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Reflection - The last project

Out of all my time at the BCT, this has been the most meaningful project to me. I had fun making all those game soundtracks of course, but Easy Stems is my ultimate brainchild. It’s a passion project spawned from personal tribulations and problems in real life that has emerged as a really cool design, with a really good team behind it.

We worked really well together once again. Probably the most conflict-free team dynamic ive ever had. We are definitely all on the same page with how we like to work. We never use organized timetabling like Trello or HacknPlan. To be honest, while I understand timetablings usefulness, I hate being micromanaged and I don't like to micromanage others. As long as the work is being done well, within loose time brackets, then thats fine by me. I’m fairly impressed with our time management abilities overall.

We had a few hiccups this semester though. Our workflow wasn’t the most optimal and sometimes it was hard navigating the academic side of continuing an existing project. But overall, we definitely accomplished what we set out to do at the start. Every error we made is a valuable learning experience for us all.

At this stage, I feel confident showing Easy Stems as a display of competence when persuing internships/jobs. I also believe it's ready to be constructed and I would feel safe engaging with programmers who know how to create the back-end aspects of the software.

As the initial creator of the concept, I was inevitably the spearhead of our overall conceptual design. However, I seriously couldn't have created the application to the same standard without the team there. The visual and UI work from the team has been exceptional as well as just general idea bouncing. If there’s one thing I've learned, solo developers are either geniuses or morons. A team is a vital component in the development of complex concepts of any sort.

In conclusion, while Easy Stems isn’t perfect, or finished yet; it was a job well done from everybody this semester. Very proud of the boys.

I'm not sure where we will go from here, but I'm keen to take Easy Stems further. What that will emerge as exactly is still unknown, but I’d like to work in this industry and see Easy Stems happen.

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During the day of the fire, Tim and I embarked on a wild adventure through the chaotic streets of Auckland to visit my pal Joachim, so we could film at his house. Filming was tricky because neither of us are very practiced videographers. This was actually our second visit to Joachim, we had to go again because we discovered we needed more shots during editing.

After we gathered the footage we needed, I did some sound editing. The background music is some liquid drum and bass hobby work I had started a while ago. I made some adjustments for the video so we could time the shots to the track and it didn’t sound horrible.

I also worked to piece together the drop sequence in the video using Camtasia which is much easier to use for small tasks. 

FINISHED VIDEO HERE

Kickstarter Video Update

We’ve decided to split up the work of the video, as we realised it would be way too much work for an individual. The video has three core parts: A fun, short demonstration of three producers making a project together with Easy Stems, some highlighted descriptions of what Easy Stems is and does, and a visual animation element of the program functioning.

I’ve volunteered try do the first part, which was the short demo. I haven’t exactly used Premiere for over a year and a half now, so to say I’m rusty would be putting it nicely. After a couple days of refreshing myself and a couple Youtube tutorials, I feel like I’ve been put back on track and am now at a point where I’m happy with how it looks. With the help of Matt the DJ (from BCT), and  Joachim Pearson (BCT graduate) who are both producers, Oscar and I tried our best to take some footage of them to use for the video. We first started by using a DSLR camera, but figured we could more simply use my iPhone camera, which was a lot less admin to use, as neither of us are photographers and can’t really use a camera that well. 

With the first part of the video done, I can focus on other parts of Studio, including this blog that you’re reading now.

I next need to compile all of my designs I’ve been working on throughout the semester into one document, as well as the rest of our hand-in stuff.

[oscar-randle-bct]

A good rundown by Tim of recent work

Easy Stems - Kickstarter Video

Now that both the UI and website are at a point we are happy with, our next project as described in my previous blog is the Kickstarter video. The last couple weeks have been pretty full on with my other elective papers, but now that those are done and out of the way, it’s time to focus on Studio properly again.

Trying to figure out a good idea we can follow for our Kickstarter video was quite the challenge, so we decided to look at previous successful Kickstarter campaign’s videos to gain some kind of idea of what needs to be shown and try find common concepts among them.

Simon came up with the idea that we should introduce Easy Stems on our Kickstarter video by the means of an informative music video. We will film multiple people using Easy Stems overlaid on FL Studios, Logic Pro, and Ableton Live in different settings in order to showcase the emphasis on multi-platform collaboration. Each user will be making music in real time of the video, and as each user is introduced, a new instrument will be played, as if they are making a song together in real time using Easy Stems.

We decided to take a candid and handheld look and feel for our video as we want to make it look as friendly and inviting as possible. The effect of the handheld look will subconsciously show viewers that we don’t aim to make Easy Stems for a strictly professional audience. In reality we prefer the opposite where we aim at bedroom producers who simply want to make a sick tune with a couple of the boys or girls.

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Preparing for Hand in

The last few weeks have been all about preparing for our submission and presentation. Final XD modifications were made by Simon and Tim made some last additions to the UI. I’ve been doing a lot of writing. Unlike last semester, we won't be creating a meaty conceptual design document of the same magnitude. We feel like our efforts to present our work in a more intractable and interesting way means that it’s unnecessary. 

Having said that though, I believe it's still important to create some sort of packaging for the project. Given that our work is conceptual I believe a concept overview document provides some needed clarity to the project. 

This document basically includes a rundown of the overarching contexts behind the project as well as a project description and list of functions. 

I've also been drafting our group's A4 submission sheet so it's easy for the team to smash it out together when we need to. I don’t mind being the team author, different writing styles emerging in one co-authored document seems to trigger some deep-seated OCD, so all good. 

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Where we went a bit wrong

A lot of the feedback we received recently can’t be added in time for the end of the semester. Easy Stems was never supposed to be a finished artifact by the end of uni, so it's not the end of the world. But what's interesting to note is that we probably could have done everything if we rearranged our work structure.

When considering doing more testing at the start of the semester, one obstacle that made me avoid it was having no interactable wireframe to base questions and feedback on. I felt that the testing would yield unhelpful results without an immersive interaction to supplement it.

There were a few immediate refinements on the UI I wanted to make and I got the team caught up in a full scale UI overhaul before we knew it. This would have been okay, only we overdid it. We ended up spending too much time agonizing over details and polishing the visual aesthetic that we ran out of time to do our testing. At that point, we had already crafted this UI and we didn’t have time to integrate changes we wanted.

If we had worked quickly and designed a basic shell of the UI, necessary for testing, we could have built from the ground up instead of the other way. In this respect, our workflow was totally illogical and I would change if I could. But still, it was a really valuable piece of experience that I won't be forgetting.

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Easy Stems Extended - Blog Hub

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/186465444908/expanding-easy-stems

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/186465621343/industry-pursuit

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/186667801828/3-weeks-in-a-bit-stuck

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/186690461683/the-big-overhaul

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/187295061948/redesigning-the-ui

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/187296757968/theme-and-model

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/187341212013/xd-and-presentation

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188072030833/qualitative-research

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188649136973/where-we-went-a-bit-wrong

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188649266128/preparing-for-hand-in

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188649286963/easy-stems-kickstarter-video

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188649358393/kickstarter-video-update

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188649744728/reflection-the-last-project

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I&P Blog/documentation Hub

Blogs

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/186778926088/interaction-and-play-the-freyberg-novel

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/186939805843/interaction-and-play-week-4

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188073343033/ip-why-the-freyburg-novel-completely-fails

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188487069503/ip-freyburg-heroes

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188487255048/ip-overarching-blog

https://oscar-randle-bct.tumblr.com/post/188490576683/ip-reflection

Slides

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OslPwJysci7kltnolerA5stSqL_Ayx1AFvcQE-lp_hs/edit#slide=id.g5d31ec324e_1_41

Videos

https://youtu.be/tJg-uk-i5GU

https://youtu.be/VU-HU8pOL0M

[oscar-randle-bct]

I&P Reflection

Learning

I’d say the greatest area of learning during this paper was definitely about player agency and expressionism. From this project, as well as other game design projects I have been a part of, expression seems to be a tricky aesthetic to implement properly. Expressionism arguably requires freedom, however, in a setting like a public space or an instanced video game experience, how much freedom can game makers really give the players without losing control and moderation.

It's a tenuous balance to keep. Our team touched on this during the development of our game ‘Bard’ in 2018, but again in this paper, my experience has proven that expression can still be meaningful despite limitations being forced on it. 

I think in the case of Freyberg Heroes, the expressionism works because of humor. Personally, I feel that the creation process, despite actually really limited still allows players to add their own personal touch to their hero. This personal touch being a user's unique sense of humor. They decide what combination of prompts and powers makes the funniest hero and release it to the world.

Process

Although I think we settled on a cool concept, the process should have been way smoother. Our end result was essentially an emergency reshuffle induced by weeks of Limbo caused by a lack of communication and planning amongst the team. Part of this is my fault as ‘team coordinator’, but I think there was a general lack of enthusiasm and wariness across the board which made teamwork hard. 

It was a self-destructive cycle that started with creating an ill-considered and poor initial concept which demotivated the team. We would try to solve our issues but failed because we were so demotivated, and in the process became even more demotivated. In the end, we saved ourselves out of sheer necessity; but If we had done it sooner we could have achieved better things.

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This blog from Stuart sums up the journey and process as well.

I&P Overarching Blog.

Because why make 10 posts and spam someone else’s feed

I&P has been been a rollercoaster and an absolute clusterfuck of an idea that we had to mishmash and filter to get to where we are today. With that being said, it is an absolute meme that I loved being part of.

Keep reading

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I&P Freyburg Heroes

The realization that our project was fundamentally flawed was a point of tension in the group process. We had invested so much time trying to make the novel concept work, I think we were very hesitant to change; however, we decided that ultimately we would have to in order to make a playtestable interaction. 

The challenge was how to adapt the concept into an autonomously functioning interaction while preserving the play aesthetics and intentions we were set on. One of our main goals from the beginning was the idea of leaving a public signature of one's existence and participation in a space. In our earlier concept, this was done by writing part of a story and contributing to a communal entity. This boiled down to the aesthetics Expression and Narrative. 

Initially, we went through a few different iterations on the original idea to try and salvage it, such as turning the experience into a roleplaying game by assigning characters to each user and providing story prompts to get the ball rolling. However, this led back to the conclusion of public writing being an uncontrollable and unusable mechanic.

After multiple sessions of unsuccessfully smashing our heads together, we finally came up with something. I remembered a tabletop game I played a while ago called Super Fight. 

The mechanics in that game involve character creation through the selection of randomized character features. Although the choices of the players are always limited, the choice still feels impactful and meaningful. 

I thought adopting a similar mechanic would be the perfect solution. We continued with the idea and developed FreyBurg Heroes.

A hero public hero creator where people could create a comedic/unorthodox hero and have it displayed on a public widescreen as circles (Agar.io style). People could vote for their favorite hero which would grow in size and eventually challenge the most voted hero for its status once it reached equal votes. 

Through this design, we hit on all three intentions and aesthetics. Expressionism in the form of creating a thing, Narrative in the form of contributing to an evolving and adaptive public arena. Public signature in the form of leaving their creation to exist in that public sphere. As Ben put it, we pulled the DNA from our old project into the new one

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This is a compilation of passable concepts that we either aren’t going to use or are not going to be used currently in the game. 

There were more, a fair few more...

But they were really undercooked and not Soundcloud worthy, mostly just basic loops testing out instrument combinations and melodies. They can be considered as primitive precursors to the concepts songs above.

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These are the three polished tracks that are to be used in the game. Each one exists for a different theme and location in the world.

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In my presentations, I've spoken about trying to find a balance for the game in terms of diegetic and non-diegetic audio. I think overall my main focus has definitely been on music creation. However, I did compile and process a number of tracks and samples for the team. My source was a free archive released by the BBC with thousands of royalty-free recordings. I also used public domain songs from the 1920s and processed them for the game by adding EQ.

http://bbcsfx.acropolis.org.uk/

[oscar-randle-bct]

Space Image and Sound - Reflection

In retrospect, while I had fun on the project I’m not entirely happy with the way it turned out in all aspects.

This was always an audio-focused project and that becomes really evident when looking at the visual presentation. I’ve done many audio projects and one issue I've always had is trying to make the outcome match the process. In more visually focused projects, it can be self-evident what’s gone into its creation and it has a real wow factor. I think this isnt always the case on audio projects where all the sounds l created digitally on a grey dull-looking software.

Personally, I think I neglected it too much from the start and didn’t end up thinking of an ideal way to present my audio. Because of the paper name ‘Space, Image and Sound’ I felt like I had to have a cool visual element to fit in, maybe I was wrong? But just submitting a few Soundcloud EPs seemed flat and effortless.

VR is always a cool thing to experience, but now that it exists, I can't help feeling that there was a much better cleaner and less disjointed way of approaching a demonstration around the corner, if only I had spent a little more time thinking about it. 

It’s a bit of a shame because I think that the music I ended up making was some of the best game music I’ve ever made. I put many hours into carefully choosing sounds, creating song structures and mixing them as best as I could. So while I'm really happy with my audio work, I just wish I could have pulled something a little better together to make a presentation of my work pop a bit more.

Maybe its just my self-critical nature getting the better of me. At the end of the day, this is an audio and music project for clients - the development team is happy with the audio, which means I did my job and I had a lot of fun.

[oscar-randle-bct]

Space Image and Sound - Set up

Previously, I talked about having the VR presentation be a modified version of the game that allows the viewer to teleport to different game locations and witness the audio in the actual game space. But we ended up going for a more personalized approach and created something more along the lines of my previous VR consideration (reskinning an old VR project).

 Although instead of reskinning DootsVR (old project), we decided It would be better to create a private island in the unity project of Aeronautica using assets created for the game itself. We opted for a desert island approach and created this chill zone where a viewer could browse through the music and enjoy the view. 

I have to concede, though. Except for the audio, I had very little to do with the assembly of the Unity project. Because they had all the assets and seats on the Unity Teams it seemed easier if the development team created it for me under my instruction - as a kind of trade for my sound work. The programing and assembly were done by Max Kooij @synergybct and the models were created mostly by Kelvin Roux @krouxbct. 

I didn’t give them a whole lot of time, to be honest, so It's not quite as fleshed out as I would like. I think the main thing missing is a visual stimulus in the sky above. Some sort of reactive visualizer would be amazing but we, unfortunately, did not get there.

In terms of a showcase interaction, this gets a 4/10 for practicality and logistics. It inevitably requires supervision and some level of explanation at It’s current stage. There's the equipping and unequipping of VR headsets and controllers to deal with as well as adjustment some users might need to make if they are unused to virtual reality. So overall, I would not really present this as an art piece in an open studio/exhibition environment.

[oscar-randle-bct]

Creating sound Identity

It's pretty important that all the music fits together and feels like part of the same package, sp one of my main considerations when designing the musical tracks for Aeronautica is how to create a musical identity for the game. 

Back towards the start of the semester, I think the first rendition of the track ‘Back to the Drawing board’ turned out with a pretty identifiable timbre which fit the overarching pacific, mechanical themes of the game. I had a listen to identify the distinct sounds and I realized that the main instruments that carried the tone of the music were the glockenspiel, the bongos and quite clearly the staccato violin.

These work out fairly well as a high, mid and low range selection. The video game is supposed to be about vehicle construction and engineering as much as anything else (it was when I started work, anyway), so the reason I like the glockenspiel is that adds an element of technicality to the tracks. As a pretty simple instrument, it has a sense of precision and programming that I think fits quite well into context.

I’m a big melody guy and I usually stylize my music to accommodate intricate melodies and scales. The violin is a really strong instrument for creating melodies, but also by nature it’s a sound I think a lot of people can easily associate with ‘pirates’ or ‘sailing’. 

I use bongos mainly because they are a nice, smooth instrument for carrying beats but the percussion is easily linked to pacific island music, so it's just a well-rounded choice.

Overall, I based the tracks off these three sounds, but I curated each track to its individual context and factored that in when adding other sounds and instruments, such as woodwinds and cello. Sometimes they take a back seat to other things to make the track work but, yeah they are basically the hinge of the sound.

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I&P - Why the Freyburg novel completely fails

A majority of this semester has revolved around a constant uphill battle with our concept, ‘the freyburg novel’. Our early testing showed us many of the flaws in the logistics of an open-ended written piece like we imagined for the project. The reality is, writing is such a wild, untamable mechanic to manage in a public environment. 

Cons of trying to get people to write a public written piece

Requires too much investment - even if users are restricted by some sort of criteria such as a time or word limit, the sheer fact that they need to think about a thing to take part can dissuade people from using the installation.

Difficult to moderate - creating an autonomous experience like this would be extremely difficult. While we did play with this idea of observing community moderation, we do want the written piece to make sense and be legible in order for it to work. Due to a number of factors such as illiteracy among userbase, chaotic users who mess it up on purpose and people who just don't get it, it's very difficult to make a piece of writing flow without regular intervention from the game makers.

Only appeals to some - writing/creative writing is something that only appeals to some people, while it’s okay to only appeal to certain people in a public place it harshly limits the amount of use the installation might receive.

Not that fun - one thing we realized is that the main play aesthetic that would attract people to this interaction would need to be a sensation. A simple, pleasurable act. With the project so free form, this was far from a guaranteed result when taking part. Basically, the whole incentive for using the installation is just ineffective.

We realized that to make the project managable we would have to forgo the freeform model and create some serious criteria and began to discuss options.