After a first round of comps, Linzi noticed that each of them seemed to work for different seasons. Ira’s was spring, Linzi’s was winter, Andrea’s was autum and Andy’s was summer.

Inspired, we decided that our game would rotate between four seasons. In addition to working on a second round of comps, the team also did some preliminary drawings of characters inspired by the seasons and how they could transform between seasons.

Linzi

Andrea

Andy

Ira

Krista

After looking at our first round of comps Linzi pointed out that they all seemed to be seasonal, which isn’t a bad direction to head in as an overall metaphor for the game. Over the next week we entered the story-line discussion phase of the game development process, since this would dictate our visual direction and the overall gameplay.

The great thing about going with a seasonal theme is that it would allow us to keep the game pla cyclical, and part of our overall goal was to create a game which people can jump into and out of very quickly, without any time spent on having to explain the particulars or to catch newcomers up to a higher level of gameplay. This meant that the game needed to be extremely intuitive, but at the same time still fun. The other good thing about sticking with the seasons is that it allowed us to pull from everyone’s ideas from the first round of comps, as you can see below.

Beginner Level: Fall
.The Harvest
.Andrea’s ‘Peter Rabbit’
.Halloween
.back to school / paper airplanes
.little characters are in long sleeve shirts & pants

Middle Level: Winter
.Death
.Linzi’s winter landscape
.snowballs
.ice
.shovels, snowboards, skiing, mountains, ice pics

Hard Level: Spring
.Life
.Ira’s plants
.Jumanji
.treacherous jungles
.rain

Boss Level: Summer
.Excitment
.Andy’s warm, inviting colors
.grass, beaches
.swimming, sports, frisbee,
.camp: wood, tents, bon-fires
.lemonade / ice tea

[end_columns]

Here is what Linzi had to say about her idea:

The game play for the “winter” level as I’m comping it will be that two of the characters will encourage the players and a third character will be frozen in ice. Saving the third character will be your goal!

How do you save the third character – you melt the ice with FIREBALLSSSSSS. (fireball lazors) In addition to melting the ice to save the character your melting the environment to turn into spring – therefore progressing to the next season! Two birds with one… fireball? lol… sooo lame.

And Ira’s variation on that theme:

May be each block contains a part of the broken weather machine. It’s each player’s goal to put together one before the other does – instead of the meters for each player, each accumulates these pieces, and once he reaches a specific point he is able to shoot at the Final Machine Piece (goal), which there is only one of. This can go with the same fireball melting environment idea – just at the end you have a weather machine to help you get to the next level.

And finally, our settled thoughts on how the elements of the game will function with the seasonal theme we seem to have settled on:

Block & Meter Info

1 meter

.dropping the ball transfers power to other player
.breaking blocks gives you power
.power only increases ability / never deters you from being able to break stuff
.blocks will take more than one hit to break / power will allow you to break with one

.your paddle reflects your power
.paddles should be visually defined from each other
.the ball inherits qualities from your bar

meter – sun energy(?)

**we don’t want to have to explain anything

– – – – – – – – – – – -POSSIBLE GOALS

. Sense of completion per season

Cycle:
-when all 4 seasons are hit, something happens (community)
-show year

Overall Goal

– move through the seasons – each level has a different block layout (difficulty is subjective) – move through easily and can enter at any timeSeasonal Goals

– something from the next season in the goal of the season before itSummer to Fall Options:
Leaf
Pumpkin man
Turkey
Halloween
Pilgrims
Indians

Fall to Winter Options:
Snow
Ice
Sled
Snowman
Hot chocolate
Snow shapes up to snowman
Ice pic
Santa
Shovel
Reindeer
Elf
present

Winter to Spring Options:
Seedlings
Cloud
Bird
Sun
Flowers
Raindrop
Sprout
[reading]Rainbow
birdhouse
bird eggs
seed to flower

Spring to Summer Options:
Sunflower seed
Butterfly
Rubber ducky?
Sun
Pool toys
Suntan lotion
Shades
Flipflops
Beach
Starfish
Sandcastle
Frisbee
Underwear
Lemonade
Nudity

[Video Outside of People Playing]
[Monitoring Seasons & Year]

Takeaways have season, year, and graphic of season.
Stickers, buttons

Most of our brainstorming to date has revolved around trying to figure out how to create an entertaining game for the user. At our last meeting with Adam we determined that our goal was to make an entertaining game that is FLAWLESS – hence last week’s mutilation of our idea, and the process of regathering and rebuilding that we’re involved in now.

All our research and conversations with Adam seem to have led us to one basic idea – the best way to create a new game is to use an old, familiar, and already knownt to be fun one as a base. Something as simple as hot potato or breakout can be used as a jumping off point, dressed, added to, changed, etc, to create something seemingly new and exciting. Adam describes the process in 3 levels:

1. Skin the game - dressing an old and familiar game in nice graphics so well that the user doesn’t necessarily see past the skin of the game to the very basic and familiar concept, i.e. hot potato, breakout, etc. In something like breakout, which usually involves a ball that breaks blocks, this could mean that instead of a ball it is a small creature being launched at a collection of stuff that it has to gather while it is up there, etc. Same basic principle – different skin.
2. Advanced Game Play – this one means skinning the game, then taking the basic gameplay and changing it a little to add a new element. Taking the example of hot potato, may be instead of just tossing the object around, every time you throw it you have to rotate it a certain way to make it fit through a certain shape in the middle of the screen on its way to the other person. Adding this elements fundamentally changes the game and adds challenge, but the basic idea is the same – catch and throw, and don’t hold on to stuff or it will burn or otherwise deface you.
3. Deeper Meaning – this is the third and final level of the game design process. Not every game needs to be tied to some universal problem or cause to be fun and entertaining, but there are some out there that actually work really well for raising awareness of global issues. Weaving in a deeper meaning like that into the game allows players to make better connections with the game play and to care about the outcome of the game

We went through and identified some elements pertaining to each level of depth:

Then we identified some elements particularly applicable to our game:

And created a flowchart of the game play we outline in our conversation:

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.

We knew we had to simplify whatever game we do to its bare essentials, but the more we thought about breaking the Human Machine game down, the more it seemed, well, too simple. After another long brainstorming session we decided that instead of doing one large game or one small simple game, we could do a game that is made up of many mini games.

There are several advantages to the mini game option. First of all, whatever game we do will need to be able to support a lot of people going through it quickly. We want to allow as many people as possible to play the game and have access to the exhibit, so that nobody has to wait for a long time for one round to finish in order to jump in. This means that the rounds will need to be very quick – a minute tops. Otherwise the wait period may become too long and people will wander away before getting a chance to try the game. Having a series of very short mini games will allow us to push large quantities of people through the exhibit at a fairly quick rate, while keeping the games interesting and the players fresh and new.

The other advantage to this solution is that the games will need to be super super simple, based upon a universally well-known concept, and therefore intuitive and well tested in their quality of fun. Our list of basic games to take as the basis of our interpretations went a little something like this:

• The Human Machine (make stuff out of body parts)
• Tetherball
• Pick & Throw @ Target
• Hot Potato
• Fit Into This (fit into certain shape with body)
• Falling Objects (catching game)
• Simon Says
• Don’t Break the Ice
• Rope Pull
• Digging (dig something out)
• Don’t Wake Daddy
• Whack-a-Mole

From there, we each came up with 2 detailed games based on these simple concepts and the following criteria:

Important things that ALL games should have: – group/team interaction (working together to complete a task) there can be versus games, but in those games, the game itself should show a sense of communal “good deed” – good use of 3D space (being able to move forward and back, side to side, using your whole body) – problem solving – around 30 secs to a minute long (minute long games for memorization or taking turns games) – be witty, have a sense of humor, the graphics are as enjoyable as the action of playing the game (it can still be beautiful, Little Big Planet does an excellent job of blending “sense of humor” and “beauty,” Wario Ware makes excellent use of the mini game concept)

The games we came up with were these:

1. Human Machine

Story: The machine has broken and you must fix the circuitry by using your
team of nano robots.

Players: 2 or 4

Objective: Two teams try and connect their start and end point before the
other.

Style 1: Twister / Tuba-Ruba Flow Style

Players are divided into two separate, equal teams. When the game starts,
two different pairs of colored points are placed on the game playing field.
Each team has 2 colors to signify their start and end points. The players
must position themselves in such a way as to define the path the electricity
will take using glow sticks or the like. When the electricity beam begins to
flow the players must adjust their path to avoid obstacles and the other
teams path.

Style 2: Block / Break style

Players are divided into two separate, equal teams. When the game starts,
two different pairs of colored points are placed on the game playing field.
Each team has 2 colors to signify their start and end points. A countdown
timer will count down from 3 and at 0 the players begin game play. The
players must position themselves in such a way as to define the path the
electricity will take using glow sticks or the like . The countdown repeats
until a circuit is connected in a turn based style. Players can block the
others path like in snake, you cannot cut into a path. There would be
barriers, bombs, dead spaces and other obstacles to avoid.

2. Electric Team Tetherball

Players: 2 or 4

Objective: Wind the electric rope attached to the electric ball completely
around the electric pole

Players are divided into two equal opposing teams. The setup is each team is
in front of a display that shows an avatar representation of each players
position around a tetherball pole. The players will have glowsticks to track
their arm movements. The two teams stand on opposite sides of the pole. Each
team tries to hit the ball one way; one clockwise, and one counterclockwise.
The game ends when one team manages to wind the ball all the way around the
pole so that it is stopped by the rope. One player can hit the ball around,
but if a player manages to hit it in such a way that their teammate can hit
it as well then the ball will achieve Super Shot Status and thusly have to
be countered by both teammates or it will keep swinging in favor of the
other team.

3. Team Pong

Players: 2 – 4

Objective: Score 5 points against the opposing team by hitting the ball into
their play area

Players are divided into two equal opposing teams. Their glow sticks help
define their paddles. Players can bounce the ball against their teammate up
to 3 hits per side before returning but never against themselves.

4. Don’t Hatch the Egg!

Game round fades in from black with one of the players holding a spotted creature egg that was supposedly given to them by a lazy creature mama. The egg vibrates and shakes every once in a while, threatening to hatch at any time.

The players are instructed that they must pass the egg from one to the other by throwing it, because it is about to hatch. When it hatches, the little newborns will decide that whoever was holding the egg at the time of its hatching is their rightful mother, and will attach to that player, slowing down his or her movements through the game and putting them at a disadvantage.

There are multiple rounds to the game, which end when one player reaches a chain of 3 hatchlings attached to him or her.

The egg cannot be dropped – if it is, the creature mama will come and wreak havoc on the players, taking away a life. The reward in this game could be an extra life for the team, or a specific object/skill that could help the team in the game.

Game Play:

Users must work together to not drop the egg, and against each other not to have it hatch in their hands.

They can utilize 3D space to run around in and be of a certain proportion to the size of the egg to determine whether they are close enough to it in Z-space to successfully catch it. The catching motion will be recognized by folding the hands together a certain way to mimic catching – just contact with the silhouette is not enough and will cause the egg to slide down the side of the body and break.

5. Nom Nom Nom

Game round fades in from black and the players find themselves in a field of strange looking edible things, and strange looking poisonous things. The aim of the game is to pick up the yummy things and throw them to you partner to collect or “eat”.

The game can be played two ways.

1:
One player is the designated picker, the other the designated catcher. The picker must pick up only the edible objects and thrown them to their partner to put into their basket and have for later – depending on the amount of yummy things collected at the end of the game the players may or may not get another life or advance in the game (versus starving). If the picker throws non edible items and catcher catches them, points are subtracted, and/or the catcher become momentarily poisoned or otherwise affected, slowing down the game.

2:
Both players can pick up objects and take turns throwing them to each other to “eat”. Same deal – if someone eats a non-edible object they get sick, affected, or die, ending the game. The game is timed to speed is a factor, and the aim is to get as much as possible yummy food in the time allotted.

After the presentations, the most positive response seemed to be to the Human Machine idea. The snowball game could be interesting, but would be harder to instill deeper meaning into, and we don’t want to build just another snowball game. The dancing art idea slowly got accumulated into the Human Machine as well – all we would have to do is have the body movements generate some sort of trailing sparkles, or whatever fits the concept the best.

From there, we focused on team building. In order to have the Human Machine be more interesting than just another game, we decided it should really force the players to work together as a community to accomplish some task. We are looking pretty extensively into team building activities (huge lists found here, here, here, and here) for ideas on the kinds of games we might want to incorporate into our installation. We want to keep these games very simple, but spin them in such a way that their overall meaning to the game is much bigger than just fitting shapes into other shapes or whatever. Linzi found this cool Swedish Armed Forces recruiting website, which does a fantastic job of keeping the games simple but the users entertained. And it does a great job of tying the simplicity of the game to the overall concept.

I also found this paper that goes through the decision making process for creating team building games in Second Life using the model of teams that are spread out wide and not next to each other. It’s long but interesting, with good examples of abstracted tasks representing a larger whole. It goes through several games:

All our brainstorming finally led us to choose 3 ideas for possible projects, which we presented to our classmates and professors during one of the lab times. The response overall was very positive, and helped us further narrow down our direction.

Idea 1: Art Creation

Concept Statement

Dancing, music, and visual art are part of almost every culture on Earth, but not everyone can dance well, or create beautiful art. We propose the creation of a virtual public art board that will interpret movement and convert it into beautiful projected art, accompanied by an audio visualization. A webcam system will interpret the movements of the individual dancing and correlate them with events on the screen – particle systems and collisions, color changes, swirls, object creation, etc. Having this dramatically altered visualization of the dancer’s motion will allow the individual to overcome self-consciousness and to create art he or she would otherwise have been incapable of. Possibly, an avatar may be created and controlled through movements of the individual on camera to increase the fun and decrease self-consciousness.

Collaboration Possibilities

• Community collaboration through creating a mosaic of the individual participants’ experiences on the website – a living, changing art piece.
  • ability to select one cell of the mosaic and watch that particular user’s experience
  • possible filtering by geographic location
• Collaboration through having more than one person dancing at a time
  • layering of visuals on top of each over (person A over person B)
  • different colors are used to represent different people
  • visual representation based on different dancing styles (ie: tango vs. the robot), fluid vs. jagged
• Building on other people’s work: one user records their experience, someone else then uses it as background for theirs

Solution Objectives

• Community collaboration
• Sense of accomplishment
• Use of creativity
• FUN
• Customization
• Entertainment
• Memories / Take-Aways

Research (references, articles, examples)

• Robert Hodgin is my hero. (sound visualization with processing)
• Realtime gesture analysis
• Interactive fireworks display
• 3D Graffitti
• Particles in Flash controlled by Webcam Interaction
• http://www.boffswana.com/news/
• GREAT EXAMPLE
• Adobe Wall
• Mesmerize

Project Deliverables (possible implementation descriptions and format)

• Installation – a webcam setup interprets the movements of the individual dancing to the music, which feeds into software that creates visual events on a semi-circular screen with the sound visualization as a backdrop
  • Interaction with avatar based on movements
  • semi-circular screen allows for full immersion in the activity by including stimuli for peripheral vision
• Website – uses user’s webcam to interpret movements to music and translate them to visual events on the screen, with the sound visualization as a backdrop
  • Living mosaic out of many users’ experiences
  • Possible filtering by geographic location of users
  • Ability to collaborate with other users and/or build on their work to create new art
  • Ability to watch streaming video of many users’ experiences
  • Interaction with avatar based on movements
• Capture frames or video from the user’s experience and allow to be saved or printed as takeaways / memories
• Capture frames from our own experimentation with the application and print as publicity posters for installation
  

Required Designs

• User Interface
• Installation
• Web Site

Required Technologies

• Webcam, motion tracking
• Processing (?)
• Myron is an open source plugin for processing that allows color tracking and motion tracking functionality.

————————————————————————————————

Idea 2: The Human Machine

Concept Statement

Techniques for team-building, such as ‘The Human Machine’, have been used for ages as a way to build trust, sense of community, and to have fun.  We propose the creation of a large projected game in which participants have to work together using points on their bodies (or possibly silhouettes) to get a ball from one side of the screen to the other.  A webcam system will interpret the movements of the individuals and correlate them with the real time movement of the physics ball on screen – whether it be rolling, pushing, tapping, or dropping from one person to the other.  In the spirit of quick installation art, the ball will drop from the top of the left side of the screen 10 sec after the previous run was a success or failure.  We want our piece to foster problem solving, decision making, communication, goal setting, and team building throughout a community in a fun and interesting way.

If possible, we would like to combine this idea with Idea 1.  As people hold their position while the ball rolls, their body points map out gesture art that remains on the screen even as they move away.  Their captured movements could build a path on which the ball will roll from one side of the screen to the other and make beautiful art.

Solution Objectives

• Community collaboration
• Sense of accomplishment
• Use of creativity
• Fun
• Foster problem solving, decision making, communication, goal setting, and team building.

Research (references, articles, examples)

• Webcam motion detection tracking
• Minority report actionscript webcam interface
• Actionscript 30 webcam motion detection with interaction physics
• Webcam motion detection in AS3
• Bitmapdata extract colour palette
• Actionscript 3 webcam tracks multiple objects
• Simple marker tracking using webcam

Project Deliverables (possible implementation descriptions and format)

• Informational Website
• Pamphlets / Flyers
• Installation

Required Designs

• Installation Interface
• Installation Room/Area Played In
• Flyers, Pamphlets
• Informational Website Interface

Required Technologies

• Webcam; motion tracking
• Flash Physics
• Processing

————————————————————————————————

Idea 3: Snowball Fight

Concept Statement

In the near future, humanity is plunged into chaos as a nuclear winter engulfs the world. The few surviving humans set about working to restore civilization and quickly realize they could never risk the use of what were once conventional weapons. Instead, the children of disputing territories settle their elder’s arguments for them using the resource most widely available. Welcome to snow wars. As a member of your tribe you must work with your allies to try and defeat the other tribes. Using specially constructed gloves, you will have to lob snowballs, rebuild walls of your fort and setup defenses. Or go online and build a custom snowball to wreak havoc on the enemy. A voting system will help establish the perfect snowball.

Solution Objectives

• Community Collaboration
• Fast-paced game action
• Stylized, cheery graphics
• Installation and web environment interact with each other
• Fun to watch, better to play
• Continuous games, individual players enter/leave

Research (references, articles, examples)

• Super Dodge Ball wiki
• SDB Brawl video
• Castle Crashers webste
• CC video

Project Deliverables (possible implementation descriptions and format)

Installation – a webcam setup interprets the movements of the individuals packing snowballs, throwing them, repairing and/or installing walls, and installing and/or repairing defense systems.

Website – users design custom snowballs which are then imported into the installation environment where the players vote on their effectiveness. The website portal will allow viewing of the game in play as well.

Required Designs

• Installation
• User Interface
• Snowballs
• Background animation
• Avatars

Required Technologies

• Web Camera, motion tracking
• Webcams (possibly between 2 and 4)
• Projection wall (dome?)
• Super arm suit (People wear over their clothes that has the colored points interpreted by the web cam.  We’ll probably need between 2 or 4 and each one will have their own color… possibly glow sticks in a dark room.)

After days of brainstorming sessions, piles of idea cards, and multiple whiteboards filled with lists, we came up with the following goals and ideas that we would like to utilize in our project.

Tech – the technology we want to use

• webcam / glove
• motion tracking
• environment feedback
• multiple installations (telescope)
• multiuser
• flash / processing

General Ideas – what kind of project should this be?

• entertainment / call to action
• multiplayer / community
• installation art
• particles interact w/ motion
• dancing / music video
• music visualizer
• paint + abstract painting
• game
• customization
• physics, ladies
• simulation
• create own environment
• goal

Games – ooo games

• puzzles
• sandbox
• push-able objects
• inspirations
• board games
• mario party
• pipe snake
• ski ball
• tic tac toe
• dont break the ice
• dont wake daddy
• mazes
• building games
• 3D puzzles

Broad Ideas – we would like our project to involve:

• creation
• funny / silly
• paper  airplanes
• music
• **performance**
• color
• painting
• literal
• abstract
• involved
• obstacles, weapons

[end_columns]

More process photos? Here

After feeling like kids at a candy store while looking at such a broad pool of inspiration and research into potential technologies, and just plain cool stuff, we began to narrow down our focus to decide what our project would be all about. Here I have to give due credit to Linzi, who right from the get-go really wanted to be project manager, and with good reason – I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an organizedly chaotic brainstorm in my life.

To start the brainstorm off on the right foot, we considered the parameters of the project. First of all, according to the rubric for the class, it needs to be presentable at Imagine RIT: Innovation and Creativity Festival here on campus. This pretty much defines our audience: adults, college students, families, and children. Of course, if we’re to present this project at Imagine RIT,  we want it to be more or less universally accessible, and placed in a high-traffic area so that it gets the most exposure possible, whether indoors or outdoors.

Projects also tend to be more successful if they fulfill some sort of want or need of the user. This could be anything from fostering a sense of community from a multi-user experience, to “memories” and little takeaways from the experience. Escapism can be a great example of a community desire that needs to be fulfilled, whether you want to “escape” from yourself for a while by controlling a completely different character or avatar on the screen and losing your sense of self-consciousness through that experience, or something as simple as finding yourself on a virtual beach with sunny weather to escape the dreary cold of Rochester. This want or need can also be an invoked emotion, a shared experience and “bonding” with other people, or a sense of accomplishment. This installment is meant to be all kinds of good-natured fun – we definitely don’t want to make anyone feel stupid.

Although the possibilities for this project are tempting and endless, one thing we wanted to keep in mind before we got too involved in the details of things is to keep everything SIMPLE. We even wrote it in 60 point font in our notes. It’s that important. You will see why in a second.

The possibilities for the type of project and the technology we can use are, like I said, pretty much endless. Installation vs. TakeHome vs. Website vs. any combination of the three are only a few of the ideas we came up with right off the bat. As far as non-mouse interactive technologies here’s a whole list:

• Keyboard
• Camera
• Video game controller
  • DDR pad
  • Rock Band equipment
  • Guitar Hero guitar
  • Wii hit board
• BX24
• Projector
• Multi touch screen
• Infrared, webcam
• Playstation game camera
• Pins/sensors for touch

But what do we actually want to do? After miles of notes and hours of deliberation we came to a basic consensus. We want to blow your mind. How that will be done is up for discussion at this point, but done it will be. Don’t worry.

A huge source of inspiration for Linzi was the Terrascope(?) installation in New York City. The installation was composed of a giant sculpture of a telescope that used a webcam feed from London to display in the eye of the telescope. This facilitated communication between two cities very far apart, to the point where people on opposite sides of the earth were having drinking contests via “telescope.” Now that’s community bonding right there.

The idea of facilitating interaction between remote areas really struck us and even kind of stuck for a while. After talking about the MIT Party Room we got to thinking – what if users online couldn control the physical environment, for example the composition of a room? Somewhat like playing God, yes, but the collaboration between a removed decision maker and a person experiencing the environment firsthand could be interesting concept to explore. This also brings in the idea of teamwork, which is something we’ve slowly been zeroing in on during this brainstorm. If we do a game, like a puzzle game, or a maze, where you actually have to use your body to find your way, we could set up multiple installations and allow people across campus to work together to complete the games.

Another aspect that we want to bring into this project is viral marketing for the project. We want it to spread like wildfire through campus on the day of Imagine RIT by word of mouth, through handouts, giveaways, etc.

More from this brainstorm session can be found here.

After our first meeting everyone went out and found their respective “Cool Stuff” links – anything that inspires, informs, or influences our ideas about the project, technologies that we might be able to use, do it yourself projects, etc. etc. The list turned out to be fairly extensive and can be seen in full here, but here, for your viewing pleasure, our compilation of “Cool Stuff” – just for you. And everyone else on the internet.

Mike:

Robert Hodgin is my hero.
Weird webcam based game.
Eye tracking to calculate depth of field.
Head tracking with webcam
Realtime face tracking
Realtime gesture analysis
Realtime face tracking

Linzi:

Bjork ‘Declare Independence’ Music Video
Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote
Daito Manabe YouTube
Robot Controlled by WiiRemote
WiiRemote for Virtual Reality
Immersive Eye Tracking
In-expensive Eye Tracking (we could afford this)
Living Interface
Point Screen 2 3
Music Wall
Hacked Gadgets
Laughing Man’s Copy Cat (avatar face tracking)
Quadrilateral Optical Recognition
Game Control Using Webcam Tracking OpenSource
How to Make a Multi-touch Screen (home-made) $2
Sand Animation
Cool Pics 2 3 4
Installation Art 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Graffiti Research Labs 2
Zachary Lieberman 2

Andrea:

Cool instillation art
Flash- interactive Motion
Wodden mirror
Interactive fireworks display
Laser writing: Video
Christmas light show

Krista:

Eyetracking Gear
Trials of Topoq (PS3 camera game demo)

Ira:

Domino System Video
Brain Cap Controlls Games
Multitouch 3D Interaction Screen
Microsoft Touch Surface + Wireless Device Linking
Lowcost Multitouch Whiteboard with WII remote
3D Video Interaction
Particles in Flash controlled by Webcam Interaction
Webcam Motion Detection & Audio Detection
WiiFlash and Papervision 3D
Webcam Snow
3D Graffitti
Robot reads, does math, slaps on forward advances

Dan:

Balance board
Tenori demo!!!!
Tenori main site
Interactive multi-touch
Pen & touch
Neutouch

Andy:

Boffswana (tracking a piece of paper)
Weird system for papervision
Wiimote 3d particles
More webcam tracking with flash
Webcam / pool table projection

Zach:

Wiimote Whiteboard

3D world using Wiimote

Wiimote + Robot + intense anime music = kinda cool

Motion tracking

[end_columns]