For ease of finding, I have compiled all of Jasper's and I's work into one page, which will be updated whenever new things are developed.
development.html
For the next semester, I will continue along the visual course of the project. The UI will probably go through several more refinements in style and organization, and other visuals such as websites and logos will fall under my realm as well.
But first and foremost, I think, will be coming up with a name for our game/simulation/explorer, and then perhaps basing a style off of that. I've already asked several people for ideas and they're all pretty stumped... naming is harder than I thought. Hopefully, though, I can have the new name and theme done by the beginning of next semester.
So of course, any ideas for a name are certainly welcome.
12.17.2007
Maunderings: End of Semester
Well, it's been a crazy semester, that's for sure. Having a collaborator in another class on a different schedule was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.
At first is was all okay, he was writing papers, and by helping him get his ideas onto paper it was helping me formulate the ideas in my head. We came up with the concept, the nitty-gritty bits, and life was good, right? I got through my assignments with only a few hitches, he was getting his papers done, and things were progressing like normal.
And then reality kicked in.
Our original IP idea got shot down, because it didn't tie the game and the internet content together closely enough. Okay, time to fall back on another idea garnered from a session with an expert - tying a galaxy together with links. The planet content stayed about the same. But how do we determine what is what?
At first celestial objects were going to be stacked based on the amount of links. Then it was changed to organize it based on domain. But then how does that work? Well, let's make the planets have everything determined by their content. Easy enough. Except that in order to do most of the stuff we'd want to put into the program we'd have to pretty much write a whole new browser, perhaps.
And then there was the headache of the division of the project - what's Jasper's role and what was mine? When it was all concept, then it was both of us, but when project development kicked in then it got a bit blurry. Jasper's original intent was to have me doing interface design, yet I seemed to have more and more programming pushed on me. Do I stick to just the visuals and ignore these demands at the risk of my grade, or do I try to stumble through a programming language I don't know at all, and have no idea where to start from, and have to rely heavily on outside help?
Meanwhile, our project is getting great reviews from other people, and getting a fair amount of mention. People don't know exactly what our idea is, but they do like what they do know.
So in the end, after one last nerve-wracking presentation, I find out people don't really know at all what we want to do with this project. Some think it should be as open as possible, with lots of markers to see what other people have done, and others want to go against the whole exploration thing and make it into another version of a social networking site, where everyone can accumulate in popular areas and ignore the rest. As much as I would like to go against that as much as possible, is it really worth fighting the norm? Maybe we should put some sort of blogging function into the site so people can endlessly browse heavily trafficked areas and ignore the outer reaches where we're trying to encourage them to explore. I guess the whole "mapping the internet" pales in interest to a sort of storytelling universe, where things happen out of your control, but you can make up stories to justify it to your own liking.
Well, it's all things we'll have to consider over break, and decide whether or not it could be implemented.
At first is was all okay, he was writing papers, and by helping him get his ideas onto paper it was helping me formulate the ideas in my head. We came up with the concept, the nitty-gritty bits, and life was good, right? I got through my assignments with only a few hitches, he was getting his papers done, and things were progressing like normal.
And then reality kicked in.
Our original IP idea got shot down, because it didn't tie the game and the internet content together closely enough. Okay, time to fall back on another idea garnered from a session with an expert - tying a galaxy together with links. The planet content stayed about the same. But how do we determine what is what?
At first celestial objects were going to be stacked based on the amount of links. Then it was changed to organize it based on domain. But then how does that work? Well, let's make the planets have everything determined by their content. Easy enough. Except that in order to do most of the stuff we'd want to put into the program we'd have to pretty much write a whole new browser, perhaps.
And then there was the headache of the division of the project - what's Jasper's role and what was mine? When it was all concept, then it was both of us, but when project development kicked in then it got a bit blurry. Jasper's original intent was to have me doing interface design, yet I seemed to have more and more programming pushed on me. Do I stick to just the visuals and ignore these demands at the risk of my grade, or do I try to stumble through a programming language I don't know at all, and have no idea where to start from, and have to rely heavily on outside help?
Meanwhile, our project is getting great reviews from other people, and getting a fair amount of mention. People don't know exactly what our idea is, but they do like what they do know.
So in the end, after one last nerve-wracking presentation, I find out people don't really know at all what we want to do with this project. Some think it should be as open as possible, with lots of markers to see what other people have done, and others want to go against the whole exploration thing and make it into another version of a social networking site, where everyone can accumulate in popular areas and ignore the rest. As much as I would like to go against that as much as possible, is it really worth fighting the norm? Maybe we should put some sort of blogging function into the site so people can endlessly browse heavily trafficked areas and ignore the outer reaches where we're trying to encourage them to explore. I guess the whole "mapping the internet" pales in interest to a sort of storytelling universe, where things happen out of your control, but you can make up stories to justify it to your own liking.
Well, it's all things we'll have to consider over break, and decide whether or not it could be implemented.
Links for Me: Copernica
Stellar Cartography
This page links to a fair amount of stuff that is rather relevant to my project, so I will list the ideas I get from each project.
CyberAtlas
electric sky: I kind of like the idea of having some way for the user to view each page as they go to the representation of it. Firefox has an add-on that saves a page as an image... perhaps that image can be incorporated somehow.
intelligent life: Searching by category is a bit more complicated than what we would like to go into, but perhaps the interconnectivity of .coms, .orgs, and .nets can be represented in this manner.
digital techtonics: Making categories into different dimensions or compass points is an interesting idea, although I am at a loss to think of how this could apply to our category-less project.
Works of Martin Wattenberg
Even though our idea of determining land mass of a planet via white space vs. content has been mostly discarded as being too difficult, it is perhaps possible on a smaller scale. I've seen neural networks mentioned here and there in some of these projects, and a collaborator actually told me that if we saved images of web pages and analyzed them as images, it would be possible to group pages together based on similarity. Web pages that have a mostly green hue could be grouped together, web pages that have similar amounts of images can group together, and etc. However nice of a concept it is, though, it is way out of the scale of our abilities.
This page links to a fair amount of stuff that is rather relevant to my project, so I will list the ideas I get from each project.
CyberAtlas
electric sky: I kind of like the idea of having some way for the user to view each page as they go to the representation of it. Firefox has an add-on that saves a page as an image... perhaps that image can be incorporated somehow.
intelligent life: Searching by category is a bit more complicated than what we would like to go into, but perhaps the interconnectivity of .coms, .orgs, and .nets can be represented in this manner.
digital techtonics: Making categories into different dimensions or compass points is an interesting idea, although I am at a loss to think of how this could apply to our category-less project.
Works of Martin Wattenberg
Even though our idea of determining land mass of a planet via white space vs. content has been mostly discarded as being too difficult, it is perhaps possible on a smaller scale. I've seen neural networks mentioned here and there in some of these projects, and a collaborator actually told me that if we saved images of web pages and analyzed them as images, it would be possible to group pages together based on similarity. Web pages that have a mostly green hue could be grouped together, web pages that have similar amounts of images can group together, and etc. However nice of a concept it is, though, it is way out of the scale of our abilities.
Links For Me: 1:1 (2)
1:1 (2)
This project hearkens back to our original idea, or mapping the internet galaxy based on IP address and translating them based on the pages they contain. However, the idea was discarded for several reasons.
1. Content. While some web pages, like Slashdot, can claim an entire IP address to themselves, maybe even two IPs, other web pages, and especially web spaces like MySpace or Blogger would have thousands of web pages to a few IP addresses. Going by domain name gives the system a more accurate balance of content, and a more logical organization.
2. Feasibility. When inputting an IP address into a system, you will more than likely get a page. However, the page may not be representative of everything that is at that one IP address. In order to find out every page that could be found at one IP, you would have to scan every page and read the IP that is attached to it, and build a database off of that. Not only would that be unrealistic, given the resources two New Media students have available to them, but when you're already building a web crawler to figure out IP addresses, why not use the web crawler data?
3. Representation. IP addresses relate to each other in the fact that they consist of numbers - logically, there is a number before and after each number. The contents of two IP addresses could have nothing in common with each other, and an IP-based project would show a relationship between the two just because they happened to be numerically next to each other. However, web pages tend to link to content that relates to their own - for example, graphic designers will link to other designers, and designing resources.
Ultimately, we went with the link-based model for organizing the galaxy, just because it represented the internet better.
This project hearkens back to our original idea, or mapping the internet galaxy based on IP address and translating them based on the pages they contain. However, the idea was discarded for several reasons.
1. Content. While some web pages, like Slashdot, can claim an entire IP address to themselves, maybe even two IPs, other web pages, and especially web spaces like MySpace or Blogger would have thousands of web pages to a few IP addresses. Going by domain name gives the system a more accurate balance of content, and a more logical organization.
2. Feasibility. When inputting an IP address into a system, you will more than likely get a page. However, the page may not be representative of everything that is at that one IP address. In order to find out every page that could be found at one IP, you would have to scan every page and read the IP that is attached to it, and build a database off of that. Not only would that be unrealistic, given the resources two New Media students have available to them, but when you're already building a web crawler to figure out IP addresses, why not use the web crawler data?
3. Representation. IP addresses relate to each other in the fact that they consist of numbers - logically, there is a number before and after each number. The contents of two IP addresses could have nothing in common with each other, and an IP-based project would show a relationship between the two just because they happened to be numerically next to each other. However, web pages tend to link to content that relates to their own - for example, graphic designers will link to other designers, and designing resources.
Ultimately, we went with the link-based model for organizing the galaxy, just because it represented the internet better.
Links for Me: visualcomplexity.com
Visual Complexity
This web page shows a bunch of "maps" (I use this term lightly) that describe everything from incredibly detailed clusters to random dots and lines people felt like drawing.
A lot of these projects mirror pretty closely what Jasper and I are trying to do with web pages, which is arrange them closer together or further apart based on how much they link together... these projects just do it much better visually. However, these projects do come up with some good ways to make our project work more smoothly.
The Map of Science leads to a paper which suggests color-coding and short-hand, which could make processing the entire galaxy of web pages a lot quicker. Anymails follows a lot of the classification structure that we have been considering in our project, by classifying e-mails much like we would classify web pages. This also opens up the possibility of using different types or appearances of stars to represent different types of web pages. And many other projects are worth looking at, perhaps not for concept, but for visual ideas - sort of like looking at other people's web pages to get visual ideas for your own.
This web page shows a bunch of "maps" (I use this term lightly) that describe everything from incredibly detailed clusters to random dots and lines people felt like drawing.
A lot of these projects mirror pretty closely what Jasper and I are trying to do with web pages, which is arrange them closer together or further apart based on how much they link together... these projects just do it much better visually. However, these projects do come up with some good ways to make our project work more smoothly.
The Map of Science leads to a paper which suggests color-coding and short-hand, which could make processing the entire galaxy of web pages a lot quicker. Anymails follows a lot of the classification structure that we have been considering in our project, by classifying e-mails much like we would classify web pages. This also opens up the possibility of using different types or appearances of stars to represent different types of web pages. And many other projects are worth looking at, perhaps not for concept, but for visual ideas - sort of like looking at other people's web pages to get visual ideas for your own.
12.16.2007
Links for Me: Carnivore/Fuel and Guernica Clients
CarnivorePE
Carnivore is a visually based packet-sniffer. It takes all the information that your computer sends and receives and interprets it into animations or just plain data. It seems to be just limited to what your computer is connecting to - other computers, servers, and modems, which I assume is an more general way of saying "the internet." It animates every connection with a line and a pulse in graphics to show you when the connection is occurring.
Visually, the program is quite interesting. I like the idea of showing connections when they happen, and where they go, and I think it would make for a great capstone if we could incorporate something like that into our project. Unfortunately, all that data that would tell us when connections are occurring and where is just not available, especially for the whole internet. The amount of server permissions and company permissions we'd have to get would be beyond comprehension. But, the pulsing graphics and lines forming is still a good concept to use in our project, it just would not have the meaning that it would in Carnivore.
However, if we wanted to scale our project down to fit servers and connections just within the University, then it might be possible to get data like that, and perhaps build a new sort of interface for network diagnostics. However, that would be severely deviating from our original idea, and it's a bit late in the semester to do that.
Since the next couple of links are just an add-ons to Carnivore, I'll include them in this post.
Fuel
This is the Carnivore concept, except with stars that grow and collapse instead of pulsing circles. The only way I could think of this animation concept applying to our project would be if we had the user go to a solar system, and the solar system would be constantly updating - that is, the program would be constantly scanning the web pages in the domain, looking for the minute changes and displaying them accordingly.
If we would want something like that to work, however, we'd have to put the burden of the webpage scanning on the user side rather than the server, which I don't think would be a very popular idea.
Guernica
Another client which views your traffic and connections as a sort of post-apocalyptic world where planes fly around crazily and buildings are formed and destroyed. It might be fun to consider doing the art style of this project into a particular genre, like cyberpunk or steampunk... definitely something to consider.
Carnivore is a visually based packet-sniffer. It takes all the information that your computer sends and receives and interprets it into animations or just plain data. It seems to be just limited to what your computer is connecting to - other computers, servers, and modems, which I assume is an more general way of saying "the internet." It animates every connection with a line and a pulse in graphics to show you when the connection is occurring.
Visually, the program is quite interesting. I like the idea of showing connections when they happen, and where they go, and I think it would make for a great capstone if we could incorporate something like that into our project. Unfortunately, all that data that would tell us when connections are occurring and where is just not available, especially for the whole internet. The amount of server permissions and company permissions we'd have to get would be beyond comprehension. But, the pulsing graphics and lines forming is still a good concept to use in our project, it just would not have the meaning that it would in Carnivore.
However, if we wanted to scale our project down to fit servers and connections just within the University, then it might be possible to get data like that, and perhaps build a new sort of interface for network diagnostics. However, that would be severely deviating from our original idea, and it's a bit late in the semester to do that.
Since the next couple of links are just an add-ons to Carnivore, I'll include them in this post.
Fuel
This is the Carnivore concept, except with stars that grow and collapse instead of pulsing circles. The only way I could think of this animation concept applying to our project would be if we had the user go to a solar system, and the solar system would be constantly updating - that is, the program would be constantly scanning the web pages in the domain, looking for the minute changes and displaying them accordingly.
If we would want something like that to work, however, we'd have to put the burden of the webpage scanning on the user side rather than the server, which I don't think would be a very popular idea.
Guernica
Another client which views your traffic and connections as a sort of post-apocalyptic world where planes fly around crazily and buildings are formed and destroyed. It might be fun to consider doing the art style of this project into a particular genre, like cyberpunk or steampunk... definitely something to consider.
Links For Me: Rivalry (Economics)
Rivalry (Economics)
A brief Wikipedia article describing a type of economic concept. Rivalrous goods are goods that cannot be consumed by more than one user at a time, but can be reused. I suppose this is supposed to fit with our concept of someone "owning" a planet in the game, by laying claim to it and controlling all it's resources, but also having the capability to be taken over by someone else.
It also goes into the opposite of rival goods, which is non-rival... something that can be enjoyed by many people at the same time. The idea that was brought up in presentations of planets forming get-together chat rooms probably fits with this concept, but I think kind of goes against the idea of exploration and finding those out-of-the-way places that Jasper and I are trying to bring across. Sites like Facebook and MySpace encourage you to go where all your friends are - when have you ever seen these sites encourage you to find people that hardly relate to you at all and figure them out?
I think social networking is great and all, but it doesn't really require you to step very far from your comfort zone, and it sorts of builds the expectation that every site should follow the same rules. Hopefully we can break out of this mentality of clustering together and encourage people to spread out a lot more.
A brief Wikipedia article describing a type of economic concept. Rivalrous goods are goods that cannot be consumed by more than one user at a time, but can be reused. I suppose this is supposed to fit with our concept of someone "owning" a planet in the game, by laying claim to it and controlling all it's resources, but also having the capability to be taken over by someone else.
It also goes into the opposite of rival goods, which is non-rival... something that can be enjoyed by many people at the same time. The idea that was brought up in presentations of planets forming get-together chat rooms probably fits with this concept, but I think kind of goes against the idea of exploration and finding those out-of-the-way places that Jasper and I are trying to bring across. Sites like Facebook and MySpace encourage you to go where all your friends are - when have you ever seen these sites encourage you to find people that hardly relate to you at all and figure them out?
I think social networking is great and all, but it doesn't really require you to step very far from your comfort zone, and it sorts of builds the expectation that every site should follow the same rules. Hopefully we can break out of this mentality of clustering together and encourage people to spread out a lot more.
Links For Me: Is Cyberspace Really a Space?
So, since I've been absolutely horrid in using this blog to document my progress, I decided that the rest of my postcount can be dedicated towards disseminating all the links that have been sent to me via del.icio.us, and settle for accumulating all the work Jasper and I have done in one page.
So, on to where I last left off.
------------------------
Is Cyberspace Really a Space?
This article mostly talks about how to make the concept of cyberspace appealing to a reader or viewer - rather than boring them with details of the technical aspect of the internet and data transfers, or going in depth to the point that people wouldn't even understand it anymore, it simply says that a simple metaphor will help make it interesting. Like, as the example used, in Neuromancer, a cyber "space," where various aspects of the underlying technologies manifest themselves as physical objects.
This pertains to the concept of our project in that we are trying to make the internet into a "space" - space as we actually know it. Data is manifested as physical planets and objects, distances between planets and solar systems depend on interconnectivity, and some of the underlying things like IPs determine space ports and other connections.
One of the things the author expresses concern about is the "distance" of a cyber "space." That making things actually have a distance and require time to get to takes away some of the magic of the near-instantaneous connections of the internet. I think our project addresses a concern like this by making space travel near instantaneous as well. Sure, we could make you sit through a minute of stars zipping past in order for the user to reach a "distant" planet - one that doesn't really relate to other pages all that much - but then I feel that would detract users from actually going to planets such as that, and users would then only stick to the common planets, the one close to each other, and not feel like they should be branching out.
All in all, this article touches on a lot of what we're trying to do with this project, which is make the internet into something people will want to understand and explore, because we've done all the legwork of making it understandable to the user.
So, on to where I last left off.
------------------------
Is Cyberspace Really a Space?
This article mostly talks about how to make the concept of cyberspace appealing to a reader or viewer - rather than boring them with details of the technical aspect of the internet and data transfers, or going in depth to the point that people wouldn't even understand it anymore, it simply says that a simple metaphor will help make it interesting. Like, as the example used, in Neuromancer, a cyber "space," where various aspects of the underlying technologies manifest themselves as physical objects.
This pertains to the concept of our project in that we are trying to make the internet into a "space" - space as we actually know it. Data is manifested as physical planets and objects, distances between planets and solar systems depend on interconnectivity, and some of the underlying things like IPs determine space ports and other connections.
One of the things the author expresses concern about is the "distance" of a cyber "space." That making things actually have a distance and require time to get to takes away some of the magic of the near-instantaneous connections of the internet. I think our project addresses a concern like this by making space travel near instantaneous as well. Sure, we could make you sit through a minute of stars zipping past in order for the user to reach a "distant" planet - one that doesn't really relate to other pages all that much - but then I feel that would detract users from actually going to planets such as that, and users would then only stick to the common planets, the one close to each other, and not feel like they should be branching out.
All in all, this article touches on a lot of what we're trying to do with this project, which is make the internet into something people will want to understand and explore, because we've done all the legwork of making it understandable to the user.
11.08.2007
Assignment: Computer-Free Capstone
Since my capstone relies on computers on both ends, I decided to turn to another form of communication between people - telephones.
------------------------------
The Interphrase Project
The telephone. A device that lets you pick up and talk to someone across the country as if they were in the next room. Through a complicated series of wires, stations and junctions, people can talk to anyone that they please - provided the person picks up the phone, of course. People are no longer isolated by the delay of writing letters and waiting for a response, or limited to the only sort of emotions you can put on paper. Relationships can stay close between friends and family when you can talk to them as if it were face to face. But, how close are you to the people you know?
Interphrase is a new project that lets you track how many calls you receive from a particular person, and the duration of each. By dialing in and signing up for our service, we begin monitoring your phone usage, and a monthly diagram is sent right to your home. Set up in an easy-to-understand format, like planets in the sky, people you call most often and the longest will be prominently featured, while those who you only call once or twice will be more indistinct. By observing this diagram, we hope that you will get a clearer picture of how the telephone has affected the relationships with the people you know.
Call us toll-free at 1-800-IPP-HOME to sign up!
------------------------------
The Interphrase Project
The telephone. A device that lets you pick up and talk to someone across the country as if they were in the next room. Through a complicated series of wires, stations and junctions, people can talk to anyone that they please - provided the person picks up the phone, of course. People are no longer isolated by the delay of writing letters and waiting for a response, or limited to the only sort of emotions you can put on paper. Relationships can stay close between friends and family when you can talk to them as if it were face to face. But, how close are you to the people you know?
Interphrase is a new project that lets you track how many calls you receive from a particular person, and the duration of each. By dialing in and signing up for our service, we begin monitoring your phone usage, and a monthly diagram is sent right to your home. Set up in an easy-to-understand format, like planets in the sky, people you call most often and the longest will be prominently featured, while those who you only call once or twice will be more indistinct. By observing this diagram, we hope that you will get a clearer picture of how the telephone has affected the relationships with the people you know.
Call us toll-free at 1-800-IPP-HOME to sign up!
11.06.2007
Notes: Universal Motion
Another important aspect to this game is making stuff move. So, in order to make it believable motion and satisfy my perfectionist urges, here's the notes I've taken on the relative motions of the Universe.
Motion
First, the relationship between the planet and it's moon. The moon orbits around the planet - clear enough. It is also "tidally locked" to a planet, which means the same face is always showing to the planet, with a few exceptions. This is also less the case the further a moon is away from the planet. Which means the moon spins on it's axis the opposite of what the Earth spins on, to keep the same face pointed towards the planet. This face is also the "heavier" side of the moon, which leaves interesting possibilities in our project as to the link between planets and moons.
Now, the motion of planets. The planets of the solar system work as follows:
Mercury:
~0.4x the size of Earth
orbits once every 88 days (47.87 km/s)
rotates once every 59 days (10.892 km/h)
Venus:
~0.9x the size of Earth
orbits once every 225 days (35.02 km/s)
rotates once every 243 days (6.52 km/h)
Mars:
~0.5x the size of the Earth
orbits once every 687 days (24.077 km/s)
rotates once every 24 hours and 40 minutes (868.22 km/h)
Jupiter:
~11x the size of Earth
orbits once every 4335 days (13.07 km/s)
rotates once every 10 hours (45,300 km/h)
Saturn:
~9x the size of Earth
orbits once every 10823 days (9.69 km/s)
rotates once every 10 hours and 32 minutes (35,500 km/h)
Uranus:
~4x the size of Earth
orbits once every 30799 days (6.81 km/s)
rotates once every 17 hours and 14 minutes (9,320 km/h)
Neptune:
~3.8x the size of Earth
orbits once every 60373 days (5.43 km/s)
rotates once every 16 hours and 6 minutes (9,660 km/h)
So, aside from the obvious conclusion that the further the planet is away from the Sun, the longer it takes to orbit, there are a few other observations. Planets tend to get bigger the further away they are from the Sun, although size seems to be mostly determined by their composition. And, planet rotate faster the further away they get from the Sun - due to lesser gravity or the size they achieve, I'm not sure.
Will this affect how we organize our websites? With the example of Slashdot being a Sun, could it mean that it's closest planet will end up the size of Jupiter? Or should we compress it down somehow, much like gravity compresses down planets, or would tampering with the fact that the size of a web page determines the size of the planets cripple the educational aspect somehow?
Source: Various Wikipedia articles.
Motion
First, the relationship between the planet and it's moon. The moon orbits around the planet - clear enough. It is also "tidally locked" to a planet, which means the same face is always showing to the planet, with a few exceptions. This is also less the case the further a moon is away from the planet. Which means the moon spins on it's axis the opposite of what the Earth spins on, to keep the same face pointed towards the planet. This face is also the "heavier" side of the moon, which leaves interesting possibilities in our project as to the link between planets and moons.
Now, the motion of planets. The planets of the solar system work as follows:
Mercury:
~0.4x the size of Earth
orbits once every 88 days (47.87 km/s)
rotates once every 59 days (10.892 km/h)
Venus:
~0.9x the size of Earth
orbits once every 225 days (35.02 km/s)
rotates once every 243 days (6.52 km/h)
Mars:
~0.5x the size of the Earth
orbits once every 687 days (24.077 km/s)
rotates once every 24 hours and 40 minutes (868.22 km/h)
Jupiter:
~11x the size of Earth
orbits once every 4335 days (13.07 km/s)
rotates once every 10 hours (45,300 km/h)
Saturn:
~9x the size of Earth
orbits once every 10823 days (9.69 km/s)
rotates once every 10 hours and 32 minutes (35,500 km/h)
Uranus:
~4x the size of Earth
orbits once every 30799 days (6.81 km/s)
rotates once every 17 hours and 14 minutes (9,320 km/h)
Neptune:
~3.8x the size of Earth
orbits once every 60373 days (5.43 km/s)
rotates once every 16 hours and 6 minutes (9,660 km/h)
So, aside from the obvious conclusion that the further the planet is away from the Sun, the longer it takes to orbit, there are a few other observations. Planets tend to get bigger the further away they are from the Sun, although size seems to be mostly determined by their composition. And, planet rotate faster the further away they get from the Sun - due to lesser gravity or the size they achieve, I'm not sure.
Will this affect how we organize our websites? With the example of Slashdot being a Sun, could it mean that it's closest planet will end up the size of Jupiter? Or should we compress it down somehow, much like gravity compresses down planets, or would tampering with the fact that the size of a web page determines the size of the planets cripple the educational aspect somehow?
Source: Various Wikipedia articles.
Notes: Universe Hierarchy
So, the first step to structuring a game based on the final frontier is to understand how the final frontier is structured. So, here are notes I took, trying to understand how the universe is structured.
Hierarchy of the Universe
Now , for the purpose of keeping this somewhat simple, we start on the lowest level of your common moon. The hierarchy goes as such.
Moon --> Planet --> Sun --> Galaxy --> Cluster --> Supercluster
Galactic centers are highly speculative, perhaps full of black holes or larger suns with huge gravitational pull. So stars in a galaxy relate to each other, but have no definitive center like a Sun is to a solar system.
Clusters are a bunch of galaxies that have a common attracting point, and are pretty much moving together through the Universe as it expands. The Milky Way galaxy is part of the "Local Cluster"Again, this common point of attraction is fairly vague, speculated to be dark matter. The cluster does not have a clear orbit like a solar system - as a matter of fact, in approximately 3 billion years our Milky Way galaxy will be crashing into the Andromeda galaxy. Good to know, huh?
Clusters can also be bound together into a Supercluster, as scientists have termed it, but it's not entirely certain that they work like the smaller clusters, so for the sake of this project, we'll ignore superclusters.
So what does this mean for our project? The current plan is to scan the internet and let site with a lot of links rise to be the Suns and maybe more could be changed. Since there is no definitive center for things like galaxies and clusters, having a site "represent it" would be puzzling. So perhaps sites that become Suns merely orbit around the "center" of the galaxy and perhaps group closer or further depending on their relationships - in which case, we may not need to go to a cluster level at all.
Another thought is looking at the spiral structure of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The galaxy has "arms" that spiral outwards from the galactic center. Could websites be organized into arms based on content or amount of links? it's something to think about, because then we wouldn't have to worry about the cluster level at all, and everything could be contained into one spiral galaxy form for exploration.
Main Source
Hierarchy of the Universe
Now , for the purpose of keeping this somewhat simple, we start on the lowest level of your common moon. The hierarchy goes as such.
Moon --> Planet --> Sun --> Galaxy --> Cluster --> Supercluster
Galactic centers are highly speculative, perhaps full of black holes or larger suns with huge gravitational pull. So stars in a galaxy relate to each other, but have no definitive center like a Sun is to a solar system.
Clusters are a bunch of galaxies that have a common attracting point, and are pretty much moving together through the Universe as it expands. The Milky Way galaxy is part of the "Local Cluster"Again, this common point of attraction is fairly vague, speculated to be dark matter. The cluster does not have a clear orbit like a solar system - as a matter of fact, in approximately 3 billion years our Milky Way galaxy will be crashing into the Andromeda galaxy. Good to know, huh?
Clusters can also be bound together into a Supercluster, as scientists have termed it, but it's not entirely certain that they work like the smaller clusters, so for the sake of this project, we'll ignore superclusters.
So what does this mean for our project? The current plan is to scan the internet and let site with a lot of links rise to be the Suns and maybe more could be changed. Since there is no definitive center for things like galaxies and clusters, having a site "represent it" would be puzzling. So perhaps sites that become Suns merely orbit around the "center" of the galaxy and perhaps group closer or further depending on their relationships - in which case, we may not need to go to a cluster level at all.
Another thought is looking at the spiral structure of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The galaxy has "arms" that spiral outwards from the galactic center. Could websites be organized into arms based on content or amount of links? it's something to think about, because then we wouldn't have to worry about the cluster level at all, and everything could be contained into one spiral galaxy form for exploration.
Main Source
FAQ version 1.0
Jasper recently sent me an e-mail where he responded to all the reviews we got from our Pool intents. I thought it might help answer some question if I posted it here.
Interface is a great topic, and conceptualization of the World Wide Web is something that, though often explored, has plenty of room for more exploration.
I am wondering: You are talking about creating an interface where navigation is through space -- literally. How will this interface affect the way we view Web pages? At what point does the space interface end?
The point isn't about websearching or viewing the webpage. You get a distilled gist of what's there for understanding, but after that, it's about the relationships. The 'space interface' ends when we keep the real terms, like pinging or traceroutes, so there's an affiliation of a mechanism to a common term.
Great idea! I would love to see this as a functioning internet based game. The most interesting feature would be that as time progresses, the game would change due to links changes, new websites popping up etc.
That was the original point!
I like the flash file shown, obviously it is pretty beta, but it shows what is going on quite well.
The swf file was a demonstration of an algorithm, and that's about it.
This is where you may have some problems. I'm thinking that number crunching the entire internet will be a taxing (to say the least) thing to do for even the most powerful computers. Also, when exploring the web like this, do you see images, text, just the name of the websites? Do you block out pornography or violence or is it unfiltered?
We never figured we'd ever explore it all. Exploration is done on a website to website basis by individual users who contibute their findings to the pool of knowlege. The full implementation will have the majority of downloading/analysis/etc done on their own computer without the server helping them out. This is distributed computing, and helps solve the vastness of it all. The prototype, for the sake of time or proof-of-concept, helps along the users by doing most of the work for their computers.
Since the content itself is not portrayed, but rather a representation of it, it wouldn't be viewable. If you visit a porn site, you'd find a very mineral-rich (media) planet with minimal poplation (text). Other details, such as the arrangement of media/text, or other types, depends on the makeup of the website.
The concept described here is very interesting. A visual representation of the internet is a topic that has been attempted before but a feasible navigation system has yet to be employed. Your method seems rooted in an easy pattern that could yield some pretty layouts and connections. I'm curious as to how navigation will be enhanced with this method.
We're not in it for feasibility, or is it about navigating the internet per se. This isn't an alternative search engine. It's not about searching, it's about exploration. Navigation/searching implies that there's knowlege (mapping) there already, whereas this is about discovering those structures, and learning the user about how it all works at the same time. Navigation will exist obviously, and we're gearing it towards a logical breakdown so it's fairly easy.
You'll start to get an exponentially increasing amount of data as you crawl your way through the net to build your connections. What language do you intend to develop this project?
The database design will have to reflect this, both on the WWW level, and IP level. It shouldn't be a problem though, since mapping the internet at top speed isn't in the scope of this project. A user doesn't want to sit there for a half hour while the program figures out a webpage, but beyond that, not so much.
The prototype is in php/mysql/python/etc. The full implementation will likely be mysql/c++/etc... more client-side processing with more efficient languages.
I like the idea of the internet as a space where objects are given a weight and position. This idea (and the .swf graphic) make me think of planet systems with each entity given gravity. I wonder how these relationships between sites can be associated under your new system.
I wonder that too.
The .swf file was an algorithm idea demonstration. The real thing wouldn't animate, but would just update the positions to the end result. The clusters would probably be a lot bigger (read: internet sized), which is why I need a faster, more effective algorithm. Most likely, the position data in the database for stars would be processed on the back-end by a separate program (perhaps c++ or something), and updated the db contents occasionally.
I think the concept is very interesting and has potential to be useful, although it doesn't seem very useful right away. I never have trouble finding information on the internet currently, but I suppose if enough relationships are made and the nodes are moved enough, it could be a bit easier to find what information you are searching for on the web.
That's really not the point of the project at all. It's about exploring, not searching. It's an educational tool to help give a better understanding of what this whole Internet thing is, how it works, the relationships, and the mechanics.
Some of the potential directions of this project imply that "planets" might be evaluated as to the quality of their resources; Ryan Schaller's review, for example, asks whether a media-rich site packed with ads would score as high on the game as a less media-rich but more content-rich site such as a Wikipedia page. ALICE is an example of a project based deliberately on this sort of evaluation. This AI spiders the Web, turning happy every time it finds useful resources but unhappy every time it runs into pop-ups, commercials, and other Internet "trash."
The details and attributes of a website are taken into account, but not acted upon, unless the user has an emotional reaction of some sort, where he/she punches his/her monitor. We don't evaluate the 'quality', since the project is about an objective analysis of a site. This will only be surface-level too, since interfacing with a search engine is beyond the scope of this project (How would we write a program that can interface with any search engine in existance, generically?). If we came across Wikipedia.org, it'd look at the front face contents, and move on. If someone linked to a wikipedia article in their page front-face, then that would be explored, as well as any links to other articles from that page. That'd be sort of the trigger that causes the exploration.
The program understands the mechanics of the internet, is given some tools to evaluate/explore, but in the end, it tries to make as few assumptions as possible, so it can work anywhere on anything. We know what wikipedia.org is, but would the program if it came across it? Same with google. There's no way it could fully tap the information google references.
Any information gathered is processed and stored based on the heirarchy of the link.
like the general direction you guys are headed with this concept. However, im not so sure how this as a game would really succeed. Maybe if you guys made it more of an encyclopedia of the net? This reminds me of the wayback-machine, but maybe with some really clever interface, like you how you described servs as planets or something. I think a cataloging of the net could offer up several uses; user statistics, comon trends, popular sites. WikiWeb =p
If people learn, then it has succeeded. Mapping out the internet isn't bad either.
The project is not a search engine. Some distilled data about some things (vague I know), may be gathered/processed, though.
I am curious how your game would quantify the "richness of content on a website", in terms of how much resources you can mine from the site. Would a website that was packed with advertisements, yet little useful information be more resource-rich than a website with minimal images, yet loads of information (ie., a Wikipedia page). Would the popular sites run out of resources faster than not-so-popular sites? This could encourage people to go search for sites that haven't been mined by others as much, so that there can still be resources to be found.
We wouldn't, like that. We can barely get voice recognition working, or spam filters.. let alone two people for a capstone focused on a different scope of development making something that can determine something like that.
When someone explores a particular place, and uplaod that data, they are tagged as the explorers, and people can't re-explore that (They can update the data though).
The success of this proposal depends on the appropriateness of two metaphors: the suggestion that cyberspace is like outer space, and that the Web resources found there are like planetary resources to be documented and mined for content. The first metaphor is both appropriate and inappropriate:: physical space is indefinitely expandable (appropriate), but its planets are separated by different distances (inappropriate). (For more on the usefulness of space as network metaphor, see "Is Cyberspace Really a Space" in your Del.icio.us links.) The second metaphor seems largely inappropriate: a carryover from the industrial age, it suggests that Web resources are rivalrous goods (see Del.icio.us'd Wikipedia article). It therefore seems to me that the underlying metaphor either needs to be changed or that the interface is a industrial-age game superimposed on an information-age network. I'm not sure how interesting the latter would be, since it seems to defeat what's interesting about the Internet in the first place; see Entropy8Zuper's Guernica (In Relationships) for a precedent. More interesting, I think, would be to rethink the "space mining" metaphor to match the new economic realities of the information age.
I guess I don't see how that's vitally important. There are some key differences, but they don't affect where the idea came from, or where it's going (in negative ways). It's enough similar. The original idea was to use the internet itself as game content (As opposed to a few hundred megs of data packed into files individually installed onto people's computers). The idea was meant to break away from server-centric models, where despite that we have this amazing network at our disposal, still tend to have one computer connected to one server, and our understanding/scope doesn't reach far beyond that.
Webpages linking to one another is about the best we've done to 'reach out' from a server/site centric model.
Space (ie 3 dimensions) may be too literal. In a sense, the internet is 0-dimensional, and n-dimensional. There's no (without tying it into real space) real way of determining the 'position' of a web-page in 'cybserspace'. Whether we represent that as 2D or 3D is quite irrelevant, since either will be highly arbitrary. Most things are arbitrary.
My question is, you're talking about the 'appropriateness' of the metaphor... appropriateness to what? Instead of planets, we could have marshmellows. Links between webpages could be represented as flaming squirrels shooting eyelasers from one marshmellow to another. The point of the project, and its goals would still be met. Space-exploration makes a good amount of sense, and makes the theme cohesive as a whole. We considered having towns instead of planets, states instead of solar systems, and navigation was primarily WoW-like. That seemed too dorky.
Is there a possibility that someone might mistake what we're attempting to convey, in that we're making assertions about astronomy? Maybe. Does it matter? The conception differs from astronomy enough to trigger that realization anyway. The metaphor at least gives us a solid ground of comparison, to convey complex understandings. Most metaphors abandon certain practicalities in order to accomplish this, anyway. Even though planets don't disappear and reappear, typically speaking in real life, having a metaphor that depicts this as happening, tying the occurance to servers that keep crashing or going down, conveys behavior about the behavior of servers, and how they differ from what we normally understand, and not about planets. Metaphors are great at pointing out similarities and differences. Space exploration is the reality-based basis of understanding in which to start making comparisons, both for and against.
The key is to tie that model as accurately and informatively into the heirarchy-network structure of the Internet, and how it works. After that, the representation is up in the air, with perhaps some attempts being more convoluted than others.
Interface is a great topic, and conceptualization of the World Wide Web is something that, though often explored, has plenty of room for more exploration.
I am wondering: You are talking about creating an interface where navigation is through space -- literally. How will this interface affect the way we view Web pages? At what point does the space interface end?
The point isn't about websearching or viewing the webpage. You get a distilled gist of what's there for understanding, but after that, it's about the relationships. The 'space interface' ends when we keep the real terms, like pinging or traceroutes, so there's an affiliation of a mechanism to a common term.
Great idea! I would love to see this as a functioning internet based game. The most interesting feature would be that as time progresses, the game would change due to links changes, new websites popping up etc.
That was the original point!
I like the flash file shown, obviously it is pretty beta, but it shows what is going on quite well.
The swf file was a demonstration of an algorithm, and that's about it.
This is where you may have some problems. I'm thinking that number crunching the entire internet will be a taxing (to say the least) thing to do for even the most powerful computers. Also, when exploring the web like this, do you see images, text, just the name of the websites? Do you block out pornography or violence or is it unfiltered?
We never figured we'd ever explore it all. Exploration is done on a website to website basis by individual users who contibute their findings to the pool of knowlege. The full implementation will have the majority of downloading/analysis/etc done on their own computer without the server helping them out. This is distributed computing, and helps solve the vastness of it all. The prototype, for the sake of time or proof-of-concept, helps along the users by doing most of the work for their computers.
Since the content itself is not portrayed, but rather a representation of it, it wouldn't be viewable. If you visit a porn site, you'd find a very mineral-rich (media) planet with minimal poplation (text). Other details, such as the arrangement of media/text, or other types, depends on the makeup of the website.
The concept described here is very interesting. A visual representation of the internet is a topic that has been attempted before but a feasible navigation system has yet to be employed. Your method seems rooted in an easy pattern that could yield some pretty layouts and connections. I'm curious as to how navigation will be enhanced with this method.
We're not in it for feasibility, or is it about navigating the internet per se. This isn't an alternative search engine. It's not about searching, it's about exploration. Navigation/searching implies that there's knowlege (mapping) there already, whereas this is about discovering those structures, and learning the user about how it all works at the same time. Navigation will exist obviously, and we're gearing it towards a logical breakdown so it's fairly easy.
You'll start to get an exponentially increasing amount of data as you crawl your way through the net to build your connections. What language do you intend to develop this project?
The database design will have to reflect this, both on the WWW level, and IP level. It shouldn't be a problem though, since mapping the internet at top speed isn't in the scope of this project. A user doesn't want to sit there for a half hour while the program figures out a webpage, but beyond that, not so much.
The prototype is in php/mysql/python/etc. The full implementation will likely be mysql/c++/etc... more client-side processing with more efficient languages.
I like the idea of the internet as a space where objects are given a weight and position. This idea (and the .swf graphic) make me think of planet systems with each entity given gravity. I wonder how these relationships between sites can be associated under your new system.
I wonder that too.
The .swf file was an algorithm idea demonstration. The real thing wouldn't animate, but would just update the positions to the end result. The clusters would probably be a lot bigger (read: internet sized), which is why I need a faster, more effective algorithm. Most likely, the position data in the database for stars would be processed on the back-end by a separate program (perhaps c++ or something), and updated the db contents occasionally.
I think the concept is very interesting and has potential to be useful, although it doesn't seem very useful right away. I never have trouble finding information on the internet currently, but I suppose if enough relationships are made and the nodes are moved enough, it could be a bit easier to find what information you are searching for on the web.
That's really not the point of the project at all. It's about exploring, not searching. It's an educational tool to help give a better understanding of what this whole Internet thing is, how it works, the relationships, and the mechanics.
Some of the potential directions of this project imply that "planets" might be evaluated as to the quality of their resources; Ryan Schaller's review, for example, asks whether a media-rich site packed with ads would score as high on the game as a less media-rich but more content-rich site such as a Wikipedia page. ALICE is an example of a project based deliberately on this sort of evaluation. This AI spiders the Web, turning happy every time it finds useful resources but unhappy every time it runs into pop-ups, commercials, and other Internet "trash."
The details and attributes of a website are taken into account, but not acted upon, unless the user has an emotional reaction of some sort, where he/she punches his/her monitor. We don't evaluate the 'quality', since the project is about an objective analysis of a site. This will only be surface-level too, since interfacing with a search engine is beyond the scope of this project (How would we write a program that can interface with any search engine in existance, generically?). If we came across Wikipedia.org, it'd look at the front face contents, and move on. If someone linked to a wikipedia article in their page front-face, then that would be explored, as well as any links to other articles from that page. That'd be sort of the trigger that causes the exploration.
The program understands the mechanics of the internet, is given some tools to evaluate/explore, but in the end, it tries to make as few assumptions as possible, so it can work anywhere on anything. We know what wikipedia.org is, but would the program if it came across it? Same with google. There's no way it could fully tap the information google references.
Any information gathered is processed and stored based on the heirarchy of the link.
like the general direction you guys are headed with this concept. However, im not so sure how this as a game would really succeed. Maybe if you guys made it more of an encyclopedia of the net? This reminds me of the wayback-machine, but maybe with some really clever interface, like you how you described servs as planets or something. I think a cataloging of the net could offer up several uses; user statistics, comon trends, popular sites. WikiWeb =p
If people learn, then it has succeeded. Mapping out the internet isn't bad either.
The project is not a search engine. Some distilled data about some things (vague I know), may be gathered/processed, though.
I am curious how your game would quantify the "richness of content on a website", in terms of how much resources you can mine from the site. Would a website that was packed with advertisements, yet little useful information be more resource-rich than a website with minimal images, yet loads of information (ie., a Wikipedia page). Would the popular sites run out of resources faster than not-so-popular sites? This could encourage people to go search for sites that haven't been mined by others as much, so that there can still be resources to be found.
We wouldn't, like that. We can barely get voice recognition working, or spam filters.. let alone two people for a capstone focused on a different scope of development making something that can determine something like that.
When someone explores a particular place, and uplaod that data, they are tagged as the explorers, and people can't re-explore that (They can update the data though).
The success of this proposal depends on the appropriateness of two metaphors: the suggestion that cyberspace is like outer space, and that the Web resources found there are like planetary resources to be documented and mined for content. The first metaphor is both appropriate and inappropriate:: physical space is indefinitely expandable (appropriate), but its planets are separated by different distances (inappropriate). (For more on the usefulness of space as network metaphor, see "Is Cyberspace Really a Space" in your Del.icio.us links.) The second metaphor seems largely inappropriate: a carryover from the industrial age, it suggests that Web resources are rivalrous goods (see Del.icio.us'd Wikipedia article). It therefore seems to me that the underlying metaphor either needs to be changed or that the interface is a industrial-age game superimposed on an information-age network. I'm not sure how interesting the latter would be, since it seems to defeat what's interesting about the Internet in the first place; see Entropy8Zuper's Guernica (In Relationships) for a precedent. More interesting, I think, would be to rethink the "space mining" metaphor to match the new economic realities of the information age.
I guess I don't see how that's vitally important. There are some key differences, but they don't affect where the idea came from, or where it's going (in negative ways). It's enough similar. The original idea was to use the internet itself as game content (As opposed to a few hundred megs of data packed into files individually installed onto people's computers). The idea was meant to break away from server-centric models, where despite that we have this amazing network at our disposal, still tend to have one computer connected to one server, and our understanding/scope doesn't reach far beyond that.
Webpages linking to one another is about the best we've done to 'reach out' from a server/site centric model.
Space (ie 3 dimensions) may be too literal. In a sense, the internet is 0-dimensional, and n-dimensional. There's no (without tying it into real space) real way of determining the 'position' of a web-page in 'cybserspace'. Whether we represent that as 2D or 3D is quite irrelevant, since either will be highly arbitrary. Most things are arbitrary.
My question is, you're talking about the 'appropriateness' of the metaphor... appropriateness to what? Instead of planets, we could have marshmellows. Links between webpages could be represented as flaming squirrels shooting eyelasers from one marshmellow to another. The point of the project, and its goals would still be met. Space-exploration makes a good amount of sense, and makes the theme cohesive as a whole. We considered having towns instead of planets, states instead of solar systems, and navigation was primarily WoW-like. That seemed too dorky.
Is there a possibility that someone might mistake what we're attempting to convey, in that we're making assertions about astronomy? Maybe. Does it matter? The conception differs from astronomy enough to trigger that realization anyway. The metaphor at least gives us a solid ground of comparison, to convey complex understandings. Most metaphors abandon certain practicalities in order to accomplish this, anyway. Even though planets don't disappear and reappear, typically speaking in real life, having a metaphor that depicts this as happening, tying the occurance to servers that keep crashing or going down, conveys behavior about the behavior of servers, and how they differ from what we normally understand, and not about planets. Metaphors are great at pointing out similarities and differences. Space exploration is the reality-based basis of understanding in which to start making comparisons, both for and against.
The key is to tie that model as accurately and informatively into the heirarchy-network structure of the Internet, and how it works. After that, the representation is up in the air, with perhaps some attempts being more convoluted than others.
10.23.2007
Gantt Chart the First
Image Link
May I just say that Gantt Project is one of the most horrible programs I've ever worked with. It is slow, clunky, buggy, and absolutely nothing is intuitive. Simple things like renaming or entering a date through the text box only works about half the time (if you're lucky), the program apparently has religious convictions that forbid you to start anything on the weekend - it's just an all-around BAD program.
I'm going to be the only person in my capstone class with a hand drawn Gantt chart, I swear.
May I just say that Gantt Project is one of the most horrible programs I've ever worked with. It is slow, clunky, buggy, and absolutely nothing is intuitive. Simple things like renaming or entering a date through the text box only works about half the time (if you're lucky), the program apparently has religious convictions that forbid you to start anything on the weekend - it's just an all-around BAD program.
I'm going to be the only person in my capstone class with a hand drawn Gantt chart, I swear.
10.22.2007
Proposal Version 1
Link!
So, hopefully Jasper and I have this idea nailed down pretty solidly. A bit more research, and we might actually be ready to start making this thing.
So, hopefully Jasper and I have this idea nailed down pretty solidly. A bit more research, and we might actually be ready to start making this thing.
10.08.2007
Benchmark 01: Thoughts
Well, I fell a bit short of the mark assignment-wise. Juggling the work load for my own class, and what Jasper requires for his class, is a bit difficult when the expectations are so different. I do my best to make sure Jasper gets through his papers and presentations okay, and I forget to blog about it for my own benefit. I concentrate on how to best organize the wiki, and I forget to post to The Pool for my own method of gathering input.
So, what's on the plate for this week, and my remaining two days off.
- Diagrams! The storyboarding has given me ideas for interfaces, now it's time to start playing in Photoshop or Illustrator and seeing how they fly.
- Wiki! The wiki, right now, is a sort of tossed salad of information. Time to organize it, sprinkle it with loads of information, and start tossing the link in a few different directions to get some input.
- Research! As much as internet resources abound and are generously free, I'm still a big fan of the printed word, so it's time to hit up the bookstores and read the words of the experts.
So, see you all next Monday!
So, what's on the plate for this week, and my remaining two days off.
- Diagrams! The storyboarding has given me ideas for interfaces, now it's time to start playing in Photoshop or Illustrator and seeing how they fly.
- Wiki! The wiki, right now, is a sort of tossed salad of information. Time to organize it, sprinkle it with loads of information, and start tossing the link in a few different directions to get some input.
- Research! As much as internet resources abound and are generously free, I'm still a big fan of the printed word, so it's time to hit up the bookstores and read the words of the experts.
So, see you all next Monday!
10.07.2007
Interphase Interface Maunderings
So, with the first storyboarding session with Jasper down and noted, I have a few ideas in mind for how this thing will look.
First, the toolbars. In order to make a interface that appeals to all, we've chosen to make each button have a pretty self-explanatory icon. To deal with the mining and competitive aspect of the game, I'll look at the different Warcrafts and Starcraft, to see how they compartmentalized the task of managing and upgrading resources mining teams. I doubt the game will reach the extent that Warcraft manages all these things, but making them easy to navigate is a huge priority in our project, so observing the more complicated thing will be a help.
Second, the overall style of the art in the game must be considered. As I was sketching ideas up on the whiteboard, it occurred to me that a lot of what I was envisioning was influenced by the Japanese game Katamari Damacy. Katamari Damacy is a game that looks like it was designed with a younger audience in mind, yet is so zany and hilarious in both gameplay and style that it appeals to the older generation as well. With a simple objective of picking up objects and a simple interface and control scheme, it could match our game concept quite nicely. It certainly bears more looking into, and dragging Jasper over to play it so he knows what I'm talking about.
As for more interface ideas, I plan on browsing the local bookstores, and maybe ordering a few books off of Amazon, to research more into what goes into the thought process of creating an interface. I think I will also post a request to the pool for people to share interfaces and game styles that they like, hopefully to gather a large sampling of what people around our age find interesting or easy to use.
First, the toolbars. In order to make a interface that appeals to all, we've chosen to make each button have a pretty self-explanatory icon. To deal with the mining and competitive aspect of the game, I'll look at the different Warcrafts and Starcraft, to see how they compartmentalized the task of managing and upgrading resources mining teams. I doubt the game will reach the extent that Warcraft manages all these things, but making them easy to navigate is a huge priority in our project, so observing the more complicated thing will be a help.
Second, the overall style of the art in the game must be considered. As I was sketching ideas up on the whiteboard, it occurred to me that a lot of what I was envisioning was influenced by the Japanese game Katamari Damacy. Katamari Damacy is a game that looks like it was designed with a younger audience in mind, yet is so zany and hilarious in both gameplay and style that it appeals to the older generation as well. With a simple objective of picking up objects and a simple interface and control scheme, it could match our game concept quite nicely. It certainly bears more looking into, and dragging Jasper over to play it so he knows what I'm talking about.
As for more interface ideas, I plan on browsing the local bookstores, and maybe ordering a few books off of Amazon, to research more into what goes into the thought process of creating an interface. I think I will also post a request to the pool for people to share interfaces and game styles that they like, hopefully to gather a large sampling of what people around our age find interesting or easy to use.
Links for Me: if ( 1 + 1 == 1 ) { e8z = true; };
if ( 1 + 1 == 1 ) { e8z = true; };
Aside from the clever way of making you play a
memory card game to unlock the links to this group's
various projects, the website is pretty hard to navigate.
Getting to any of the game interface projects is next to
impossible.
Something tells me this is not the place to go for easy, clear,
and intuitive interfaces.
But then again, I seem to have broken formatting and word
wrap on this blog post, so I guess I'm not the best judge.
Links for Me: Tale of Tales
Tale of Tales: The Endless Forest
The Endless Forest is an online game, played mostly through a screen saver, that deals with simple exploration, communication, and looking at the world created for you. There are several different scenes (one humorously based off a Doctor Who item, which gets props from me), and your main objective is to walk around and enjoy them. You can do deer-like things, but the game presents no objectives for you to accomplish.
Communication in the game is minimal - you are limited to what you can convey in your deer form. Gender is irrelevant, as everyone is required to play a male deer - because "antlers are pretty," they say, but it is mostly to make you communicate as a deer, not as your gender counterpart.
Aside from the deer characters of this game bearing a creepy resemblance to the forest spirit in Princess Mononoke, this game is a pretty good match for the exploration side of our game - exploring for the sake of seeing what is out there. Minimalizing communication by limiting the player to a specific form is an interesting concept - making them communicate by action and emotion, rather than words, could be a concept we could use in our space exploration game. This game definitely warrants more exploration.
The Endless Forest is an online game, played mostly through a screen saver, that deals with simple exploration, communication, and looking at the world created for you. There are several different scenes (one humorously based off a Doctor Who item, which gets props from me), and your main objective is to walk around and enjoy them. You can do deer-like things, but the game presents no objectives for you to accomplish.
Communication in the game is minimal - you are limited to what you can convey in your deer form. Gender is irrelevant, as everyone is required to play a male deer - because "antlers are pretty," they say, but it is mostly to make you communicate as a deer, not as your gender counterpart.
Aside from the deer characters of this game bearing a creepy resemblance to the forest spirit in Princess Mononoke, this game is a pretty good match for the exploration side of our game - exploring for the sake of seeing what is out there. Minimalizing communication by limiting the player to a specific form is an interesting concept - making them communicate by action and emotion, rather than words, could be a concept we could use in our space exploration game. This game definitely warrants more exploration.
Links for Me: eScavenger
Only three links here to review, so let's have at the first one.
eScavengers - Let The Adventure Begin!
Aside from being a sort of puzzling dual website, this game seems to be an online game where you compete with other players in order to gain in-game currency, which can be traded for more tangible products. Online retailer subscriptions, various products, and so forth.
The method of playing involves a scavenger hunt through selected pages of companies that sponsor each game. The game gives you a hint, the answer type (image, text, number, etc.), and you have to scour the page to find the item that matches the hint and select the correct area with the crosshairs. Incorrect guesses penalize you with time, which I assume lowers your overall reward. It involves careful reading of each page, which explains why it has specific sponsors, because it forces you to read the website carefully rather than skimming over it.
As to how I think the game works, I'm guessing it's all pre-determined, rather than an on-the-fly scan and hint generation. Since the game only requires you to get about 6 answers to clear the level, then the creators can pick 20 hints from 20 different pages and just randomize them.
As to the relevance to our project, in dealing with the whole internet scanning idea, it doesn't quite match. Rather than translating the page into a whole different format, the game makes you deal with all the formatting the vendor wants you to see. The pages are likely pre-formatted and pre-loaded, and don't deal much with how pages can change and can be edited. As for the competition aspect, it kind of follows the idea of discovery, but hardly a who-can-discover-this-first, and more of a who-can-complete-the-levels-fastest. The real world prizes for game resources is a good motivation, but obviously out of the scope of a project made by two college students.
All-in-all, a good game that makes dealing with webpages a game rather than a chore (even if it is a blatant advertising ploy on the part of the company sponsoring it), and a good way to reward people for participating.
eScavengers - Let The Adventure Begin!
Aside from being a sort of puzzling dual website, this game seems to be an online game where you compete with other players in order to gain in-game currency, which can be traded for more tangible products. Online retailer subscriptions, various products, and so forth.
The method of playing involves a scavenger hunt through selected pages of companies that sponsor each game. The game gives you a hint, the answer type (image, text, number, etc.), and you have to scour the page to find the item that matches the hint and select the correct area with the crosshairs. Incorrect guesses penalize you with time, which I assume lowers your overall reward. It involves careful reading of each page, which explains why it has specific sponsors, because it forces you to read the website carefully rather than skimming over it.
As to how I think the game works, I'm guessing it's all pre-determined, rather than an on-the-fly scan and hint generation. Since the game only requires you to get about 6 answers to clear the level, then the creators can pick 20 hints from 20 different pages and just randomize them.
As to the relevance to our project, in dealing with the whole internet scanning idea, it doesn't quite match. Rather than translating the page into a whole different format, the game makes you deal with all the formatting the vendor wants you to see. The pages are likely pre-formatted and pre-loaded, and don't deal much with how pages can change and can be edited. As for the competition aspect, it kind of follows the idea of discovery, but hardly a who-can-discover-this-first, and more of a who-can-complete-the-levels-fastest. The real world prizes for game resources is a good motivation, but obviously out of the scope of a project made by two college students.
All-in-all, a good game that makes dealing with webpages a game rather than a chore (even if it is a blatant advertising ploy on the part of the company sponsoring it), and a good way to reward people for participating.
The Evolution of a Paper
So it occurs to me that I've been helping Jasper more with his assignments than I've been doing my own, so I suppose I should post them here instead of the dusty corner in the wiki that they reside to get some credit for it.
So, here's the latest version of the paper: version3.0
And for reference, version1.0 and 2.0
Next up, storyboarding and diagrams. But first, getting caught up with my end of things.
So, here's the latest version of the paper: version3.0
And for reference, version1.0 and 2.0
Next up, storyboarding and diagrams. But first, getting caught up with my end of things.
9.22.2007
Assignment: New Media Definition - Jenkins
a. How does your capstone measure up according to the definition proposed in Henry Jenkins' "Eight Traits of the New Media Landscape"? For this entry, describe the principle that your project fits best and the one it fits worst. How might you alter your project to fit better?
The principle that best fits our project is Appropriative, since we are technically taking something that already exists (the internet and the hardware and webpages it contains) and re imagining it as something else.
What fits our project the least, and may be unavoidable, the the Everyday principle. Since our project is really based on exploring "for the fun of it," it would be very hard to make it a staple of everyday life. But games have their place in lives, too. They can be an escape, a learning tool, or just something to idly click away at when bored. With a project that is based on something that is constantly shifting and changing, like the internet, perhaps the changes will incur enough interest to at least make people want to look at it regularly. But, as brought up in the last post, technological constraints are the main thing barring is from making this project as "living" as it can be. Google may be able to afford the computing power and bandwidth to constantly scan and update their database of the internet, but we will have to opt for slower, less frequent ways of changing the landscape.
b. Do you agree or disagree with Jenkins' definition, and why?
It is definitely lighter on the technical side, and more heavy on the cultural side, but it is also a good breakdown of what we consider New Media to be. Manovich might disagree, since Jenkins kind of blankets every type of technology into his definitions and principles, but the concept is solid.
I don't agree with the way he decided to not focus on the technology in his definition, though. It would be like talking about how the automobile revolutionized transportation without considering the cars, and how they were built and produced. Technology is the driving force of New Media, and advancements in the way it is made (better, faster, cheaper) is what drives the changes - the cultural driving force is nowhere near as influential. If Microsoft did not make Windows cheaper, easier, and more widely available to users, who knows where the PC market, and consequentially, the software market would be currently. (Cue rabid Mac fanatics.)
The principle that best fits our project is Appropriative, since we are technically taking something that already exists (the internet and the hardware and webpages it contains) and re imagining it as something else.
What fits our project the least, and may be unavoidable, the the Everyday principle. Since our project is really based on exploring "for the fun of it," it would be very hard to make it a staple of everyday life. But games have their place in lives, too. They can be an escape, a learning tool, or just something to idly click away at when bored. With a project that is based on something that is constantly shifting and changing, like the internet, perhaps the changes will incur enough interest to at least make people want to look at it regularly. But, as brought up in the last post, technological constraints are the main thing barring is from making this project as "living" as it can be. Google may be able to afford the computing power and bandwidth to constantly scan and update their database of the internet, but we will have to opt for slower, less frequent ways of changing the landscape.
b. Do you agree or disagree with Jenkins' definition, and why?
It is definitely lighter on the technical side, and more heavy on the cultural side, but it is also a good breakdown of what we consider New Media to be. Manovich might disagree, since Jenkins kind of blankets every type of technology into his definitions and principles, but the concept is solid.
I don't agree with the way he decided to not focus on the technology in his definition, though. It would be like talking about how the automobile revolutionized transportation without considering the cars, and how they were built and produced. Technology is the driving force of New Media, and advancements in the way it is made (better, faster, cheaper) is what drives the changes - the cultural driving force is nowhere near as influential. If Microsoft did not make Windows cheaper, easier, and more widely available to users, who knows where the PC market, and consequentially, the software market would be currently. (Cue rabid Mac fanatics.)
Assignment: New Media Definition - Manovich
a. How does your capstone measure up according to the definition proposed in Lev Manovich's "What Is New Media?" For this entry, describe the principle that your project fits best and the one it fits worst. How might you alter your project to fit better?
Out of the five principles described in Manovich's chapter, I think our project fits the Transcoding principle the best. Our main objective in this project is to make the user visualize the internet as something familiar to them - planets, solar systems, and galaxies. We all learned about the planets and their differences in content, their rotations around the sun, at an early age, yet (for some of us) the internet came later. By showing webpages and how they can connect to each other, via HTML links or physical routers, it should begin to form an image that is a lot like our solar system, with large aggregates of links or major routers forming the suns.
The weakest is likely to be the Variability category. While our project could exist in several different views, based on the connections we make, the input to the program is still entirely dependent on the content generated by others. The best way to counteract this is to either add more variability in the way we display the content, by making different connections between the "planets" and "suns" and displaying them differently, or pulling different types of content from the webpages. Of course, the biggest barrier to variability will be what is technologically possible to compute, both in what is made available and what we have the computing power to do.
b. Do you agree or disagree with Manovich's definition, and why?
It is definitely a more thorough definition of what constitutes New Media, but a more technical definition that deals with the nitty-gritty parts and less of the overall concept of New Media. Unless, of course, he went over that in a section other than Principles of New Media, which I will freely admit is the only section I read, to save myself some time.
However, technically, his definition is beautifully thorough. He clearly separates new media from what people might mistake it for, such as old media converted to a digital format. It is a good breakdown of everything we think of as "new media."
Assignment: New Media Definition - Crosbie
a. How does your capstone measure up according to the definition proposed in Vin Crosbie's "What Is New Media?" How might you alter your project to fit better?
As it stands right now, our internet "game" concept is rather one-sided. Instead of being a fully interactive program, with as much user input as program output, it instead delivers the visuals to the user in a certain way, and they are unable to change it. The problem with using the internet as the content generator is that while the user can view webpages, there isn't a whole lot they can do to edit them - they can just look at what the designer chose to show you. So, our project, which relies on the contents of websites for it's visuals, is rather fixed.
Since giving users the ability to alter the visuals, and hence the websites, is of questionable legality, we must make up for the deficiency in another area. Our planned "community" feature, where users can share their discoveries, could be the area we need to push the most. After the user has explored the galatic representation of the internet, they can meet with outher explorers and share, withhold, or barter their discoveries. They can look at what other people have explored, combine it all together, or chose to keep exploring on their own.
Another possibilty for making the game more user-input friendly is to do more in the exploration part. Perhaps by changing it into more of a Warcraft game (for lack of a better example), where the user could gather the "resources" of the planet, and use it to take over other planets, or go against other users. Planets represented by media-rich websites would be literal gold mines for whoever happened across them first. The user could strive to become the richest person in the galaxy, or they could begin a galaxy-wide conquest.
So, the balance between making people want to explore for the sake of exploring, or wanting to explore for the sake of competition, should probably be thought out.
b. Do you agree or disagree with Crosbie's definition, and why?
For the most part, I agree, but I think he may of over-simplified things a bit, or maybe been a bit too stringent on his criteria of what is "media," "medium," and "vehicle."
Yes, land/air/water and one-to-one/many-to-one/many-to-many can be mediums, but I think things such as television, magazines, and newspapers, are a bit too complex to just be "vehicles." Television, for example, can deliver entertainment, information, advertisements, visuals and audio, which can all serve as vehicles for the intent behind them. So while I think he was trying to do a good thing by dumbing New Media down enough to try to make it simple, I really don't think it's going to be as clearly defined as that.
As it stands right now, our internet "game" concept is rather one-sided. Instead of being a fully interactive program, with as much user input as program output, it instead delivers the visuals to the user in a certain way, and they are unable to change it. The problem with using the internet as the content generator is that while the user can view webpages, there isn't a whole lot they can do to edit them - they can just look at what the designer chose to show you. So, our project, which relies on the contents of websites for it's visuals, is rather fixed.
Since giving users the ability to alter the visuals, and hence the websites, is of questionable legality, we must make up for the deficiency in another area. Our planned "community" feature, where users can share their discoveries, could be the area we need to push the most. After the user has explored the galatic representation of the internet, they can meet with outher explorers and share, withhold, or barter their discoveries. They can look at what other people have explored, combine it all together, or chose to keep exploring on their own.
Another possibilty for making the game more user-input friendly is to do more in the exploration part. Perhaps by changing it into more of a Warcraft game (for lack of a better example), where the user could gather the "resources" of the planet, and use it to take over other planets, or go against other users. Planets represented by media-rich websites would be literal gold mines for whoever happened across them first. The user could strive to become the richest person in the galaxy, or they could begin a galaxy-wide conquest.
So, the balance between making people want to explore for the sake of exploring, or wanting to explore for the sake of competition, should probably be thought out.
b. Do you agree or disagree with Crosbie's definition, and why?
For the most part, I agree, but I think he may of over-simplified things a bit, or maybe been a bit too stringent on his criteria of what is "media," "medium," and "vehicle."
Yes, land/air/water and one-to-one/many-to-one/many-to-many can be mediums, but I think things such as television, magazines, and newspapers, are a bit too complex to just be "vehicles." Television, for example, can deliver entertainment, information, advertisements, visuals and audio, which can all serve as vehicles for the intent behind them. So while I think he was trying to do a good thing by dumbing New Media down enough to try to make it simple, I really don't think it's going to be as clearly defined as that.
9.19.2007
Have a wiki.
Internet Interphase Wiki
Had a meeting today with someone who knows a bit more about internet protocols than Jasper and I do, so of course he turned a lot of our ideas upside down and gave us some new ones. So who knows how much we will end up sticking with in this wiki. But I suppose that's the fun of a project, coming up with ideas and throwing them out.
Had a meeting today with someone who knows a bit more about internet protocols than Jasper and I do, so of course he turned a lot of our ideas upside down and gave us some new ones. So who knows how much we will end up sticking with in this wiki. But I suppose that's the fun of a project, coming up with ideas and throwing them out.
9.11.2007
Well, here I am.
Despite my best efforts to avoid the whole Web 2.0 thing, I seem have to inadvertently fallen into the class that requires me to fling myself into it head first.
Me, I was perfectly happy rattling around in the world outside of people blithely convinced they changed the world with every blog post they made. I browse non-political forums, volunteer details of my life and my opinions when I felt like it, and played in my massively mutliplayer fantasy worlds. The whole web-revolution was amusing to watch from the sidelines, but I never felt any particular need to participate.
But of course, the concept it rages on, and the enthusiasts conscript others into their army of assorted buzzwords. The bloggers and vloggers and whatever other made up words rage against the machine, and try to revolutionize everything but the kitchen sink.
Who knows, maybe they're trying to revolutionize that too.
And of course, everything they set out to do succeeds, which is why Bush has been impeached, net neutrality has been passed, the Iraq war has ended, and large corporations no longer control most of what we view.
Oh, wait.
But, maybe I'm being hasty. Maybe my habit of viewing everything with a nice candy coating of sarcasm has gotten the better of me. So, let's see if this class can prove me wrong.
Also, note to self: make this blog less ugly.
Me, I was perfectly happy rattling around in the world outside of people blithely convinced they changed the world with every blog post they made. I browse non-political forums, volunteer details of my life and my opinions when I felt like it, and played in my massively mutliplayer fantasy worlds. The whole web-revolution was amusing to watch from the sidelines, but I never felt any particular need to participate.
But of course, the concept it rages on, and the enthusiasts conscript others into their army of assorted buzzwords. The bloggers and vloggers and whatever other made up words rage against the machine, and try to revolutionize everything but the kitchen sink.
Who knows, maybe they're trying to revolutionize that too.
And of course, everything they set out to do succeeds, which is why Bush has been impeached, net neutrality has been passed, the Iraq war has ended, and large corporations no longer control most of what we view.
Oh, wait.
But, maybe I'm being hasty. Maybe my habit of viewing everything with a nice candy coating of sarcasm has gotten the better of me. So, let's see if this class can prove me wrong.
Also, note to self: make this blog less ugly.
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