Photos!

I'll be uploading photos to a new flickr page here

Beats reading about it all!

Waiting on the hardware...

After buying slightly the wrong kit, not the wrong parts but the wrong specification, I'm now waiting on an Infra red 8 megapixel web camera, to see the infra red distortions and interface with the software. A piece of acrylic 450mm by 500mm and the infra red 850nm LED's which are being shipped from america.

Fingers crossed there are no new problems until I try and get the software working again! That's not to say I havn't compiled Openframeworks in Code::Blocks, but I need to see if the software interfaces with the web cam properly. So that is the next test.

I'll keep you updated on the parts and I should have some picture progress to follow quite soon.

The Intuitive Interface

So what is this all about then?  Well this blog charts the progress of my efforts to find a solution to the problem of interface design in computer game studio development pipelines.  What are those?  Well computer games or video games, are made up of a series of creational steps, or building blocks.  These make up the pipeline.  To broadly summarize them, you could say they're, pre-alpha or concept design, alpha development, beta development and release.  But this summary doesn't really point out all the key areas.

What I am trying to do is build a device modeled on Multi Touch Screens like this one (Multi Touch), and then attempt to prove the hypothesis that an organic (Off the cuff, no rigid structure or thought process) intuitive interface such as this one, would allow developers enhanced modes of function, when designing games.  Like doodling in real time and playing back quick animated scenes, adding video, pictures and sound from a hard drive or external storage location to prototype ideas.  There are in short, many many things you can do with the software.  I have to thank the people at Openframeworks because they're the people who developed the software under the LGPL 3.0 license, which means it's free to use, but there are catches further down the line, though I think these only apply to rigid commercial bodies.  Everything runs on a very simple C++ shell called Code::Blocks, though it will run on others as well and so the solution is cost effective (Even if the hardware might not be!!)

So I will be updating this blog hopefully every day with updates about what's going on, until then, happy reading!

Dominic Took