ira | 
02 10th, 2009| 
The other day, Linzi had a great idea, which I think it’s fair to say, has benefited all of the groups involved in New Media Team project this year. Originally, Adam’s plan was to pretty much not have lectures spring quarter, since there isn’t that much material to present. Instead of skipping lectures on the days when Michelle and Adam don’t have a lot to present to us, Linzi wanted to try sending representatives from the teams to other teams for feedback.This has deinitely benefitted team MYO: today marked an important turning point for us thanks to another fellow team. Among other feedback, they suggest that we try using IR tracking instead of color tracking for our game, since the color tracking was a bit finicky and spotty. Dun dun dun! Stay tuned for more on this from Zach.
1. Is if fun to play?
2. Is there a reward at the end of the game or along the way?
3. Is the game a challenge to play? Is there a learning curve that allows you to get better each time you play?
4. Is the game non-frustrating?
5. Does the game have immediate repeat play value and long-term repeat play value?
6. (Optional) Is there something “magical” about the game? Usually, in a board game, that would involve color-changing ink, magnets, clever use of electronics, 3-D viewers, etc.
When I evaluated games at Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers from inventors and from inside game designers, only games that had all of the first five attributes would be considered for the line. Sometimes skill-and-action games could get away with just four of the five because they were more ‘toys with rules’ than real games.
We all did look & feel boards to convey the visual style we forsee for our game. There seems to be a pretty solid consensus over the directions that the design could go:
1. Use abstract imagery, bright vibrant colors of the glow sticks, and make everything geometrical and/or lines.
2. An environmental game with the possibility of using characters and impacting the literal environment, taking Little Big Planet and Moonkiroe as inspiration:
2a. Spin off of the environmental concept and go with a cardboardy – cut-out playful feel:
The environmental style seems like it would be the easiest to have the player relate to, and to make them care about the game. The abstracted style could probably get old rather soon, since it’s all just bright lights and particles. There is more potential for a story with the environmental style as well. We are going to try experimenting with the cutout style for the first round of comps this week, so watch for that!
While browsing the net , I stumbled upon a series of posters that used simple, well known games to make a point.
A quick demo of glowsticks being tracked to create images on the screen. This is pretty much the system we would be using in our game.
None of us really know why we waited so long before running our multiple engine, 8 mini-game idea by Adam (our professor). Yes, Michelle (our other professor) had already cut us down from 10 – 12 mini-games to the 8 we came up with now. But really, we probably should have anticipated just what Adam was going to say.
The day was best summed up by Linzi on our team messageboard:
Good news: We submitted our project to ImagineRIT.
Bad news: We need to completely tear apart our idea.Andy, Ira, and I met with Adam today and he made some really good points about our project. Basically, 8 games is way to many if we want them to be flawless and fun – so we’re back to 1 perfect game.
We should think about arcade games – games at their simple fundamentals that are time-tested fun. The idea he went off of was ‘Hot Potato’ as our 1 game that would work because it needs no explanation.
With ‘Hot Potato’ we went through a bunch of things that we could be passing that we wouldn’t want (water balloons, eggs, bombs) and words that correlated with them (splash, goo, explosions). Those led into user interactions, such as the water balloon pops if it hits the ground and the screen fills partially with water that slows down the movement of the people.
Then we got talking about combining ‘Hot Potato’ and ‘Tetris’ where 2 people are passing ‘puzzle pieces’ that morph mid-air trying to find the puzzle piece that will fit into their ‘lock’ – passing through level graphics.
He said our game could go two ways: an entertaining game; in which the game itself has to be flawless OR a message; where the message guides the game.
And so, back to the drawing board we went. Many doodles, weird diagrams, funny hats, and simple games later, here is where we ended up, summed up by Krista:
Our proposed game is a two-player camera installation piece primarily based on Breakout (sometimes called Blockbreaker). Users will each hold two glow sticks in front of them to act as their ‘paddle’. Point detection will be used to simulate digital paddle length and flexibility. By moving the glow sticks apart, the paddle will become taut and provide a hard surface for the ball to bounce off of. By moving the sticks together, the surface will sag, creating a space for the ball to fall into. When users quickly move the sticks apart again, the ball will whip back into gameplay (similar to a slingshot).
Users must work together to eliminate any obstacles around their goal. However, the player who actually gets the prize in the middle is deemed the winner, so the collaborative gameplay will quickly turn to competition in the game’s final moments.
Other notable features are that the ‘blocks’ will not stay static. They will actually spin around the prize as they are hit, adding more difficulty to the game. When the game is completed, a new theme will be loaded. This means that graphics (such as the ‘blocks’ and ‘ball’) are subject to change, adding more character and creativity to the game.
Research references/possible image sources: Breakout, Bubble Spinner, Rope example (holding a rope and moving the ends together), Zach’s point detection experiments
For homework, we all went back to our respective happy places to think of simple games that would grab the user and keep him or her interested for at least 4 minutes.
Something our team has discussed with this project is setting up a video feed of the players’ interactions with our game, and displaying it on a TV outside the exhibit. This is the perfect example of why this is both worth it and necessary. Watch it to the end!
While taking a look at the rear-projection system in one of the fancy rooms underneath the library here at RIT, we stumbled across this wonderful DIY how-to on how to build a rear-projection screen in your own bedroom. Using a shower curtain.
We were so inspired that the following Saturday we set up the projector and screens again, except this time we came prepared with (dun dun DUN) materials.
The screens in the special rear-projection room under the library are made of acrylics (looks like thick, frosted plexiglass), and at first we thought that that might be a viable option for us as well. However, a trip to Home Depot very quickly proved us wrong – first of all, plexiglass is very expensive in large quantities; second, its fragile, heavy, and hard to move, especially for such a large size. Finally, we were so inspired by the shower curtain screen that we had to try it ourselves.
We gathered an array of materials in the shape of 2 shower curtains (one translucent, the other white), 5 different fabric samples ranging in thickness and stretchiness, and a large stretchy drape cloth usually used for photo shoots. Over the next several hours we tested and retested these materials for quality of projection. As expected, the stretchy ones worked the best – first of all, they are thinner and let the most light through, which allows for the best picture quality. Secondly, they do not wrinkle, which means we don’t have to iron huge sheets of fabric before every set up. Score!
The more we thought about the setup of the screens, the more we realized it needed to change from our original mockup. The biggest issue came when we read the guidelines for displaying installations in the fieldhouse, which gets the most traffic at Imagine RIT: no tents or roofed constructions, or flammable materials. Having some sort of roof over our heads for the installation is going to be pretty important – we will need it to block out the extra light that will interfere with the silhouettes, what’s being seen on the projection screen, and with what the camera picks up. Taking this into consideration, we decided to split the installation into two roofed sections so that the light is blocked out from directly above the players (so it does not interfere with the silhouettes), and also so that the light is blocked from directly above the screen, so that the visibility is not affected. In the dead space in the middle will be a wide walkway for passersby to be able to look in and see what’s going on inside. This will also help with the fire hazard regulations. I adjusted the mock up.
The screen that filters the light behind the people is curved in this setup to accomodate for it being smaller and still taking up the full view of the camera. In the original setup, the screen would have had to be about 16 x 18 feet in order to cover the whole background of the field of view (FOV) of the camera. This way, if we curve the back and lean it over the FOV, the same effect is achieved with more structural integrity and less heavy things to move.
The only problem with this setup is the amount of room it requires – that’s about 35 feet in length alone. Actually, backlighting the entire installation almost doubles its length, since the projector has to be about 12.5 feet away from the screen in order to project an image that’s about 7 – 8feet tall. We want this to be a fully immersive experience, so the projection needs to be very large, so the deadspace in front of the projector has to be pretty large as well. We could always try to save space by front-lighting the whole thing, which would increase the quality of the image too, but this presents the problem of having to hide the projector somehow – either constructing a structure for it above or below the screen.
Before going too forward with the project, we wanted to make sure that we tested our proposed setup to ascertain the dimensions, playing space, projectors, and cameras for everything we need. We used FluidTunes to test the camera and its sensitivity to light, dimension, and angle to the users.
We set up a camera on the floor at a 13 degree angle looking up at the players, and rigged up a sheet on some poles to provide a solid background for the program to recognize the silhouettes of the people moving about in front of the camera. This setup actually worked fairly well for interacting with FluidTunes, especially after we brought in a lighting kit to light the sheet from the back and create more of a contrasted silhouette.
We also tested a regular video camera for the feed in, which worked just as well as Linzi’s external iSight. Most likely the best solution is going to be using a lower quality camera, like the iSight, since the program will only need to detect dark pixels vs. light, and the actual image of the person will not need to be projected on the screen in high quality. By sacrificing quality no one is ever going to see we are actually optimizing the processing for the program itself, since the code will not have as many detailed pixels to rip through.
This first setup was mostly used to determine the sizes of the area that will be visible on screen and therefore playable. Linzi created this mock up to summarize our calculations.
Since we’re planning on setting up the display at Imagine RIT, we need to somehow keep the projector hidden from view of the visitors to the exhibit. While we could potentially construct an overhead berth for the projector, I think we all feel a little better about back-lighting the screen and keeping the projector behind it.
AS3 vs. Processing
Actionscript
- There seems to be a lot more existing motion tracking projects using AS3
- Possible multi-use
- Web deployable
[end_columns]Processing
- Open source
- Hardware accelerated
- Uses openGL
- Much greater performance
- built in 3D
Captured images are run through a few filters in order to more easily detect the center of the objects. First is a mean filter that causes the image to be blurred, reducing noise. An RGB filter is then used to remove all objects from the image except for those areas where the requested RGB values exist. The image is then run through a threshold filter that reduces it to a black and white representation of that image. The white areas are where the requested color exists and the black areas are where the color is absent. With this image areas of white can be clumped together to track multiple objects and the center of each of these objects can be calculated. Here is a tool that can help you see what I’m talking about. Follow the directions using the orange circle on the image. You will see that it can easily be picked out of the rest of the image. So with this method if we have fast processing we can track multiple objects, ie. glow sticks, by running each frame though this type of filter. Fun stuff!