Announcements, Flash, Flex, Interactive Design,
3/20/08
An article based on a section of my recent Flash Platform Workshop went live on Adobe.com last week. Titled “Adobe Flash and Flex—Which Makes the Most Sense for Your Project?” it’s a short piece that presents a generalized heuristic for developers trying to decide whether they should use Flash or Flex. I hope it’s helpful—feel free to post any feedback!
Games, Interactive Design, Wii,
3/4/08
IGN Wii Editor Matt Casamassina recently posted video on his blog of 3DV Systems’ Z-Camera technology, which was showing at GDC. It looks pretty impressive—enabling body motion sensing in 3D without the need for an input device. As the comments on Matt’s blog indicate, there’s obviously going to be many applications for which you want to be holding something anyway, but the idea that that something could be a cheap plastic toy instead of an electronic device is an intriguing one. Matt hopes Nintendo is considering the tech for Wii 2—what should Nintendo do for Wii 2, anyway?
Flash, Games, Interactive Design, Wii,
3/2/08
Raph Koster, president of Areae and designer of Ultima Online and Star Wars: Galaxies, made this and other interesting statements at a private GDC lunch as reported on gamesindustry.biz. Koster argues that Flash’s ubiquity and device-independence puts it in a leadership position among next-gen gaming platforms, and notes that as devices proliferate, “a lot of games… are not going to know what devices they are landing on”.
As it becomes increasingly common for a given experience to be run on multiple devices, some fundamental design issues come into play, as I’m discovering trying to develop works that will accommodate both the mouse and the Wii remote. While in this case I’m talking about multiple control schemes on a single hardware platform (a PC running WiiFlash), the problem is essentially the same as if I was designing a PC experience that could also run on the Wii.
It’s one thing to design a casual game in which the vocabulary of user actions is defined relatively independently from the control scheme, and then figure out how to make that game work with various input devices. It’s something else, however, to design an experience that takes advantage of the unique capabilities of the Wii remote, while still making the interface functional and rewarding for a mouse user. Of course, the fallback position is always to design for the mouse user and then use the IR pointer capability of the remote to emulate the mouse, and this might be perfectly appropriate for especially complex interfaces. A more customized bit between experience and controller, however, will always be desirable.
Making music out of the data of interplanetary exploration.
Making music out of the data of interplanetary exploration.
Here’s a list of links to works cited in my recent talk “Storytelling in the Age of Divided Screens” at Gallaudet University.
I’m very happy to announce the launch of “Timeframing: The Art of Comics on Screens,” a new website that explores what comics have to teach us about creative communication in the age of screen media.
To celebrate the launch of Upgrade Soul, here’s a screen shot of an eleven year old prototype I made that sets artwork from Will Eisner’s “The Treasure of Avenue ‘C’” (a story from New York: The Big City) in two dynamically resizable panels.
Algorithms
Animation
Announcements
Authoring Tools
Comics
Digital Humanities
Electronic Literature
Events
Experiments
Exemplary Work
Flash
Flex
Fun
Games
Graphic Design
Interactive Design
iPhone
jQuery
LA Flash
Miscellaneous
Music
Opertoon
Remembrances
Source Code
Typography
User Experience
Viewfinder
Wii
July 2018
May 2018
February 2015
October 2014
October 2012
February 2012
January 2012
January 2011
April 2010
March 2010
October 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
September 2008
July 2008
June 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007