The first project of many with LamasaTech and it’s been an interesting challenge implementing content for multi-user interaction. For now, it’s an initial concept for interactive posters that would extend beyond the traditional websites and bringing the bonus content to the user, instead of them having to discover it.

It is brilliant working with the team, as they let me run wild with ideas to play with and implement. There’s definitely more exciting projects coming to life shortly and with new features being introduced to the multi-user platform.

Sunderland Community IT Development Day

It was a privilege in meeting with other developers of similar interests. It’s quite interesting to see a common trend of ideas evolving around bringing the community together through various Internet website solutions. Quickly mocking up interactive prototypes of some targeted ideas were challenging and it was a fun day out.

It was a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate some of the multi-touch software & hardware resources at hand. The growing interest from the crowd leads an optimistic view in how these technologies can benefit society.

ScaleForm Gfx has now grown more powerful with the upgraded support in its framework and optimized for the mobile platform. I guess it wouldn’t be long till it’s works directly with the other new 3D technologies in the market.

Its projected performance is between 2-10 times faster; though I guess that’s with the inclusion of ActionScript 3 for better data management (I kind of saw this coming when I was migrating from AS2). The new attributes of multi-touch support, hardware acceleration and various other features are clearly inherited from using Flash player 10.

There are so many benefits gained from to move on beyond the limitations of Flash 8, because if you ask me, it’s about time! The only presented challenge is existing users who mastered AS2 may need to AS3 to enjoy the fruits of these new features and future-proof their works further.

Omegame Menus Master is another interesting middleware GUI tool that certainly has its success story in Heavy Rain. Since sharing similar features, my only question I’m thinking now is will Omegame’s products range be as recognised?

Anyhow, the ScaleForm has already a strong present within the games industry with a growing catalogue of games in its back-pocket and especially numerous titles built on the Unreal 3 Engine.

GreenSock is a powerful toolset to dynamically generate smooth animations and user interface transitions. Very light-weight, battle-tested and well matched against other existing tweening engines.

Some solutions perform differently with various workloads, but the light-weight flexibility shouldn’t be reason enough be used excessively. Both Simultaneous and continuous use of tweening can affect runtime performance; as some background study suggested a coined phrase/term, “tweening syndrome”. This sums up the potential addiction amongst many designers and developers alike.

This was highly recommended by my colleagues; I too have grown much attached to it since first use only a couple of months ago.  I have to admit, this is my first introduction to tweening, as I’ve never done it before!  In the past, all visual transition affects were independently implemented. If I have started harnessing the power of tweens some years ago, my math skills wouldn’t be as sharp. A definite time saver, but still I’ll choose not to rely on it so much, or else I may get another lazy habit when coding.

Not to mention scattering fibre-optic mice around the branches and plugged them in for lighting. Even random sweets littered it with an office phone embedded within to chime the seasonal tune. Of course we couldn’t leave it bare without presents, so all the empty Dell boxes were re-purposed. An inventive cyber-tree to be proud of…

The festive spirit helped with getting to know new colleagues and people around Newcastle and Sunderland. Making positive relations with neighbouring companies and business networks. Especially by some random fluke, I made a potential partnership contact with Durham University whilst on my way by train to visit my family.

Of course spending time visit my family at Christmas was nice. In fact they came across a novelty stress ball (URL on the right) and thought of me. kind of sums up what joys I go through on a daily basis, lol.

I’ve just had the honour to relocate and join a young company who specialise in the multi-user aspect of interaction during early December. Basically imagine restaurant tables being touch screen surfaces that can be used to play virtual air-hockey, order food without even leaving the table or other decorative features!

It’ll be a challenge to strive for sophisticated solutions of natural interaction by looking beyond the traditional confines of traditional interface design and functionality. I will be having lots of fun with the in-house technology that is assured to be more responsive of multi-touch and gesture processing than the inbuilt adobe flash player functions.

In the next coming months, I will be getting deeply involved in developing it further and have a lot of fun creating some exciting programs!

About six months ago I had a little time to research how other programmers had accomplished a continuous oceanic wave animation using perlin noise in Flash. Have discovered some answers (thanks to Bruce Jawn’s Flash Blog). Thought it was quite clever letting it automatically sculpt terrains of various proportions, etc.

As the isometric grid of block sprites are laid out flat; as their vertical scaling is dependant on the general colour brightness value within the pixel coordinates of the bitmapData. Basically brighter a colour, higher a block may rise, but darker readings dictate how far a block would fall. Plus depending on the configuration; it can work in reverse.

It works in the same principle of examining sound wave spectrums. Many audio players have a visual equalizer (higher the sound pitch is; a spike would be more noticeable in a visual format of a bar graph). May have sounded long-winded, but at least I got some of the theory out of the way.

Only until recently it dawned on me that I could use an image file as the source to replace the perlin noise in the same scenario. I’ve seen the legacy of various game engines like Quake and Unreal use this idea to generate sculpted environments for the players to explore. Also greyscale images or normal-mapping techniques add a depth of realism by manipulating patterns of light and shadow upon flat surfaces. Commonly used to enhance visual real-time 3D rendering.

I’ve applied this with a static image to prove the concept. Also added a secondary tile set to represent a fictional water level for aesthetics. Thinking of combing the Perlin Noise behaviour with water tiles to it look more impressive. I can see why it’s easier to average to RGB values instead of choosing an individual one for simplicity. Also could use another image file to colour it separately.

With further development, I would be able to include a feature of uploading a sample image to demonstrate it further and maybe supply a stencil space to paint/sculpt in real-time. In time it can morph into a funky visual equalizer in an online MP3 player component like some others published online. Even better – use it as a wacky gameplay mechanic!

Although I do remember seeing an article of a developer showing off a similar idea in using a music video footage of U2 being played in real-time. Perhaps this exercise is a reflection of it, but I love to recreate it myself one day.

I love do the LinkedIn website and its networking directories. As it is a business version of Facebook; it’s something I am personally more comfortable with. Every week, it astounds me in discovering a broad range of upcoming talent and industry professionals. It really has helped in looking measuring your experience with trends and sharing ideas.

As well as building an online presence and gaining new skills, I feel welcomed with comments of positive comments of my portfolio and creating bridges with people across the world. As well as being part of a community that strives to be as creative and additionally a recruitment hot-spot for agencies or industry professionals who can quickly refer to our profiles.

During the past month with ongoing phone calls from recruitment agency, so it was an extremely hectic period and delicate gamble to balancing current workloads and attending new employment opportunities. Plus that’s why I’ve been pretty quite since my last post.

It has also helped me be more aware of users still using Internet Explorer 6. The Spoon.net sandbox browser plug-in was life saver to fixing backwards compatibility issues (last lost me a couple of weekends).

Being considered by Public Creative and Fish in a Bottle is quite an achievement in getting noticed by globally renowned agencies. Although unsuccessful during my application, never the less; it was an absolute privilege in receiving an audience. With attention like this gave me strength to move on, learn, adapt and expanding with the interactive market.

After spending roughly £250 alone on train fare towards what may have seemed to be a wild goose-chase, but yet it’s the frustrating close to reaching it and yet quite there. Finding a permanent position with secure prospects are rare gems in this economic climate, it’s sometimes the case of being happy with what we’ve got.

Had been looking forward to Halloween, but instead, been stuck indoors recovering from the flu during the past few days. Oh well, at least I can put some more money aside to getting a proper Star Wars storm trooper for next year! Plus thanks to a small tip from a fan club in Norfolk, might install a little air conditioning fan under the helmet.

The reception was well received when our intentions with the flash programs were sincere in offering assistance in educational activities and medical applications. The primary goal within the brief was achieved with flying colours in successfully demonstrating the hardware interactivity and practical use. The event also opened a door to alternative possibilities in teaching methods and therapy.

They were very impressed by the level of functionality, quality and how efficient the games were, even at their early stage of development. Although my only regret was not being able to attend; thanks being pulled into new projects and finding new business connections.

Whilst working with the limited mouse functionality for the user, a combination of rollover/rollout triggers helped to create the sling-shot mechanic for this little number. Although it may not follow the curling game rules accurately.

The goal is to try and get player’s coloured ball as close as possible to the white one. The winner is the one who achieves the closest distance.

To pick up the ball, just rollover the white outline, swing it around to get enough momentum and make sure it’s going the right direction. Whilst swinging it around, there’s no fear of collision with any others that are already deployed until released. That also counts with the ball bouncing off its game space.

To throw the ball, just roll out of the outlined area. Also every ball can rebound off each other and even against the perimeter walls. Each player can block or knock another out of place as a competitive feature.

Once they all have been thrown, just rollover the swing-zone again to reveal the winner. There’s a reply button for you to rollout of to start again. So I hope this will be another fun mini-game.

Of course I couldn’t resist to apply a sheep edition to demonstrate how versatile it can be to repurpose the design.