Digital Worlds - Interactive Media and Game Design

Something for the family this week - Moshi Monsters:

Moshi Monsters is a free online game for kids, in which they adopt a monster and look after it. Kids whose parents give us their approval can become members on our site, and can adopt a Moshi Monster. Kids care for their monster by solving puzzle games, which earn their monster virtual rewards called Rox. Kids can spend Rox on virtual items like food, furniture and other treats and toys for their monster. Over time their monster will increase in level, be able to visit new locations in Monstro City, and earn all kinds of in-game rewards for playing. Monster owners will also be able to make friends with other owners and leave messages on their pages.

(For more details, there’s an “in-depth tour” of the game on the Game, Set, Watch blog: Exploring Online Worlds: Mind Candy’s ‘Moshi Monsters’.)

It’s claimed that the ’solve-to-earn Rox’ puzzles make the game “educational” - do you agree?

To provide a faintly serious side to this post(?!), how does Moshi Monsters address issues of child safety and parental control? What is the Moshi Monsters line on advertising on the site, compared to its ‘thematic rival’, Neopets? To what extent do you think Moshi Monsters is simply providing a vehicle for selling Moshi Monsters branded goods?

How does the parental advice offered by Moshi Monsters compare with information for parents provided on other child-friendly social networking sites such as Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin or Barbie Girls?

If you’re after 5 minutes of *really* educational fun (?!), why not have a go at Typeracer…

The game it to type a quote out from a book, movie or song lyric faster than the people you are competing against…

The main focus of this post - SketchUp - is probably more fitting as a weekend project than anything else, but if you’re looking for a quick Friday afternoon game, I’ve mentioned one of those too at the end of the post…

SketchUp is a 3D design tool that can be used to create 3D models of buildings (as well as other objects). SketchUp models can be displayed in Google Earth and used in other 3D web applications and virtual worlds.

SketchUp works on Mac and Windows computers and can be downloaded from http://sketchup.google.com/.

It is also possible to model - and view - objects inside building that you have created, as well as creating the buildings themselves.

In true collaborative style, you can share and edit the designs that other people have created by checking them out of the 3D Warehouse.

One very powerful feature of SketchUp is the ability to use a photograph as the basis for a model, as the following movie illustrates:

Download Google SketchUp and have a go at creating your own 3D model. There are lots of video tutorials to help get you started on both the Google SketchUp website and on YouTube. When you have completed your model, why not upload it to the 3D Warehouse, or post a movie of a walkthrough of your model to a video sharing site, with a link back here? :-)

To what extent do you think SketchUp might be useful as part of a game design or development process? (Hint: you may find SketchUp for Gaming a useful starting point, although bear in mind that is is a piece of marketing material!)

Free Rice

If you’re looking for something a little more casual to play with to while away a Friday afternoon, then check out this casual serious game - Free Rice. For every answer you get correct in this simple word game, 20 grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations World Food Program.

If you are tempted to search for an answer, then why not use a use a charity fundraising search engine such as Everyclick for your search?

[The videos contained within this post can also be viewed in the compilation "3D Modeling in SketchUp" show on the Digital Worlds Splashcast video channel]

In today’s Friday Fun, I thought it’d be fun to anticipate a forthcoming post on 3D models of the real world and look around for a few games that are set in Google Earth and Virtual Earth 3D, the 3D mapping tools from Google and Microsoft respectively…

Perhaps the most well known game in the Google Earth is the inbuilt flight simulator.

You can find out how to use the Google Earth flight simulator here: flight simulator in Google Earth

As far as Virtual Earth goes, I’ve heard tell that alien invaders are attacking the Open University campus in Milton Keynes, and it’s down to you to stop them: Destroy All Invaders…

To what extent do you think either of this 3D world maps might be used as environments for games in the future? If you haven’t used either of these applications before, take a few minutes just looking around them. How easy do you find it to control the 3D view? Can you zoom in to a point, look up, down, and from side to side?

PS Where’s Wally?

The majority of posts over the last week have focussed on the process of sound design for games and interactive media.

So I thought that in this Friday Fun post, I’d provide a roundup of several online audio sequencers so that you can have a go at creating your own soundtrack.

First up is the online MIDI sequencer, which allows you create and save your own simple MIDI sequences:

The same site also has a MIDI editor that allows you to change the temp and pitch of an uploaded MIDI track. IF you only have a few minutes spare, why not download some game soundtracks as MIDI files from Game Music Themes then upload them to the online MIDI editor and see how much you can change it with a quick edit? ;-)

The Online Step Sequencer is a Flash application that allows you to create your own drum sequences, but there doesn’t appear to be any way to save either the audio or a MIDI file of the result.

(The BBC Radio 1 Virtual Studio provides an online sequencer and mixing desk if your browser has a Shockwave plugin installed - which unfortunately rules this online application out for Intel Mac users.)

One of the most comprehensive online audio sequencers I’ve found for manipulating sound files (rather than MIDI files) comes from Splice:

If you’ve never used an audio sequencer, Splice may appear quite intimidating at first, so it’s well worth looking through the FAQ, and watching the intro movie:

The principles behind using Splice are exactly the same as for many pro-amateur and pro audio seqeuncing tools, so if you think you’d like to get into audio sequencing, it’s well worth spending a bit of time familiarising yourself with the basics (?!) using a tool like Splice before moving on to more powerful tools.

(If you’re a Mac user, you may well have Garageband on your computer. Splice works in a similar way, so anything you learn to do on Splice should be transferable to something like Garageband - and vice versa…)

Of course, if all you’re after is a game, why not visit Retro Sabotage, which offers some novel twists on several classic arcade games… if any particularly catch your eye, post a comment back here with a link to the game, and a paragraph or too about how the game compares with the original, and offers a new spin on it…

Picking up on a post from earlier this week, (Breathing Life into Animated Objects), why not have a go at creating some simple animations of your own.

I came across Pencil the other day, a desktop application that works on Macs, Windows and Linux, that provides an excellent environment for creating your own line drawing animations. (Just reading through the user manual is also quite instructive in terms of finding out what sorts of support computer applications offer an animator today!)

Here’s a rather blurry tutorial of how to do a ‘traditional’ bouncing ball animation in pencil (the lines are faint at times - try watching the video in full screen view…): the bouncing ball tutorial (pencil).

If you fancy something a little more, err, casual, then why not try the online AniBoom shapeshifter application (bouncing ball tutorial).

Whilst not quite animation in the traditional sense, SketchCast offers another interesting way of telling stories through drawing…

If you’d rather just play a game, it being Friday and all, then why not try Grid16? There are no instructions given (apart from the hint that you need to use the arrow keys!). The game is made up from 16 minigames, each of which tests a particular style of game mechanic. See if you can work out what the aim of each minigame is, and then see if you can improve your score!

And if game playing is even too much for you, just sit back and watch this: Animator vs. Animation ;-)

Many of the simpler games I’ve mentioned in Digital Worlds so far (including in the other Friday Fun posts), are based around a single “agent” - that is, the action in the game happens to a single entity, or a scenario is established where a sequence of events, or consequences, is played out around a single character - the sledger in LineRider, for example, or the ball in Launchball.

In today’s Friday fun posts, I’m going to help you waste your Friday afternoon, and maybe even your weekend, with a couple of horribly addictive flash games, where the consequences of your actions play out along several different directions at the same time…

First up is Boomshine. The idea is simple, a series of moving bubbles appear on the screen. Click anywhere, and you drop a bubble that grows for a short while and then bursts (i.e. disappears). If any of the other bubbles touch a growing bubble, they grow for a while, before bursting. The idea is to ‘boom’ as many bubbles as you can…

If you play Boomshine, does the game become increasingly difficulty? To what extent do ‘lower levels’ of the game teach the player how to play the game?

The second game is Desktop Tower Defense, a “fun flash based puzzle / strategy game where you have to protect your desktop from invaders by spending money on attacking pieces and building a maze for them to follow”.

The idea here is to position, in real time, defensive cannon emplacements that will prevent waves of marauding enemies from reaching the other side of the screen (or something like that!) Not only do you have to keep an eye on where the enemies are coming from, and how often, you also need to think carefully about how the free-running defensive positions you have placed on the battlefield will work together…

This game ‘went viral’ several months ago (as described in Desktop Tower of Money: 3 tips to profit from casual games), and many working days were lost as a result!

If you do spend a few minutes hours (err? days) playing this game, write a quick note about how the difficulty levels are managed, and why the game appears to be so addictive (to some people at least..!)

This week’s Friday Fun application is a physics game creator called Newtoon.

Get it from here:
Newtoon microgame editor

Newtoon games have two components: balls and springs. Balls can be connected to springs by dragging the end of a spring into the centre of a ball.

When in Setup mode, items can be dragged onto the canvas from the library, and configured from a properties panel that is opened by clicking on the item. Each ball can be configured as a hazard, token or goal. The aim of the game is to move the Token to the Goal, avoiding the Hazards as you do so.

Spring properties can also be modified:

As can the properties of the environment:

By experimenting with the different placement of game objects, and different configurations of physical properties (gravity, charge, friction, and so on) the game can be made or less challenging, and require a greater or lesser understanding of the action of the particular physical effects (such as like charges repelling, or different charges attracting).

Understanding how to negotiate a particular obstacle course can be explored by running the game in experiment mode, and seeing how the various forces are acting:

I haven’t managed to find any documentation for Newtoon - the idea it to just play and experiment with it - but if you do find yourself taking notes on how to create a compelling Newtoon game, then why not add them as a comment here, or post a link to them if you publish them elsewhere on the web…

Newtoon was developed using the Java programming language, so it should run on Macs as well as PCs, and even some mobile phones. (If you donlt already have Java installed on your computer, you should be prompted to install it. If not, you can download and install it from here: Java Web Start Download.)

Newtoon was originally developed as an educational game creation application designed to engage learners in the joy of physics :-) (You can read a review of how well it fared here: Learning Science Socially Through game Creation: a case study of the Newtoon Prototype)

To be able to save a game, you will need to register for an account on the Soda website. Once you have saved several games, you will be able to aggregate several of them as separate levels in a single, multiple level game using the Newtoon gamestack.

Games can be uploaded to, and shared from, the Soda website. If you do create a game and manage to share it, please post a link to the game in the comments below.

Here’s the link again: Newtoon microgame editor

The second of this week’s “fun things to try out’ is an online digital story, the first of six, that are being released, one per week, over the next six weeks (so I guess this could be assumed to be a good Friday Fun destination site over that period, just anyway?! ;-)

The site is at http://wetellstories.co.uk/, with the first story, The Twenty One Steps, being told “across” an interactive Google map. I intend to post several items about the role of stories, and “narrative”, over the next few weeks, so if you do get a chance to, err, read (?) this story, I encourage you to do so…

There’s a fascinating backstory to this project, too, which has been documented in part by Adrian Hon, one of the designers of the project: Stories, Games, and The 21 Steps, and who speaks in interview here: Q&A: Perplex City Creators Craft ‘We Tell Stories’.

To what extent do you think a narrative, or story, is an important feature of a game? Is “The 21 Steps” a game? What features does it have in common with a game? To what extent would you say “The Twenty Steps” is an example of interactive digital media, and why? How does the technology support the telling of the story?

And PS 10 points for whoever posts the first summary of what Perplex City, which is mentioned in some of the background notes to the game, was all about…

As it’s a holiday weekend, I’m going to do two Friday Fun posts this week; one today (a game) and one tomorrow (more of an interactive media piece ;-)

Today’s app is actually produced by the Science Museum and it’s called: launchball

launchball is essentially a ‘physics’ game. By positioning a series of blocks strategically within a room you have to configure the room so that a ball dropped into it bounces its way to the room exit. The blocks represent various things - such as springs, or fans, for instance - which act on the ball as you might expect. The room also models gravity, of course…

How is the difficulty managed across levels? To what extent are the levels designed so that the player is taught “how to play the game” by actually playing the game?

As well as playing the prepopulated levels (and there are 30 of them!) there’s also a studio where you can create your own levels.

Read more about launchball here: launchball.

Launchball was designed with education in mind, so there’s also a Teachers’ Guide to Launchball available… It also links to a particular useful Guide to the Launchball blocks.

If you do manage to create a level or two, why not write a blog post about them with a screenshot or two, or maybe even comment back here with a link so we can all have go? ;-)

Using the level designer, could you design a five to ten level game that starts from scratch (i.e. that assumes the player knows nothing about the game) and that uses the early levels to teach the player how to use 3 or 4 sorts of block , before presenting them with 3 or four increasingly difficult levels that require the particularly cunning use of those blocks? ;-)

Whenever I post to the Digital Worlds blog, I get offered the chance to upload my “avatar”. I intend to have a ramble about avatars and how they relate to - and represent - identity in online, digital and virtual worlds later on, but thought it might be fun if we did start to use avatars to represent ourselves in the Digital Worlds space…

The term avatar has its roots in the Hindu religion, where it describes the earthly manifestation of a god on earth. Typically, the avatar would have a human form, although it could also be an animal.

Ten (10) points to whoever’s the first to identify the names and representations of each avatar. Five points each for a brief summary of the background story to each one ;-)

[I'm trusting you to keep your own scores... maybe I need to post a stars chart, somewhere?! ;-)]

In online communities, avatars are representations that of real people, in some form or another. They can be used to provide an identifiable way of identifying and communicating with anonymous individuals who might otherwise be hidden away behind a textual user ID.

An avatar may range from a simple photo, image or static cartoon like character, such as you might use to identify yourself in an instant messaging system or in a web forum, to lifelike 3D characters that roam around virtual worlds such as Second Life. There’s an interesting history here of the avatars one person has used over the last few years that’s well worth a read: History of Avatars; and this post on The History of Avatars describes how the notion of avatars has been used across different media, from cyberpunk literature, through IM, to today’s online virtual worlds. What are the different ‘treatments’ of avatars that are described in that second article?

In the ultimate expression of postmodernism - the self-referential construction of cultural artefacts out of other cultural artefacts (or something like that - I’m no philosopher or critical theorist;-) - there is now even social network for avatars: Koinup

Create Your Own Avatar

There are more than a few sites out there that allow you to create your own avatar - you may already have one or more avatars - so this bit of Friday Fun is about setting up avatars to hide behind in the Digital Worlds universe ;-)

If you already have an avatar in an appropriate form, maybe you’d like to create a WordPress account and use it as your avatar when posting a comment here. If you haven’t already got an avatar, or if you haven’t got one that you can - or want to - use here, then chop chop, get to it, let’s create one now…

There are many ways of creating online avatars, from simple cartoon images to 3D animated figures that inhabit 3D rooms you can decorate yourself. I suggest spending about half an hour or so (5 mins is enough, but hours can go by…;-) creating a cartoon-like character that can be saved as a simple image file, and then uploaded to a personal web profile page in the same way that you might upload a photograph of yourself.

Of course, you might have other ideas…

[The editor on the Mii Editor site has been taken down due to legal action by Nintendo.]

The Mii Editor

The Miieditor actually allows you to save an XML file that can be loaded into a Wiimote for the Wii games console - so you can bring your avatar alive in your favourite Wii game!

What’s the alternative?

If you have time, or if you don’t like the idea of creating a Mii avatar, there are plenty of other avatar and 3D room creation sites.

I bookmarked a few I’ve come across using the delicious social bookmarking site:
http://del.icio.us/psychemedia/avatar+editor

The Dress-Up Games website also lists several dozen avatar creation sites.

Be warned, though, creating avatars can be addictive, and very time consuming, and some complex, Flash animated 3D avatars can take a long time to load if you add them to a webpage! If you do try any of these other sites out, why not post a link to ones you found particularly engaging (maybe with a quick review) as a comment?