I am working with Michael DeMinico, 6th grade Sports for the Mind teacher, to build 4 games for SMALLab. These games are selected from a pool of games designed by groups of students in Michael’s classes as their first attempt to educational game design. The 4 selected ideas are interestingly echoing early popular educational game genres- game show, simulation game, shooting game, and sports game. Except for the Crazy Farm (upper-right), educational contents are add-on, with or without it doesn’t really change the gameplay.
=====Originally we decided that students were responsible for producing all the assets necessary for the game development but all I ended up getting were 4 giant game idea posters. I did some Photoshop works to keep the look and feel true to the drawings.
SMALLab photos:
05/30/13 DOE proxy kept game apps from reading Google spreadsheet. Firefox proxy won’t cut it, have to do it through System Preference.
06/02/13 Test the games in SMALLab for the first time, controller caused rollover graphics to flicker. Thought it was Tracking tool, but found out later it was mouseMode = true
06/03/13 Y is reversed due to new projection orientation
06/12/13 Rehearsal/playtest with Michael and Rich. found following bugs: =======game 2: out of bond bug =======game 2: puck needs bigger tracking range =======game 3: change countdown timer to 3 mins =======game 4: spacejet wonders off the screen due to (Rotate angle = NaN)
06/13/13 Michael filled up question spreadsheet, games are ready to go.
NaturalPoint – Mike:
In the calibration menu, there are options for “Data acquisition”. Try dropping “Min Camera Coverage %” to 10, then rewand. Don’t worry about the calibration quality, just make sure the cameras are relatively placed correctly. Set the ground plane, do a quick recording of the ground plane in place, then send that .pt2 file to support@naturalpoint.com. I’ll take a look at your camera positioning more in depth and give you some analysis.
Don Burroni’s set up: Looks like the side with high and low cameras (like camera 2 and 3 in SMALLab), they look at different point in the space to form a longer more inclusive vertical view. Other single cameras look at the center point of the space.
12/16/13 I came to calibrate the cameras for tomorrow’s bosslevel game: Robe’s box. However, when I tried to adjust camera no.9, I was electrocuted by the camera. The camera disconnected from the tracking tool right after the discharge and I have to restart the system to get the camera back. This has never happened to me before, so I called Optitrack to make sure this is not a sight of hardware failure. The technician said it might be the static electricity.
Galaxy Rider is a space horse riding simulation game made possible by combining a vertical Gametrak and a GE wireless doorbell.
TECHNOLOGY: Gametrak is a motion-sensing controller that came out in 2004. It was popular in its own right and some 300,000 units were sold after the release. What I love about this controller is the spring-less joystick and the retractable wire mechanism that makes motion-tracking possible for this controller. It’s unlike anything in the market at the time. When I opened up the Gametrak for the first time, the interior is beautifully designed, it was straight-forward, modular, and totally p-comp friendly. There is also a Gametrak version 2 controller that packs the retractable mechanism and joystick into 1 small and detachable module, but it is only available in Europe.
GE wireless doorbell is probably one of the cheapest solutions for quick and dirty wireless buttons. My game controller extraordinaire, Kaho Abe, gave me the initial insight. She uses the setup in a version of her awesome game – Hit Me!. I eventually got the pin on the doorbell PCB figured out by trial and error.
LOG: 4/23/2013 Attempted to read PS2 USB peripheral Gametrak with Processing and proCONTROLL library on both my Mac and PC and it didn’t work well. The controller shows up as a USB device and proCONTROLL is able to get the details on Joysticks and Buttons. However, the data doesn’t seem to update correctly, I also tested it in Controllermate and got the same result, the buttons, and joysticks show up fine but not reacting. This happened to me before with other USB electrics and it was mostly a JAVA serial issue due to rxtx version difference/incompatibility. Since I am going to incorporate wireless buttons, I will just hack the controller and use Arduino to handle the serial communication.
4/27/2013 Open up Gametrak and wire the pots to Arduino. I found out something more interesting during the autopsy. I realized that the PCB actually has the option to switch the serial mode to PC or XBOX. Apparently, there are different versions of this circuit board out there and luckily the one I have (REV2) has the options visible on the board. I soldered the contacts together for PC (pink circled) and now it works perfectly fine with my Processing + proCONTROLL + Unity 3D setup.
This semester we’ve stop the t-shirt tradition and embarked a brand new one with our awesome USB bracelet earn-away! All the registered presenters will be given a bracelet for their games well-made. Participants, on the other hand, will have to earn the bracelet by testing lots of fun games with us. We distributed these bracelet through MOUSE’s awesome metagame over the event, youth participants came up with some brilliant game ideas and feedback!
Just got my Lytro today. Originally, I wanted to make surreal looking games with the focus-shifting mechanism that this awesome camera privides. After poking around more, I have mix feelings about this camera toy that I was so excited about. The biggest downer is they decide to go for the instagram model and ignore the fact that people who bought the camera are more interested in the technology itself than purely taking square pictures with a file extension no one knows about. There is a potential opportunity to build a community of creative makers around this technology and, if intended, benefit from it.
CAREN Lab, a hidden gem of embodied play in the city! Too bad this panorama projection + motion tracking + interactive hydraulic floor installation is only used for physical rehab. Through an unexpected connection, I was invited to visit the hidden CAREN Lab in mid-town. This medical grade arcade center is packed with technologies. SMALLab and CAREN Lab use the same marker-based motion tracking system but CAREN Lab has better cameras. A researcher there pointed out that a marker based tracking system is necessary to the installation because marker-less sensors such as KINECT can’t provide accurate information on patient’s joints. CAREN Lab has its own custom game editor and the interface works like one in MAX/MSP.
PLAYTECH is a playtesting event at Parsons. It happens at the end of every semester. Any student or alumni projects that are interactive and teen friendly are welcome to be tested in this two-hour long event.
Tablets have rapidly emerged as a powerful new learning platform in the K-12 classroom. With the ever-growing choices for educational apps, many schools who have adopted these touch screen slates are reporting impressive results in terms of improved student participation and innovative new learning opportunities.
Although tablets have proven to be beneficial, several key tradeoffs with the current generation of tablet devices have surfaced. While tablets are ideal for consuming media, teachers have noted that they would like more ways for students to write and work creatively on their tablets. Tablets to-date have also been limited in their multitasking functionality creating problems for students that have grown accustomed to running numerous applications simultaneously.
This semester I am teaching a new course I designed with Ramiro Corbetta called Code Play. It is an introductory course to interactive programming. Students will be looking at programming from the view of game design. Syntax and logic become components of a situated play experience. After the basics, students will be working with small code blocks instead of writing the program from the ground up. Students will be playing, designing, and prototyping games on a weekly basis. The end goal is to help design oriented students to build a library of interactive code snippets to speed up the prototyping process.
Today is the last day of the course, we were thrilled to have Kurt Bieg and Chris Makris, two living indie game magicians (thanks Ramiro for inviting), to join our game fair. I want to thank Kurt and Chris again for their undivided attention through out the fair and their valuable comments for students. Here are some highlights:
Featuring projects:
Wonderdoll is a single player side-scrolling platformer inspired by the whimsical world of Alice in Wonderland by Nicole Del Senno and I-Shin Naomi Lin
Play on Mac: WonderDoll(final)The Weirding Way is a simple shooter game that uses microphone as a controller. Players control the shooter by making low-pitch and high-pitch sounds to aim, and loud and explosive noise to shoot. Taking inspiration from Frank Herbert’s Dune (and David Lynch’s movie), where warriors learn to control their voice as a powerful sonic weapon (watch a clip), and from shooter games from the 80′s such as Asteroids and Galaga, I created this game that results in super fun interactions. by Francisco Zamorano
by Amira Anne Pettus, WenChing Li, and I Chien Wu, jaw-dropping illustrations finished with a touch of burn tool (literally) Set in a surreal universe with eight unfortunate aliens who constantly put their lives on balancing acts.
The Collectorsby Haitham Ennasr, a 2-player banana trading game with Texas hold em fun!
ShaDaby arShaan Sarang and Daniel Albuquerque, ShaDa is a game made using processing. For this game, we created our own graphics (except the paper) and our own sounds. The players gets to choose between me or Daniel and the point of the game is to graduate. To graduate you have to beat up three professors. Each level is set up in a different way. For example, one of the levels is designed to look and feel like a space shooter. Play on Mac : Shada
Play on PC : Shada
Semantic Adventures by Mohini Dutta, don’t underestimate the creative power of words!! Also feat. Frodo, Legolas, Gandalf, troll, and Rich Uncle Pennybags, all in one game!
COOKING SHOOTING by Bryce WilliamsFrying, pan shooter in a culinary crisis. Cook those enemies into delicious dishes with burning missiles! *comes with complimentary boss fight!
Zombie Sweeper by Maxim Safioulline, zombies raised from the field of mine sweeper. Shoot gun? Of cause, but you have to sweep mines to get bullets!
SCREAM’EM UP! by Jane Friedhoff, The loudest Kinect shooting game ever! SCREAM TO SHOOT!
Battle Isthmus by Andrew Knaup, a 4-Player territorial match 3 game. Looking forward to the combo actions!
Drake-o-matic was one of the prototypes made for an old project. It was used to demo different trait combinations and how the physical features will look like on a small and chubby drake. The project eventually went for a more realistic look, but I had great fun making these little things.
