This is probably going to be one of my last wall of concepts. Since everything is going along smoothly in terms of design i’m going to get my hands dirty with some coding in preparation for the next stages of our gant chart.

This wall of concept comes in the form of a Skeleton layout of what is needed for each page. Similarly to the first wall of concept with the menu-map this second stage involves layout. I remember Jervis being touchy about the fact that everything was so rough so i initiated a mock of my skeleton in terms of what it might look like.

This is what the First Page Skeleton looks like.

Basically, all we want to do here is get some infrared on your face so you can do some head-tracking.  The easiest way to do this is to grab your Wii sensor bar, hold it up to your forehead (or mount it to a hat), and turn on the Wii console.  In this tutorial, we will be dealing with a specific brand of LED glasses, for the easiest, cheapest solution for sturdy, adjustable, switch-operated IR glasses. The whole set-up will cost you about $20.

What you need:

-LED Light Vision V2 Safety Glasses

We purchased these through Amazon.com for about $12.  These goggles are the perfect solution, mainly because of the independent battery-operated switches for the LEDs.  This saves you from the ugly mess of wiring individual LEDs to a battery holder and soldering the contacts.

- 5mm Infrared LEDs (2)

These can be purchased at any RadioShack.  Each LED will run you about $2.

Here’s what the packages for the infrared LEDs and glasses look like:

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So as said in the group post, I made an Air Application that holds the cube as well as custom made window options (minimize, maximize, restore, and close). This also holds a scalable gradient that changes when the user maximizes the screen. This application can be downloaded here.

Here is the 2 level choices that I had proposed. As I stated before, we are opted to re-think the final sequence which is going to be one of my main tasks for the next week.

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This week, The Fourmation learned a lot about the math, science, programming, and designing that lies ahead.  Our meeting Thursday, despite missing two team members, turned out to be a great brainstorming session.  We talked mostly about the gameplay, and new exciting features that we could include in the final product.  We are engineering Fourmation to be an engaging, visually stimulating problem-solving game.  For next week, some of the team member roles are going to mesh together.  We all want to be well versed in every aspect of our project.  Some of the designers will dive into the programming, and some of the programmers will produce ideas and start to make designs.  Many Gantt Chart milestones will be reached tomorrow and we are satisfied with our progress thus far.

Updated Gantt Chart

Week 3 Hours

New designs for Fourmation, some more variations to come.

The new Fourmation symbol.

Ok, so since everything about this game requires you to use a Wiimote on your computer, I’m writing up this quick setup guide to help everyone do that. This should take no longer than five minutes to set up. Please note that I’m doing this on Windows, but Mac setup is very similar. The only difference is the version of WiiFlash Server that you need to use.

What you need:
So to start, you’re going to need the following:

Bluetooth:
-Most laptops/desktops come with bluetooth already installed, if you don’t have support for it, I’d recommend just grabbing a USB dongle from Newegg . You can get them for <$20.

Bluetooth Software:
-I’m using BlueSoleil but you should be able to use any software that can pair a device to your system. Your computer probably already has some installed, or your USB dongle probably came with some software.

WiiFlash Server
-WiiFlash

WiiMote
-The whole point of this. Go grab one from your entertainment system. Don’t worry, it’s not like there is anything on Wii that you want to be playing right now anyway.

Setup:
I’m not going to get into how to install your Bluetooth software, there should be instructions with whatever software you chose, but most computers made in the last few years already have this all set up.

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I’ve been tinkering with WiiFlash and getting Wiimotes to interact with Flash for awhile now, and here is a pretty neat test app. You need to have a WiiMote connected and set up in order for this to do anything cool, and the WiiFlash server running. If for somereason you have all this setup, it should track the pointing location of both WiiMotes, and the d-pad on WiiMote #1 should control the rotation of the cube. If you don’t have any of that, you can just use the arrows on the keyboard (make sure you click the swf…)

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