Elemental Body

Author: Luke Schenker

Concept: Each level is a classical element, which are wind, water, fire, and earth (in order) which are expressed through how the level is laid out. In the first 3 levels the player directs the balls to the target platforms. For the last one the player holds up the balls until they dissipate. In more detail:

Level 1: Wind
Players act as the wind, and direct objects to targets on either side

Level 2: Water
Players guide the flow of the water to pouring from above to the target below

Level 3: Fire
Players guide sparks from the fire below to the target above as they float up into the sky

Level 4: Earth
Players catch rocks and hold them up until they erode away

Overall I was happy with how the game came together, and even happier with the response from the people at the little play fair we had. I was a bit skeptical of how fun the game actually was, but lots of people asked to play it and kept me busy most of the 3 hours of the fair! Bunches of kids were even laughing and having a really fun time playing, as were their friends laughing along with the “yoga” like poses they were making. Several times I was about to grab pizza but there were people asking to play next, so I had to oblige and root em on 🙂

Download the source code and necessary libraries here!

Tutorial (I used) to get the Kinect running on my machine which includes links to all software and drivers needed, except the  SimpleOpenNI driver which can be downloaded HERE.

When running using Processing, the first time you run it it won’t work, so just stop the program (WITHOUT QUITTING PROCESSING) and run it again, give it about 30 sec and it should boot up fine.

If you want to try running the exported application instead of using the source, libraries, and kinect install its worth a shot, but I couldn’t get the standalone application working. It can be downloaded HERE

Final Proposal – Luke Schenker

Proposal:
Make a physics game for Kinect as opposed to the facial recognition; this makes for more possible objectives (such that you can contort your body much more than your face). In addition, the facial recognition is buggy when the head is tilted too much, again limiting gameplay.

Objectives:
Nov 11th – Have kinect motion tracking running/understood, have objectives and gameplay details ironed out (proof of concept)
Nov 18th – Started implementing gameplay, some (½) art assets finished
Nov 25th – Gameplay finished, art assets in place
Dec 1st – Polish/debug, add splash screens

Luke’s Face idea!

SIMPLE! Use two points on your face (which change per round) to balance a physics object for a set amount of time. Gets tougher as time goes on, you get a higher score the less the object moves.

Lukes Voice Idea!

Use your voice to manipulate a wave to push a ball into the opponents hoop. The higher your pitch your wave bumps closer to the center of the field of play, and the more volume to your voice the larger/more powerful the bump is.

Luke’s Kinect post!

SIMPLE! Make a kinect program which is essentially an interface for a synthesizer with a looping/recording feature. Kind of a futuristic interface kinda like avatar. It also allows for automation of track facets based upon movement, either going to use a custom made simple sequencer, or use a fully functional one such as Ableton running in the background, handling the inputs the kinect interface generates. Ok, maybe not so simple, but super awesome.

http://www.nl-rso.org/photos/hansvonk.jpg

Courtyard game!

So the idea is that its basically a fusion of the game 24, twister, and the courtyard. After a set interval of time, players must use all 4 appendages to mark 4 squares – all oriented the same way (as in vertical or horizontal) – and make sure they add up to a target number, which changes upon each time interval.

Dat Best Games Fest – Luke Schenker

Getting off the bus my mind filled with wonder; what wonders could the Games Fest hold? Could it be a giant life size pong interface, or perhaps a virtual reality simulator? Since I didn’t read the schedule of events, it was up to my imagination…

That is until I arrived, upon which time I got a free shirt and wristband that entitled me to a fraction of a keg to be tapped later on. The day was looking bright, until we formed teams with… strangers! To summarize, it was a strange group. Luckily I had my two fine gentlemen Alex and Mark from Alternative interfaces to back me up!

For the next two hours we wandered around the city doing their revolutionary twitter idea. The idea was simple: put posters up around the city that told people to take a picture of themselves with the poster and tag it “Pgh1” through “Pgh5”, each being one of 5 locations. They had hoped this would cause a trend of people all taking their pictures at the sites and that it would expand to more sites. This was a good opportunity to analyze the downfall of the teams idea, because it had several problems…

First, people passing have little to no incentive to take their picture with it because all it offers is that they took their picture with a sign that is advertising for something they don’t recognize; very few people would stop for this. Second, if they wanted to take a picture anyways, why use a tag that they don’t know what it is. It is for all these reasons that near the end of our putting up signs that Alex and I bailed on the group to see the fountain. It was awesome.

Then we played a game called “Wandering Gnomes”, the idea was simple: everyone gets a card with a phrase to decode and a few decoded words. To decode your instructions you had to ask around if people had the decoded words in your phrase. It was an interesting idea, and if it hadn’t whittled my self-respect down to a nub by the thousandth time I asked if anyone knew “Wishy-washy-woo-tittle-tee” it definitely would have had some promise. However my dignity could handle no more of the game, and the keg was nowhere in sight, so me and Alex left Mark to play with the gnomes.