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nitefoll

Jun. 29th, 2008 05:54 pm 17th Shard swines!!!

Wow, seems like an age since I last posted, work has been occupying even my spare time.

Today I managed to complete another mScape, but not without some considerable jiggery pokery.

As part of The Sky Remains ARG, I installed an mScape onto my trusty HP iPaq 4150 as the loaned HP Travelmate still refuses to get a GPS fix and I got tired farting around with it. The game installed but wouldn't start up, after re-installing the mScape Player and Adobe Mobile Flash, still no luck, the mScape player locked up and required a soft reset of my iPaq.

It wasn't until I loaded the mScape into the mScape Builder Software that I surmised that the fact the game was Landscape Screen Oriented was causing a problem. As an experiment, I deliberatley switched the game to portrait, repacked it, and loaded it onto my iPaq and it worked fine albeit looking a bit wonky.

Much digging, re-installing of the original "landscape" game and installing of 3rd party video drivers for my iPaq later and I was able to get the mScape to run, but only with very specific settings. If this seems like a rant, it isn't, I know my PDA is an old model I just hate being defied by technology.

The mScape was simple 'checkpoint' style game and I completed it in about 10 minutes. Despite the aforementioned "startup" issues, the game ran smoothly and I was able to get the information I required.

Just a side note to mScape creators (myself a fledgling creator), ask yourself if your game REALLY needs to be in Landspace mode to fulfill it's purpose, if it doesn't stick with Portrait mode to allow compatibility with older PDA's that run older OS's, such as Windows Mobile 2003 (1st Edition).

Tags: hp reasearch

Current Location: At Home

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nitefoll

Jun. 5th, 2008 01:42 pm mScapetastic - TimeHole

Success, hurrah at last I managed to get an mScape working.

After my 2 previous failed attempts I was a little dubious this would work, but after installing and firing up the TimeHole mscape I was pleasantly surprised. I again wandered to George Square in Glasgow and after a few moments I got a GPS fix and was off eagerly settings my "Spirit Spaces."

My initial reaction was the game was a cool concept, but, as with previous mscaping, I did feel quite self conscious that I was wandering around with an expensive piece of kit in my hand. The fear of either dropping/breaking it or having it pinched was prevalent. I would recommend you have accident insurance for your PDA if your wandering around outside with it.

Once the "Spirit Spaces" were calibrated the game was easy enough to play, though I did forget where one of them was, so took a bit of wandering around to find it again. I didn't have time to close the timehole, but played it enough to make a few observations:

Essential, you really do need an accurate GPS fix.
Walk slowly, if you don't have a decent GPS signal it takes a few moments for the game to detect you've moved.
Ensure you put a good distance between GPS nodes ("Spirit Spaces") or the game simply goes crazy playing overlapping media clips etc.
Once the mScape game detects that you've moved into an "interaction" area, stand still. I found that, probably due to poor GPS, that I'd walk into and out of a "Spirit Space, but had to laboriously wait for the game to play through the "entering location" then "leaving location" then "entering location" media clips... annoying! Perhaps building a "Skip" function into the media clip? Also, a "replay clip" function for important game info.
Pay attention to your surroundings, walking around staring at a PDA screen allowed me to nearly walk over an open drain cover, common sense I know, but when you're immersed in the game you may not notice.
Not sure if it's possible but "Multi-player" games, would ROCK!!
Looking at the next release of the MBuilder software the ability to zero in on GPS bugs and other blue tooth devices, also ROCKS!

From an ARGing perspective, weekly/monthly episodic style releases spring to mind, in conjunction with the game, TV shows or movies. All in all, I enjoyed playing the game and would be interested in purchasing full blown MScape games, provided they were of high quality and immersive enough to achieve lasting game play.

Tags: hp research

Current Location: At Work

World Without Oil

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