Drinking and Driving

OBJECTIVE As one of the leading causes of automobile accidents and deaths, the dangers involved in DWI (Driving While Intoxicated) needs to be brought to the attention of the drivers and the general public. The ultimate goal of this project is to bring a better understanding about DWI to the public in an attempt to enforce safety on the roads. OVERVIEW ¨ New.movie This is the main movie. Start up the project from this movie. All other movies will be opened up as movies in a window. Most importantly, it contains the main menu which includes the help function (dice), navigational buttons (beeper), and the two main icons (glass & key.) As the background music, a jazz tune by Joe Pass was borrowed. Mouse clicks on the navigational tools will make highlights on the buttons (along with descriptions on the LCD) and sound off a corresponding puppet sound (note that the 'chaching' or 'cough' sound plays only while the mouse is down.) Some functions such as volume control, quit, and help are under construction. ¨ Dash.pict (dash) This frame was intended to create an interactive driver's seat in which the user can learn about the functionalities of the gauges and instruments. However, this page frame is currently under construction. Once it is finished, the following shall be available. • Each gauge and instrument will light up (rollover effect) and then give the name & a brief description of the functionality (by sound.) • Detailed information can be seen with a mouse click on the gauge which moves the frame to the next destination. • Driver's education tutorial (manual and/or automatic transmission.) ¨ Car_flash.movie (car) This movie functions as a sub-menu page frame for the 'Driving' theme. Putting the cursor on the topic bar will show a brief description of the contents in the scrolling text window. A mouse click on the sub-topic bar allows the user to move on to the detailed information on the next page. The movie has the following sub-topics. • DWI Statistics • Prevention • Cool Animations ¨ New_ball.movie (ball) A simple Director animation. The ball consists of two layers of images, a red 2D spiral image layered on top of a yellow 3D globe image. ¨ Crash.movie (crash) A Director animation created strictly from the paint window option within Director. The background music is a shrieking instrumental by Steve Vai; however, the crash sound effect was created with a midi drum machine and mixed down with sound effects through a 8-track mixer. The text can be read by clicking on the sub-topic bars. The movie has the following sub-topics. • Statistics • Laws & Regulations ¨ Collision.movie (X) A quicktime movie. Appropriately enough, a tune by Jimmy Hendrix called " Cross Town Traffic " was used. The lyrics have relevance to the traffic / driving theme. The text portion, regarding 'Prevention,' is still under construction. ¨ Glass.movie (glass) This movie also functions as a sub-menu page frame for the 'Drinking' theme. The 3-dimensional animation was created in Logomotion and was saved in a Quicktime movie format. The new.movie calls the glass.movie, and the Quicktime movie is opened as a movie in a window. The user has the option to play or stop the Quicktime movie while browsing through the text. In the background, there is a rain and bell sound which sets the grim mood ( related to the fact that alcohol is a depressant.) The movie has the following sub-topics. • Effects of Alcohol • Blood Alcohol Level (BAL) ¨ Desert.movie (desert) The still image was rendered in Photoshop. In order to create the heat wave effect, the original image was distorted. Then the distorted images were arranged in a sequence through the Director. To dramatize the dry desert sensation, an illusive tune by Pink Floyd called "Breathe" was used. The text can be read by clicking on the sub-topic bars. The movie has the following sub-topics. • What is Blood Alcohol Level • Effects of Blood Alcohol Level ¨ Windshield.movie (windsh) The still image was rendered in Photoshop. In order to create the blurry road effect, the windshield portion of the image was distorted. Then the distorted images were arranged in a sequence through the Director. The chosen music was by the Doors called " Riders in the Storm." The text can be read by clicking on the sub-topic bars. The movie has the following sub-topics. • Short-term Effects • Long-term Effects • Alcohol vs. Sexuality INTERFACE The main interface is driven by icons and image-maps which allows the user to browse through the pages of the movie. The content of the project is partitioned into two main parts: text and animation. The text portion is opened by a scrolling text window. On the initial page frames that serve as a topic menu, rollovers have been used on the text windows. In other words, the text window shows up when the mouse cursor is at the respective topic bar. This allows the user to see a brief overlook of the related topic. Once the user has selected the desired topic and clicked on the topic bar, the frame moves on to the respective page frame. As the user traverses through the page frames, there will be more sub-topics which will discuss the contents in greater detail. In order to see the full text, the user must click on the sub-tonic bar and scroll up and down the text window. Another important part of the interface is the animation. The entire project is run by the main movie called " new.movie." From this movie, calls are made to the other movies (which are in the same directory.) These movies are opened up as movies in a window which has the following advantages. First, it has duality in a sense that the movie in a window can be processing one thing, and the remaining stage can be doing a completely different thing. In this case, the movie in a window is playing an animation on the side while the user can manipulate or interact with the menu interface. Secondly, the main movie, "new.movie," stays organized as it is kept small and calls other movies into itself only when they are needed. This is analogous to the structured programming strategy: the main code is brief and makes many procedure calls. The only disadvantage of movies in a window is that it sometimes causes minor annoyances or glitches. For example, if the called movie has transitions in between frames, it will slow down the computer and make short pauses in cursor movements. Another possible error exists in the sound sprites. Let's suppose that there is a sound track playing in the called movie. When the movie is closed by the "forget movie" command, it is supposed to close down the whole movie. However, what happens is that the sequence does move on to the next frame, yet the sound is still playing in the background. The results can be devastating as the movie has the current sound and the previous sound from another movie playing simultaneously. In this situation, one way to eliminate the problem is to always have a sound file in the same rows of the sound sprites. CONCLUSION & EVALUATION At first, I was actually working on another project of the same theme. During the course of the semester, however, I came to realize that this project was lacking in many ways. I remember seeing a project done by an ITP student which gave me the inspiration to pursue this project to a greater extent. That's when I had this burning desire to boldly start over from scratch. From that moment on it was back to the drawing board. This project has an immense amount of time invested into the interface concept, and animation. I believe that I've spent as much time just thinking about the interface layout as actually working on the project itself. I was hoping to make a complete guide to 'Driving.' But it wasn't long before I realized that this was too grand of a scheme for a semester's work load. " Drinking and Driving " is only a part of my large prospective project. I regret that the semester has only so much time available. As the project stands now, many functionalities and navigation are either not yet implemented or somewhat unstable. In given time though, I am planning on continuing this project in the semesters to come. It may take more time to learn new tools and methods, but I'm also hoping to include more digital video and 3-Dimensional materials. Someday this project will be a highly interactive, informative, virtual reality environment for all types of drivers and pedestrians.