Trails of woe

I've been working on some code for our Four-week game iterations for our flash development module

the aim of the game will be something along the lines of "create chain reactions by placing trails of gunpowder (strategically?)"

Try not to repeatedly hit the walls at a very shallow angle - it will eventually get stuck.. but apart from that.. YAY!

Halloween V 1.2

I found and designed a new carving for my other pumpkin:

The problem with this pumpkin is that the walls are super thick (I don't know why) which meant very little light exiting, but I wasn't about to scrape away at the inside and ruin what I'd just carved =P

Halloween V1.1

Okay, So.. It's nearly Halloween again and after the success of the last pumpkin-hacking session, Ross Frazer and myself decided to take another go at it.
We are in the second year now, So we really had to up the stakes a little.
after a trip to the nearest supermarket and buying two pumpkins each, we went about trying to find some plans or designs for pumpkins... Which.. is not is great supply might I add.
After hours of searching for things we might like on our pumpkins we came across a few contenders;

Similar to, but not actual picture I used
 (this is much more detailed)

I first tried the Ironman design; We'd decided that to improve the pumpkins, we would try shaving parts off the pumpkins to try and get different variations of light passing through the flesh.

In theory, we thought that although fiddly, we hoped this method would be easier because you wouldn't have floaty-bits of pumpkin which were threatening to break off at any moment.

I knew I had bitten off more than I could chew as soon as I tried to cut out the eyes of Ironman and they merged in the middle. in my defence, that design might have worked out if I had a bigger pumpkin and a bigger design. I'm a student: I can't afford big pumpkins, so parts of the pumpkin continued to merge together as I cut away at the shoulders until I had something that resembled a Nun.

At this point I gave up and threw in the towel. Well, kind of - What I actually cleverly did was stop before I completely ruined the pumpkin so that I could salvage another design on the back of the pumpkin, while pondering what I had learnt from the first attempt.

Lessons:

• No more than about 3 different depths
• Medium detail, so shading
• No Nuns
• Plan which bits to cut out
• you don't need to cut very deep to get the effect of part-light (literally millimetres) 

I took a look at my second prospective picture; It had several problems - rough edges, lines that don't join, tiny teeth and a horrible tongue-like-thing.

I thought I'd try my hand at image editing.

Venom - Pumpkin Template: stealer's will die!

First thing I did was import the picture into flash, smooth the lines, and go over everything with an eraser. Then I added an outer circle. most of the rest was making lines thicker, changing colours and removing the tongue. I wasn't sure about the teeth so I left them in just in case.

Well, I was pleased in how it ended up.

While I carved, I found I had to sacrifice teeth for an open mouth as I feared. I did the spider emblem in two parts, and by the time I got to the second half (left half) it was hard to tell where the marks I made for the legs actually were, so I had to kind of make it up on the spot... 

Anyway, enough rambling, here it is:

  Epic - Just how I like it!

Anyway, I'd better go and find something else equally or more amazing to carve on my other pumpkin!

Cogs!

I've been doing some modelling for my 'Anymation' module:

I'm really happy with how it's going, It's quite rewarding to do too... I'm still trying to decide how I'm going to calculate the spin speed of the bearings inside of the helical Cog... It's probably something to do with Pi, Circumference, radius and ratio - ...In any order or combination.
I managed to get all of the other speeds sorted though!

I'm thinking about using a tutorial I found on iridescent car paint and applying it to my cogs - I'm not sure how that will work out, but it will be interesting to find out!

My cogs need more detail.

MOAR!

Ideas Via Mike Bambury

A while ago, Mike Bambury (Art Director at Sony's London Studio) game a guest lecture on creating ideas - New or unique ideas rather than the reprocessed or influenced ideas we often see around us. It was a simple lecture but yet it was very interesting and useful.

Mike covered three ways of creating or processing ideas;

"Random Entry"
Mike explained random entry as thinking of a selection of random words and then somehow linking them (apparently something our brains are pretty good at doing).
For instance - 'Castle', 'Clouds', 'Rocket Propelled Grenade' could come up with lots of very random or interesting situations; A castle in the clouds, shooting RPG's into clouds, a rocket propelled castle, Evil clouds holding a castle to siege?
One of the examples which were given (amongst other things) was the moon - and yet somebody linked the moon with cheese - for belief that the moon itself is made of cheese, which displays the point that the human mind can link almost anything with something else.

Using this method is quick, and a few simple links can soon be expand upon in order to make concepts or stories to kick start an idea.

Concept Extraction

The easiest way of describing concept extraction is thinking of the world as a hierarchy - concept extraction is basically getting a bunch of ideas and finding a common factor and taking it up a notch in that hierarchy.

for example - Goblin, Griffin, Fairy, Minotaur would all fit into the category 'mythical creatures' whereas pogo stick, car, aeroplane, penny-farthing would all fit into the category of transport or methods of travel.

this method not only helps separate completely unrelated, unusable ideas from a main concept, but it also helps find other things which are related to your current ideas by backtracking; for instance, if you backtrack from transport you will also get boats, hovercraft, rockets scooters and trains.

Provocation

Provocation is the last way of generating ideas that mike talked about - Provocation is basically taking what we expect, or the norm, and switching it on its head. For instance - we expect a FPS to have guns and enemies and we expect a racing game to have a track and finish gates - So if we took one or more of these aspects of game play away, we would have done this method justice.

For instance, 'Upgrade complete' is a flash shooting game, however - It doesn't have any of the expected parts which are usually required in such a game - you have to upgrade and buy all of the parts of the game in order to play it. (Not the best example of provocation, but a good start).

http://armorgames.com/play/3955/upgrade-complete

http://armorgames.com/play/11028/upgrade-complete-2

So - In conclusion, a pretty interesting and useful lecture really!

KS1 Essay

This is my essay I wrote on the design issues we faced during the development of our key stage 1 game this year. Enjoy!


---


Key Stage 1 Game Development


'With particular reference to the readings you have undertaken this year what are the major design issues you have faced in developing a game for Key Stage 1 children '


There will always be design issues to face when designing and making games. This essay is about the main design issues we faced or had to consider whilst developing our game for Key Stage 1 children.
We decided to choose the part of the curriculum about Circuits and electricity;


‘Pupils should be taught:
About everyday appliances that use electricity
About simple series circuits involving batteries, wires, bulbs and other components [for example, buzzers, motors]
How a switch can be used to break a circuit.’ (National Curriculum:2011)


Very early during the development of our game we decided that the concept was going to be a circuit creation/completion game based on the already established “pipe dream” style game.
One of the first design issues we faced when developing this idea was the game idea and mechanics - or in short, what actually defines the game and makes it work. Due to the new ideas and concepts that needed to be added from the curriculum, the game needed to be very different from the game it was originally based from. Our design had so many new and different aspects that needed to be added, we almost had to completely make the game idea from scratch - and while doing so, made a game idea which was over-complicated and had lots of loose ends. We needed a minimum baseline for what was needed in a game. Costikyan splits games and gameplay into several separate chunks; 'Interaction', 'Goals' and 'Structure' in order to help us understand and break down games.
Costikyan defines interaction as how ‘the game state changes in response to your decisions’ (Costikyan, 2002: 11). Interaction could be as simple as a button to take you to the next page, or Movement of graphics with the keyboard. However, Costikyan also says that ‘Interaction has no game value in itself. Interaction must have a purpose’ (Costikyan, 2002: 11) and therefore goals are made to create a purpose for the interaction. For example, adding a high score, achievements or adding a time limit on top of some simple functions (such as clicking a few buttons) would give an aim or goal to the interactivity present. The addition of goals gives rise to decision making – players will start to make decisions based on which option will benefit them most in order to reach the goal. In order for the game to be interesting, there needs to be some aspect of Competition or struggle when making these decisions; Costikyan writes that there is no thrill in victory if there is no struggle to get there - What is the point in taking option 'B.' if 'A.' is always better. There are many ways to create struggle within a game – It can range from competition from a human opponent to puzzles or restrictions. Structure is also very important in games, Costikyan defines game structure as 'The means by which a game shapes player behavior' (Costikyan, 2002: 20), this may involve pushing the story along or any other type of progression toward the ultimate goal of the game. Costikyan believes 'A game’s structure creates its own meanings.' And he refers to this as ‘Endogenous meaning’ (Costikyan, 2002: 22).


Using the above we decided our game would be a simple drag and drop game using the mouse. It is comprised of a grid, a way to rotate tiles in 90 degree increments and a set of straight and corner tiles which can be moved and onto the grid and snap in place. This was the basic interactivity starting point.
We also decided some goals and rules to our game. these included; "Tiles cannot be placed unless directly or indirectly connected to a power source", "You must go through all electrical components", "You must complete a circuit to win". The main goal turned from a puzzle into a time trial; instead of finding a way to complete the circuit, you have to do it in the fastest time possible, changing the game from a puzzle to a competitive puzzle and simultaneously making the player struggle toward victory – Against time. Lastly, we added some structure to the game – We added a main character related to the theme (an electrician), and a related place he could work in (a house) and added toys that he could fix – The toys acted as levels and the rooms as “game worlds” – giving a basic structure and movement to the game. We decided that for good work the electrician could hand out medals, which would provide some much needed 'Endogenous meaning' to our game.
The fact that we did not have this knowledge when developing our game meant we had a problem because the game idea was missing or lacking critical aspects and was not at all simple – giving knock-on effects to the rest of the game.


Before we explored Costikyan's simple component guide to games, we had a very simple but reasonably unique game idea "learn, by designing and building circuits within a restricted area". This is a perfectly good game idea, but it will not necessarily make the game 'fun' to play. Falstein explores different types of fun and how it relates to our human nature. He talks about how 'Games are a specialized form of play' (Falstein, N: 2004: 1) and that play is so historic that it is found in other species. He splits games into three ancestral groups; 'Physical Fun', 'Social Fun' and 'Mental Fun'.


Falstein talks about how physical fun is related to survival skills and physical strength - 'Hunters'; Sports, for instance are a primary example of how the use and maintenance of strong muscles and co-ordination provides instinctual great interest for some people. Another aspect of 'Physical fun' is collecting and gathering things; whether it be hearts, coins, stars or Pokémon - 'Gatherers'. Other aspects which fall under Physical fun include Exploring - e.g. 'finding the best places to get specific resources', and tool use. Falstein doesn't just refer to tool use as the regular axe's and hammers that would usually jump to mind; 'abstractions of tool use in simulations of complex machinery like flight simulators, racing games and military vehicle simulations' (Falstein, N: 2004: 2) are also stemmed from ancient tool skills.


He describes Social fun as 'social gathering-type activities like shopping, trading collectible items of all sorts, chatting about where to locate bargains, or who throws the best parties, and even just pure social-bonding activities like going to parties or gossiping with friends' (Falstein, N: 2004: 2) . He states that in social activities, 'We don't have to see something first hand to learn about it, we can hear or read about it instead'. For instance you might learn through social activities that there are more fish in certain parts of a river, or that it is less dangerous to do something another way. Social activities can also involve storytelling which can include all types of learning which has been used to transfer knowledge throughout the years.
The last type of fun that Falstein refers to is mental fun. Mental fun refers to the exercise of 'perception and manipulation of patterns' (Falstein, N: 2004: 2). For obvious reasons, problem solving and finding patterns in things was a very useful trait in our ancestors. it just so happens that the use of mental fun was also very useful in our Key stage 1 game as it fit very well with the style of game. We also used some components from other types of fun such as collecting from 'social fun' and exploring from 'physical fun'. Falstein refers to this as 'blended fun' as more than one type is usually used at any one time. Before we applied these principals to this game design, we found it very difficult to make the game as educational as we might have liked - the use of Falstien's 'natural funativity' has meant that use of learning processes that have been used for thousands of years are being used in our game; And after all - If it has worked for that long, it is good enough for our game.
As well as Costikyan, Doug Church also talks about several aspects of games. One of these is ‘Perceivable consequence’ and describes it as 'A clear reaction from the game world to the action of the player.' (Church, D, 1999: 4). This basically means that due to the use of ‘Perceivable consequence’ within the game, 'When players attempt to do something and it goes wrong, they are likely to realize why it went wrong' (Church, D. 1999: 4). One of the huge problems we had during the development of our game was that it was hard to describe and/or show what the player could and couldn’t do, and why - which is very important for younger users in a game based around learning. There were many rules that were designed so that players couldn’t place circuit pieces that didn’t join, which either blocked off other parts of the circuit or were general "illegal moves"; but we had no 'perceivable consequence' implemented for if it was wrong. We used the main character as a mentor to give correction tips, and by making use of colour changes and sounds to give feedback on correct gameplay we made sure that the game had a sufficient amount of perceivable consequence for young learning children. An interactive tutorial was added to the game in order to back up ideas about how the game works and to generate some perceivable consequence before the game actually starts. This is mainly because it would be very frustrating for a small child to learn how the game works, while simultaneously trying to get a high score. By having an interactive tutorial it practically gives the player a level to play at their own pace in which they can begin to understand the game before moving on to the levels that ‘count’.
Doug also talks about the use of story in games – 'The narrative thread, whether designer-driven or player-driven, that binds events together and drives the player forward toward completion of the game.' (Church, D, 1999: 5). In this case, ‘story’ doesn’t just refer to the narrative seen in books; the narrative found in games is often influenced by the game itself, or different outcomes are created by different actions. Getting all these different events or options planned out and combined and coherent into a story is often a difficult task, especially when aiming toward younger audiences; as we found with the development of our game. One of the first things we needed to do was to find and decide why the player was putting seemingly random circuits together for no apparent reason. There were many ways we resulted in doing this; one of these was creating a story in which the target audience could relate to - In fact, the player actually became part of the story - Creating an additional 'immersive' aspect to the gameplay. We did this by creating a narrative in which the player was "Assisting" the main character by completing circuits and subsequently fixing things. This in itself is a simple idea but gives an effective meaning to the game. By using a setting such as a house in the narrative and familiar objects such as toys, means that the player can relate more to the game and its contents.
Of course, these are only a few of the problems we faced during the development of the design of this game - and we faced many more while working with the group, during communication and even during the creation of the game itself. However these other issues, unlike some of the above design problems, can often only be solved by perseverance and learning from mistakes. By reading and understanding the design of games themselves, most of the problems stated above, can be minimized - or even removed completely.


Bibliography


Costikyan, G. 2002. I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games. Proceedings of Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference. pp. 9 – 33.


Church, D. (1999) Gamasutra, Formal Abstract Design Tools. [Online] Available at:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3357/formal_abstract_design_tools.php [Accessed: 20 April 2011].


National Curriculum (2011) Science key stage 1: Sc4 Physical processes. [Online] Available at: http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/key-stages-1-and-2/subjects/science/keystage1/index.aspx [Accessed: 20 April 2011].


Falstein, N. 2004. Gamasutra, Natural Funativity. [Online] Available at:
http://www.jnoodle.com/careertech/files/funativity.pdf [Accessed: 20 April 2011].

Stumble To London

A little while ago, perhaps a little longer, we took a trip to London to take a look at some of the artefacts in the British museum which are related to our course. Amongst them was a The Lewis Chessmen, some counter pieces, the royal game of Ur and various other game related artefacts.

Lewis Chessmen

The array of artefacts gave a great perspective to the length and breadth of games throughout the eras, the ways of playing games and the reasons behind them. However, that aside; That is not what this blog is about, and neither (surprisingly) the main point of interest, or learning of our trip... For me, anyway.

Readers may be a little disheartened; but never fear - In the world of Sean Edwick, You just end up seeing things completely differently to everyone, resulting in slight deviations in outcomes.

The first of any deviations on the trip to London was Architecture.

Now let me explain; I was born in Felixstowe, and have lived in it ever since - It typically consists of 99.5% square, pointy-roof, red-brick houses. For somebody who likes pretty and interesting architecture (though specific reason cannot be found) going to London was very interesting and eye-opening - Despite having a rubbish camera and taking photos at jogging pace.

Perrrty!

I got told I looked like a stereotypical Japanese tourist several times.

So why did I take so many pictures of random parts of buildings and ceilings? Well, when designing things, I usually start from simple shapes, or combination of shapes, and build from there. I find architecture has a wide range of wonderful shapes which often aren't used in many other places - A great point of inspiration if you are in need of a strange set of assets for a game with no preconceived ideas.

Okay, so that was a slight deviation - Some of the pictures taken seen above.

The second deviation we took was the side-trip to the science museum. I say a side trip - it was a pretty long visit, and we managed to visit every part of the building (which I was told by my mother was impossible in a day)

The science museum was wonderful - I mean, I haven't been there since I was knee-high (and we all know how much attention we pay at knee-high-hight). Yes, the science museum was sciency; I've always been interested in science - but there was something else of interest - Interactivity.

By now we should all know that Costikyan talks about interactivity as one of the main key points of games (just thought I'd put that there).

Anyway, This interactivity - It was mostly only small things; like a button which turned a motor or played sounds - But it made an incredible difference to how people learn, and even interact with each-other; visitors actually discussed (with people they don't know) and learnt about the contents of the museum. The closest the British museum has to interactivity is the 'play' button on the anti-sociable headphones you can use to read for you.Now, I know many people go to such places for quiet (however little there may be) and to look at shiny things in glass cabinets - But you are also able to do that in the science museum. I'm pretty sure that if Ipswich museum an have some simple quizzes and puzzles to enforce facts about artefacts and how they are found, a massive museum in London could too.

So, Now I shall continue to talk about another aspect of the science museum - Games and digital quizzes.
Although they often look complicated and expensive - Below the covers of the moulded plastic covers is a PC monitor displaying a flash game and a few buttons; and yet, these simple games and quizzes can be, and usually are much more effective than plaques and sounds. Why?
I believe that the reason games such as 'flood simulator' or quizzes such as 'what personality type are you and why?' (typical types of games found in the science museum) are so popular and (probably) better at getting information across to visitors is that they cater for almost every audience (well, if it is designed well!). A digital quiz or game can be visually seen for hard of hearing and it can often be simplified or picturised for older and younger audiences. On top of this, such media can show things that wouldn't normally be able to show (size, cost), show things at speeded up rates or see instantly the different effects that choices have on things.

So when all is said and done; If you are reading this British museum - Yes; I am willing to design you some educational games, but not right now - I have assessments to do. ;-)


the last thing I have to talk about is the interactive stuff; as I've said, I don't remember much about the science museum from when I was knee-high, but I remember running around like a headless chicken while running from demonstration to demonstration - hyper on fruit-shoots.

Note these pretty tubes - displaying viscosity and bubble-size; My health bars for my coding project are now designed on a similar principal.

Note the electronic circuits - A bit late, but probably would have been a good start for our circuitry group project.

Note - This is a pretty good idea for a flash game - The aim is to place the hoops in the same position as the ball bounce.

So yeah, that is all - It took me long enough to write!

Bibliography, Finally!

Bibliography

Books:

Schrieber, I.; Brathwaite, B; 2009. Challenges for Game Designers. Charles River Media: Boston.

Scott, R; 2010. Level up!: The guide to great video game design. John Wiley & Sons: Chichester

Articles:

Zagal, J. Fernández – Vara, C. Mateas, M. 2008. Rounds, Levels, and Waves: The Early Evolution of Gameplay Segmentation. Games and Culture. Volume 3 Number 2

Venturelli, M. 2009. Space of Possibility and Pacing in Casual Game Design: A PopCap Case Study. VIII Brazilian Symposium on Games and Digital Entertainment.

Contributions: 

Caillois, R. 'The Definition of Play: The Classification of Games', Salen, K., Zimmerman, E., The Game Design Reader, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

If I find another contribution I can soon put it in... but it's about finding them rather than typing them out correctly... I think...

Bits And Bobs

Okay, so this morning I spent some more quality time with several pages of code and updated my "Epic Dragon" flash game. it took a while to figure some things out, but I now have a map and enemies (skeletons) which have health, attack, move, die and spawn. I also have a use for the wings of the Dragon (explore a wider area of the map by holding space) and improved moment for the dragon. The dragon now has functioning health and so on. The skeletons currently have a newly discovered disease which means they die after a short period of time; don't worry, it isn't contagious and it also helps dwindle their numbers.

Here is the game so far:

Move with the mouse
Click to shoot (not functional yet)
Hold space to fly around the map
(I think the old link in the posts below has been overwritten)

on top of this I have also improved on my 3D model of the Space needle. It now has a considerably complex and detailed incomplete tower structure beneath. I'm dreading adding to this more because I have considerably less pictures and angles of the tower platforms and the building on the ground. also the remaining parts of the tower are a rather odd shape...

Anyway, here it is:

View of the real thing

I'm also deciding whether or not to make the lift cars too; I've added the lift rails to the tower though.

In other news - I have seen the first sign of sun this week, you almost forget what sun is like during the winter... So I went out on my bike and took some pictures!

A photo taken at the viewing point in Felixstowe... Directly into the sun.

I had a couple of people that liked these photos (there is more than one, but they are very similar). They also told me that telling them I simply placed my mirrored sunglasses over the top of my phone camera and shot into the sun ruined the mental illusion for them. (You notice you can see the reflection outline of the phone camera lens to the right of the sun)

Furthermore... After a long time of searching and various other things, i got my hands on a decent guitar for a reasonable price:

And now I have to learn how to play the thing!

To be honest, so far it hasn't gone so bad, and after spending years trying to get my head around how to play a keyboard reasonably, I'm hoping it's not going to be such a drain. My fingers need to man-up though, the strings feel like cheese-wire and still hurt!

Coming soon, Possibly - Our trip to London!

Epic Dragon Test

 -=Here it is!=-

(Hopefully it should work!)

Oooh, Pretty!

I've been doing quite a lot of stuff lately, so I thought that I might show y'all.

Unfortunately (or fortunately), Most of the work i do these days seems to be code-based; and I'm pretty sure everybody doesn't wasn't to see 10 pages of solid code-gibberish, So I'll just show you the pretty stuff instead!

Really, the world seems quite unfair to coders; nobody ever sees the streams code that drove them to their inevitable insanity...

The first thing I've started work on again is my Dragon!

I'm very proud of my Dragon - I've got it following the mouse cursor and it articulates all the way down its body accordingly. I also spent many hours last week playing with animation and I eventually managed to make the animation for the wings; after adding code this week the wings now open and close varying amounts by holding down or releasing the space bar!

Here you can see the Dragon with folded wings!

The Dragon also now launches fireballs on the click of the mouse! They currently grow in size over time, but I'm hoping to set it so that the duration that mouse is held down as the size and damage of the fireball.

You may also notice that each fireball above looks different; this is because I added animation to it which gives the effect of backspin.

If Epic Dragons and fireballs are not your thing, perhaps Architecture might be instead - I am currently recreating the Seattle Space Needle in 3DS Max. So far I'm thoroughly enjoying it because things are actually going to plan:

Experementation

I've just spent a while trying to get used to 3ds Max:

 

This actually took a couple of hours, but I had an earlier version which didn't turn out right which took me weeks. Easy when you know how.

3D - My Way

I've been making 3D models for a while now; I started by making user content packs for Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 (helped with coding too), then to Technical 3D models for Product design, then I started trying to make pretty things and trying to combine animations with it. I haven't done much 3D work recently, partly because of workload and lack of imagination, but mainly because my computer really can't handle the workload of spending hours on a heavy program, then rendering for god knows how long, and saving. Y'see - I didn't use to have this problem, but it seems my ambitions and progression have very quickly bypassed my current computer specs.

However,my computer CAN run Google Sketchup.

Yes - Google Sketchup. Despite progressing in every way, I still stick to Google Sketchup for creating my models - Even if I end up importing it into other programs to finish the job. I have an uhh... 'unique' method of creating 3D models, and Sketchup seems to cater for them perfectly.

So, what is 'Unique'?
I honestly don't know - I regularly get asked 'how do you do that', and I just end up saying ' I dunno...' it's possibly the one of the hardest things to explain... but, it obviously works - but probably just for me.
all I know is that it includes;

• Splitting up everything I see, or want to model the world into thousands of simple shapes.
• Finding patterns in these shapes, even if there are none apparent.
• Modularising everything.
• Creating everything to exact decimal accuracy: 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125 all the way down to.. about 0.001 (or any multiples which don't include huge strings of random numbers like "73.57924..."... *shivers*)

"I'm sorry, did you just say you want to rotate that component on an unknown axis in an unknown point in space to 'about there' and then move that vertex 'a little to the right'? Step away from the computer. Now."


Anyway! I thought I'd make a little something, take pictures along the way so you can try and understand my strange ways and fail, and then guess what the hell it is. Fun? Yes!

Here I am simply segmenting the half-sphere into appropriate bits to fit the shapes in my reference pictures, simple right? No. I calculated exactly how many segments I would need (32) so I didn't have to unevenly split segments later.

adding small shapes to what I have. Technically it was two lines to make the points, then copying them around every 45 degrees. Notice how they fir exactly to the segments and have the height of exactly three-quarters of a segment.

There was quite a big step missing from above - It basically involved copying what I already had and expanding it by exactly 0.05, then I joined the outer and inner bits to amke it sticky- outy

Another View

The above might look like the same thing, but I actually expanded the sphere again and made the middle dome so it stuck out a little bit extra. what you also might not have noticed is that the edges of the spike ring are all now curved, as are the middle dome edges.

I copied all of what I made and rotated it 180 degrees to create the other end of the model (which is very similar), the above three photos show me creating a slice, intersecting it with the dome and then removing it to create a screw-head type-thing.

Whole back end with some block colour added

It's hard to explain what went on above - I basically made a small and basic LED-shaped component, precisely positioned and angled it flush with the sphere and then cut a hole in the sphere. I then rounded the edge of the hole and copied it around several times.

Front end with block colour - If you look closely you can probably see the rounded edges of the LED-holes.

Side view of both ends

I then started making the middle segments; This is where the whole 32-segment sphere came in - if the object has 8 sticky-out segments and 8 - inner segments... that makes 16 slices, that means 2 segments per slice which will make the segments slightly rounded rather than flat. Got it? Good.

This is the pattern for each segment. the problem I found was that the pattern isn't flat, it's embedded into the sphere at different depths - This creates slight problems,especially when the item is a sphere - you can't just embed everything on one axis like you would with a box because the angles of the sides are all different and.. well... Lots of other stuff. The point is that my 'unique' methods do not cater for this so I devised a new way of doing it which conformed. - I drew it once on a face of a sphere (so it was curved) and then drew lines down to the centre of the sphere from all parts of the pattern - it means if you lower the pattern equally on these lines, it's the equivalent of scaling down, only you can do it for specific aspects of the pattern

it's hard to explain, but you can see - the pattern is at different heights in different places because I varied how far down into the sphere I drew the pattern lines... Anyway - I give up on explaining that.
 

I made a screw/bolt and did it the same as I did for the LED's

I copied and rotated the pattern around 22.5 degrees, then flipped and rotated it.

then i copied and rotated both 8 times

 

And then I added some block colours.

The model isn't actually finished yet - it's basically the main shapes - It's missing detail and textures and loads of other stuff, but I don't think my computer can handle such things a the moment.

Have fun guessing what it is!