(Figure-4 screen shot of the story pages)
Image page
The image page will give the user the option of viewing three images the image menu will contain the same back ground images as the menu page. All the spinning blades then fade into the back ground and are replaces with three animated symbols which keep changing shape (fig-5). When the user roles over the symbol with his curser he is able to tell which image the animated symbol represents (fig-6). Once the user chooses an image the animated symbol will remain frozen on the specified page so that the user knows which image they are viewing.
Sound page
The sound page has three sample sounds on it one is from the blade theme tune and the other sounds are sounds that have been used in the application, one is from the introduction menu and the other sound is the same music which is constantly being played in the background (Figure-7). The sound page is similar to the image page the user has to role over and click on to one of the three animated symbols to play the sound file, the role over effect will show which sound number they are about to listen to. Once clicked on the desired sound number, the animation will freeze so that the user knows that it is indeed the sound that they have chosen. Images have also been included in this section, once the sound file starts playing a different image will loads up onto the screen for each sound file. A volume control and a stop button have also been added onto each different sound file. The volume can be controlled by dragging the graphic from right to left(Figure-8).
Video Page
Two videos have been included in this application they both run in the quick time format. Once the user clicks onto the video option. The option to play both videos is give on the video screen (Figure-8). Two identical images cover the section where the videos will play. Then the user clicks to play the first video, the video plays and the second image remains the same and vice-versa (Figure-9).
Interaction Diagram
Interaction Diagram – Story
Interaction diagram images
Interaction diagram Sound
Interaction diagram Video
The problems encountered
I encountered many problems while doing this assignment. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed this module. In this module I have learned a great deal about Director and Flash. There were many things I discovered that were not allowable in director. For example I had a movies, which I really wanted to play in my Director movie, but was not able to do so, as Director did not accept the format of the videos (.ram format). I did not expect any coding in Director, however the ‘Lingo’ was not difficult to pick up.
Also when I wanted to import an AVI movie in the Director the ‘Play’ and ‘Stop’ buttons were playing fine, however the ‘Fast Forward’ and ‘Rewind’ buttons were playing rather slow, even when I tried to change the numbers in the scripting to play at different speeds. Doing further researched I found that the AVI files are highly compressed and as a result of this they slow down once they are imported into Director. I then reverted back to my original idea of using quick time videos.
I have tried to apply number of different functions to the Director movie, purely because I wanted some form of experience of creating a same effect, but in a different format. For example by rolling a cursor over the spinning blades in the main menu, the role over changes to, ‘story’, ‘images’, ‘sound’ and ‘Video’.
Images
Throughout all of this assignment I have used jpeg images. The reason for this that the image size can be kept small and you can still retain the same image quality. The following is a comparison of two images one is a jpeg and the outer is a …………..
Animation
One of the problems that I had when designing my menu page was that I wanted the animation to move to the top right had corner when clicked on. I had great difficulty in achieving this at first as I thought that I would need to do it in flash and I may have to redo all my buttons. I discovered that within director I could get an image or graphic to move towards a sprite. I did this by creating a small transparent spot and putting it onto sprite 7. I then made which ever button was clicked on to move towards this spot.
Sound
With regards to sound I had difficulty locating the sound track from the BLADE movie. Once I had managed to find the soundtrack of the internet. The sound file was very large. I had to take large portions of the sound track out so I was left with the sound that I wanted. I also realised that if I converted the sound into mp3, the sound file was substantially smaller yet still the same quality. So there for I have used the mp3 format for sound through out the application.
Video
I have included two videos in this application both videos are in the quick time format, I have kept them in quick time because this is the format, that I feel works best and the video size is smaller.
The main major problem that I have encountered was after the creation of the application. As I have sound playing through out the application, the projector file was starting to freeze up especially when you clicked onto the enter page at the beginning of the application and when ever you clicked onto the sound button or video buttons. I rectified the problem by streaming.
Time Management
Throughout this assignment I spend a lot of time on getting all of my animations to work correctly, all the animations where done in flash. It was only after I had imported them into director, did I discover that some of the animations could have easily been done in director and in half the time taken in flash. For example the spinning blades that are on the menu screen where done in flash, but these could have easily been done in director by using the
library pallet and by choosing the “rotate Continuously” button as shown in figureX
Figure X
the video page; The fire on the text page; The rotating world on the main menu; The rotating ball on the sound page and the cinema.
Technology Analysis
Multimedia Asset
Wave file
A Wave file is an audio file format, created by Microsoft, that has become a standard PC audio file format for everything from system and game sounds to CD-quality audio. A Wave file is identified by a file name extension of WAV (.wav). Used primarily in PCs, the Wave file format has been accepted as a viable interchange medium for other computer platforms, such as Macintosh. This allows content developers to freely move audio files between platforms for processing. For example in addition to the uncompressed raw audio data, the Wave file formats stores information about the files, number of tracks, sample rate, and bit depth.
Graphics Interchange Format
A GIF (the original and preferred pronunciation is DJIF) is one of the two most common file formats for graphic images on the World Wide Web. The other is the JPEG. On the Web and elsewhere on the Internet, the GIF has become a standard form of image.
Technically, a GIF uses the 2D-raster (sequence of horizontal lines that are scanned rapidly with an electron beam from left to right and top to bottom) data type.
An animated GIF is a graphic image on a Web page that moves - for example, a twirling icon or a banner with a hand that waves or letters that magically get larger. In particular, an animated GIF is a file in the Graphics Interchange Format specified as GIF89a that contains within the single file a set of images that are presented in a specified order. An animated GIF can loop endlessly (and it appears as though your document never finishes arriving) or it can present one or a few sequences and then stop the animation.
JPEG
A JPEG (pronounced JAY-peg) is a graphic image created by choosing from a range of Compression (reduction in size of data) qualities. When you create a JPEG or convert an image from another format to a JPEG, you are asked to specify the quality of image you want. Since the highest quality results in the largest file, you can make a trade-off between image quality and file size.
Together with the GIF file formats, the JPEG is one of the image file formats supported on the World Wide Web, usually with the file suffix of ".jpg". You can create a progressive JPEG that is similar to an interlaced GIF.
Assets used
Introduction
Flash intro
Bit map
A bit map (often spelled "bitmap") defines a display space and the colour for each pixel or "bit" in the display space. A GIF and JPEG are examples of graphic image file types that contain bit maps. A bit map does not need to contain a bit of colour-coded information for each pixel on every row. It only needs to contain information indicating a new colour as the display scans along a row. Thus, an image with much solid colour will tend to require a small bit map.
Because a bit map uses a fixed or roaster graphics method of specifying an image, the image cannot be immediately re-scaled by a user without losing definition.
