Posting about the Future Melbourne project on Evillagemelbourne.com.au

I just posted about the project here;

http://evillagemelbourne.com.au/viewtopic.php?p=434#434

Please feel free to add your bit!

Here is the post;

Hi all,

I have signed up to let you know of a project we are working on and will be submitting.
I will post this under the 'Big Idea' section as it seems to cover many of the topics discussed.

I work as a teacher at Victoria University in the field of virtual reality and in particular Second Life. One of the class assignments is for the students to create a small 'town' with it's own past, culture, secrets, characters, landmarks etc.

The Gaming class at the beginning of this semester chose to build a futuristic Melbourne, without being aware of this futuremelbourne.com.au project.
The town is currently under construction(after 10 weeks of learning and planning), and will be completed in 7 weeks.

The town will only actually 'replicate' a small area of Melbourne, around Flinders Street Station from Swanston Street to Elizabeth.

To quickly summarise what the town is about, it's a fairly evil kind of post apocalyptic Melbourne, which is very creative but also makes a lot of comments about todays society.

To read the full background, as well as dozens of ideas, here is the Creative Director of the projects class blog;
http://atomictophat.blogspot.com/

My class blog can be found here;
http://oztron.blogspot.com (this is for several classes and projects)
With links to all of the IST Flinders Class student blogs on the left hand side.

Below are some images of what the students are building so far.


Flying limousines, the choice of the future rich


A tram under construction (no textures) - there will be a tram drag race feature


Flinders Street Station under construction


Post apocalyptic train under construction


'Killex' turnstiles for the station


A 'Killex' death bot ticket inspector

This entire environment will be online and interactive. It will be completed and open to the public in seven weeks and will have a website which will explain how people can visit as well as a lot more background about this particular Future Melbourne.

If anyone has any enquiries please feel free to post here, as we will be checking regularly, or alternately you can email me at dale (at) oztron.com.

Story for St Albans Stadium - WM1

An almighty roar went up from the crowd. The mighty Victorian Blues had done it again.
It had been 5 years since State or 'Sheffield Shield' cricket had came to St Albans, after the MCG had refused to drop it's ground fees despite a failing economy.
Now, in 1938, the stadium was flourishing. Fans from all over the state made their way down to the ground each weekend, eager to escape the depressing reality of modern life.

Jesse Jones was one such man. Raised in nearby Brooklyn, he loved nothing more than coming down to the St Albans Stadium for a beer or two on a Sunday afternoon. This was his church, where, as the saying goes, he healed his heart.

Jesse worked in the nearby wool factory, bailing wool by hand 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, for barely a threepence. It was a tough way to earn a quid, but one that he had learned to accept pretty quickly. Unemployment in the local area was as high as 90%, and only the foolhardy would dare knock back any form of work.

Jesse headed towards the train station as part of the heaving mass which was squeezing itself out of the stadium. The platform was packed, the trains running late as usual. Several people were nearly bowled over by the force of the wind as the V-Line steam train came belting through without warning or stopping. An tiny old italian man, one of Jesses neighbours, was selling some fruit from a cart towards the end of the platform.

Jesse was always hearing about about 'those Italians.' 'Eyeties' the guys at the factory called them, complaining about their jobs being taken, and wondering what they thought they were doing here. “It's not their bloody country mate,” Bob, one of Jesses mates would lament, “My father fought those bastards now they come here.”

Bob's father had actually fought alongside many Italians, but there has never been any need to let the truth get in the way of prejudice.

Jesse himself didn't really care. They seemed to just want a better life. None of them had taken his job yet, and he reckoned if they ever could they probably deserved it. The old gentleman with the stall would give free fruit to all of his neighbours, including Jesses family.

Unfortunately most men were not like Jesse.

Gathering around the fruit stall and the little old Italian man were a group of youths, intoxicated by both alcohol and victory. They were demanding to know who won the cricket. “Who won mate, come on who won, you shouldn't be in our country if you don't know who won,” said a tall blonde boy with a pencil thin mustache. “Go back to your own country,” chanted others.

Jesse approached the group before having second thoughts and slowing to a halt. Was it any of his business, he wondered?

The tall blonde boy lashed out, kicking the old mans fruit stall towards the tracks. The old man protested, but it was to no avail. The other boys in the mob joined in, pushing the old man back and the cart forwards, until it toppled onto the tracks, it's valued cargo falling amonsgst the rocks and rubbish. People dived on the tracks, grabbing apples, oranges, tomatoes, whatever they could get.

Jesse walked over towards the old Italian man, who was looking in disbelief at the mob of people down on the tracks taking his fruit away, wondering how he was ever going to pay his supplier, and if he would ever be trusted with a cart of fruit again.

As they stood together a rumble began. People down on the tracks started looking left and right, trying to figure out which direction the train was coming from. The more nimble jumped back up onto the platform.

As the city trained finally arrived they all scrambled on to the outbound tracks, two dozen people narrowly avoiding death.

Three seconds later, without warning, the next Vline train for Ballarat came through.

Report from Monday Meeting for IST Future Melbourne Project

Today Johnny McPherson and I took a trip to the City of Melbourne Council House to meet with the following people;

David Mayes (Manager Strategic Planning and Sustainability)
Sandra Wade (Team Leader Integrated Urban Policy)
Alister Campbell (Policy Planner)

It was an open discussion about the Future Melbourne Project they are doing with the Age, combined with Second Life and the project we are working on. We went in saying we didn't want anything yet other than to share ideas and perhaps see how we can work together. They were very interested in Second Life and keen to see what the class comes up with.

What has come out of the meeting is that the class will be presenting it's 'Evil Melbourne' ideas to the people from Future Melbourne at the end of the year.
The purpose of this is to generate some publicity for the class project and members, add a news article to your portfolios, as well as gain the experience of presenting your creative ideas to others.

Learn more at http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au

Classwork and some homework!

We started off by discussing the project again - yet more new ideas;
- The stadium is old, from the 1930s
- Depression, Not many houses, factories starting up, lots of ppl escaping from troubles using sport, Bradman, Phar Lap

Today we looked at making guns in Second Life.
The purpose of the exercise is to learn about how objects can be deconstructed and reconstructed to suit our own needs. We learnt how to take the script, sound and bullet from one gun (popgun) and put them in our own, making small modifications when necessary.
Each class member then made their own gun and bullet. (See blogs for photos)

HOMEWORK

Each person must write a linear story based around our 1930s St Albans Stadium (500 words minimum). The story can take any form you choose, however spelling and grammar are important! Please use spell check, and feel free to email me draft versions if you would like any assistance. These stories will help us form a historical background for our project, and can be included on the project website.

The stories are due at the start of next weeks class (Friday September 21st) and can be posted to your blog(feel free to edit them continually online).

Project Underway

Today we started the project, with the group led by Johnny establishing a rough blueprint for the area based on it's dimensions, then each individual person working on their specific area, as will be listed in their blogs.
I called the Council to follow up on the Future Melbourne idea and have a meeting with them next Monday at 2pm to discuss the class project.

From a friend;
A great free holo-emitter

WM1 Class Flinders

Today we started off by making guns and bullets using the popgun script as done previously. Some interesting results included an ice cream cart gun, horse gun, couch gun and more.

The purpose of the gun creation was to learn how we can modify objects and scripts to come up with something entirely new.

We finished a bit early due to several people needing to leave early, so homework before next week will be to research the following ideas;

- Shuttle/ships (Tinny, Nath)
- Costumes Area (Dimitri, Simon)
- Holodeck (Nelson)
- Gun shop (Will, Garrick)
- Biodome (Arthur)
- Elevators (David, Parv)
- Evil Lair (trapdoors) (Jay, Ed)
- Bar (Rene)

Something

Popped up on the forums, reminded me of the project....

Todays IST Flinders Class

Today we started off by going around the class and briefly describing each others story.
Some great plots and themes, all should be posted on student blogs by tonight.

We then looked at the importance of creating PLATFORMS, and being creators not consumers.

We continued our research into Future Melbourne, with each student looking into one particular area of the assignment.

Peter - flying vehicles
James F - Graffiti
Joel - Graffiti
Huggy - Nukes and weapon systems
Jay - Vegan Oasis
David - Vegan Oasis
Adam - Scripting
Johnny - Armour
Lil - Gameplay
Kenan - Ninjas and Cops
Chonny - Gas masks
Jason, Ray - Train stations
Jeffrey - Trains
Leah - Stations, toxic stuff

My own area of research was into the Ages Future Melbourne project, with the possibility we could submit something to their competition.

http://www.futuremelbourne.com.au/
http://www.evillagemelbourne.com.au/

The talking points used by this project could perhaps be used in our own as they seem to generate the right kind of information;

• talk Business
• talk Culture
• talk Destination
• talk Environment
• talk Global
• talk Knowledge
• talk Living
• talk Moving
• talk Public
• talk Service
• talk Sport


It is also interesting reading through the evillage site and seeing what other peoples ideas for the future of the city are, including a wide variety of experts.
Perhaps the future Melbourne could be used as an example in our town of just how wrong it all went.