d’lee

I have just upgraded my Wordpress blog to version 2.3.3.  It went without a hitch! Whew!

Updates are in your future.  If I’m not too busy scribbling in my scratchbooks.

Currently I am polishing the visual aspects of the virtual fish aquarium. In addition, I have also begun simple coding for the buttons and working around obstacles.  Loadmovie and unload movie scripts for buttons, submenus, and descriptions are in place.

By next week, I am supposed to have the AI for the fish as well.

The current obstacle is the interaction of the fish and submenu- would it be easier to load separate swf files, or to embed another movie clip? However, I went with load/unload SWFs because you are not able to place a button inside a movie…

The buttons are now “grouped” together- the three main buttons are together, while the alarm button is separate from the rest.

This is a more in-depth concept of the layout.

concept_layout_wfish.png is availiable. This shows the interactive fish, to scale with the rest of the layout.

Hover state for the layout. If the mouse hovers on a button, the text-based submenu will appear below. The active button will also become yellow and stand out from the rest of the stage. It’ll resume it’s default colors once the mouse moves away, or a subaction has been done. Descriptions and more information will be in the notify area below.

The attention message. The “button” will appear red and the “!” will animate in a subtle zoom in/out motion. If attention is needed, it will say so in the sub-menu area; otherwise the submenu will work as usual (actions can still be chosen).

Note: Permissions may vary from server to server.
This procedure also uses DreamWeaver:

1)create a folder named “uploads” within the “wp-content” folder (remote site, or use the “Put” command)

2)right-click on the “uploads folder” and choose “Set Permissions…”

3)Change permissions to 777 as well as “Execute All”

Congrats, you should be able to upload images now!

I have kept with a blue/green color scheme because that is associated with water and fish. Gauges have been removed; alerts and appearance of fish/bowl will be indicators. The top of this layout is the fishbowl. Directly underneath are the four main action buttons: Feed, Decorate, Care, and Alert (the latter is not a button, but an indicator of something that’ll need your attention). As you roll over the buttons, a brief description will appear in the bottom rectangle; choose a category and sub-buttons will appear underneath the button bar. The bottom rectangle will also display information on alerts, recommended action, and other things.

The betta fish is not pictured at this point. I am still trying to find a style that that is realistic yet “stylish,” like the fishbowl.

1. Sketch the idea again and have a comp in PhotoShop or Ai (layers, 800×600px)
2. Development Lists and focus
3. Research components, code, et cetera
4. Events

Due next class, break down all actions, A.I., and interactions. Pseudo-Code, if you will. Also, notes from Echo Genesis. And as for animating the betta fish, no movies. All scripts. (”Tail - wag.”)

Also, notes from today’s presentation:

• for the gauges, more than one for different aspects- health, hunger, cleanliness.
• AI for the fish, and interaction
• not the most important thing, but color can change for the fish

Click on the image to view the whole thing:

Betta Fish Bowl

So you won’t have to scroll down, here’s a recap of the project:
Feed the fish, decorate its environment, but here’s the catch: if your choices are WRONG it’ll affect the well-being of the fish, and if there are too many wrong choices, the fish dies. I want this to be a learning experience for the audience– possible future buyers of the Siamese Fighting Fish / Betta fish.

Something for the backburner: Interactive Bea…r…

Apologies for the giant image. But anyway:
You can play with this bear, feed it, poke it. Mess with the environment in order to further interact with the bear. Or mess with the bear in order to interact with the environment. This’ll be a quirky, fun thing.

I had two ideas from the preprocess:

1. Interactive Panda Bear
You can play with this bear, feed it, poke it. Mess with the environment in order to further interact with the bear. Or mess with the bear in order to interact with the environment. This’ll be a quirky, fun thing.

2. Virtual Fish Bowl
Basically all that implies. Feed the fish, decorate its environment, but here’s the catch: if your choices are WRONG it’ll affect the well-being of the fish, and if there are too many wrong choices, the fish dies. I want this to be a learning experience for the audience– possible future buyers of the Siamese Fighting Fish / Betta fish. This flash component will be included with the informational Web site I plan to build as a download.