Despite not being there for somewhat only can be said as essentisal events, he still did a good job of keeping the group together and the project probably would not be complete without the organisation.

game review: Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Game review: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is a videogame that came out for the Nintendo 64, way back in 1998. It was the first game in the series to be rendered in full 3D. With beautiful atmosphere and fantastic storyline this game has been ‘game of the year’ and favourite game of all time on all Nintendo magazines, websites and forums.

The story

The game starts out as a young boy, the games protagonist, Link, who has a nightmare where he comes face to face with the games antagonist Ganondorf. Link is known throughout the forest as the ‘boy without a fairy’. The Great Deku Tree summons Navi the fairy, Link’s companion throughout the game, to him stating that the world is in danger and that only link can save it. After obtaining the first spiritual stone from the first dungeon, Link goes to see the Princess Zelda, who sends you out on a mission to obtain the other spiritual stone and the master sword. After obtaining the other stones, link has the first brief confrontation with Ganondorf, and Zelda throws the Ocarina of time into the castle moat, which link manages to obtain. After pulling the master sword from the temple of time, Link wakes up seven years later the sage of light, rauru explains that, ganondorf uses the legendary Triforce to take over the land of hyrule and become the king of evil. Link is also told that he is the Hero of Time, who is someone who works with the seven sages to save Hyrule and seal away the evil king. After beating the games remaining 4 dungeons, the final battle between link and ganondorf begins. After the first battle, ganondorf tries to crush Link and Zelda, who was disguised as a male Shiekah, called Shiek, inside the ruins of the crumbling Tower. When the two safely escape the castle, it completely collapses where gannondorf burst forth, transforming into Ganon. Link and the seven sages seal ganondorf away into the Sacred Realm forever. Now that hyrule is safe from the threat of evil, link is then sent back in time by Zelda to his childhood, were the game ends.

Graphics

Ocarina of time is an action adventure game, where you control Link, in free roam style areas with varied landscapes and colourful scenery. The game follows a linear route from start to finish, however there are optional side quests for you to do to spit up the main adventure.

The graphics of the game are, dated by today’s standards however they are still really colourful. All the areas are varied and the dungeons themselves are beautifully designed and each of the main dungeons has their own theme. When you’re in the field or a similar area where time passes, for an n64 game. The transition to night and day and vice versa is flawless and beautifully executed.

Sound and Music

The music of the game is perfectly executed and even changes depending on our situation. For example, in the field the music will be active when you’re running around or performing other actions. Then when you stop and stand still the music will turn tranquil, and relaxing, Then when an enemy appears the music will take a more serious and sinister tone. In other areas a ‘battle theme’ will play as an enemy approaches and the transition from the area music the battle music is smooth for a great effect.

Main game play

As an action adventure game, you are able to freely roam the land of hyrule for as long as you’re please, given that you have the required items to get to a specific location. For example, right at the start of the game, you cannot go and see the Deku tree as you do not have a sword of a shield. Another is when you become an adult; you cannot get into the forest temple without the use of the Hook shot, which you obtain earlier on. Although there is a linear pathway to complete the game, there are various side quests that you can do to space out main adventure. You move if it’s so steep that Link around with the analogue stick and you can move freely in any of the eight directions. Link can scale slopes as long as the incline isn’t too steep. If it is steep, then link will just slide down, however if the incline is so steep, it’s practically a sheer drop then link wont attempt to climb it at all. Link can also climb up cliffs and blocks, depending on their height. The height that link can climb depends on whether he is an adult or a child. 

Dungeon game play

Inside dungeons the game play takes on a more puzzle like genre. For example, in order to open a door you have to push a statue on a blue switch to keep it don so the door will open, however there are loads more puzzles in the games main and sub dungeons, ranging from easy to difficult. An example of a hard puzzle is from the games infamous ‘water temple’ where you have to periodically change the water levels at the three main points and have to equip the iron boots in order to walk underwater. 

Z-Targeting

When in a dungeon or over world, Chances are you will be ambushed by enemies in one form or another. Most enemies you can ‘hack and slash’ which will kill them after a couple of hits. However other enemies need to be defeated in a certain way. Sometimes larger enemies can be harder to deal with and can leave you with the wrong end of the ‘game over screen’. However a way that you can avoid this is using the handy feature known to the game a ‘Z-targeting’. Z-targeting allows you to quickly strafe around your target and keep them on the camera at all times. This is a good way of defending yourself as you can use the R-button to defend yourself while moving. You can also tell enemy attack patterns so you can leave the fight unharmed. Other uses for his feature include talking to people who are far away and reading signs or looking at other object of interest. When targeting something, you can press up on the c-buttons to ask for Navi’s help whether it’s finding out about something or a description of how to defeat an enemy.

Bosses

At the end of every main dungeon there is a boss. Each boss is the result of a curse or ill fate and must be defeated in order to continue the adventure. All bosses have a specific tactic to them to bring them down however the all follow the same principal. Find the bosses weakness, exploit it, they collapse, and then you can attack the boss until it gets back up again, repeat. In the dungeons there will be an item inside a reassure chest that you can use to exploit that dungeon bosses weakness. After being defeated all boss drops a heart container which add a new heart to your life meter and an important storyline item which is also needed to advance in the storyline.

The Ocarina of time 

The main and most important feature of this game is the ocarina of time. The ocarina is used to solve puzzles open special doors, talk to people, call your horse, and reveal a secret and even warping. When you reach an area where the ocarina is needed, musical staff appears. When a musical staff appears you can play the ocarina with up, down, left, right or A or press B to cancel. You can play the ocarina anywhere else you want to.

Overall

The game still plays brilliantly despite its age and there are no bugs (that aren’t found intentionally), good collision detection, everything acts as it should and there are no other glitches that ruin the game play experience.

Today in class we used the level editing tool in the fan made Mario game, Mega Mario. I spent the afternoon lessons crating a level that would then be playable through the game, using the 'level select' option. The editor itself as a scary looking interface to it and can be confusing to look at from first glance, however after a little while getting used to how the program worked, the rest became real easy. The program itself, that's used to create new levels, and edit existing ones,is already pre programed as part of the actual game and it uses a scripting language, rather than coded with numbers. to make a level you basically pick the tile you wish to use then stick it wherever you like. later on after college while at home i was bored so i decided to have a go at creating another level. i did make a level in class but i thought it was too short (and too easy) :P .after spending trying to finish the  level, i changed my mind halfway through so i re built it, with allot of the old version still there but no longer acsessable.

phone OS

Today in class I leant about the different types of operating systems that are used on most phones.

The phone OS’s that are used are IOS, Android OS, Symbian, windows and blackberry. Every single phone os apart from Symbian, are used in smart phones and have loads of applications available to them. Some OS’s are proprietary, meaning that developers are only allowed to create software for that specific device whereas open source OS’s allow developers to make software for a number of different phone models and are usually free.

I also learnt that some phones are doing better than others in the market however some, like the windows phone, has only been released recently so the data on the website stat counter is so miniscule that it counts on the graph as ‘other’.