Dr. Jesper Juul, a video game scholar, visited our program last semester. He is very knowledgeable in games and offered a different approach to game design compares to how it is being taught at Design and Technology. He is also the first PhD in Video Game I know. He led a semester-long independent study on experimental game design in DT and I was very fortunate to be apart of it with my teammate – Albert Dang. We had this idea of “leveling down over the course of the gameplay” from the beginning. Is it possible to create a game that the end goal is self-destruction instead of survival? The Suicide Game is the end product of this experiment. Dr. Juul and we wrote a poster of our collaborative game together and it was selected and presented in CoFesta DiGRA in Tokyo Japan (2007). I visited the game festival at Tokyo University and met Dr. Juul there. Many people there came over and greet Dr. Juul and thanked him for his works on the online FPS community. I didn’t realize how famous he was in the game industry till that moment!
3×3 Daisy is a digital flower programed to reacts to light. It was made of 9 square LEDs, 1 Basic Stamp, 3 photo diodes, 12 resisters and some wires. The circuit is enclosed in a small aluminum lamp dome and capped with a trimmed CD disk.
Mic input mapped to the pixel size of an 8-bit Mario. Wrote this in a hotel when I was visiting Tsinghua University in Beijing in Summer 2007, there was not much else to do.
for a long time, science fictions associate robots with war, they are the weapons of massive destruction. This is not true, look at the world we’re living in right now, we are more lethal than those fictional robots. Actually, we are like robots made of more advanced technology and complex systems, however, easily corrupted through the influence of money and power. We often cover our selfish scams with sugar-coated moral values. We are too complicated to understand either scientifically or philosophically. On the other hand, a cybernetic robot is much easier to understand. They are simple, do one thing at a time and never complicate things. Robots can be romantic, robots can be more loyal than the dog next door, robots can even vacuum the floor on a set schedule, all they ask for is a wall plug or a few charged 9V batteries. Facing such a simple machine, it makes us simple too, less defense and calculation, more love and secure. Let’s make robots not war!
Dragonaut is a cheerful robot who shows up when the earth is in danger when our hearts are in need of love. It interacts with the commander’s truck using a light beam that is not at all visible to human eyes. When there is a cheer need to be made, the commander will send out an SOS signal from his truck to Dragonaut. Then Dragonaut will rise his arms and light up a cheerful pattern. “…..Aaa…aWwweee…SoOMMEee…” Dragonaut and Commander’s truck is sold separately. Batteries are not included. Buying Dragonaut and Commander’s truck will improve your faction with the International student community.
I won’t be adding captions to each picture below because I like the way they connecting each other. The robot was built on one of the two boxes made by Jennifer Taclas. When I saw the box, I instantly visualized the original Dragonaut so I spent a weekend building the robot from scratch. Originally, Dragonaut is supposed to be this ghetto hoodie robot with a little bit of attitude. When half way through, I found the head looks extremely boring, so I looked into the scraps and found the leftover cut-out from his thumbs. I put them on his head and they look nice. I love this kind of coincidence.
An iteration was made to the door in the back of Dragonaut that encloses all the electronics in his body. The door is worn off not long after I put in the Arduino board. I look at the broken door and I think this robot needs a new jet pack. (It can be seen on the first few pictures.)
Commander’s truck didn’t come in mind till later in the production. It was built on an IR transceiver Arduino module I put together early in the semester. It communicates with Dragonaut just like those robot drivers’ vehicles in any robot cartoon (Gigantor 28, Power Ranger, Remote Control Dandy, … etc.)
Dragonaut’s best friend (remote controller). Commander’s Truck is a 2-piece cardboard truck to host the IR transmitter and Arduino board. When a designer friend is in need of cheering, simply press one of the buttons on top of the truck, Dragonaut will be right there and say the delightful cheers.
Recently I have been fascinated by robots that can nod. It is one simple gesture that brings so much aliveness and human emotion out of a sensory machine. This prototype eventually turned into a class project (of cause), and the neck mechanism was mapped to the computer vision in the next prototype.
The first credited light gun game, Seeburg Ray-O-Lite, is an arcade duck hunting game appeared in as early as 1936. The earliest light gun video game I have found is the Triple Hunt by Atari in 1977, five years after PONG was invented. There are over 200 video games were produced in the course of thirty years for various kinds of light guns. However, it dies out silently after 2000 when the majority of gamers started to replace their CRT(Cathode Ray Tube) TVs with the new flat screen.
Seeburg Ray-O-Lite
There are three different methods for video game light guns to detect where the light gun is pointing at and all of these methods require the line scanning rate of CRT. Since LCD, Plasma TV and Projector refresh their screens all at once instead of line by line, all three methods become useless. However, Wii has introduced a *new way of pointing and positioning on the screen despite the type of displays the users have. This has enlightened the hope of hardcore light gun gamer. THE NEW AGE OF LIGHT GUN IS COMING!
*new way- Everything about Wii is not new. The infrared light, IR transistor, and motion detector, all of these have been tested out in the NES period in one way or another. Wii did a great job on putting all these ideas together and rebuild them with better technology and design, and then reintroduced them to us fifteen years later.
There are also new third party light guns out there that work with LCD displays using similar technology that Wii has. However, it is nothing new in terms of gaming experience (inputs), the third party gun itself is basically an alteration of the most recent light gun GUNCON2.
Second L: a new Light
My mission of the project is to design a light gun that can open up more game design possibilities. Following are some precedent for a playful interface.
explore interactivity other than pushing the button and pulling the trigger
Wii controller has successfully introduced a new game experience by simulating all kinds of movements. However, there should be more than just a rectangular-shape controller.
All the meters that used to be on the screen should be on the gun.
Players should be able to “use” the gun or to manipulate the gun during the gameplay.
Make use of all the pins. Gun controller usually uses less than half of all the available pins on the connector which means there is more room for possibilities!
Customization:
voice-over
customized parts and stickers
different type of inputs
expendable weapon slots
Third L: Judge Dredd’s Lawgiver
I am fascinated by Judge Dredd’s voice activated and multi-ammunition gun, the Lawgiver. To full fill my mission of the project, I decided to create a light gun that the player can change the ammunition on the gun in real-time to activate different weapon in the game.
Fourth L: Love me and help me
Please don’t be hesitated to give me advises and all your old light guns.
Fifth L: technoLogy Ideally I am going to use Wii remote controller for the screen pointing system, basic stamp for gun interface, Proce55ing for serial communication between Flash and BS2.
04/06/07 I have finally made some progress tonight on the technology aspect of the project. The Wii remote is still buggy with the IR sensors but I am able to make the communication between BS2 and Flash work.
04/09/07 Finished testing PISO chips and they work nice. In my original proposal I was going to make a shifting gear for weapon switching but I was convinced by the class maybe it will be more interesting if different parts gives different powers. Therefore I introduce a new element that replaces the shifting gear, it is the bullet system. How obvious, different kind of bullets gives different weapon ammo in the game. Player has to physical load a symbolic bullet to enable a particular weapon in the game. Different bullet gives a different ammo as well as special functionality that comes with it. Spending the weekend testing the bullet system and built a few bullets too.
GAME DESIGN the demo game consist two section: one is for testing out all the bullets and knobs and the other is a simulation for all the weapons.
04/11/07 Start building the gun. I cut the basic shape of the gun out of a 1/2″ thick wood board and sanded it to soften the edge. I then covered the top of the gun with a three-way plumping tube and mounted the bullet socket in the back.
04/13/07 Organize wires. I soldered wires to the edge connector for the custom made BS2 PCB board. Tested the circuit before putting them in the white box below the Wii barrel. Numbered all the wires that go into the box.
[52 E 7th St] is an exploration of the voyeuristic tendencies that people have in public and private spaces. It is a collaboration made possible by Albert Dang, Christopher Dye, Hee Jung, and Kyle Li. In the film Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock demonstrates how observing others in this way often leads to blending perceptions of the eye with perceptions of the mind, thereby forming a dynamic narrative for the viewer to make interpretations of what he sees in both a conscious and subconscious manner. The choice to use The Sims as a medium highlights how voyeuristic behavior objectifies our subject matter in order to make this process of interpretation more apparent. As Scott McCloud elucidates in Understanding Comics, the abstraction of the form allows the viewer to project his own self on the depicted person. Through the use of a live web camera feed into one of the artist’s apartments, [52 E 7th St] suggests that the projection of self from viewing the abstract also occurs when viewing real people in this way.
Digital rendering of the installation:
3D diagram of the monitor placement
monitor placement
Dye: We wanted the scenes to be pretty mundane, as voyeuristic scenes actually are. You hope for something to go on, but it rarely does. Li [Points to a scene of a kid on his computer]: This is what I do every day, from nine to two in the morning.
The Execution:
This project is part of a Sims 24 machinima game jam and competition. We won third place and exhibited in a show with other winners in Chelsea. My main role in the project is to design and create the free-standing sculpture that serves as a window complex to the virtual world of Sims.
This project is part of a Sims 24 machinima game jam and competition. We won third place and exhibited in a show with other winners in Chelsea. My main role in the project is to design and create the free-standing sculpture that serves as a window complex to the virtual world of Sims.
This project was a group project led by my studio professor Jason Corace. Our goal is to create an automated phone service for our embattled New School President Bob Kerrey and help the student voices heard. PROJECT BOB is a CallXML project devoted to collecting student’s voices and send them to Bob Kerrey. I am an illustrator on the PROJECT BOB! Picking up my rusty markers again and draw like a pro again! FUN FUN FUN!! Make sure you give it a call when you see one of these flyers around!
Embrace the trend, everyone around me is modding a RC car, so do I. The opportunity came about the Radio Shack in the neighborhood had a blow-out sale, I bought a mini RC car and a few track modules for less than 5 dollars. Hacking it and control it with my laptop made me feel like boss. I even threw in some Gundam parts to pimp it out.
