My Favourite Music - An Insight Into My Musical Taste

I'm extremely passionate about music, and I cannot live with in my life especially in the majority of situations. One of my improvements after the 10 minute review I had was to post more personal blogs about my self on here so that everyone can get a clearer impression of who I am as a Multimedia practionier, hence in this blog, I'm going to mention what my favourite songs are of all time. 

Starting with the songs I definitely cannot live without:

1. Eric Prydz - Pjanoo
2. Mika - Happy Ending
3.  Koyashu Takehito - Hyakuman Kai no Juuchi
4. Britney Spears - Stronger
5. Crush 40 - What I'm Made Of (Metal Overload)
6. Derek and The Dominoes - Layla
7. Hazel Fernandes - Number One
8. Leah - Calling
9. Ikimono Gakari - Blue Bird
10. Yasuharu Takahashi - Reverse Situation/Hero (Naruto Shippudden)
11. Lostprophets - 4Am Forever/ Can't Catch Tomorrow
12. Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal/Earth Song
13. Muse - Knights of Cydonia
14. Nickelback - Savin' Me/ If Everyone Cared 
15. Chad Kroeger - Hero
16. Santana ft Rob Thompson - Smooth
17. Santana ft Chad Kroeger - Into the Night
18. Nightwish - Last Of The Wilds/Moondance
19. Within Temptation - Memories
20. Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit
21. Iron Maiden - No More Lies/ Blood Brothers (Orchestral Remix)
22. The Offspring - Dammit I Changed Again/ Gotta Get Away/ Cant Repeat/ The Kids Arent Alright
23. Phoenix Wright/Cadenza - Pursuit -  Cornered Remix
24. Pink - Who Knew
25. Spice Girls - Viva Forever (Dont judge me, this is one of the songs I grew up with!)
26. Texas - Summer Son/Black Eyed Boy
27. The Rasmus - Guilty / No Fear
28. Ana Johnsson - We Are
29. Vic Mignogna - Brothers (Full Metal Alchemist)
30. Akeboshi - Wind (Naruto)

Yeah I have a feeling I know what you are thinking..."WTF?!!" But yeah, this is my ultimate list of music that I love, I know it's a hell of a lot of songs, but that's me for you. I have had an extremely varied taste in music since I first moved here, as I was introduced  to music properly and hence I experimented with the majority of genres at least, and  thus found a lot of songs that I feel very passionately about, and that have helped me to get through the tougher situations in life. Most of the mentioned songs at least have helped me to keep myself motivated and strong throughout my life regardless of what happened, as at the end of the day, I had these songs to revitalise my spirit after any emotional beatings that I took. If you were to sum up my personality through music alone, this is a pretty good indiciation of what it would be like. 

I've always been passionate about music from day one, and to this day it only seems to become more important for me now. The music I've listened to certainly has had it's role in shaping me into the person I am today as well as continuing to motivate me further.  I am definitely happy with my current tastes in music at the moment, and this is the one I will choose to remain with until the end of time, as I've never felt so comfortable about the music I listen to until now. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask me anyways. 

An Exceptionally Good Disaster...

I've been playing a fair few new games lately, but there's a few that I have played which have caused some very unexpected reactions to them that I thought I should mention.  I'll do a blog for each game anyways.

Firstly, there is the truly epic, hilario

us, and brilliant (I could go on) Disaster: Day of Crisis  for Nintendo Wii.  The best way I would describe this game is like a video game crossover of 24 with The Day After Tomorrow. The game is all about an ex marine soldier who has been r

ecruited to fight a newly formed

 terrorist group made up of his fellow comrades from his final mission as a marine. But here's the catch, they were as good as dead back then, as he saw the helicopter carrying said people crash after being hit b

y a flaming boulder during a volcanic eruption. To make matter

s worse, they have kidnapped a Professor of Seisomology along with his grandaughter w

ho is the younger sister of his own best mate that died in

 front of him during his final marine mission. And the real icing on the cake is that the terrorists have somehow taken control of the weather itself, and thus managed to cause natural disasters left right and centre all over the city including volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and so on...And you thought you had it bad!

Basically, as well as battling terrorists, the main cha

racter Ray also has to deal with the very worst of Mother Nature's wrath, thus leading to one hell of a situation for him and then some. The game is an actio

n adventure type, focused solely on survival of course, and it plays like

 a 3rd person shooter with platforming elements and first person shooting sections. It's a lot like games like Jet Force Gemini, Tomb Raider and Resident Evil for instanc

e. As your character makes his way through the continually weather ravaged city, he will avoid to avoid all the consqeunces of the disasters including explosions, falling buildings, cars crashing and flooding whilst having to fight members from the terrorist group and rescue people who are in dan

ger. 

I actually loved the concept of the game from first hearing about it, and I wasn't disappointed upon playing it! I'm a big fan of more unique, individual games, and I saw this going for £15 in the GAME sale, so I had to buy it. The game is amazing to play and watch though, the most 

amazing part is how the city is contiunally being destroyed around you and how the increasing amount of damage actually affects your progess and so on. For example, I was trying to reach someone in distress nearby who was quite high up but there was no way of reaching them due to immense amounts of building

 damage and rubble nearby. All of a sudden though, a b

us comes crashing down along with a dumpster (somehow due  to the earthquake, which is the theme of the second level as well as the first), and due to the way they landed, 

they created a makeshift ramp up to the person in distress which really impressed me for it's sheer creativity and ingenousity. 

Although this game has similarities to other gam

es out there, it still is very unique and it has turned out better than the magazines have said to be honest. Ray has a Stamina bar as well as a Health bar, which depletes gradually over time but  quicker if you're fighting terrorists, sprinting, lifting something and so o

n. You can replenish your Stamina bar like your Life bar, but if it goes down to zero, your Health will suffer instead and you will due if that reaches zero too. As well as those two bars, Ray has a Lungs/Oxygen meter, which is affected by smoke in an area. If there is smoke present, Ray will choke and his lungs will become polluted rapidly which is shown by the meter. You will have to sprint through the area to make it out alive, and once you are in the clear, you can exhale the smoke whilst breathing in oxygen to recover. You can hold down the Z but

ton to speed the process up, and if you press it again at the right time, he w

ill slap his cheeks (0_0) and gain bonus points. 

As well as the standard combat and movement abilities found in other games, Ray can also call out to people to see if anyone needs help nearby and thus find t

hem. Once you choose to rescue them, the rescue process initiates, and depending on the situation, you will be required to do something specific such as treating wounds, carrying someone to safe spot, reaching your hand out for them to grab, give them CPR and so on. I love this part, as I find saving people in this game quite a rewarding and pleasing experience, in cont

rast to killing them in various games. 

As you can see in the screenshot above, Ray is currently trying to resuscitate an unconscious person. In that situation, you would have to push down with the Wii Remote and Nunchuck to try

and recreate the real life coutnerpart of this. That added amount of interactivity is definitely perfect for this sort of game, 

and I thinkthis is why the game was chosen to be developed on the Wii, or even f

ormed in the first place.

The ultimate highlight of this game though is the natural disasters in it. The way that vario

us buildings come crashing down, 

or vehicles that come flying past and so on, is just a breathtak

ing and exhilarating surprise. Your just walking along

waiting to see what the game has in store for you, then all of a sudden...BAM!!! a building collapses right in front of you.

If that wasn't bad enough, during certain moments in the game, you will be chased by a chain reaction of events

caused by a natural disaster such as the upper floor of the building your in collapsing due to an earthquake,

or a series of explosions due to a fire, or even a raging flood. You have to wave the Wii Remote and Nunchuck 

up and down like mad to outrun these chain reactions otherwise you go bye bye.

One final thing I want to mention about with the game is the bonus missions you get for cleared levels. When you back

to a level you have beaten, you get extra objectives to fu

lfil on this turn round, and the one for the first level

had me in stitches. The mission was to collect these campaign f

lags that were scattered around the level  

but the funny part was the message you got through the Wii Remote speaker when you collected one.

You suddenly had this jive talking, funky 70's style voice s

houting praise at you like 

"Smooth Brother!" and "Funking Fresh!". I don't know what me laugh more, the sheer randomness of the

whole thing, or the voice itself!  

I've included some more screenshots of the game below for your vie

wing pleasure anyways.

Yep, that's how big the food is in the game. You can eat

 food that you find to recover Stamina and Life, but since when did burgers and cola cartons become bigger than a human's head?!

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 5

Today was a very busy day for me actually. Recalling the events from the last session, I decided to head out to where the christmas tree was once again and this time manage to get a screenshot of it. Luck was on my side today as I immediately went to the Brandenburg Tor and saw the tree in it's whole behemoth glory.

The screenshot doesn't do the tree enough justice unfortunately, you have to be there yourself to truly see how bewildering the height of the tree is, it is phenomenal. Something like this could easily make as a famous landmark to be honest. Moving on anyways, I decided to take more screenshots of the surrounding area as promised, which can be seen below. As I was admiring the scenery, another player suddenly appeared alongside me and said hello to me. Unfortunately for him, I was too distracted by the fact the guy HAD NO CHEST... I had to look at him twice as he was stood there as a floating head and arms above a pair of legs. I figured something must have gone wrong with the rendering but it didn't stop me finding it pretty funny though :P. The guy seemed like an alright person but then I discovered soon how rude he actually was. He asked me where I come from and then I asked him and he said Berlin. Whilst continuing the conversation onwards on Berlin itself, he interrupted me to say he does not like my language or something? 0_0... And then says he cannot understand me before disappearing off to wherever he went, leaving me standing there quite bemused. I would like to mention what my reaction was, but I feat it may be a tad too rude for the innocent eyes reading this...







After the other player's sudden disappearance, I decided to explore the area and see what there was for me to discover. After lots of random running around, I found a pretty neat feature which grabbed my attention as soon as it appeared.



As you can see in the screenshot above, I found a digital reaction of the fabled Sword in the Stone from the King Arthur mythologies. I was quite impressed to find it in this game, but it did make me wonder why it was in Berlin though? Examining the sword caused a blue door icon to appear which means it can be used to teleport to a specific location like the billboards, hence I decided to have a look to see where this would take me. I wasn't really expecting to go to Camelot though, although that would be an awesome touch regardless :P.



After being teleported by the sword, this is where I ended up which wasn't Camelot unfortunately but it'll do. I wasn't sure where I was, and just like where I was just now, it was deserted of all digital life (apart from plants and trees of course), and after running around the area, I noticed quite a few massive cranes which could mean the construction of a new building, which is an interesting touch to see in a game :P.


After seeing this area, I decided to call it a day for now anyway. On the next visit though, I'm gonna have a more in depth look around the Tutorial Area as I still haven't explored there properly and also I will visit the Real Estate office to find out about getting my own property. So yeah, in a dodgy and extremely pun of Toy Story...To Twinity and Beyond!

Sorry, that was bad.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 4

With my 4th day with Twinity, I have to say it was my best experience on it so far, which I will explain why in a minute. As soon as I logged in today, I was alerted that I had received a message from someone called Lars who turned out to be one of the staff of Twinity. Lars had contacted me to tell me he had read my blog on Day 3 of Twinity and he offered to take me to see the tree as it turns out it was still there! This was a very pleasant and unexpected surprise, especially as I felt I had come across very angsty in the blog, which was a conseqeuence of all the personal problems I'm having at the moment. I actually panicked a little, but upon conversation with Lars, it turned out he actually liked my blog a lot mainly because it was so objectionable.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I'm in the midst of my conversation with Lars but this was later on after my computer crashed. Before I logged back on and took this screenshot, I was shown the route to the christmas tree, which really embrassingly was accesible via using the sign BEHIND me to teleport there...yep -_-' Somehow, I managed to miss that... But anyways, the christmas tree was an amazing sight to see, it literally was gigantic as depicted in the advertisements for it, and Lars told me the tree itself stands at around 50 feet tall! The sight of the tree was definitely worth the effort and journey to reach, that was my highlight of today's adventure. Lars gave me a quick description of the area, including the German market stalls (just like the ones in Market Square in Nottingham at the moment!^^) and the British Embassy. Unfortunately though, whilst Lars was giving me a talk about the area, my game suddenly crashed without warning on me and I was forced to restart my computer, thus losing all the screenshots that I had built up in my image editor , which was extremely frustrating.

I really appreciate the time and effort Lars went into to help me out today though as well as his patience with dealing with me as well, and I would just like to say a big thanks to him and I would recommend seeking him out if you have any troubles in the game yourselves.

After logging back in and talking to Lars again, I went off back to Brandenburg Tor to see if I could retake my screenshots of the area including the tree, but unfortunately I think something went wrong then. When I arrived there, the tree was now a silhouette instead which was an odd sight, I'm not sure if it was due to the sun setting at the time or the rendering of the tree messing up. Hence due to that, I'm going back to area on my next visit which will be very soon and make sure I do get some screenshots of the tree as I would love to show it off ...I mean let everyone see how awesome the tree is. I took a quick screenshot of the stalls though, which can be viewed below:

I will include more screenshots of the area with my next visit definitely, but for now I'm done with today's session and I'll see you after my next visit to Twinity!

My Interactive Narrative Project: Objection!

I just realised that I still haven't posted up a blog with a link to my interactive narrative project on deviantART which is pretty shocking actually. Anyways, here is the link to my project:
http://krazykakashi234.deviantart.com/art/Objection-106115621

This is version is nowhere near as complete as the version I had throughout my head whilst I was working on it, hence I'm planning on creating a more complex, detailed and interactive version of this project as part of my porfolio for the Identities module. Please don't judge this too harshly, as I did try my best to get as much as I could done with it and if I only had more time, I could have created something better but Im still proud of what I managed to achieve regardless.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 3

With the 3rd day, things started to look up for me. I didn't have much time to spend on the game today, due to being busy but a couple of pretty interesting things happened anyway though. When I loaded up the game, I found that someone has requested a friendship with me which surprised me, as I haven't done much in the game so far. The person's name was Josie and I decided to accept the request and see what happens. I haven't spoken to her yet, but I will send a message to her on my next visit to Twinity. It was a pleasant surprise to have made a friend already, and I hope to do make a fair few more on this game as I spend more time on it in the future.

After the friend request was sorted, I decided to have a quick look around Berlin City Centre. This is where I discovered something pretty useful, all thanks to a fair bit of curiosity.

If you look in the screenshot above, my character is standing in front of some of the previous mentioned billboards. As well as being able to embed websites into them, I learned that billboards have another more useful and efficient feature. There are certain billboards in the City Centre (as well as other main areas I imagine), where pictures of the various landmarks and tourist hotspots that you can visit are embedded in them. They are not there just for show though, if you click one of these billboards, it will teleport you to the area represented in their respective image. I found this out after clicking on the billboard with the Musuem on and suddenly being whisked away to the Musuem area. This was definitely a great discovery as it makes it easier than going into the main menu and finding the area you wanting to teleport to there, and I think the less significant areas that you cannot teleport to usually also appear on the billboards.

I'm afraid I really didn't cover much in today's post, but I will spend more time with the game in each session and thus have more to talk about in the diary. The original plan was to continue looking for the christmas tree at Brandenburg Gate, but I didn't have the time or motivation to do it unfortunately. Actually, if you look at the left billboard in the screenshot, there is the advert for the christmas tree that I saw, but you cannot use it to teleport due to some technical problems. One thing I would like to mention before I finish for today though is that when I logged in, I noticed a couple of people having a conversation but it happened to be in German which was an odd but definitely intriguing experience. I was so used to seeing everything and talking in English, that I forgot that there would be players native to Germany and similar countries playing this as well and also talking in German to each other, especially seeing as the game was built in and based on Germany itself. If only I had studied German from past Key Stage 3 level, I might have stood a chance of communication with some German players, but alas I am reaping the consequences of not taking German all those years ago. Now if only I could find a game based in Japan (preferably with romanized subtitles or no kanji if thats even possible), things would certainly become very incredible and fun for me =].

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 2

With my 2nd day on Twinity, I was pleasantly surprised with the sudden and friendly welcome I received from nearby players as soon as I logged into the game. The first person who welcomed me was called Simone, and upon further conversation with her, I discovered she was actually a member of the support staff. Although, running into a member of staff was quite beneficial for me as I was able to ask her for some help I needed, including my difficulties with the camera controls. The camera is pretty horrendous in this to be honest, if you turn around for instance, it will swing around immediately and this can get very confusing and nauseating if end up turning a lot at once. I tried zooming the camera out to reduce the problem, but it still kept doing it, which was pretty annoying. I decided to ignore it and continue in the end, although the movement controls do still annoy me a fair bit at the moment. You can only move around with the keyboard, the mouse cannot be used to move around by the looks of it which is annoying, as I hate playing games with a lack of mouse based movement.

On a brighter note, whilst I was chatted to Simone, I discovered the game was completely German based, hence explaining why there is a digital recreation of Berlin in the game. She also told me about websites being embedded into billboards which can be seen in the screenshot below. I found this quite impressive especially seeing as you can embed any website you want in your own apartment as well by the use of blank photo frames in the game. Although to be honest, with the freedom to embed "any" website you want, this feature could easily be abused by the naughtier variety of players out there :P.
As you can see in the screenshot above, I managed to get into conversation with 2 other players as well, as they greeted me whilst I was talking to Simone. They did not say very much though, but one of them was new to the game like me so I assumed they were taking some time to familiarise themselves with the interface and controls.

Whilst I was waiting for the game to load the Welcome Area earlier, I noticed an advert on the loading screen, which mentioned the display of a gigantic christmas tree at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin City. This immediately grabbed my attention and I decided to set off on a hunt to find where the tree is, which I ultimately regretted. You know when they say the game is digital recreation of Berlin city...they aren't exaggerating! I teleported to the centre of Berlin city, and assumed I'd be able to find this tree in no time. Within minutes of arriving there, I was just as lost as the next guy. Due to the camera still being a nuisance and the limited movement controls, I wasn't up for running around especially considering how huge the city actually was!
I immediately went back to the Welcome Area and asked Simone for the best route there in roder to make my life a hell of a lot easier.

After speaking with Simone, I learned I could teleport to where the tree was located directly, which pleased me a lot but it wouldn't last long... Ironically, I wasn't sure why but you could not teleport there for the time being due to some technical problems, which really annoyed me. I dont mean to rant, but why go to all the effort of creating a magnificient, eye teasingly good chritmas tree for curious people to hunt and discover if you cannot even teleport to the location for the duration of the time the tree is up? It was only up until the 5th so I a few days left to go find it, buy my search eventually become very uneventful and disappointing.

Simone told me I could reach the Brandenburg Gate area by walking from the Musuem area, so I thought I'd give it shot and see what happened. I teleported to the Musuem area, only to get a kick of deja vu. As this is is a digital recreation of a city, the Musuem area alone was fairly huge which intimidated me a lot, and it did not help I forgot to ask Simone what direction I should walk in when at the Musuem, which was a very "clever" move. Seeing as I have no knowledge of the geography of Berlin at all, and that my patience and enthusiasm were fading, I decided to give up on finding the tree, as I could end up going in circles or going a considerable distance in the wrong direction even.

My impressions of the game actually have become fairly negative now due to my experiences today, but I'm nowhere near creating a final impression of it. There is still a fair amount of things to do in the game, and seeing as I'm new to this game as well as a complete greenhorn to online games, I've decided to ride this wave along and see where it takes me. Who knows after all, I may actually end up enjoying my experience after all in the future...I am interested in the fact that you can buy your own apartment and customise it to how you see fit, so that is something I will definitely look at in the the future.

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary (Twinity) - Day 1

After my recent "success" with Runescape, I thought I doomed to be honest. But thankfully, one of my friends recommended a couple of other online games to look at, and one of them turned out to be my saviour! The first game was called VSide, and it mostly centered around forming and joining parties, socialising, partying etc. I didn;t really get much of a grasp on it, but I thought I'd try it anyways. The character creation system at the beginning is pretty simplistic like Runescape's, because you only get a few hairstyles, tops and such to wear from the off.

Upon downloading the game and getting ready to play, I loaded it up only to be faced with a scary looking menu with several options all the place in different categories. There were venues I could visit, existing parties that could join which were set up by other members and so on. But whenever I tried to visit a venue or a party, I kept getting the same weird error message which just frustrated me as I didn't know what to do at all. Seeing as the game was centered around partying, I figured it wasn't for me anyways, and I decided to leave it and look at Twinity instead.

At first glance of Twinity, I was already impressed especially with the level of character detail, as it seems to be on the same level as Second Life by the looks of it. I had a look around the homepage for the game and I was generally impressed with it, especially seeing as it seemed a lot like Second Life, but I COULD RUN IT. Thus I immediately signed up for this one and got decided to start playing straight away upon installing it.

This screenshot is what I saw when I first loaded up the game anyways. I chose to go to the Welcome Area and I immediately spotted people buzzing around talking to each other, even though it is a bit empty. As you can see though, the character customisation options are definitely more advanced and specific than the other games I mentioned, which pleased me a lot, as I can now create a much more detailed avatar of my inner personality woot :P. There are a couple of options that have intriguied me a fair bit, there's an option to create yoru avatar's face using a photo, which I will test in a minute and report on it. Also in the bottom middle of the screen, there isa silver toolbar with an "animations" option in it. Upon reading the user guide, I found that you can make your character perform a series of preset animations such as dancing and cheering, which is something I usually like in a game with 3D avatars in :P.

In this second screenshot above, I've managed to create the look of my ideal persona. Unfortunately, the range of hairstyles in this game is also fairly limited but it's the best I have seen so far despite that. I really wanted to have a spikey hairstyle for my avatar, but it wasn't available so I chose my next favourite style, the dreadlocks. As I mentioned in the Runescape blog, blue hair is a must for me, hence the blueness of my dreads. I really wanted a fire coloured theme for my character's clothes, and this shirt was the closest I found to it, but I am really fond of the design and colours of it. I thought I'd add fingerless gloves for the fun of it, as I've always imagined my ideal persona to be wearing them, and I added headphones in too, to reflect my deep passion for music and the importance of it in my daily life. The shoes were a brilliant find though, I found some black boots with flames on the side of them, which just screamed out to me to get them. I also put in a random sword because I'm a big fan of sword games, so that's a good way of summarising me I suppose. I am really happy with the appearance of my character despite the lack of a spikey hairstyle, because I feel that my personality truly has been projected onto this chaarcter via his image.

I didn't bother with the feature that lets you put a photo of yourself as your avatar's face because I didn't have a photo that met their requirements, and also I realised more importantly, that this character is supposed to be a self expression of who we are on the inside, so there's no point basing the character's appearance around mine, as I didn't choose how I would look on the outside when I was born, but I chose who I was on the inside when I grew up instead, and that is what is important after all for this module (I have to say though, I think I was starting to sound a little poetic just there!).

Identities: My 3D Avatar Diary - Day 1

Day 1:

I found myself unable to run Second Life from my home computer due to an incomptaible graphics card, hence I was faced with quite a dilemma. I didn't want to use World of Warcraft as it meant paying a montly fee which is something I can't afford now as I'm low on money. Thinking of my past experiences with online gaming (which isn't much to be honest), I was faced with having to return to a game I abandoned a long time ago...Runescape.

Going back to it now, it's just as "fun" to play with as it was back then. The biggest problem with Runescape I've felt is the fact if you are "inactive" for a fairly short amount of time, it automatically logs you out, which it's already done to me a few times, as I try to write this blog alongside playing it. The character creation options are very basic too, you can only customise the hairstyles, facial hair, torso, wrists (which has next to no efffect), legs and feet. Sure you do get to customise al the important factors, but the range of options themselves such as available hairstyles is a bit too limited for my liking, and the colours you can pick do need some more shades, as most of the current ones are too bright.

In this screenshot above, I have made my character now, and he's been plonked onto the start of Tutorial Island. Unfortunately with this game being so basic (Im not sure how advanced the Members version is), my character ends up with lacking a lot of detail as you can. I cannot zoom in on him as well, so I had to provide ascreenshot like this I'm afraid, but I have circled who my character is.

This character is a rough example of how I would love to look if I had the choice. I love the mixture of orange, red and yellow to create a firey look, and as you can see, I do love blue hair as well. Due to a very limited range of available clothes, this is nowhere near as detailed as how I imagine my ideal self to be, but I suppose it will do for now.

I will try to create a separate diary for another online game like Second Life or something similar, which has a much more detailed avatar creation system, but as for now I will document a basic diary using Runescape until I find a suitable game.

Narratives: Interactive Narrative Project

The third project for our Narratives module is the study and production of a Flash based Interactive Narrative sequence. Using at least 10 still images and Macromedia Flash CS3, we have to build an interactive story sequence which is affected by the choices the user makes throughout it. Basically, at certain parts of the story, we have to make the user decide what to do in the situation and thus see the consequences, whether it could be progressing the story onwards or coming to an abrupt halt.

User interaction is the core of this project along with the story itself, and we have to try and include as much interactivity in the project as much as possible. This can include clickable buttons or parts of the image, moving around with the mouse and also clicking on a given option when asked what to do next.

To be truly honest, I was stuck for inspiration on this project, not as much as for the One Shot Film but still to a reasonable degree. But then it hit me...I've got quite a lot of games that are pretty much interactive narratives but with a few extra features and such. There's one particular series of games that I own which is what I'm going to base my work around. As I think I mentioned in the past, I produce video based parodies of a Nintendo DS series called Phoenix Wright as a hobby. It's an existing internet trend, but I decided to contribute my own tribute to it which has become pretty successful and well-loved on Youtube since I started making them back in June this year.

The video parodies I make are called Phoenix Wrongs, and the original inventor of them produced them through Macromedia Flash, where as I produced my versions of them through a video editor called Sony Vegas. I have wanted to learn how to make a Phoenix Wrong through Flash though for curiosity's sake as well as it does produce more polished results than a video editor can for this. Hence I decided to combine my Narratives project with my hobby and thus the final idea for my Interactive Narrative was born.

My final idea is going to be an Interactive Narrative based around the Phoenix Wright series, which will involve travelling through various areas one at a time. In each area will be three characters from the series who all have been accused of murder and it's up to to the user to pick who is the guilty party out of the three people. The right choice will move the user forwards, but the wrong choice will either move the user back to the start or preferably just make the choice again. I had 2 of my friends look over the structure map and the basic idea of my project, and they suggested having some sort of a description appearing when you hover over a character. I also told them about a couple of ideas I had in mind, where one of them would be the character changing their pose or expression when you hover over themm which would be easy to do with sprites from the game itself. The other idea is when you hover over a character, a spotlight style effect will appear on the respective character, with the rest of the screen going dark, to help make it more obvious that the characters themselves are interactive.

I really like this final idea that I came up with, and I'm confident that I'll be able to produce it to a pretty reasonable standard at least. It's based on a game which I'm very passionate about and do love interactive narrative work especially in the games that I have. With the previous two projects, as extremely enjoyable as they were to make (especially Pixilation!), I didn't feel they did turn out to be the standard the course expects from us to be honest, especially upon seeing the interactive narrative work by the students who were in the first year last year. That's also part of the reason why I chose to do the Phoenix Wright idea, as it's something that I've been working with for a long time and I'm pretty confident with, hence it should help to improve the actual standard of my work. When it comes to humour, I have to say I am really good at it as shown by my fan's reactions and comments to my videos on Youtube, but prensentation and polish have always been my mortal weaknesses. My videos may excel in the humorous department, but they always lacked the finesse of other videos such as other Phoenix Wrongs made by other fans of the series. I definitely can't pass this course with humour alone, hence why I am determined to bring up my presentation and production skills up to as high as level as possible to help ensure that I do well in this course as well as in the future with anything else.