Ending it, part 2

Finally, all done.

I’ve done my best to maintain the site to be ’scroll’ free. Its a nice change to be able to find everything in the one view.

I made a trailer which turned out better than expected. I was surprised how the music timed itself onto events in the video. I tried to make the viewer be the pilot and question whether they’re good enough. Its one of those, ‘prove to me you can do it!’ situations.

Theres a little scrolling sign down the bottom that has I think 6 messages. I thought it’d be a fun thing to do. While thinking about the messages, I was thinking back when playing ‘Portal’ by Valve. One of the characters was a nice sounding ‘female’ AI system, but it turns out she was just plain evil. The script she had as well as the timing made her very blunt. I guess it might explain a few of the messages.

I have seen others, and they do look very professional and I congratulate them on their success. They also have a lot more content than I do which is slightly worrying to me and my site. But, I wanted to keep the site slim to how much would be said. The visuals would sell the product. Too much text tends to bore me and Sky Assault isn’t about boredom.

This final site I have to say is very different. Not like the approaches I made with the first two sites. It might explain my unsettling feeling.

This will be the final post, so in spirit of making money, I leave with the link to the trailer.

Pat8037.

Ending it, part 1.

I’ve managed to finish the layout of the website after several revisions.

The aim was to develop something to show no limits since its dealing with flight, as well something ‘techy’ since they’re aircraft. It first started out as a more horizontal website, but it didn’t work too well to sizing. It resulted in the normal vertical up-down goings. There are jets which are off the main body to try and show ‘no limits’, then having feint scan lines in the background and using the kind of text you’d see at airport monitors were it rolls the characters to show inbound and outbound flights too show ‘techy’.

Now, onto part 2.

Revising the needs.

Since I’ve dropped a flash website, I’ve needed to get some information from the now disgruntled interviewees. Muhahaha.

Back to the point. I pitched my new idea for the website. I had to keep in mind that this site was to sell the product specifically and not as a community thing to check stats, speak to admins etc. The site would be like an interactive presentation where it would grab people’s attention.

So the same questions were asked; What did they like? What they didn’t like? What annoyed them…

1. Too many clicks was something users thought that was really frustrating. At the moment, my temporary site setup takes 3 clicks to reach the destination; splash page, then another page with an iphone on it, then the main site. ‘Way too long!’ the people thought. They wanted something simple and direct, something on the idea of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

2. Little pointless animations. They thought it was pretty fun…after seeing it once. In the end the users realised the animations didn’t really have a point but to entertain. Some people liked it since it made things a little more lively. Examples like buttons changing colours was not too bad, they weren’t too intrusive and were actually assisting the website by having a larger indication of a link for example. But things such as drop down menus were thought to be annoying since they’d have to wait for it. Those interviewing said specifically that they were impatient when it came to viewing websites. This point actually leads to the next point.

3.Waiting time is always a point that came up from pretty much everyone I questioned. Users talked of experience where parts of a site taking ages to load and sitting there looking at an incomplete site for some time thinking ‘this is ridiculous’. First impressions count in this case and people are impatient…

4. Small text sizes came up again. People’s concern for having larger text size was duly noted.

5. There was a point raised with annoyance to having to scroll down a page. They said it was ‘just annoying’ to have to scroll through information. Personally, I kinda agreed with what they were saying just never came about to thinking of it from the bigger picture of things…It may be lazy but it can be annoying.

6. ‘Crappy sounds’ came too again.

So…I now have another perception of how things should be but for a html site. Better get to work.

Dire straits

Spending a day on tutorials have led me no where in developing a flash site that is good enough to sell a product. So I don’t really have a choice but to drop the full flash website and go for just a normal website with a few animations. I’ll leave flash websites when I know a bit more about Actionscript. Kinda disappointing but it’ll make things a lot more easier since I can freely developed the website as I know html/css better.

Sky Assault itself.

The only permanent change which has occurred so far is the inclusion of the small button which will open up a transparent screen displaying radar.

I am now thinking of the options to what can be done about the ‘green zone’ or the safe zone. Possibly having the planes land automatically into their team’s hangers which would therefore disable the players control of their plane. Originally, I think the green zone was just a point in space. The problem is, ‘would players still be moving?’ and ‘how would they control their way out of the green zone if the controls were stuck on portrait?’

So now with a ‘forced landing’, control is completely gone removing that 2nd problem and since they are landing, the plane would not be moving, which is logical instead of floating in mid air…

The players would be able to refuel and resupply weapons as well as viewing radar and their stats. Pushing a button would set the plane to automatically launch and back out into the battle.

The idea I feel seems alright, but better check with a few people first.

Work on the flash website

I’ve re started work on the flash website by asking people about flash websites. What did they like? What they didn’t like? What annoyed them…

I pitched out my idea but there was already disagreements as a got through my first point.

1. They didn’t want to see a pop-up. They preferred it stayed in the same window as they found it was a nuisance to deal with more browsers opening.
2. The people would like to see an animation, but if it took too long to load, even if it had a pre-loader, they would not bother. They would prefer something less animated if it meant accessing the content quickly.

3. There was a big divide on the inclusion of sound. People thoughts from experience were that repetitive button sounds became annoying. Background music was also an issue. Music that wouldn’t normally suit the taste of the person would make their experience ‘crap’. But there was an on/off button for sound which was a good option.

4. A few users have experienced a moving navigation. They did not like it put simply. After having experienced a moving navigation they longed for simple static navigation boxes.

5. Too many animations was also a problem. They saw that too many animations was distracting and frustrating when trying to read text off the flash website.

6. Some flash websites had small text which the users thought was just ’stupid’ and requested that I have bigger text.

So from all these criticisms, I now have kind of a guideline to how I should be building the flash website.

No Updates

Progress of minisite 3 has been halted due to deco 1008 assignment due by 26th. Hopefully by tomorrow, I can start something on it. All that has been done is a few sketches for the site. At least I can get my hands dirty immediately after I’ve done with 1008.

Extension! w00t

2nd November.

This will defiantly make what remaining time there is for First Year be less hectic.

Issues

Developing the flash website has been really frustrating. I’ve under estimated the task.  There just isn’t enough time.  Two very big assignments (there are 3 but deco1005 is easy) in under 2 weeks to be both completed.

The issue is understanding the structure of a flash website. I’ve looked through a lot of tutorials and there are many techniques to developing a website, but they’re pretty simple in design. The idea I’ve had planned for the flash website may have to be scrapped and rebuilt to what I know now about developing the website in order to produce something on time.

Still 1.5 weeks left. No kinds of panic yet.

Flash websites

To help produce an idea of what I want my flash website to show, I’ve been looking at flash websites of things i’m interested in to get an idea of how they go to produce a flash website to sell. One of the ‘overkill’ sites is Halo 3. Microsoft sure knows how to make a publicity stunt.

To grab people’s attention, things have to be animated. Static images isn’t good enough when trying to sell a product.

There is no way i’m going to be able to produce something on par with Halo 3, but maybe I can produce a few animations to get some eye candy for people. As for sound, if there is time I’ll put them in, put it’ll mean I have to learn some more coding as well having the task of sourcing some sfx.

I’ll be uploading some sketches of what the site will look like and what it will animate.