Whatbird.com

Yes we will add more choices in the new version with multiple difficulty levels. And one of the levels will remove the "glints" as well. Thanks for trying it out.

Your right those voices saying correct are too loud, I will lower the volume on them. We are optimizing the graphics and sounds, please try the Mountains habitat if you can, that one has been optimized so it should load much faster. If it doesnt please let me know.

I have a suggestion about the visual hints.  I think it would be more realistic, and fun, if the birds were  hidden by leaves, grass, a tree, stump, rock, or cloud, etc.  Then with each hint, the bird would move slightly from behind the obstruction, revealing a little more of the bird each time. 

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Julianne Bockius

Thats a very good idea. The problem however is for that to work we would have to anchor the bird to the object that they are on, and somehow build pices of that objects image into the bird image. It can be done but it would be very hard to easily move the birds around, and my long term goal is to make it so YOU can pick the birds with a development system using our database. So I came up with these ideas, one of which is like yours, and another which is different, what do you think:

Visual hints and the binoculars

 

What would be very cool is if instead of having visual hints that simply change transparency we combined the visibility feature with the binoculars. The idea here is to make this more like real life.

 

Suppose when you wanted a visual hint you used the binoculars and there was no V button. Rather then having transparency as the effect, instead we make the bird out of focus (not the background which would as you say be CPU intensive). Each time you magnify the bird it becomes more in focus. We may or may not want to remove points for using the binoculars depending on the level of difficulty.

 

Another more complex solution is that we don’t use the focus affect. First time you used them the bird becomes partly visible, like the old Visual hint works. But imagine that instead of simply magnifying the bird the binoculars magnified only a part of the bird, like the head or the tail. And it would not be fully opaque, you would see a partially transparent head the first time you tried to focus on the bird. Each time you increase the magnification you would see more of the bird, maybe its tail and head on 1.5X and a little less transparent, and maybe finally the whole body on 4X. This would make the game more of a challenge and be similar to what happens in nature, when you use binoculars its often you don’t get a perfect view of the bird, because its moving, or obscured by a branch, or the lighting is too dark.

 

For this to work I was thinking we could use regions or masks on the birds body that are changed in visibility when the binoculars are used, so I don’t have to have multiple images for the bird (body head, tail). Otherwise we might have to put different parts of the bird on different layers and align them which would be pretty hard and time consuming.

 

But between these two ideas I like the out of focus idea best because it does not require a lot of changes in the XML.

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BTW I would like your opinon on this debate I am having with a game developer, see the end of this thread:

http://www.whatbird.com/forums/forums/2/2895/ShowThread.aspx

I recevied this today and I thought it was a wonderful message. She also has a good idea about a habitat geared to local birds in a suburban area

"I liked the "what bird is this?" game very much; will you include birds that are more common to suburban homes?  I would love to become more acquainted with the little creatures in my own backyard, and know that many cities (at least here in Texas) are including greenbelts in their urban planning.  I have lived in suburban homes all my 46 years, over 40 of them in Texas, and I just now became acquainted with the pretty little gray-brown-and-coral housefinch. I also like your music. Thanks for a great website, and for helping the rest of us appreciate the beauty of the world around us.  It has made my enjoyment of my own life richer. - Lynne"

 

Thanks to David Lukas I have replaced most of the birds in the Marsh and Mountain environments, and added birds that are more likely to be found in those habitats. Please try them out and let me know if you see the improvments.

Mountains

Marsh

Return Visitors: If you are visiting this site a second time, in order to see the new changes we have made you will need to clear your browser of the old page that it stored. In Internet Explorer (X) go to the menu Tools->Internet Options... and click the button called "Delete Files" under the General Tab.

 

Wanted to give an update one the Bird P I game (you havent forgot about have you :) ). Last week I was about to receive the next beta from the programmer, but I didnt hear from him. Then a few days later his sister wrote me an email explaining he had broke his leg and was in the hospital!

He lives in Slovania, so I guess mountain climbing is a big deal there. Anyway a week went by and I did not hear anything and I was starting to get nervous that maybe it was even more serious, but today I heard from him. He is back home and has two bolts in his leg. The good news he told me was that he won't be going to school for a few weeks and was going to just focus on the game.

So I should have the next phase to post on the web site in a few days. Its going to be really cool, lots of changes, like binoculars that flip up like you are bringing them to your eyes and have a true focus control, different difficulty levels, volume control for the background music, more preferences you can control, and a lot more.

Stay tuned, I will let you know here when it is ready.

The new beta for the Bird P. I. Game is ready, you can try it here. Be sure and read the instructions so you understand all its new features.

I hope you let me know your impressions in this forum.

Hi Mitch,

Tried the new BETA for the Bird P.I. Game.   Problem: screen is all grey - no game.  I get all the colored buttons and can switch between scenes on the small screen at bottom, but no big screen picture at all.  Any clues?  This is a brand new computer as of this weekend, so I did not have any of the older versions on this computer. 

Thanks!!

Ginny Alfano

                                                                                                           

 

 

 

Sorry about that Ginny, lets see if we can get it running. First I was working on the game today and there was a short period of time when the screen did not come up and just showed the dark metal gray background. So try it again and see if it works now. If not - since this is a new computer have you verified that you have Flash 8 and not an eariler version? Once we know that answer I can dig more.

Hi Mike -

Thanks for your quick reply.  I definately do have Flash 8 - no problem there.  I just went back on the site as you suggested, but no change.  Still has the dark metal background.  By the way, I tried the original version and loved it.  What a great program!  Any chance you might do a warbler version?  That would be a tremendous learning tool for songs.  I always get confused by them. 

Take care, and thanks again for a great program.  Maybe we'll get the beta version up and running yet!!

Ginny Alfano

This is the new URL for the game beta:

http://www.whatbird.com/gamebeta/game.aspx

Make sure you select a habitat and click the blue habitat start button in the lower right. The binocular selector is not working yet but lots of other stuff is.

We may do lots of different versions of this game, just  trying to sort out what to do next, and to get an editor working so we can make development go faster.

I tried the newest version of the game today.  I used the hard level (no picture and no glint) on the mountain and marsh habitats, and found that the bird sounds didn't work as well as I remembered them on the older versions.  The list of choices showed up on the screen before the sound of the bird.  The sound got louder as the target neared the middle of the screen on a horizontal pan, but the volume didn't change with the vertical movement of the screen. Therefore I couldn't tell whether the invisable bird was in the sky, on the ground, or in a tree or bush.

I liked using the binoculars and the realistic way they focus.  I was able to scroll through the different types of binoculars, and the "buy" button took me to the eStore, but I couldn't understand what the "try" button was supposed to do.

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Julianne Bockius

Julianne:

Turns out we introduced some bug in the game that we are chasing down right now. Regarding the sound getting louder as the bird comes into view, I think that is working just as it did before. I certainly dont  remember that it changed when the screen was moved vertically.  I dont remember the timing of the list of choices for the bird name, but why would it matter when that appeared?

Glad you like the binoculars. You are correct about the "Try"button, it really makes no sense, at one time it was going to be the way we selected the binoculars but then we modifed that so it is selected with the blue button.

We should have a new version up there realy soon.

For some reason I had a little trouble getting the bird sound to start when I started the game -- I think I didn't click on the screen after I clicked the start button.  Anyway, I was a bit confused by the list of choices being on the screen when I couldn't hear any bird. 

I think it would be better if the bird sounds did vary in volume when the screen is move vertically as well as horizontally, because when the binoculars are used, it is a litttle hard to find the bird.  Hard is good, but having the sound volume signal "warmer and colder" would be fun.

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Julianne Bockius