Atelier Weekly Challenge Three Part II/Final

The following project/game is called Wordsnap

The following people who created this game are: Mulugeta Bisrat, William Kasurak, Alanna Predko, David Snow and Marishka Zachariah.

Project Logline:

Wordsnap is a social visual game. Players play using an app, specifying players to create a combination of objects using specific methods.

Project Description:

Wordsnap Is a social visual game. With a minimum of two players, players can play invidually or in teams consisting of an even amount of people. Players will play by following the Wordsnap application (made from Processing) which will specify players to create a combination of objects using a specific method (e.g. creating a pigeon-bicycle using mixed media) within a time limit. Once players are done within the time limit (or when the timer reaches 0) Players “snap” a photo of their completed work and upload their photo to the Facebook page: Wordsnap! (https://www.facebook.com/WordSnap). People who’ve “liked” the page act as judges by voting for which photo most accurately represents the word chosen by the app. Thus, the winner is determined by whoever receives the most amount of votes for accurately portraying the word combination using the following method provided by Processing.

The core mechanics associated with this game are silliness, association, social media use of visuals, out-of-the-box thinking, chance (determined by votes and words generated), and playful engagement of the world around you. Although there is no intended audience, this game suits people who are more right-brained or artists to use as a tool/inspiration game. Our group was inspired by apps like Snapchat and Draw Something but improved upon it by using the environment around players and altering the objective by using visuals.

Photo documentation of final product:

The following is generated from Processing.

The following is a demo of Wordsnap:

The play-test was against two players. Within the 6 minute time limit, they had to produce a pigeon bicycle using mixed media. These are their uploads.

The admin of the group then takes the photos from all the participants and asks members of the page to vote based on best portrayal. Sam Roberts was the winner.

The following downloads/execs is the processing code and instructions. Unfortunately, when uploading the file to webspace.ocad.ca, the file would not run properly. Thus, we are presenting the game through our laptop. Links to the code and instructions are available below (or click here):

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2VxHQL-XwUzcnVMTWZpS0lJdVE&usp=sharing

Development Notes:/Troubles

Our original starting point. There have been a couple modifications since but this is how we got rolling.

I finalized the game by putting it as a set of instructions which can be seen by clicking here. Original concepts of formulating our concepts to an actual playable game can be seen in this blog post.

Using concepts like "urban space" and objects to get a player's mind rolling (as well as provide a challenge) we generated around 50 words to use in the game (/use these words in arrays in Processing) Will and Mule were in charge of generating words.

David worked on the app using Processing. The code and his comments can be found here.

Here is the app and other notes in more detail:

App design:

-The app includes a starting loading screen which shows cases the title and gives the gist of the game.
-After 2.5 seconds the app continues to a instruction screen of which tells the user how to use the app and play the game.
-The user must press the "next" button at the bottom of the screen in order to continue to the next page.
 -This continues the user to a "start" screen, this screen holds just one central function, the user must press the circular start button in order to get instructions/challenge for what the user or multiple users must create.
-Once the start button is pressed, two randomly generated words will appear in a sentence saying; "create a BLANK using BLANK" this screen also holds a function of a counting down timer.
-The user/users cannot interact with the app until the timer has run out, once the timer has run out the app jumps to another screen displaying the challenge but also a link to the page of where the user posts the photo they have created as well as a title holding the challenge of which they were trying to create. There will also be a reset button on this screen which will reset and display a new challenge with a new count down.
 Notes: An app should be simple and elegant, should not be overwhelming in aesthetic nature but very simple. Instead of a confusing web of buttons our app is a procedural program that is straight forward and sticks to the point of what the app is doing.
 Personal Note: The reason i chose to create an web app is because i use a PC and cannot get any versions of IOS SDK's on my PC, if i was to own a mac i would have used XCODE in order to create the program, due to the simple nature of creating the app and that it can be opened directly on the phone and not on a browser.
  - David Snow

Alanna was in charge of forming the Facebook Wordsnap page as well as the graphics for the game alongside Will.

We decided to brand our game this way as it sums up the concept of the game as well as represents the name and the game itself clearly.

on the side: these were the original graphics for the game to keep it consistent with the title/logo. From playtesting, many people preferred the graphics to be colourful as well as we believed to be more clear and concise with instructions, etc. so we scrapped this.




This later became the background graphics for the game to make it more exciting and visually appealing.

The original layout of the page. Instructions and posts have been modified. Every member of the group is an admin to this page and promoted this page to everyone they knew, encouraging people to participate as either judges and/or players. However, the background image caused people's eyes to avert from the logo to the opposite side of the page.

This is the current background photo. The colour scheme of the arrows is based on the objects used to form the word Wordsnap for our game.

On a final note, when playtesting, the players felt that there should be more resources around. While we suggest exploring anywhere (your environment/urban area or suburbs/rural area) we concluded that for collages in this case, we'll provide the materials/mediums for this.

Future Directions:

To get more widespread recognition (as well as provide a more “polished” game) we could upload the game onto a website so everything (the facebook link and the app) would be on one webpage. We would also place QR codes all over the city/OCAD so people could use their smartphone and access the webpage from there.