W3C Validator

As i have finished my site, i went to W3C validator to check for my HTML and CSS. At the beginning there are some errors in the website. But i followed the instruction and correct all of them. But still when i put my flash content in the site, it couldn’t pass the validation of HTML, so there are problems about Flash content validating, the CSS validation is successful. Hope though these validators, my site becomes more formal and standard.

Check out this: HTML and CSS Validator

Site Launched & User Testing

After four months’ hard working, so far i had done most of my project, the site is ready so i put it on the server to do some user testing, waiting for more feedback, and then i can improve it.

To see my project prototype : http://impserver/~chuang/index.html

Finish the game–

With the help of Mark, i succeed to finish the interactive part of the flash game, suddenly i found i became more interestied in the interactive stuff, it is not so easy to achieve interactive function, when you see some flash games, the first impression is that it is easy to achieve, but when you are creating it by yourself, you should always consider so many factors, how it affects? how audience react with it? how to interact? I have been really learning a lot from this final project, espeacially i had experienced creating an interactivity between my subject and the audience. It seems almost the end of the whole course, but i think it is just the beginning of my interactive media exploration.

Here are my flash game parts:

Almost Done!

I had been learning the Flash day by day and doing my flash story during last couple of weeks, now i had finished index page and the twelve flash stories, which means that i am most there! One more flash game and i will be done. But i think i meet some problems now, as i am still not familiar with the action script, i don’t know how to achieve the interactive part of the game, i might need some help from Mark and learn those skills very quickly. Ok, let’s take a look at my screen shots of the story part:

Script and the Voice

These days i have been busy with writing the story script, asking people to record the voice for me. In my story, there are many crop circles taken place in four places, in every place, there are three characters talking about the event. So i wrote 12 short speech script and asked several people to do voice. Thanks to Sun Jianyan,Xavier Gales-sides, May Parkin, today had already taken all of the voice material ready for my flash. Moreover, at the same time, i had been collecting some background sound and button effect sound, getting most of material i need for the project. So far it seems i have done quite well, let’s do more!

Website Done!

So far i have done most of the website html and CSS, just a bit improved my second design layout and i put some flash elements in it and all the content, including images, text, and so on. It seems quite simple but i think the content is fine, now next step is to do the main part–the story telling and the interactive game in Flash. I have learned much about the Flash before, from now i work harder to catch up with my schedule.

Below are my website final layout:

Full Throttle–A narrative game

Full throttle is a good example of narrative game, although i didn’t play it, i had searched some kinds of information, letting me know more about how to make a narrative style game, this game had insprited me the way of creating the game plot and making the storyline.

“The game seems to be a mix of Mad Max and Escape from New York themes. The main character is a Kurt Russell (“Call me Snake”) type named Ben, leader of a motorcycle gang. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic environment reminiscent of movies like The Road Warrior. All this is tied up with a dose of Easy Rider and plenty of shots of motorcyles tearing down lonely highways to pulse-pounding rock (mostly digitized samples of a band named “The Gone Jackals). Although I don’t usually appreciate recorded music in games, the band’s guzzlin’ guitar music fits the engine-revving atmosphere perfectly. The voice acting is mostly good–if you consider Kurt Russell’s tough guy routine do be good, that is.  ” Cited from gameology.org.

“In Full Throttle: Hell On Wheels, players climb on a Corley motorcycle to become the biker they’ve always dreamed of in this humorous adventure that blends bare-knuckle brawling and hard-driving action. As Ben, leader of a renegade motorcycle gang called the Polecats, players engage rough and tumble rivals in brutal high speed motorcycle combat as well as tough bar room brawls. ” Cited from nlgaming.com.

Google earth helps!

As i said the locations of crop circles took place are far away from here, i can neither doing research around crop circle, nor experiencing seeing it myself, but, thanks to the new technology, now i can see the real-time crop circle from the satellite. It is the Google Earth! Using this software, we can see the real crop circle image from the satellite. It is quite heartening when i saw it using Google earth the first time, the crop circles are just there, so clear, so wonderfully designed, so amazing and unbelievable! This gave me similar experience of seeing myself. Also i use google earth to crop the england land shape to fit into my flash graphic, of course the real time pictures of the crop circle should be shown in my project. I feel really great, even i am not there, i am able to see it from the Internet, thanks to the convenience and help of the Google Earth!

Second Layout

As i designed the first layout of my web site last week, i found it was not good looking, i have been improving it, but however i changed it, i didn’t know how to make it become much better. So i drawed another layout, and using other colour styles. This time i chose yellow as my main colour, and i put some crop frames and border, also some background images of crop circle. Now i think the design is much better, and it is more related to ‘crop’ stuff. Below is my second design layout:

First Layout

I drew my first website layout today, i am still using the logo i designed before, and i put a dark green image on top to join the logo together. Basically, i use green as the main colour, light and dark green. Then i put the main navigation on the left side, letting users easily navigate the site. Also i will use some rollover techni to highlight the navigation, which makes users easier to navigate. The rest part are for the main content, which i will put my findings of crop circle phenomenon, and my flash game and video there. But obviously the design is a bit simple, and the style is not so good looking, i am not so good at designing, so let me spend more time doing it and let’s see if i can improve it or not.