Blue Flame Publishing Gamebook

Shortly following our second appearance on Channel 5′s The Gadget Show last year, that episode about casual gaming, we received a lot of calls and offers of work and pitch opportunities. A good few we declined because they weren’t a great fit for what we do, but one of them we absolutely loved and said yes to— and now we’re in a position to tell you a little bit about it!

Blue Flame Publishing asked us to develop an interactive gamebook app!

It’s in the style of  ‘choose your own adventure‘ books, which were popular in the 80s, as a reader you would have to make choices at the end of each chapter which affected your hero’s journey through reading the rest of the book.

With Askary’l Grimoire which is part of the Hamnasya trilogy, you play as Edhan on a perilous mission to find a stolen book of immense power, while avenging the death of his mother! It’s a complex plot with lots of twists and turns and lots of opportunities for you to completely immerse yourself in the storyverse.

To further expand its reach, it’s totally bi-lingual! (French and English) and multidevice for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, with interfaces which suit each device.

We see a lot of nice interactive projects centered around reading, a lot of projects where the content needs to find a right vessel, but many of them suffer from a paucity of content, or they haven’t really considered their target market carefully.. or quite simply they have serious usability issues.  Well we’d like to think  this one is a little bit different not just because we feel very vested in the idea as developers, but what’s fresh about this project is that  it’s working with original never seen before content and a client who is genuinely concerned about tailoring the format  for the audience familiar with either dark fantasy writing or  the vernacular of RPG gaming.. from the style of the interface to how the instruments in the melodies sound like, everything has been considered.

To us retronauts and avid readers, it’s one of the  most exciting developments in publishing we know of that beautifully merges new content with some additions that makes sense for the platform it’s on without diluting the focus which is the reading experience itself. We’re merely enhancing that reading experience with unobtrusive interactivity.

Specification

The content comprises of 500 chapters written by Nicolas Lenain accompanied by incredible illustrations by David Revoy. We actually really enjoyed unravelling the complex interactive narratives as kids in the form of analogue books, so an app for iOS devices really will make the book a truly engaging read and adventure. Music and sound effects are by by Leaf Sound Design and a top VFX studio in France Delapost Paris are working on a trailer!

In short we’re excited about working on an enhanced reading experience. combining the reading experience of a traditional choose your own adventure style book, with RPG elements, score keeping, inventories, set collection and interactive fight sequences to make for an engrossing  journey alongside the character, where you can be the hero!

We were lucky to be one of the first mobile agencies in the UK to work with publishers like Harper Collins doing interactive accompaniments to books, and this project feels perfectly in keeping with that.

We want to share two observations and one exciting bit of news about something we’re working on.

1. Sometimes the tactile qualities of physical interfaces and a heightened sense of physicality and (some might say superfluous visual realism) in virtual interfaces make our interactions a bit more pleasing, memorable, reassuring and more importantly, quite human!

2. Often phone-cameras suffer from a noticeable lack of stability and grip, it’s not just that we crave for that familiar feel, or the affordance and reassurance that a physical depressable button or toggle gives us, it’s also the fact  that phone cameras aren’t that easy to frame shots with – essentially you’ve got one hand touching a screen and another holding the camera. Even in the case of iOS5 and iPhone 4 and 4s’ with the volume buttons taking a shot, it still feels quite fiddly. There are quite a few projects that aim to address this.

We think BeepHQ’s POPA is an attempt to address both issues head on, whether it’s with the unmistakeable big red button, the pleasing to hold leather grip, the affordance of holding a your phone in a familiar way that resonates with professional photographers and amateur snappers alike or the textures in the app itself which are also beautifully skeumorphic, POPA delivers and does so with finesse!

So when Brendan Dawes the director of Beep Industries and good friend of ours asked us to help out, we were super excited to see how we could improve the performance of the app and add a few wishlist features like ‘touch to focus’ and faster response times and stability to the experience.

With that said, no amount of software or hardware is good if people aren’t using it or don’t get it, here’s an awesome review by a street photographer with some lovely work in his portfolio. For us the proof in the pudding on how well POPA works and how people take to it, was when Brendan was demo-ing it to us in a cafe in Manchester – the guy working in the cafe came over to have a play, he intuitively got it there and then! It’s a button, I gotta press it, it has an app! I’ve also heard about kids using it with ease.

Beep Industries already had a fully fledged app, our role in working on the app was to ensure it acts in a responsive and stable fashion and work on some features! We’re pleased to say we’re looking forward to future developments which we’re also partnering with Beep Industries on!

So a couple of weeks ago we got a call from our friends at the Gadget Show and they were wondering whether we could help them out with something very close to our hearts! An FPS called Battlefield and their dream to make an utterly immersive experience.  The incentive… getting our hands on the hottest game of the year well before anyone else would and playing on the Ultimate Battlefield 3 Simulator.

We genuinely can’t talk much about our involvement until the show airs, other than saying we did the Kinect Body Tracking and consulting on some of the other bits. The trailer, which has racked up an impressive 600,000 views on YouTube since yesterday, should give you an idea of how all the components (there were five specialist companies helping out) helped create something that has excited a lot of people in the gaming and military simulation world!

We’ll be releasing some more pics and information on how we developed our component after the show airs. Like our Facebook page to find out more and get sneak peeks at future work we do, well before anyone else knows about it.

The show airs on Channel 5 on the 24th of October in the UK. If we can get past the licensing issues we’ll post a recording here for our American friends!

Update: there is a huge buzz gathering around this episode, it’s been picked up by some of the biggest games and tech websites including Engadget and Kotaku! You can even see the RITH Macbook Pro on the Engadget behind the scenes photo gallery.

The trailer has now had more than 1,000,000 views on YouTube… fantastic!
The trailer has now had more than 2,000,000 views !! and even a parody! haha

Update 2 :  watch the full episode

The University of Huddersfield UniApp that we developed has been shortlisted for a 2011 Times Higher Education award for Outstanding ICT Initiative of the Year!

We’re really pleased because its our first awards nomination. That in itself was a nice little accolade, but being shortlisted in the final is the icing on the cake

UniApp / RITH / UoH Team

So we’re looking forward to going down to London for the event, along with the happy bunch at the University of Huddersfield who were involved in the project. The event itself is on the 24th of November at Grosvenor House and seeing all the other projects that make their way onto the stage, and possibly even UniApp should be interesting! Fingers crossed.

How we developed a useful cross platform app. 

As far as the app goes, it’s been downloaded a healthy number of times on both iOS and Android devices (though much less on Android), in fact it’s a very significant number (a double digit percentage of total student population of Huddersfield University) and it spiked again with the intake of students this year.

It’s easy for us to say we designed and developed it and take all the credit, but really it’s a good case of the University seeking then listening to user feedback, then approaching us for a proposal. The University was involved in every process and carefully weighed the options and choices presented to them in wireframe and prototype form, to optimise the usefulness and reach of each facet of it. At no point did we indulge our own ideas of what it should be without carefully evaluating the point of that feature or implement something without evaluating its use over time.

Features like:

• Searching the staff directory
• Live computer availability in the Library
• Photos of buildings to ease familiarisation with the surroundings
• Renewing library items via a simple interface
• Searching the library catalogue

Are all useful features to a potential student or member of staff, and that’s what makes a good utility app!

The project is also a very good case for totally customising something for your end users, and not going for the cookie cutter solution. Ironically those who do end up with generic solutions usually end up paying extortionate license fees which is a trend we hope to reverse one bit of software at a time. Nothing beats handcrafted software that you iterate on.

If you’ve come here after hearing about us on the Gadget Show, we hope you enjoyed playing with the game we made for Jason Bradbury. As we write this the episode hasn’t aired yet, so we don’t know if we won the challenge or not, but you might be interested to know we can make games like the one featured in the challenge in very short timespans, to engage, educate, amuse or create conversation. As well as Flash games we also create games and apps for mobile devices!

For this project we assembled a small team and delivered the game on time, in record time, and frankly had a lot of fun while we did it. Given time and a reasonable budget, we can do amazing things that engage and amuse in equal measure and look great too!

If you’re an agency or client who wants to work with us directly on an interactive project do pick up the phone or write to us. We’d be happy to discuss all the things we could do and the expertise we can offer.

If you have an idea that’s interesting, there’s pretty much no challenge we wont rise to, we’ll work for your idea and deliver your vision with our expertise embedded within.

Maybe you just want a coffee with us? Either way get in touch and see what we’re about and whether we can help you. We’re always looking for new talent too, so this might be a good time to hear from you!

Due to confidentiality agreements, we’re not allowed to talk about some of the games and app’s we’ve done, but we’ve worked for some really well known brands, not just in the UK but abroad as well. Below, on our blog, is a small sample of some work from the past few months that we can talk about. Bookmark this site to see our new one in a few weeks time.

Wax on, wax off.

The last couple of weeks we’ve been catching flies with chopsticks and getting a fun ninja / robot / kung-fu game together for Channel 5′s The Gadget Show and Mr Jason Bradbury. A short while ago we were approached by the lovely researchers at the Gadget Show to see if we could work with them on another project, this time for a challenge involving Suzi Perry and Jason Bradbury, two of the shows star presenters, in a casual gaming face-off!

We have until the end of March to register as many game visits as possible on the Gadget Show website, so spread the word! We want to win. Here is the game http://fwd.five.tv/adv/mechu-fu-game, make sure you Tweet, Facebook Like and check out Suzi’s game too.

On this game we assembled the finest talent that we’ve worked with. Monty Adkins composed four musical tracks, Rose Dodd provided sound effect design and placement student Joe Sharpe did a stunning job of translating Jason’s original direction into a series of animated characters and environments.

“It’s like you’ve looked into my brain and photocopied it” – Jason

Wow. What a fantastic year 2010 has been for RITH. We’ve just about re-charged our batteries thanks to a week with our families eating lots of turkey and chocolate and now it’s back to work.

It’s been a while since our last post so we thought we’d provide a little summary on what has been keeping us so busy, huddled up in our warm Huddersfield office – safe from the snow (on days we could actually get in)! Here’s what we have been up to:

University of Huddersfield iPhone app

In September we started a longterm working relationship with the University of Huddersfield, working with them to develop mobile applications to be used by new and current students, as well as staff.

Some of the features in the first version of the mobile app include:

• search staff directory
• view campus buildings on maps
• access library account and renew items
• view computer availability for study rooms

Just before Christmas we launched the iPhone version of the app which is now available to download from the app store.

In the new year we will be releasing updates for the iPhone version of the app, introducing new features, and beginning development of the Android version.

Christie’s iPad app

September was a really busy month! Our earlier partnership with Kettle NYC culminated in providing our native app development services for the Christie’s auction house iPad app.

The Christie’s iPad app has many features – users can:

• browse all of Christie’s upcoming auctions
• view lot information, images and videos
• view auction results
• learn how to buy and sell with Christie’s
• view auction house locations on maps

If you fancy yourself as a bit of an art collector you can download the Christie’s iPad app from the app store.

In 2011 we will be continuing to work with Kettle, producing updates and enhancements for the app.

Alps™ client file upload system

Alps™ is one of our oldest clients and we are continuously working with their team to expand their online services.

In October we launched the first part of a new website for Alps™ that allows their clients (over 2000 schools and colleges) to upload their data directly to Alps™’ server.

In 2011 we will be working with Alps™ to develop a full suite of browser based management tools around this new system.

EMI signed solo artist Daniel Alexander website

In December we launched a brand new website for EMI Music Publishing signed solo artist, Daniel Alexander – a soul and R&B songwriter from The Netherlands.

During 2011 we will be continuing work with Daniel to promote his upcoming single and album.

Going into the new year

We have had a fantastic year at RITH. We continued to produce work for our current clients and started relationships with some brilliant new clients. We have had the pleasure of working on some very prestigious projects and made some lovely new friends along the way.

From everyone at RITH, we hope you enjoy seeing in the new year and we look forward to meeting and working with you in 2011.

Well given our name, you could be mistaken that we do sports related things but to be quite honest we probably fare better at video game versions of athletics and doing what we do best in our spare time,  tinkering with technology!

So  how do you end up being asked by the Gadget Show on Channel 5 to do something for them on the topic of football and referee-less games using smart design?

Well it all started when we got a call from our friends Smallfry who had previously appeared as innovation and product design experts on the show and helped the hosts of the Gadget show, Jason Bradbury and Suzi Perry, go head to head in designing future wearable gadgets.

In this episode we were asked to come up with ways of detecting the offside rule and measurement of a free kick’s minimum distance between players of opposing teams using computer vision. If we’ve lost you there fear not. The process we went through is actually more exciting than the end product and the speedy turnaround and working proof of concept the real story.

This episode aired on Monday 13th of September on Channel 5 in the UK @ 8pm you can watch it here on the Channel 5 site (UK only) we start at 3m55s.

It’s been a really industrious year for us and what we dreamt of actually happened, we got so busy we haven’t had a chance to update the blog as frequently as we would have liked to!

In this our first year at Running in the Halls, lots of stuff has happened, Sam got engaged, we’ve been filmed for an episode of the Gadget Show!

…we had work featured in a national newspaper (Telegraph – Iman doesnt like the picture they took of him and the Glitch Book!) and we got to go to DIBI Conf and SXSWi in Texas and met some of our heroes and old friends!

Alison kept making games like brian and discovered a newfound love of dress making! (though she wont let us post pics!) and… she was also interviewed by PC Gamer about a month after we started!

We also pitched our ‘not so top secret’ but still in stealth mode Lemontree (which we first debuted at Mashed Liverpool) to one the UK’s largest and most successful public libraries (oww we cant talk about it yet) and worked on a few more projects we’re not allowed to talk about!

We’ve had the tremendous privilege of working with some fantastic new clients:

and the good fortune to work with some old ones like ALPS doing more funky stuff behind the scenes on their behemoth of a web app designed by our Sam.

Best of all we’ve made some amazing friends and formed great partnerships which we intend to nurture with our new directions and projects. Kettle are an award winning NY based interactive agency operating in a similar area as us with some incredible clients and Smallfry are one of the most respected names in UK product design!

We’re so proud of this little launch as well:
http://batesmill.co.uk

Being based in Bates Mill and saying hello to Ian (the Mill’s utterly amazing and interesting handyman) every morning has been pure inspiration and one of the best things that ever happened to us. We are literally operating at the point where Digital and Analogue collide and stories are formed. It’s tremendous fun doing what we do, so much so that it doesn’t feel like work.

Here’s to the future!
Love from everyone at RITH.

x

We have recently been collaborating with our new client, 4th Estate at Harper Collins to deliver an iPhone app for one of the most celebrated mathematicians in this country. Working to an extremely tight schedule on this one and pouring a lot of heart and soul into our signature pixels and code for Marcus Du Sautoy’s Number Mysteries due out in hardback next month.