Application Addition – Wrist Attachment

One point that was brought up during the feedback section of my presentation was the need for a wrist attachment.

The iPhone is designed to function in a similar way to the Nintendo Wii controller in my application , i.e. gestures are a key part of game-play. Many Wii controllers have been broken by users as a result of these gestures; the controller slipping from a users hand or smashing into a wall or other hard object when being used. Nintendo designed a wrist attachment for their consul controller to help avoid this problem.

As with the iPod, Apple designed an an arm attachment for the iPhone (shown bellow).

I have modified this arm attachment in the design of my wrist attachment:

This is to be attached to the wrist of the user, with the iPhone in his/her hand. The wrist strap can be adjusted as can the height of the iphone to suit the hand of the user.

Application Change – Game Modes

There has been some confusion about the different game modes of my application. Because of this, I have decided to design new game modes, including some which have been previously mentioned.

Once again here are the various weapons in the game:

Fists and melee weapons:

 

• brass knuckles
• knife
• night stick
• baseball bat
• shovel
• katana

Pistols:

• 9mm
• silenced 9mm
• desert eagle

SMG’s:

• tec-9
• micro MP5
• MP5

Shotguns:

• shotgun
• sawn-off shotgun
• combat shot gun

Long Rifles:

• rifle
• sniper rifle

Assault Rifles:

• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• M4

Heavy Weapons:

• mini-gun
• rocket launcher
• heat seeking RPG

Projectiles: 

• tear gas 
• Molotov cocktails
• grenades
• satchels (with detonator)

Special:

• fire extinguisher
• chainsaw
• flame thrower

After researching some games, I found that some had all weapons available at one time. As I have mentioned before, to do this in my application would become too confusing. Other games with a larger variety of weapons classed them into different categories. This seems to be the most effective way of playing shooting games. I have classed my weapons into various categories, making up the different game modes of my application. These different game modes, I believe, suit a wide variety of styles of game-play, suiting the needs of various users.

Here is the list of the different game modes, and the weapons included in each of them:

Close Range Combat:

• brass knuckles
• knife
• night stick
• baseball bat
• shovel
• katana
• fire extinguisher
• chainsaw
• flame thrower

Pistols Only:

• 9mm
• silenced 9mm
• desert eagle

SMG’s Only:

• tec-9
• micro MP5
• MP5

Shotguns Only:

• shotgun
• sawn-off shotgun
• combat shot gun

Rifles Only:

• rifle
• sniper rifle
• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• M4

Heavy Artillery:

• mini-gun
• heat seeking RPG
• rocket launcher

Throws Only: 

• tear gas
• Molotov cocktails
• grenades
• satchels (with detonator)

Grade One Weapons:

• tear gas
• Molotov cocktails
• brass knuckles
• baseball bat
• 9mm
• tec-9
• shotgun
• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• mini-gun
• fire extinguisher

Grade Two Weapons:

• grenades
• knife
• shovel
• silenced 9mm
• micro MP5
• swan-off shotgun
• rifle
• Kalashnikov (AK-47)
• rocket launcher
• chainsaw

Grade Three Weapons:

• satchels (with detonator) 
• knight stick
• katana
• desert eagle
• MP5
• combat shotgun
• sniper rifle
• heat seeking RPG
• flame thrower

Application Change – Central Game Style

There were a lot of new ideas I received during the final presentation of my application. One regards the different styles of the game.

From the feedback of my focus group, I decided to include an additional game style where player icons can not be seen. However, I have decided to scrap this whole idea of spit gaming styles and stick to one new style. Both the visible and invisible game-play styles have been incorporated the improved style. 

The way this style works is that icons may be either visible and invisible depending on where they are on the may in relation to your playing screen. The closer a player is to another person in the game, the more invisible they become.

To illustrate this, here is the previous playing screen:

Now here is the playing screen with the new gaming style:

The black circles in this image show different distance ranges:

  

Any other player who is in the smallest circle will be completely invisible. Players in the second circle will be 20% visible. In the third circle player are 60% visible. Generally, visibility increases as players move further away from your location.  As it can be seen, the player in the bottom left hand corner of the screen is completely visible.

Shot fired and projectiles thrown by opponents are visible no matter what the range is. This is meant to give the game a greater sense of realism. Even though shots fired from most guns cannot be seen in real life, they can be heard, and because these loud sounds cannot be re-created on the iPhone’s small speaker, the firing of rounds can be seen by players, giving them chance to avoid being shot.

It is also important to point out the the speed of ammunition fire is not realistic as this is too fast.  Amunition will move much slower, but its speed is effected by the weapon used. For example a rifle bullet moves at a different speed to a pistol bullet.

Application Change – Name (again)

When discussing my application with Rob last week, he told me that the name I chose for my application was not right.

He said that the name “Live Active” did not suit the application, because it sounded too much like a slogan or name for a gym or health product. I totally agree with what he said and could not believe that it didn’t come to me earlier. What came to mind after he told me this was the GNC catalogue sitting on my coffee table at home, with the company slogan “Live Well’.

So once again, the name of my application will change, however, I decided to keep the idea that my application name should provide insight into what my application is designed to do. After much hard thinking (i.e. looking for synonyms of different words) I have come up with the new and much more imroved name for my application: “Active Onslaught”.

I have decided to keep the silhouette imagery as it still described what the application does. However, I will also include a lot of advertisement images of the application in use when creating my final website.