When I got there a talk had just started “nokia: the art of open source workshop”, which showcased the development potential of the maemo platform for high end Nokia phones, so I sat in on it not really know what to expect. It was quite interesting but did get a bit too geeky for me, talking about abstract concepts behind the design of the N900 device rather than showing how to develop for it and more of what can be/has been done with the technology.
It did inspire me to checkout maemo.org and I would like to develop for such a device but am put off by it being linux based and by not having a handset to test on. I might have to consider one of the handsets for my next upgrade, especially when they get multi touch support.
The main installation at the exhibition, the “onedotzero identity” was using the N900.
Here is a demo:
I had a go on the device in the evening, it was really responsive and a good concept that has given me a few commercial ideas that I might put together a prototype for if I get some time soon.
There were also a couple of other interactive pieces around the BFI:
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs by squidsoup.org was a really nice piece, I had a chat to the guys behind it about the technology; it used a 3d camera with 2 lenses to work out the depth of the sand, and a projector. I was quite surprised that the application was built in Director, but that’s what the developer was happy with and it could access some native stuff.
Glowing Pathfinder Bugs in action:
There was a multi touch table with the program of events and some related media on it, this was the first multi touch table I have had a chance to play with. I found it a bit hard to control but it was quite responsive, think the main problem was the design of the menu. It wasn’t very stable as I did see flash player 10 crash message.
By far the least impressive and most pointless installation was “graffonic: virtual spraypaint”. It was basically using an irLED a laser to draw a line, but the worst part was that the display and style changed every 10 seconds so you couldn’t actually draw anything, just a line that was removed from the screen as fast as it appeared.
I have seen much better thought out and produced digital graffiti installations, like a prototype by my friend and colleague Andrew Myher that uses a wii remote as a controller, this is me playing with it:
Digital wall:
I also saw an amazing film preview while I was there: “Mary and Max”, its not on general release in the UK but I would recommend seeing it, the onedotzero site describes it perfectly:
“Mary and max is an exceptional film that deals with little people and their big issues in a compassionate and entertaining way. It is funny, warm, moving and sad all at the same time, and will once and for all dispel the notion that animation can only deal with fluffy and trivial issues.”
This is the latest website that I have had the pleasure of being part of the development team for. I took the lead on this project, lots of hours were involved in getting this one out the door in time, 70 hours in 7 days, that’s about 9 days work in a week.
The past couple of weeks I have been creating a mobile game whenever I get some free time.
I decided to give mobile game development a go for a couple of reasons;
One was to try out The Adobe Distribution Player Solution. Which was a bit of a nightmare to get started with, as I installed the software and all the extra SDK’s, it didn’t work so I read the guide and found that I had installed the wrong version of one of the SDK’s, reinstalled everything several times but I couldn’t create a Symbian certificate. After messing around with that for a couple of days I decided to swap to a clean computer to start from scratch and that worked fine.
I had one other big issue with The Adobe Distribution Player Solution – the flash player wouldn’t download over Wifi or mobile internet in the UK, I tried it on Nokia N95 and HTC Touch Diamond with no luck. Has anyone got the over the air download to work??
Another was to enter The Flash Lite Developer Challenge, which I have done but I don’t think I have much chance as the game is very basic.
And also because I play a lot of mobile games and have had an idea for a game for some time now. This however is just one abstracted part of the final game I have in mind and if I keep going I should have a final version in about 6 months (I have already started developing a second generation of this game).
This is what the game looks like :
The Idea I thought was simple and too the instructions but some people had a little trouble grasping the idea, you basically join up the small blocks around the outside with block of that colour. Each level has one solution so if the level doesn’t end you haven’t completed the puzzle.
I have tested the game via The Adobe Distribution Player Solution on the Nokia N95 and HTC Touch Diamond. The game has also been tested in the Flash Lite player 2.1 on the Sony Ericsson C905.
You can download it here – Please select you download form the options below :
Mobile Platform: S60: Download
Nokia 6120c
Nokia E51
Nokia E65
Nokia E71
Nokia N73
Nokia N78
Nokia N82
Nokia N95
Nokia N95 8GB
Nokia N81
Nokia N81 8GB
Nokia N96
All other phones – swf only
If your phone has flash lite 2.0 or above you can use this file, however it will only show up in your file system and not in the game menu (will only work on a mobile device).
Please not that when you download the applicable file above (not the swf only version) and install it you will be requested to download Adobe Flash Lite.
This download will be done over your mobile internet access, if this is not successful please follow the links below (you may need to download the file on a computer and transfer to your mobile)
I spent a couple of days testing out the FLARManager for FLARToolkit and created this basic combination lock.
If you get the symbols in the correct order it will give you a pound.
Build in flash, AS3, Papervision3D Public Beta 2.0 – Great White, FLARToolkit, FLARManager and published for Flash Player 10
Here is a video of it, if you want to try it for yourself don’t watch the video as it will spoil the game of breaking the combination.
You can try the demo for yourself if you have a webcam attached to your computer, Flash player installed and can print this symbol (PDF file) you then need to cut-out the black squares and place them on the outlines within the big black border, some of the black pieces overlap.
* you will need to allow flash access to your webcam when it asks (or right click flash and select settings).
[kml_flashembed movie="/swfs/ar-combination/bin-debug/test.swf" height="480" width="640" /]
The above post sheds light on the questions I had about the marker pattern, there is an AIR app available to create the code Mikko also give some guidance on creating your own marker.
Mikko has saved me a lot of time by rewriting the source code I was working from to make it easier to follow and he has provided comments in English.
I’m really happy now I don’t have to dig through the code and translate the Japanese using bable fish, it’s quite hard to understand.
Recently I’ve been trying to get my head round augmented reality in flash.
Here is a little demo of a globe…. It works quite well most of the time but does loose the image now and then.
I have been working from the source of this demo: http://www.boffswana.com/news/?p=392
And it’s quite easy to replace the object that is used once you get it all working.
I want to post some clean code with an expiation of what I think the code is doing, so hopefully ill have time to do that soon.
One thing that I have been trying to work out is how the data for the pattern is created, I’ve searched the web and had a look @ the FlarToolKit forum but it’s mostly in Japanese, so not had much luck.
All the demos I’ve seen use one of 2 patterns, so I’m thinking either is really hard to create or the people who know how to do it don’t want to let it out.
I have tried to create the data from the bitmap data of a movie clip in the library, but can’t get the values in the correct format; can anyone shed any light on this?
