memBrain
The image above is a prototype of a simulated reflective surface on a plasma television.
The memBrain project explores the idea of a collective memory. “Separate from the individual memory, the collective memory is shared, passed on and also constructed by the group.” Observers interact with a central object which represents a communal brain. Upon sustained interactivity, observers are photographed and their image is added as a new memory to the brain. Once the photograph is captured, it is analyzed and compared to all previously captured images (old memories) and similar images are displayed for the observer as triggered memories.
The process will be split into three phases.
- Birth / “Pre-consciousness”
This phase includes the initial boot up of the brain hardware. The initial memories will be preloaded onto the hardware.
- Awakening / Consciousness
While the brain is conscious it will have the ability to record new memories. These newly captured events will be stored into the hardware and trigger similar stored memories. All of this will be visualized on screen.
- Death and Re-birth
Possibility of included a death and rebirth cycle into our algorithm. Deterioration of older memories
Aloha! Remix.
Aloha! Remix is a remake of the classic java game Slime Volleyball. It is starting from where the original Beach Ball game idea left off.The game features slime-like characters playing beach volleyball. I know the graphics are terrible and the music is an extremely cheesy garage band song.
Feel free to e-mail me with any bugs/glitches or possible improvements.
Controls
Player 1:
a - move left
d - move right
w - jump
Player2:
j - move left
i - jump
l - move right
Download
OSX version (zipped as an .app)
PC version
The Neubox: A rapid prototyping platform for interactive applications
The Neubox is a development environment for quickly prototyping applications in Processing and Arduino. We were influenced by the Nintendo Wii as a alternate interface for controlling not only games, but any form of interactive software.
It’s main strength is that it comes built in with the functionality to send serial I/O between Processing and Arduino and all of the common sensors for input are already built in. The framework we provide offers a quick way to port pre-existing applications to our new inputs, or create your own.
The accelerometer was implemented as a replacement for the arrow keys or mouse movement. It can be used in applications when X and Y values are needed to place objects on a screen. The Wiimote works through a bluetooth connection and DarwiinOSC. Here you can see the Wiimote tucked away.
The two force sensors are placed on opposite ends of the box. This allows for squeezing, hugging, pushing or even tapping. In this demo, I squeeze the box to mimic the use of cymbals.
The rumble pack allows for the interface to react to actions that occur in the applications. For example: If you are driving off road in a racing game the box will provide you some force feedback. In this example the box rumbles when I pick it up.
The mic detects loud decibel levels, or large spikes in volume. It could be used to detect screaming, dropping or blowing. There is a hole at the top of the Neubox to allow sound to be detected.
Finally, there is a photocell placed under the box to detect how high the box is picked up. This can used to simulate heavy objects. Placing the box down can also be viewed as a form of passive interaction.
We hope we provided an easy to use environment for ITP students to develop their processing games. You can view all the source code for squeeze demo or download the Arduino code here.
Hummingbird: A conversation about national news.
What is it?
Hummingbird is an attempt to find out what people are saying about current topics in the news. For this version we are using the headlines from the New York Time’s front page. The main goal of the application is to find out if people are talking about what is on the news. It is interesting to see that in most cases news headlines lead to popular discussion throughout the internet.
How it works.
Humming is an application that grabs the latest New York Times headlines through XML. The individual words in each of the headlines are broken up into objects that can be clicked. Once a word is clicked, Hummingbird searches twitter for all occurrences of that word and displays the most recent conversations on screen. The twitter feed will stay until another word is selected.
Since Hummingbird is updated dynamically the results will be different every time you run it. Hummingbird uses Daniel Shiffman’s simpleML library to get the XML data from the New York Times and Twitter.
Here is a video of it in action. You can view the source code here.
Midterm - Game console interface
For our midterm project, Peter Horvath, Vitaliy Dikker and I are working on a interface for game consoles and other prototype applications. The goal of our project is to provide developers an environment for rapidly prototyping their interactive applications without the need of going through arduino to send serial data to processing.
Currently our console has:
- An accelerometer for measuring changes in pitch and roll
- Mic input for detecting volume levels.
- Photocell for detecting when the console is picked up.
- Two force sensors allowing the ability to measure taps, pushes or pinches of the box.
- A rumble pack for force feedback.
Our rumble pack is just a motor with a lopsided fan attachment. It’s a very low tech way of doing it but it vibrates the box nicely.
We are developing some original demos for the presentation. We are also working on “remixing” current processing projects and porting them to our control schemes.
SoundScape v.2
After some tinkering with the original demo, I am finally able to release a playable version of SoundScape. You play by navigating your mouse through the sound generated obstacles. The game gets faster and the music speeds up depending on your score.
Controls
Use your mouse to navigate the pulsing circle through the levels.
You can change the song by pressing the 1 or 2 keys.
If you lose, just click to restart.
Known bugs:
- You win if you just stay in the center of the screen, because the bar lengths are capped.
- Collision detection can be dodgy
- The game will eventually slow down because of too many calculations (bad coding).
- The game technicaly uses Sonia’s LiveInput() functionality so the game only works properly if your spears are right next to your mic input (aka Macbook or Macbook pro).
- It’s 29 megabytes! How do I compress .aif files without losing too much quality?
Its basically just a proof of concept. Ill expand upon it in the future. All of the music credit goes to Nullsleep.
Check out the playable version here. Source code included.
Processing + Wiimote
I was able to use a Wiimote to control a simple paddle ball game through processing. Darwiin remote is a application that maps your Wiimote inputs through bluetooth and sends them to processing through the Darwiin Remote OSC libraries.
The source is relatively simple to use once everything is installed correctly. After you download it, place the libraries in your processing folder. Also, make sure you have the Darwiin remote application running and synced to your Wiimote before you start programming, otherwise the libraries will not read it. If you have trouble syncing (like I did) just restart your bluetooth, Darwiin and processing. Sometimes Processing gets nervous.
You are able to utilize the pitch, roll and buttons of the Wiimote. This may be a good solution to some who do not want to waste any of the precious Arduino analog inputs, or want another cheap accelerometer alternative.
The base code for the ball game is not my own, it is a remixed version of Hye Jin’s project from a previous week.
Soundscape Demo
I’m working on a new game in Processing called SoundScape. SoundScape is a game in which the levels are dynamically generated by sound. As a proof of concept, I am using the Sonia library for live input feature in which microphone inputs are used to generate the game world. The objective will be to dodge oncoming obstacles and walls which are also generated by sounds such as bass kicks, snares or sudden decibel spikes.
In the first version the bars on top are generated by the right channel and the bars on bottom are generated by the left channel. I like the second version (on the right) better because it displays the left channel on the left and the right channel on the right side respectively.
Week 6 - Beach Ball game concept
Beach Ball will be a two player head to head game. It based off a popular web game called Slime Volleyball. The creator has released the source code to the public (in java) and encourages the creation of mods to the game. Mods are user created additions or changes to the actual game code which sometimes result in completely different games. I will be porting his game over to Processing in an attempt to:
- Create more realistic physics
- Add the ability to pick a location to play
- Have the gameplay conditions be adjusted live through XML which will incorporate wind and temperature.
I will probably be using yahoo weather XML from a nice beach in Hawaii. The wind will add subtle forces to the ball and players in the air and the temperature will change the brightness of the screen. Be
sure to wear your sunglasses.
Scorch
Scorch is a two player board game with asymmetric roles. There are two factions in the game, humans and demons. Demons are represented by the red pieces and humans are represented by the wooden squares (Scrabble pieces for now). The basic rules are as follows:
Each turn has three phases, populate, move and attack. The pieces of the board can be flipped to show which faction is in control of the square. The humans start off with the most territory but they are by no means guaranteed victory.
Demons
The demons role is to populate quickly and surround the humans. Demons win the game if they control more then 50% of the board (13 squares) or eliminate all humans.
- Can only place two demons per square.
- Demons have the advantage of populating twice and moving to any square.
- Demons also get an attack bonus of one for attacking human stacks of three (towers).
- Demons can sacrifice themselves in order to “scorch” more earth.
Humans
The human strategy is to outwit the demon outbreak. Since they attack twice their strategies lie in hit and run combat. They achieve victory for controlling the entire board or eliminating all demons.
- Humans have the advantage of having three per square and moving twice.
- Humans can not step on any scorched space unless they are in a tower form (three humans).
- Humans can conquer unoccupied scorched land with a group of humans in tower form
