A word of advice for coders from Alan

Sometimes when you write code you can go completely round in a circle.  As your project & codebase develops, you will perform a process called Refactoring - this is the art of improving and generalising existing code to make it more usable for your new needs.

When you start refactoring, you may have a grand idea in your head of what you can do to improve the code.  Along the way though, you may hit a road block causing you to write something a little bit hacky & inelegant to complete the refactor.  Your gut will twinge, but you will ignore it and say "everything is nice now".

Like a loose thread on a jumper, you will (very quickly) pull on the one in-elegancy and shortly after, everything will turn ugly.  What you have now is worse than what you began with, so you cut your losses and go back to the drawing board.  But the time is not wasted!  Any failed attempt pushes the limits of what you know to be possible - when you think again of how to refactor you will remember your previous attempt and avoid that route.

Fail as many times as you like; you only need to succeed once

www.moderncocoafarmer.org

Today I started working with Lewis Waller on the website.  Lewis is an ex back end wordpress expert and a good friend of mine.  He agreed (very kindly to host my domain moderncocoafarmer.org on his servers and give me a theme which he owns).  This saves me a great deal of hassel and money, thank you .  He also talked me through how to use the Divi theme on wordpress.org.  

I made an attempt a few weeks ago to create a website, but used the wrong wordpress.com by accident, wasting time and money, learning a software and paying for something which didn't have the right kind of functionality.  

Today we associated the name moderncocoafarmer.org to the wordpress editing software and started working on the website with reference to a mock up website I had created on Illustrator. 

It was surprisingly easy to get the effect I wanted, thanks to the simple UI of wordpress and Divi.  

I connected the social media accounts of Modern cocoa Farmer and started uploading blog posts onto the website.  I will keep working on this website until it is finished and will get help from Lewis sporadically if I get stuck.  

Inspector Lewis

Today I used Lewis's technical knowledge to get started. But importantly I have been given the tools and the skills to continue on my own.  Thanks Lewis for being so patient and talking through it all with me. 

MANGOS CAN DELIVER

"I love this sprite, It's just so Riskay" - Alan

Two weeks of correspondence and binary decision maps later, Alan the Wizard that he is has finished all of the background functionality for the game.  This means that we can start putting assets into the game to bring it all to life. This involved trawling Open Game Art and Kenny for free placeholder assets as well as briefing the Game Artist Ines to make the key assets.  

I started work today on a presentation. 

Keyframing sprite

Creating a child animation

Bar increases from the middle going out  ?!

Corrected Bars, Now it moves in the right direction  

Today was the first time I saw the project built and run on a phone. When the level starts and the music comes on I am happy that it is working. I can start to see all the hard work coming together.  

Phone screenshot

Phone screenshot

Pixel Art

All images © Ines Ng

This pixel art  boy is a vast improvement on the placeholder we had before for the minigame.  

Drawn by Ines Ng on my instruction, it depicts a boy of the right age and ethnicity for the game. 

Parent level by Alan Wills

"I am always amazed at how much artwork changes a game.  In some ways you want to create your game with bad artwork because you can otherwise be fooled in to the quality of your product.  Today, the parent level has gone from squares on a red background to something looking a little more like Mali (if you're squinting, in a dark room).  Nevertheless, things will only get better as David continues to hunt down more artwork.

Today, I've been working with tile maps - a concept incredibly common in 2D games.  Your map is constructed of many small interlocking tiles which come together to form a level.  When done well, they can produce incredible results - the best example I've ever seen HAS to be from
the game Golden Sun.  It still staggers me that that game was made on the Gameboy Advance.

Golden Sun screenshot

I've also migrated the game over to an Android app, which again was relatively painless due to Unity's incredible Build tools. I shudder to think of the many development hours it must have taken to get this cross-platform creation working, but it truly is a piece of technological brilliance.

Roll on the parent level!"

Written by Alan Wills

Behind the music by JD Wasabi

In this post, I attempt to explain the process and creative intent when writing the first draft of the theme for the Cocoa Pod Collecting mini game in Modern Cocoa Farmer.

The narrative of this level is that you play a child slave whose objective is to the collect the fallen cocoa pods to make money and send it home. The setting for the level takes place in the Ivory Coast.

Whilst talking with David, certain words and phrases came to mind:

• Thoughtful

• (Almost) Tragic

• Reflection of the harsh realities

Taking into account geographical and historical context, I wanted to juxtapose the irony of the situation. Chocolate as a product is a beautiful sweet treat. It’s a gesture of love on Valentine’s Day and gratitude on Mother’s Day. It’s also a known comfort food for cold winter nights and generally associated with the expression of kindness and human connection. Yet this product is also often built by the hands of child slaves and by families who have little choice of their lifestyle situations. Not to mention the aspect of huge multi-industrial corporation who takes advantage of the situation, we as a consumer rarely get to see what happens on the other side of the corporate lens.

I felt that this has a similar connection to the origins of Jazz. Like chocolate, Jazz is a beautiful and soulful expression of music yet has problematic origins. The features of Jazz that make it Jazz takes from the awful experiences and hardships of African-American slaves in the late 19th and early 20th century. For this theme, I wanted to have some Jazz elements as an acknowledgement to its origins. The Jazz chord progression is based on Bill Wither’s “Ain’t No Sunshine”. I felt its simple chord structure and melody mirrors the expression that I wanted to convey. The use of the piano is also a play on the term ‘ivory’ since the narrative takes place in the Ivory Coast and piano keys were made from ivory before it became illegal to do so. It’s again another juxtaposition where the piano instrument is an elegant and expressive instrument yet built on the deaths and cruelty of animals.

I purposely set the tempo and underlining percussion to mirror work songs. Work songs are mostly based around the steady rhythm of working in the fields and I felt this was a very important element to keep for the game’s narrative. The melody and other elements are written using instruments from West Africa. While the compositional structure has a more Westernised approach, I hope the sounds of the instruments can still ground the track (and narrative) in its original roots.

Jade Leamcharaskul © 

Written by Jade Leamcharaskul

http://wasabi-playground.com/

Sword-ted and Saucery Pizza

After finishing off a rather tasty round of saucy pizzas from Mamma Dough's, and David showing me pictures of the awesome pixel art in Sword and Sorcery (ha, see what we did there!), he showed me our new pixel art.

For several weeks now, I have had to watch a rather hunched pixellated version of myself walking in what can only be described as a chiropracter's nightmare.  Much to my delight, I was able to remove myself from the game and add in a fantastic new animated character by Ines Ng (our new pixel artist)!

We spent the remainder of the evening tweaking the new chopping animation (something the game desperately needed) and fixing up some of the other screens that had fallen behind.  There are still a few bugs which need ironing out, but the mini-game is really coming along nicely.

The next step is the exciting one - over the next few weeks I will be developing the Parent level of the game with David.  This is personally the part of the game I am most excited for and is going to be the most fun to play.  Screenshots and updates will follow, so watch this space!

Bevis Fair Trade Hack

I messaged the head of Hacksmiths at Goldsmiths asking if they would be interested in holding a game Jam event with fairtrade or on fairtrade issues.  He said that he would raise the point in the upcoming board meeting on Wednesday to discuss this as a possibility. I asked if I could come along ... I felt that there really is value in games in this charitable field and that by harnessing the creative power of people drawn to hackathons we can start to make headway into working out whether or not games can make a real impact in raising awareness and making a tangiable difference to people's lives.  A fairtrade hack represents many communities coming together to work on something together. I found the connections and I hope that I can galvanise people to make those steps towards making something like this happen.  This means convincing people at fairtrade to back something like this in addition to my project and getting Hacksmiths to want to  organise and run such an event. (perhaps over the summer). The meeting will happen this wednesday and we will find out soon what the result of that meeting is.  With Hacksmiths backing the idea I can apply to fairtrade with the idea and this will help to legitimise the idea. (i.e established community wants to get involved with fair trade to make games). 

Jade Leamcharaskul Sound effects and music guru

Yesterday (over dinner) I briefed Jade about the music for the mini game. I asked Jade to  taking influence from Negro spirituals and slave working songs as well as traditional Music from Mali. We talked about the feeling of trudging that the music is trying to create.  We discussed some pieces that we like and thought about the instrumentation and the story which is trying to be explained.  This is a harsh reality of life for many.  I asked Jade to take some screenshots of the project as she is working on it and keep track of her sonic choices as she works. 

Alan does not like Macs

Genuine frustration as Alan tries to download file sharing software on my macbook

"No self respecting programmer owns a mac"

Our meeting started when I asked alan about his opinion on the scope of the project. Alan said that in the time left it would be best to try to complete two levels of the game (The parents level and the farmers level. This would give us ample time to complete the graphic and functional elements of the game.  

I Asked Alan if he knows anyone who can help with the graphic element of the project and set up an introduction. He said that he did know someone at work, but that their services would be too expensive (i.e, Not free). Hum I need to have a think about what's possible here.  

Alan started by connecting up the Playstation 4 controller I had bought to the introduction Introduction screen and game. I told Alan which buttons should be assigned to different functions.  We added a JUMP FUNCTION, Lowered the pod cap, Made the pods spawn faster after having fallen off tree changed fonts back to roses are ff0000 as it fitted the aesthetic better. We discussed a controls pop up at beginning of game, but this didn't happen in the end as we ran out of time.  

The Jump function was not working and the character was jumping far too high. He keeps going up and up up. The character could also walk in mid air.

From this position the character can jump (horizontally).

Someone has their head in the clouds (or thinks they are living on the moon)

We discussed the possibility of telling the story from the perspective of the child, but decided that the perspective of the parent gives more of a sense for the system which leads to slavery. Rather than stuff happening to the player (as child). The parent has a little more control over the fate of the child. This allows the game to be more similar to a resource management game rather than an adventure. 

This is the software 'Git' which allows for file sharing without having to download it again and again.  All the red pieces of text are the changes made in the session, which was downloaded automatically with a few little bits of code. 

These are the bits of code I typed in to update the file on my computer automatically.

We realised that we had planned out too much and needed to pair back the challenge that we were setting ourselves. Also the realisation , that just as important as the game is my documentation of the process.

A productive session , but not much visual difference from the last time we met. 

a magazine article meeting

Last week I was approached by the Goldsmiths Student union magazine to write an article about a subject of my choosing. I felt that this was an opportunity to speak about my final project. I set myself the task of summing up the project in a simple communicable way.

Today I had a meeting with the Senior editor of the magazine, who gave me detailed specific feedback about my first draft. I was asked to restructure the piece and provide a brief introduction to game activism design (by way of examples) to make the content a little more accessible. She also recommended that I should try to describe the project in a less formal way to fit with the sort of casual readers the magazine will be expecting.

This meeting was a great lesson for me in how to communicate my project simply and shows me that I should carefully consider my reader (audience) when I am writing about Modern Cocoa Farmer, whether on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or on www.moderncocoafarmer.org

www.moderncocoafarmer.org

Yesterday I bought www.moderncocoafarmer.org.

I would like this website to include the following sections:

• Home page / Trailer for the game/ Buy the game.
• Teaser - A mini version of the game on the website for players as a teaser.
• About - A summary of the game, and it's mission to educate and raise money for charity/ a word about the sponsors/ their mission/ amount raised so far for causes.
• Education - A summary of relevant research into the story of child trafficking and Child slavery.
• Blog - describing, in detail, the process of making the game from research and initial sketches, through failures and demos, unexpected turns and prototypes as well as methods of collaboration.
• Meet the team - A thank you to all the people who have helped the project along/  thanks to the sponsors/ funders etc
• Jobs/opportunities- Join the team and pitch in your creative skills to add to the mission.  Do you have skills as a visual artist, programmer or animator, do you want to do something for charity and get credited for your work, Well join half eaten biscuit productions and start making a difference now .  

I think it's important to start to build a culture of collaboration and sharing around a project like this.  I think that my project this year is partly about the game and partly about the systems and structures I set in place to support a culture of collaboration and working together towards a shared goal.  This is maybe my role as the designer, to set up the methods of collaborative working which allow a project such as Modern Cocoa farmer to work. 

What is my role IN MAKING MODERN COCOA FARMER ?

So far in this project I have asked for help from:

Alan (programming/mechanics), Jade Wasabi and Erin Tomlinson (Music and SFX), Linda Spaggiari after effects and video editing, Fair Trade Foundation (Funding the project), Martin Conreen (Materials expert), Caroline Knowles (sociological materials expert), Mark Edmondson and Pete Rodgers ( hardware advisors), Ruby Rossini, (Photographer) and my tutors, friends and family.  THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HELPED ME SO FAR, YOU ARE AWESOME!

I must consider Music, Programming, Funding, hardware, Advertising and distribution, Social platforms, user Experience, graphics and hardware. 

In order to deal with the scale of this challenge I have found myself in the role of delegator and director of a small team. Trying to meet regularly to collaborate with Alan, Jade and Erin to make a working version of the game.  I have been trying to document the process of collaboration as we all go along. So far I have been in charge of the graphics, but as more elements and people join the project I find that my role becomes more about directing others than doing things myself.  I have struggled to work on the graphics and ensure all aspects of the project come together in the right way.  

So, for efficiency I would like to if I work with a Pixel Artist and an animator who can produce the graphics for the game. This makes me seriously question what role I play as the 'Designer' in this group of people. So far, I have enjoyed the freedom of finding the people with the necessary skills and knowledge to help me actualise my ideas. If I ask someone else to do the graphics and animation, then am I delegating too much ? Can I still be considered a designer  if all I am doing is directing the process ? 

So far my role has been to

1.  Research the context and come up with an idea and find out what would need to be done to make the idea a reality.

2. I am devising the parameters of the game and how the different characters in the game relate to each other and how their decisions affect the outcomes of the game. I am the creator of the game. 

3.  Find people with the skills and knowledge to actualise my idea and work out how they would best work together. 

4. Convince them to work on the project

5.  Work together towards a shared goal in regular meetings, set deadlines and keep everyone focused.

6.  Marketing/ Advertising the game to reach consumers/ gamers and get the game noticed and  played

My plan is to get funding for the project and keep meeting regularly with Alan and Jade (and the artist I find ) to make the next iteration of Modern Cocoa Farmer.

Modern Cocoa Farmer

An overview of the game

Concept

I plan to create an educational game called ‘Modern Cocoa Farmer’ (MCF). This project is about the hidden story of child slavery and child trafficking in the cocoa industry in West Africa. The game will allow you [the player] to play out this story from three perspectives.  Parents from Mali, Farmers in the Ivory Coast and Consumers. These three perspectives play a key role in the story as I see it. I plan to use MCF to explain and educate about the complex networks of economic, social and environmental relationships which make up this commodity and lead to slavery in this context.

Practical and material direction of the project

I have started to collaborate with Alan Wills (computer programmer) and Erin Tomkins (Music composer) to create a mini game. We are making this game in ‘Unity’ (a free game engine), but the final game will be coded from scratch because it allows for more creative freedom.

Questions

What role does design have to play in the story of slavery in the Ivory coast cocoa industry ?  How can I bring the skills of others together to execute a project and keep a clear direction ? I claim that games and play can be used to make serious comments, raise awareness and make a tangible difference to people’s lives. I am using this game to try to find out if this claim is true.

Form my project will take;

Initially my project will take the form of a digital game with a games controller. I bought a leap motion hand sensor so that I can control the game with my hand gestures in the future. And eventually I would like to use an xbox kinect to incorporate body gestures into the game as well. This is to increase the player's sense of involvement in the game, heightening the power of the message. I am starting to collect objects which form part of the material culture of the Ivorian cocoa industry, starting with this bag.

Potential users

As this game is intended to educate I would like it to test it out with schoolchildren aged 9, 10 and 11 to teach about the effects of their consumer choices.

I would also like to gage the reaction of the general public by placing the game in various public spaces where games innocuously exist, like pubs and chicken shops.

Beneficiaries

When I have the game well underway I want to get the project sponsored by a charity such as ‘fairtrade’ or the ‘Rainforest Aliance’. They (or another smaller charity) would sponsor game play so that the longer one plays the game, the more is donated to charity. I plan to sell the music on both Spotify and apple music with all proceeds also going to charity too.

In summary  

The mechanics of my game are a reflection of the the complex networks of relationships which make up the commodity, not totally accurate, but as close as I can manage.

To make a comment on the feeling of desensitisation that many feel when presented with images of poverty and slavery, the game uses a pixelated aesthetic, similar to Nintendo Entertainment System games.

There will be 3 distinct pieces of music for each level of the game. The Mali and Ivory Coast levels would be inspired by both 8 bit music (used in nintendo games) and traditional folk music from the relevant country. The consumer level would be upbeat and inspired by western feel good pop music.

The hardware and user experience is all chosen with the purpose of engaging the user most fully in the experience of playing the game (Thanks Donald Norman)

Visual effects expert advice

Frame by frame isolation

Nuke keying process

Game music

I asked Erin, a great composer,  if she would be willing to work on the music for my game.  After a long discussion about my project and what I wanted to achieve she thankfully agreed.

We decided that there should be 3 distinct pieces of music for each level of the game. The Mali and Ivory Coast levels would be inspired by both 8 bit music and traditional folk music from the country. The consumer level would be upbeat and inspired by western feel good pop music.

Erin composed a one minuet teaser for the mini game within the Ivory coast level. This music exactly fitted the pixelated aesthetic of the game and the subject matter. I am very happy with the results but asked for the piece to be extended for another minuet to fit the 2 min timer for the mini level. It is likely that there will be lots of changing the music based on the game and visa versa. I want to make sure that the music enhances game play and to do this there will be lots of trial and error. I am very excited to try out the game with the music for the first time on Friday with Alan.

Myself and Erin Tomkins - Composer - www.erintomkins.com

matching assets to the code

NewGame

Discussing the placement of functions on the controller.

placeholder image

Still of Alan walking

Editing in photoshop

Alan and I met up at the Royal Festival Hall to continue work on the game (still yet to be named - possibly 'I gave up chocolate twice for this').

We started by updating the old assets used in the game with new ones I had drawn since our last meeting. Alan then added a two minuet timer and score counter for the number of pods cut off the tree within the time. 

We used placeholder images are used to give form to the underlying functions coded into the game (game mechanics). For the player, we used an image of a pixelated child worker. This placeholder allowed us to check that the Left, Right and cut functions worked correctly. They did.

I decided that it would be a good idea to use a 'Playstation' style controller to control the game instead of the keyboard. This is because the interface has been designed to be hand held and ergonomic. This means that the player can more easily forget about what they are doing with their hands and become more engaged in the game play and what happens on the screen. I explained where I want each function on the controller. Our aim is to get a working model of this small game working with all of the animations and functions mapped out onto the controller.  

To create the illusion of a player moving one must create a 'sprite sheet'. A 'sprite sheet' is the series of images used in the animation of assets (elements) in a game. These images are played in quick succession creating the illusion of an animated character. The quality of the animation depends on the precise placement of images on the sprite sheet (i.e regular spacing between  sprites and each one same size as the next).

To create my own sprite for the game I repeated the process of pixelating images I had learned last week, but with stills from a video of Alan walking left to right whilst holding a foam machete I had made. This would become the left to right movement of the player in the game instead of the placeholder image. I learned by speaking with 'Linda Spaggiari' a Visual effects artist for films, that I could use a green screen to make it easier to separate the figure from the background.  

My plan is to film an actor of the correct ethnicity, age and gender (Black, between 10 and 15 and Male) acting out the animations for the player in my game against a green or blue screen. I have asked Linda for help when I have got the footage. She has kindly agreed. I look forward to working with her.

Pixelated Alan walking right in the game

Linda Spaggiari

Starting collaboration the right way

With pizza !

Early mock up

Script for cocoa pods

I learned from my flatmate Rocco, that it is important to set a regular time to meet up and work together in the same place (Mondays), to be clear about job roles (Alan codes the game and I create the assets).In addition I learned that it is important to set clear deadlines and goals. A working model of the game in one months time and to start a collective google drive to share and keep tack of files as we go along (thanks Rocco).  

Prior to our first meeting I gave Alan a copy of my dissertation to read. This outlined in my in depth research into the subject of the game and gave an explanation of rationale behind the game. This meant that before we had even started, we were on the same page.

I shared my very rough sketches and we discussed about how we would approach making the game. Although crude, these sketches helped us to clarify our thoughts and gave us something to talk about and shape together. When we had decided which key elements to make first, we worked together to create a first basic mock up of the game in 'Unity'. 

pixel art

Pixelated image

Animation in Photoshop

I am starting to use photoshop to create the pixelated art. I claim that many consumers and large companies think about child slaves in a desensitised way, like playing a game. I hope to comment on this mentality with my aesthetic choices for the game (pixelated and abstract). I hope that this will reinforce the idea feeling of desensitisation from the reality of the situation for the 'player'. These graphics will be imported into 'Unity' and used as assets for the game. 

MLH Hack Day

Today I went to the MLH Hack Day at Goldsmiths with the intension of getting someone to help me with my game.  I was directed to an online tutorial with Unity.  A simple roll-a-ball game.   I followed the tutorial and with help from Will, was able to make a working app on my phone.  This was a simplistic version, but showed me that it's possible to make a working prototype of something quite quickly.  Thankfully the tutorials are really helpful.  I started to learn the OS yesterday.  I will be able to get some help from Will and Ben after the christmas break.  This means that I can direct a small team.  

Will suggested that I work in 2d, because that makes it easier to make.  But I showed him tokyo 42 and said that I really like that style with a fixed camera.  This means I will need to 3D model the objects and create OBJ files.  Learn about animation and work out the connections within the game which need to be linked together and coded.   I hope that my new friends who study computer programming can help me with this (especially the code )

In terms of collaboration, I want them to feel creatively free and enthusiastic about the project.  In order to do this I really want to make the visuals very intriguing.   

Will helping me out with Unity.  

Will helping me to export the game onto my phone.  He spent almost half an hour DeBugging  the software. So generous , thanks Will .