ed dickins

klik : Modern Foreign Language games for children on Channel 4’s GridClub site. Work done whilst working for StarDotStar.

Finally finished the ‘klik’ suite of games for the Channel 4 ‘GridClub’ childrens’ website. A very ambitious collection of games that will hopefully teach primary age kids how to learn some Spanish and French whilst playing computer games.

We chose games that have eternal gameplay values, like breakout, pellmanism and Simon Says so that they would hopefully engage with them quickly. There is currently one outstanding game to finish - a multiplayer game that may well end up different to how it was imagined. We shall see…..

There was lots to do on these games and everyone worked their socks off. Particularly Guy and Rick. We made the decision to build it using the new Flash mx 2004 Actionscript 2.0, and build proper classes and wherever possible build components so that we could distribute working code easily, as well as make modifications easy to implement whenever they happened. Like when the game names changed. Every hour. On the hour.

It was pretty tough modelling how the games were going to work, but we based the model on how S.C.O.R.M. implements learning objects. We built a nice rich shell that loads in games rather like how an Learning Management System loads in S.C.O.R.M. learning objects, and let the games be ‘dumb’ as to what language they were in, or the mode in which they were being played - 1 player, 2player, multiplayer.

It all came down to creating different xml for different games, and setting the mode of play when the game starts. Sadly I can’t link to the games as you need to be a child attending school to be able to login - to prevent the misuse of the site by non-approved users - but you will have to take my word for it when I say it was a very broad reaching and rich project, with some really nice touches.

My favourite being a little face icon that represents the player in each game. Guy worked very hard on that so that the kids could choose a body with accessories and hairdos, which is then changed to a faceIcon that represents them as they play each game. We were even able to make up a face for each person in the office.

www.mrscruff.com

Mr Scruff is DJ/Producer Andy Carthy. He is from Stockport in Cheshire.
He has eclectic musical tastes and a wonderful and instantly recognisable graphic style that is well and truly identified with his music. As well as DJing and releasing records as Mr Scruff on NinjaTunes he also does a radio show called HotPotRadio with Treva Whateva on Picadilly Key 103 in Manchester.

In Oct 1999 with much help from Frank at WeLoveTheWeb we built the first version of his website, centered around Andy’s drawings and sense of silliness. Based on original drawings by Andy we tried to make the site as animated and as rich as possible. Every page had at least two black and white flash animations on it, featuring something daft like dinosaurs, breakdancers or sheep. And of course lots of pies. It was also available in either French, Spanish, Japanese or English. I learned a lot of ASP on this project.

Andy updated the site regularly himself with diary notes and the latest news and the site was a popular success with over 25,000 registering on the mailing list. It supported Mr Scruff’s releases, live dates and DJ nights around the UK and the rest of the world, but most importantly it was a great point of contact between Mr Scruff and his fans.

Then in August 2004 we got the chance to rebuild the site as we had always imagined it should be. Working closely with Andy we created a fully immersive Flash Scruff World with animated street scenes and characters, building interiors including nightclubs and record shops, and finally Mr Scruff was in colour!. There were even opportunities to make daft animated shorts that appear here and there throughout the site.

Maximum respect goes to Frank and Mike from WeLoveTheWeb for the many hours of scanning and animating that went into it (somewhere near 400 hours of animation), as well as the steep learning curve with the Flash xml connectors. Also big thanks to Richard Tingley who did stirling animation work for us. I mostly got to do fun stuff!

I am most proud of the main animating street scene as it was my first application of ActionScript 2.0 classes, and there are some data-aware MovieClips here and there that load in content from xml sources so that items in the environment continue to be fresh when you return to the site - like the airship and the adverts on the sides of trucks.