Iv'e created a new column for my blog work and shall name it All things bright and Multimedia

I'll create posts now and again about various Multimeda related topics that i shall research and share with you. SO i get to know more about aspects of Multimedia and share it with you.

So without further adu i shall post my first Blog and it's about the NEW Nintendo Wii (Mainly the remote).

Unless you have been on mars for a while you will have heard of the new game console ‘Nintendo Wii’. Previously known as Revolution and the successor to the Nintendo GameCube. Mentioned in 2004 and a prototype was shown in 2005 at the Tokyo Game Show. The feature which makes this console so sort after is it’s wireless controller.

The contoller works by using two things; Infa Red and an accelerometer.

Infa Red - communicates with the consoles sensor bar and that detects where the remote is pointing to.
An accelerometer - An instrument for measuring acceleration, detecting and measuring vibrations, or for measuring acceleration due to gravity. The Wii remote for the contains accelerometers for measuring movement and tilt to complement its pointer functionality. However when playing a game the gamer must not be too far or too close or the signal will be lost.

With this a gamer can not only just be apart of a game with various flashing in-depth graphics or use a steering wheel or gun to get closer to the action but now actually move about and feel more of the character in the game. Top Notch!

Recording a band

Below is a step by step guide of how to record a band in the bonnington studio. Assuming that the instrument(s) and or singer have been miced up we can begin...

• Open a session in Pro Tools and save it in the required location.
• Create track - as many as microphones are input in the rooms.
• Create a stereo track, this will be our master fader.
• Set all tracks on the mixer to 'MIC' input and set the gains to zero.
• Record and enable the tracks.
• Find levels of the mics and adjust the gain accordingly until the sound coming in turns into a light orange, this way we have a little bit of room for a louder sound coming through without it clipping and distorting.
• To set up the headphonnes for a headphone mix we need to look at the light grey area on the mix window and click on the arrows go to 'INTERFACE' - then headphone send left. Make sure to set them to 'PRE' and then put the faders to zero. (Alt-click the fader)
• On the Octopri the inputs need to be selected to mono, these will light up orange when pressed.
• Press 'SEND B' then 'FLIP' on the mixing desk to shift the desk function to the headphone setup - the faders can be adjusted accoringly here.
• To adjust the output level on the headphones in the stuio then simply change the output level on the octopri.
• The people in the studio room can chack out the headphone levels by putting the headphone jack in the 'HEADPHONE OUT' on the octopri .
• If the vocals is going to be recorded over the song, they will want to hear the song when they will be recorded. To do this the vocal track on the record window on Pro Tools will need to be set to 'INPUT ONLY MONITORING' this is the 'I' near the track name.
• For the use of a keyboard in the Live Room two DI boxes can be used (left and right channels) to set up this for Pro Tools we will need to Aux Tracks.
• If Phantom power is ever needed through the Octopri the clicking the +48v will give the microphone the power.
• When wanting to talk back to the band at any time in the Live Room the 'TALK BACK MIC LEVEL' knob and the 'MONITOR TO AUX' knob should be turned up accordingly.

Good things to know...

• TDM plug-ins use the computers hardware and R-TAS use external hardware(e.g. an M-Box) this is useful to know if the computer is starting to run slowly.
• A guitar can also be recorded in the Studio Room if the jack is inserted in the Octopri and the 'INSTRUMENT' button is enabled. The input on ProTools should be set up for this also e.g. B1
• 414's are good for multiple vocal inputs at the smae time - once set to omni.

Whilst doing various shots for SPP2 i was playing around with the camera and took a couple of shots, they may not be great quality and you may think they are pants, BUT i dont care because i dont know how to operate the uni cameras and i put them on my blog anyway so hahahaha!

SPP2 week 2, following on from the the space lecture last we worked on Visual Blocks this time round. These are Line, Shape, Tone, Colour, Movement, Rhythm. Below are a few examples of what our group took.

We recorded a shot where the 2 objects, although different in type, purpose have a similar shape.
Closure of line, looking at the birds your mind can pick up a triangular shape.

We also recorded a shot that demonstrates continuum of movement from shot to shot in terms of the viewer’s attention. Here the duck is on the left and when it leaves the screen on the right another duck will appear on the left.

This blog is for SPP2 - Space

There are four types of space Deep, Flat, Limited and Ambiguous. 'Space' is used in camera work (both stills and moving pictures) and below are a few pictures that our group took using various tyes of space.

Ambiguous space - The viewer is not sure of the actual size of an object(s) and shape.

Deep Space - Uses aerial diffusion where the atmosphere is darker or not as clear to sive the scene depth.

Flat Space - Uses objects moving parallel to a surface similarities in textures and surfaces.

Limited space & flat space - A combination of Deep and Flat space with still a sense of tone and image sizes.

FEEDBACK!!!

After slightly ammending the rules i played the game with a few other people (in two player and four player scenarios) and here are the two feedbacks i received...

Michelle - "I think your 'JUKE' game is quite original and the design is simple and nice. Good!"

Todd - "The game is good and original. I like the idea of layers within the game e.g. trying to find the cards that spell Juke, the numbers and the uses of the coloured bonuses. Well Done.

So the game works the rules have been amended and the next stage is to make the game look pretty. So the next blog will show the cards that i have made up on Photoshop... SORTED!

Ok last week Brad asked us to do a quick guide of how to play the game - I think he said the first round of gameplay but i cant remember so i shall continue until i can not think of anymore :)

As stated in the rules earlier the game consists of four rounds - for a two player game each player starts round twice, for four players each player starts a round once and for a three player game each player starts a round once, but on the last round, the player who is currently losing starts.

• Firstly as any card game starts off with a good shuffle is needed!
  
• Right, to start off the game the dealer should give each player 5 cards (face down) each, whilst the rest of the cards are placed face down in a pile - this will be the pickup pile for each round.
  
• The cards are picked up by the respective player but must not be seen by any other players. The player right of the dealer goes first, and discards a card they do not wish to keep. This should be placed face down to create a new pile next to the pickup pile. This is known as the drop pile.
  
• Once a card been discarded then the player picks up a card from the pickup pile so they have five cards in their hand once again. The next player (anticlockwise) then does the same and the play continues.
  
• The players continue to dicard and pickup cards trying to reach their goal of getting J,U,K,E and/or search for symbols of the same colour for a larger point score. Special Play Cards (SPL's) can be used at any time by any player except for the JOKE card which can only be used once 'Juke' has been called.
  
• The play continues until a player shouts out 'JUKE' and the round has come to end (barring that a special play card does not stop the JUKE).
  
• Once a round has been completed each player counts the score of their cards to give a round total. This should be written down.

Bonuses for a round can include...

Double score: A players score is doubled if they called 'JUKE' and /or if they have 4 coloured symbol cards in a hand.

Triple Score : A players score is tripled if they have all five of their cards the same coloured symbol.

After four rounds each of the players round totals is added up to give a game total, the player who has the largest score wins!!!!!!!

Right the game was created on pieces of paper as a first copy. From here the initial testing stage can commence. After playing a few games of 'Juke' some amendments to the rules and alteration to the gameplay were discussed. Here are the changes and why...

After winning 'Juke' in one round a player with a low score can easily be out of the rest of the game with the other player calling Juke (with the bonus of the triple points score) so a winning Juke score will be doubled from now on.
With this a player who loses a couple of rounds can still be in the game without being too far behind, keeping the game close.

Symbols, letters and numbers could be placed on the border of the card?
When holding the cards players may be aware of showing cards when holding them - when the symbols were in the middle. If placed on the border the cards can be held more closely.

Possibly use the symbols more E.G four of a kind may be double the final score and five of a kind could be triple score for that round.
Players can chose not to go for duke and try and attain symbols for a higher score. The game will be higher scores (which to the player will feel more of an accomplishment).

Reducing the amount of cards - especially the lowest and highest numbers. Maybe six low and four high.
More numbers ranging between 3 and 6 will surface which will then attend a more close game. As before alot of 1's came into hand which was slightly annoying.!.

After finding my friend Atif, I politely (forced) asked him to read my rules on the previous blog to see if they were clear enough to understand. He gave me the thumbs up but asked about the special cards. I told him that I have not thought of them all yet but they will change the balance of a game quickly, so a player who thinks he is on the verge of winning with a massive pointscore can be juked and lose everything!

He was excited.

Okso a quick run-through the rules i have created so far - these are not finalised and may be amended and added on throughout production and testing.
The cards will each have a number (which represents a point) not only this but the card also has a symbol (yet to be decided which symbols) and a letter J,U,K and E.

THE OBJECTIVE of the game is to gain AS MANY points as possible.
A pen and paper should be used to keep score.

Firstly the cards are shuffled, and 5 are given to each player and the rest are placed face down in a pile.

The means of winning a game is to collect at least 4 cards that spell out JUKE by replacing unwanted cards with the pile on the table. The player must first dicard an unwated card face down near the pile and then pick the top card from the pile. The cards must not be seen by the other player(s).
Note that a player will always have 5 cards at the end of their go so a duplicate lettered card may arise, this card will then be used for the value of the points or symbol it has with the exception of the special cards (which will be explained on the next blog).

Once a player has JUKE they may call juke to end the game and the points on the cards are added by each player to give a total. The player who won by calling JUKE gets a bonus and triples their score for the game. JUKE does not have to be called straight away, instead a player can continue replacing their cards to try and get as many points as possible. HOWEVER if another player gets and calls JUKE then they shall receive the bonus.

The game is played four times for J,U,K E and each player goes at least once. And the point score from all the games are added together to create a total score.


So overall the game is to be greedy and get as many points as possible but also not to be too greedy and lose bonuses! A player is to try and juke the opposition to become victorious!

Ok after careful consideration i have decided that Juke will not be created from a standard set of playing cards but indeed a shall create a new deck specifically for this game.

Also looking on Dictionary.com i found out that the word 'Juke' means -
1.
to make a move intended to deceive (an opponent). –noun
2.
a fake or feint, usually intended to deceive a defensive player.

After a quick think through the rules, the game kind of follows this description. EXCELLENT so the game is in progress, in the next blog i shall go through the rules i will have created to date.

Ok, so to kick start off with the Games Design we have to create a card game that follws a few simple rules...

1) The game must be original and use no further components E.g dice, boards tokens.
2) Be for a minimum of 2 players and last longer than 5 minutes (no more than 20)
3) Must have a typed rule sheet.

So with this i thought of random thoughts and stared out of a window or two to come up with 2 games... Diamond Cut and Juke

After consideration of rules and a means to win the games Juke was the one that i will concentrate on - as the other was pants!

Live Ipod...

This was created last week the 25th i think and we were being taught about layers and pop art colour.