AnimfxNZ 2011 – day 2

Just finished up Day 2 which was spent in the Games Master class. I took a ton of notes but I’ll just jot down some interesting points otherwise it will be a long long post :-)

Patrick Hudson – covered launching new IP by walking through the development of “Orcs must die”. Interesting to me was the fact that marketing was 10% – 20% of development budget, the issues with getting the game on XBL (needing a publisher and some middleware performance issues). Also the industry standard of the platform (Steam, XBL) taking a 30% cut with the developer getting 70%. If a publisher is involved they take 20% – 30% of the developers cut which seems pretty steep.

Eros Resmini – from OpenFeint talked about the Free to Play business model on mobile and the current state of play in this space. Currently iPhone top grossing apps are all F2P. He covered the F2P funnel which starts with distribution rather then ends with it. He made a very good point that if you have a F2P game then you are a services company, not a product company. I have my doubts on how easy it is for a small studio to pull off being a services company. 80% of revenue from 3% of users (the whales) was an interesting stat. He also made a good point that your game should be “pay for experience” rather then “pay to win”.

Lance Priebe – a slightly manic and rambling pressentation (including a magic trick) but he had some excellent sound bites:

  • Games are fueled by fans

  • Iterate, monitise each iteration and use it to fund the next one

  • Grow with your audience.  Start small, learn, grow

  • Crunch is simply the result of the failure to plan

  • A brand is not a logo, it is an emotion

  • UX designers are the most important people on the team. Make every click count.

  • Gaming is part of the human condition

  • The lemonade stand: the Internet has no passing traffic. You need to figure out how to get people to your game

He also provided a reading list: Tribes by Seth Godin, The long tail by Chris Anderson, Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim, Free by Chris Anderson, Rework, The dip by Seth Godin.

In answer to my question re the size of the Club Penguin dev team he said they have 70 devs and 400+ support/service staff and more scattered around in offices world wide.

Tracey Sellar – covered DIY user testing. She focused on usability testing and how small studios can apply it. Wasn’t anything new here for me as it was pretty much standard software usability testing applied to games but the presentation had a lot of good practical tips. She recommended each test consist of 1 on 1 sessions, 1-2 hrs long, with 6 to 9 participants, with research showing this would typically uncover 80%-90% of usability issues. Also advocted early testing and even paper prototypes for things like game mechanics and UI.

Don Geyer – discussed his studio’s approach to building teams. Covered people, process and a bit on tools.

Most important to the team:

  • Intrinsically motivated people

  • Extrinsic motivation. They have an interesting approach of sharing of 60% of the profits split equally amongst the team

  • Teachability index – people who can accept new things adapt and change

  • Talent history

  • Teamwork history (no assholes)

They also use Keirsey Sorter profiling to figure out what management approach to take with each team member.

In terms of a management structure they use something they call C3:

  • co-creation: everyone contributes ideas etc

  • calibration: workflow tuning, co-location, mini-teams

  • concentration: everyone focuses on one particular part of the game. 80% of the team working on the current ‘block, 20% on pre production for next block.

Other tidbits:

  • trick is to find mistakes quickly

  • biggest issue is wasted work and effort due to mistakes. Impacts moral.

  • work smarter not harder. Lots of procedural content generation etc..

And that was it. One again a very good day. There have been a bunch of themes that have come out in the last few days. I’ll let them perculate for a while and then I’ll write them up.

AnimfxNZ 2011 – day 1

Just a quick post to cover my first day at Animfx. Apart from some AV glitches everything ran pretty smoothly and all the speakers were fantastic. The MC is hilarious but he didn’t really introduce himself so I have no idea who he is!

The speakers that I saw today were:

Lance Priebe – who gave a good account of Club Penguin and its history. Very interesting.

Patrick Hudson – ex Ensemble Studios who talked about their move from big budget to smaller scale games. Some interesting stuff here but it did sound a bit like “we have just discovered Agile dev” (there was more to it then that of course)

Tracey Sellar – from Microsoft’s usability/user research group discussing their work helping tune AAA titles. The video clip of the usability test session with a guy who obviously wasn’t much of gamer playing a GTA style game was hilarious.

Scott Foe – gave a very good presentation of the state of the game industry and what a studio needs to be doing to be successful.  Interesting push for getting a minimum viable product to market and the using Kanban to create content and updates in a sustainable way.

David Rosenbaum – covering the history of the game industry, the current platforms and the next cycle of platforms and delivery channels.

Sean Kauppinen – threw up lots of facts and figures covering trends in technologies, platforms and markets. Nice interactive session.

And lastly Enrico Casarosa from Pixar who premiered “La Luna” the new Pixar short film. Apparently this was the first time it had been shown in the Southern Hemisphere!  He then proceeded to give a detailed and fascinating account of the development of the short. I only wished that they would have played the short a second time so you could see it in light of all the great background detail that Enrico gave. Here is a YouTube clip from the short:

YouTube Preview Image

All in all very cool day. Tomorrow I’m in the “Games Master Class” which should be fun and on Thursday we get to go hang out at Weta which should be awesome.

The Food Bill

Yesterday I read Lance Wiggs’ post on making everyone in NZ part of the 1% which I believe is a fantastic idea. Of course to do this we need a government that works for the people and I’m not sure that it fully is…

Point in case, this week NZ signed the ACTA (when instead it could have being announcing a bill such as Brazil’s Civil Rights Based Internet laws) and of course there is the new Food Bill.

Introduced last month The Food Bill in its current form it effectively makes it illegal to grow food and share it with others! This blog post discusses the bill, covering all the tin-foil hat scenarios, including  the AOS kicking in the gates of maraes to confiscate their vegetables and seeds :)

Unfortunately as currently written the bill would actually allow these scenarios to occur. I thought I’d ask an MP about it and tweeted Green MP Gareth Hughes:

@GarethMP WTF is this Food Bill thing about ? nzfoodsecurity.org/2011/07/19/foo…

His response was:

@rabidgremlin hey it’s not as bad as some people are making out. Here’s Sue Kedgley’s view blog.greens.org.nz/2011/09/13/foo…

I’m not sure I agree with Gareth’s assessment but Sue’s response makes good sense (is it just me or are the Greens the only party that seem to have any common sense?) and would solve the problems in the bill, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

This whole issue of course highlights the fact that governments are fallible and that poorly drafted laws can have a huge impact on our lives. We can’t just sit back and expect everything to fall into place, instead we need to become actively involved in our country, policies and government if we want to make New Zealand the country were everyone in it a part of the 1%.

More links:

 

(Un)happy Skynet day !

The Skynet Bill is passed. The system goes on-line September 1, 2011. Human rights are removed from the Internet. Skynet begins to accuse at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. New Zealand time, September 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug…

but it is too late the NZ government has sold it’s soul and the people to the lobby groups

(Un)happy Skynet Day everyone! Have you stopped your torrents today ?

Response to my Auckland Train Signage rant

Well, I received a response from Auckland Transport about my Auckland Train Signage FAIL post. Unfortunately it wasn’t very helpful as they merely (and carefully) explained how the signs are going to work and why they removed the scrolling list of stations:

Thank you for contacting Auckland Transport regarding the new Real Time boards to be installed across the Auckland public transport network.

Your comments were forwarded to the Customer Information team who have provided the following feedback.

The decision to remove the scrolling message underneath the destination information as seen on the current Real Time boards, was made to allow enough room for the next two services to be displayed (rather than just the next one) and moves closer towards emulating a ‘metro’ or ‘national’ style service.

If you look at the bottom of the board, you will see information to explain the abbreviations that may appear on the screen.  These abbreviations will appear next to the destination name to advise the customer which key station the service is travelling via which will also allow customers to identify the line.

For example Papatoetoe/ GI would indicate that this service is travelling to Papatoetoe via Glen Innes on the Eastern Line, or Papatoetoe/ N would indicate that the service is travelling on the Southern line via Newmarket.

I trust his information is of use.

Thank you once again for taking the time to contact us and for your support of Auckland Transport.

Clearly they missed the point of my post which was: JUST PUT THE FRIGGING NAME OF THE LINE IN THE DISPLAY. The signs will be a million times better and you won’t need to add cryptic abbreviations nor require a traveller to have area and train network knowledge to figure out which train to catch.

My response to AT:

Thanks for the response,

Whilst I appreciate that the removal of the scrolling message frees up an additional line for information, I believe that adding /GI or /N, to the name of the terminating station, to indicate the line is counter intuitive and is certainly not in keeping with a ‘metro’ style service.

Surely it would be far better for the signs to read EAST – Papatoetoe or  _SOUTH – Papatoetoe_  (or perhaps EST Papatoetoe or STH Papatoetoe if space is an issue) ?

Using /GI or /N:

a) requires a key so that the user can figure out what the abbreviations mean

b) area knowledge to understand what/where Glenn Innes & Newmarket is

c) knowledge of the rail network to know that you need to take the train that goes via GI if you want the Eastern line and the train that goes via Newmarket if you want the Southern line.

Which is pretty useless for first time travellers and tourists.

Cheers

 

Ask Gremlin…

I’ve received a couple of interesting emails recently from people asking for advice. I figured my answers might be of use to others so here are the (redacted) emails:

Android App

The email:

I am wanting a Android Application designed for me. I am wanting to know a little more about Android Applications and how to go about getting one designed for me. How do the laws work around making a app and around how much would someone have to pay to get one designed? If a Android developer was to make a app for me would the rights of that app be mine or the creator? Sorry for the inconvenience I’m really new to this. Any information would be appreciated.

My response:

Hi ****,

A few years ago there was a move in NZ to better clarify ownership of intellectual property and copyright for “commissioned works” which includes software developement. However this amendment did not pass see: http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/ContentTopicSummary____18836.aspx

Although there are some existing laws that cover this area, what you want to ensure is that there is a clause in any contracts you sign (and you should ensure you have a contract with anyone who is written apps for you) that you own ALL the IP and copyrights on the work that is produced.

In terms of how much will it cost, the answer is it depends on how complicated the app is :)

Basically there are two general models followed for software development: “Time and Materials” (T&M)  or Fixed Price.

With T&M you generally pay the developer an hourly rate. For software development you can pay anything from $25/hr through to $150/hr. Typically the more senior or skilled the person, the higher their rates. Of course paying more doesn’t guarantee quality or success.

With Fixed price the price is determined ahead of time and that is the amount you will pay for the completed software. Whilst this seems a “safe” option, software development is often complicated and unexpected things turn up all the time, as such Fixed Priced contracts are often padded with a “contingency” to ensure that the developer makes money. If the project looks risky the contingency can be as high as 50% which means you would be paying far more for the work then it is worth. The other issue with fixed price contracts is that they often have a “change request” (CR) process which allows the developer to make additional charges for work (eg features of the app) that were not covered by the original specification (or “scope”) of the project. CR processes are often confusing & abused and you land up paying way more then you intended to in the end.

The best way to “protect” yourself against unforeseen costs is to be very, very, very clear on what you want to have built. In software development this is often called “scope” or the specifications of the project.

For an Android app I would suggest that you create what is called a wireframe or mockup of the app. You can use a tool such as http://balsamiq.com/ or http://yeblon.com/androidmockup/ or even paper & pen and sketch out each of the screens of the app, add notes about what each screen should do and how you navigate from one screen to another.

Once you have your wireframe sorted you can then shop around and get different quotes from different developers to find a price and developer you like. If you think your idea is particularly unique, you might want people to sign a non-disclosure  aggreement (NDA) before you show them your wireframes or talk to them about the app.

Lastly you might want to try and write the software yourself ! Have a look at http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/ as a “gently” intro to Android development. It will let you create a working prototype that you can actually run on your phone :)

Hopefully the above has been helpful.

Cheers

QR code generation

The email:

I saw your comment on the hack-a-day QRcode post.  You seem to have quite a bit of experience in QRcodes and other scanning apps.  One thing that I have been looking for (and maybe you might be able to help) is a program that creates unique QRcodes from list of URLs.  I’m helping out a non-profit **\* with their website and I was trying to find an easy solution to automatically create printable QRcodes for all of the ***\** at once.  This way each **** has their own QR code to an info page on a WordPress blog.  It could be done manually, but the ** change every two weeks! :)

A bonus would be automatically taking Bitly URLs and turning them into a bunch of printable QRcodes.

Just thinking

My response

Hi *****,

The Google Charts API can be used to quickly create QR codes. Check out: http://code.google.com/apis/chart/infographics/docs/overview.html and http://code.google.com/apis/chart/infographics/docs/qr_codes.html

So the following #aliases: https://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chs=150×150&cht=qr&chl=http://blog.rabidgremlin.com  would create a 150px by 150px .png QR code containing a URL to my blog (http://blog.rabidgremlin.com)

You could probably use a tool such as Curl or WGET to script the fetching of the bar codes.

Cheers

Auckland Train Signage FAIL

I’m an avid user of the trains in Auckland. It takes me 20 minutes to get from my house to downtown (and that includes a 8 minute walk) which sure beats getting stuck in rush hour traffic.

But one thing that has been driving me crazy for a long, long time now is the poor quality of digital signage. In it’s current state it is awfully confusing for first time travellers which why (with the RWC looming) I was pleased to hear that MAXX was investing in some new real-time signs.

Alas it appears seems that the new signs will actually be a gigantic step backwards :(

First some context. The Auckland rail network currently has 4 main lines, as shown in this very nice network map (click to enlarge it):

Each line is assigned a name (Eastern, Southern, Western, Onehunga) and nice distinct colour (yellow, red, green and blue). All very straightforward and very familiar to anyone who has seen the London underground or NYC subway maps.

Now a peculiarity of the Auckland network is that a number of lines have stations in common, in particular the Eastern and Southern lines, which share 12 stations. This is where things start to unravel…

The current platform signs at Britomart look like this (apologize for the poor image quality):

Now if you look closely you will notice that NOWHERE on the board does it mention the train line! In fact since both the Eastern and Southern lines can terminate at Papakura the only way to tell which line you are on, is to watching the scrolling list of stops to see if the train is going via Glen Innes (Eastern Line) or via Newmarket (Southern Line). The problem is further compounded by the fact that trains on these lines may terminate at Otahuhu, Papakura or Pukekohe…

Imagine how confusing this is for first time travellers and tourists! They look at the nice network map figure out that they want the Eastern line and then when they get to the platform there is no mention of the line anywhere. Instead they need some area knowledge to figure out they want the train that is going via Glenn Innes, this is just awful.

The fix of course if pretty simple; just display the name of the line on the sign; Duh.

So you could have:

  • STH – Papakura
  • EAST – Papakura
  • STH – Otahuhu
  • WEST – Swanson
  • ONE – Onehunga

In fact this is what they do on the MAXX website when you search the train timetables and this is what I was hoping to see on the new signs….

This morning I was handed the MAXX/Auckland Transport’s On Board leaflet which, on pages 4 and 5, raves about the new real time information boards that are getting put in place. Here is the mock-up of the board from the leaflet:

 

Words cannot explain how crap the new sign’s design is.

First off the line name is still not displayed but worse the scrolling list of stations has now been dropped. Instead you have now have abbreviations (/GI, /N /LS) and you need a frigging key to explain them… seriously ? Clearly they let some of us techies loose on solving the “real-time” problem and gave no thought on making the sign actually useful.

Hopefully someone from AT or MAXX will see this post and come to their senses (or better yet if you know someone working on this project, pass them this link).

/RANT DONE – that feels much better

_UPDATE: I got a response from AT about this post_

 

 

Android Tips: Using a live wallpaper as your app’s background

This one took a while to find so it’s worthy of a tip :)

To use the current live wallpaper as your app’s background, simply set the theme for your activity to @android:style/Theme.Wallpaper in your AndroidManifest.xml:

...
<activity .... android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Wallpaper">
 ...
</activity>

What I did last week – 15 Feb 2011

Actually it’s more what I did last month.

RC simulator

A mate of mine bought himself a swish RC quad-copter. As part of the package he bought Phoenix RC. It is a simulator that allows you to plug your RC controller into a PC and you can then practice flying (and crashing) virtual RC models before tackling the real ones. Very useful and it clearly proved that I should never attempt to fly a real RC helicopter.

Kinect

Believe it or not, I’m actually getting paid to hack a Kinect. Im using the OpenNI framework so hacking really consists of installing the software and then using a nice high-level framework that does all the hard work for you. I’ve been very impressed with the skeleton tracking.  I’ve been able to simultaneously track 3 people with full skeletons without any issues.  This is the guide I used to install the base software. You should also check out the Ogre and Unity demos.

Unity

Whilst tinkering with the Kinect I ran through the Unity 3D platformer tutorial. Unity is very impressive. If you want to create a 3d game I’d start here.  The basic version is free. The cross platform nature of the engine is impressive to.

Auckland Buses app

I finally got around to releasing my Auckland Buses app for Android. It only took a few hours to put together.  I’m experimenting with an ad supported model. The app has about 225 users, averages around 25 impressions a day. So far I’ve made 49c so not really a money maker :) What is interesting is the fairly poor fill rates I get some days.  If you had marketing dollars to spend,  mobile ads might be the way to go as not many people seem to be tapping them.

That’s about it…

Things I did last week – 4 Jan 2011

Gonna try a new thing here, every week I’m going to post up a quick summary of what I’ve been up to tech wise. Hopefully you find something useful in here.

Lightworks Beta

I tried out the beta of  Lightworks, the newly open-sourced video editor from EditShare. It seems amazingly powerful and the UI is very pretty. Unfortunately I had a hard time with its concepts of bins, racks and edits. I continuously lost things and getting clips onto the timeline (stripview) seemed really clumsy. I think I may have to go back and RTFM on this one :)

Node.js

I watched an introduction video on node.js, it has some very  interesting concepts,  I then got distracted creating a simple MUD using node (as you do). It works very nicely but JavaScript sure has a lot of quirks when try do advanced things like “classes”.

Wikipedia

I created my first Wikipedia article, it is an entry on 4LW. I also did some digging into downloading the content of Wikipedia (it’s big) and the cool WikiReader device. I figure having the contents of Wikipedia would be very handy post a civilization destroying event.

Actually I’m thinking that  a cool project would be to use something like OneBeep to continuously stream the contents of Wikipedia over shortwave radio. Not quite sure how I would broadcast the bootstrap instructions so that people/aliens could tap into the feed however.

Android Apps

I spent some time updating my Android app entries in the Android Market. For some reason you now have to upload a 512x512px icon along with the app, so I took the opportunity to rework some of my icons (hooray for Inkscape) and released new versions of my apps. I also added a “Share” menu option to ScanPaste so that you can now share the scanned barcodes with other apps.

I’m also did some work on my Android games. Currently Frakt is the one that is closest to completion out of the 4 I have on the boil. I think I’m going to focus on it and use it a technology testbed. I’m using the very cool AndEngine to power the games.

Lego Digital Designer

This is a great app that lets you build virtual Lego models, create build instructions and even place an order for the physical bricks to build your design. I was hoping to order a bunch of armed Lego men for use with Brikwars but it became very pricey very quickly. I might have to scour some garage sales or Trademe instead.

Links from Twitter

Links I posted on Twitter in the last week: