Visualization.fla

The above link are some colorful background visuals synced up to my trance loops created in Rebirth, which I utilized for a sculpture enclosure. To be honest, however, I had originally envisioned them to work better with the Rez flash game I was concurrently working on. One of the great parts of the original game was that it was just as fun to watch as it was to play, due to the psychedelic visuals and aural syncronization with the graphics. Will's code looks almost done, and we got Heather's enemy renders. Hopefully she has completed the main character/buddha/particle, which we decided to use LW for to keep continuity with the other graphics. If not, I can try cooking something up. It's getting pretty tight, but I think we're gonna make it.

The project is really coming together, thanks largely to Will's amazing coding ability. We are planning to meet up during the week to finalize things, and we will try to get Heather's renders (she is currently spending her last moments as a senior partying it up.) I am very satisfied with how everything is looking, and await anxiously the finished game. Not much else to report; we jus' gotta make erey tang work!

Rez

The project is coming along well. The newest version of the game features a moving ball which can be clicked to produce a sound, and a new ball which revolves around a central axis and appears to travel through a three-dimensional space. I have begun to try to incorporate Will's code of a particle system into my own, but have not quite figured it out yet, as I am not too keep with hand-coded particle systems. Once the two are combined, however, the resulting effect will be quite a sight to behold. I await anxiously heather's Lightwave enemy renders, which I'm sure will be excellent and much more interesting than the current yellow ball.

I have attempted to make the trance soundtrack interesting by changing both the distortion and rhythmic patterns involved, and the stereo direction from which the sounds are coming. The desired effect is to present an evolution of sound, a change in orientation which denotes progression and the moving of a character to a new level or area.

When I tried to scan the concept art I drew for this project, my scanner didn't work right and the colors reversed. Interestingly, the resulting color scheme is much more interesting and imitated how in the original game you could replay the game in 'Beyond Mode', where a different color scheme was used for the same game.

Did some more work on the audio - the new files are posted below. I did get the sound to loop with Actionscript, which makes the whole thing run faster, but I still haven't figured out how to make a sound trigger when another sound clip is done playing. The problem is that when you loop a clip, there is no pause so there is no time for the system to know that the sound is done. I tried using the sound position variable, but I will have to try again.

Audio
Audio2
Audio3
Audio4
Audio5

Interestingly, work I am doing for another class can also be used and applied for this class. I am creating a digital art enclosure/installation for my Sculpture Survey with Ben Entner. It is an enclosure for my laptop screen which will have dark fabric on top of it, so as to isolate the viewer from everything except the visualizations and audio. The audio and some of the visual work done for that project can also be used for this class, as both simulate moving through technicolor environments with a trance soundtrack.

Group project

Over the week I worked a lot on getting the audio to work, and getting some of the preliminary gameplay visuals done. What I have done is very, very rough and just a demo of the kind of gameplay we want from the game. Will is going to work on some abstract background visuals, Heather is going to model enemies in LW and export the images to use as movie clips and I will do both visuals and work on getting the audio working right. I am really excited about this game, and from what I've seen so far it will really push the possibilities of Flash gaming.

http://web.syr.edu/~jgwolfe/rez.fla

For my group project, I want to make a Flash remake of the Dreamcast game Rez. In this game, the player moves along a set path though a psychedelic, technicolor environment where the object is to move to cursor on to the brightest object (an enemy, missle, etc.) There is a trance soundtrack playing, and every object you hit makes a sound that is synced with the music and builds the song as a rhymic crescendo that progresses throughout the area. One also has the ability to upgrade their form from a simple circle to a body to a buddha to a particle to the final state of a baby. It is a very intense visual and aural experience that I think could translate well into Flash. Also, we wouldn't have to use specifically the original visuals and audio - vector based drawings and the use of a drum program (such as Fruity Loops or Rebirth) could aid in the audio design. I loved this game because it is very simple in how to play - there are only 2 buttons, attack and overdrive - and yet it is both challenging and extremely interesting. I think the creation of this game would really push the boundaries of Flash as an artistic medium that combines both the mass appeal of entertainment and modern art.

Assignment 4/Project 2

Project 2
-Had some trouble uploading Assingment 4, its on the Courses folder.
I had a little bit of trouble understanding fully the assigned reading on collision detection and tile-based worlds. The overall gist of the text was apparent, but there was just far too much code for me to absorb and fully understand without extra in-class instruction. I reviewed the sample .fla files on the CD included with the Flash book and the TonyPA tutorials online, and used two of those files as a basis for Assignment 4 and Project 2.

For Assignment 4, I created a sort of physics rollercoaster that demonstrated accurate collison detection. I modified a simple program that demonstrated ball-line collision detection and reaction by adding lines of various lengths and angles that were drawn by Actionscript, and supplemented them with hand drawn graphics, a background and moving clouds to make a relaxing environment. I also tried to implement code from a file I got from Flashkit to give the player the ability to pick up the ball and drop it anywhere, but I couldn't get the code to work right. I tried both using a boolean "flag" and a number variable that would trigger when the ball was clicked and dragged, but to no avail. I also wanted to find out how to make the sound of the ball bouncing play whenever the ball collided with the line, but I couldn't find the necessary code.

For Project 2, I made a tile-based game featuring Mikey the Mouse who navigates an underground maze in order to reach the cheese. I used one of the tutorials from the TonyPA website as a basis for code and designed my tiles and game graphics around it. I made the cheese tile act as a door, so when the mouse collides with it he goes to a different map. For some reason, I could start on my second map and go to my first one, but not vice versa. For sound I found a mouse squeak online and put it with the walk animation. I found a tilable dirt texture online for the wall/ground tiles, and drew a cute little mouse.

I seem to be having a little trouble posting my files on my gamera syr account, so I'll see if I can just post it on /courses, or either email u copies of my files/give u a hard copy.

http://www.heavyflash.com/poetry/Shakespeare_Sonnet18.html
-Link I found on Digg.com - William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day? As told in ActionScript 2.0 syntax.