DOCUMENTATION SITE

Assignment

Create an interactive piece while working on a team of developers and designers.

Concepts

The next part of our assingment was to create concepts for our final piece. These were to be different ideas that we could eventually, when given the right tools, execute.

Idea One

A Floor is Lava game where the lava is projected on to the floor and the user has to interact with it in an 8-bit video game style. They need to stay on the "rocks" to stay alive in the game.

Idea Two

8-bit video game that is projection mapped on a 3-D space, wrapping the game around walls and boxes. This would mean the user would have to physically walk around to play the game.

Our projection mapping project can and will have many features. These features range from being optional all the way to being of critical importance for the application to run. Below I will discuss all of the primary and optional features that we have thought of up to this point in time. Note that we haven’t started implementing the project yet so there is a potential of adding, removing, or editing some features in the future.

Sense & Activate

This feature will utilize the Kinect and OpenPTrack to sense when somebody is in the room. The idea is that in order for the game to activate, the player will have to step into a square that we have marked on the floor (tape). Prior to detection the projector will be projecting nothing. As the player steps into the square, the Kinect paired with OpenPTrack will detect them and signal the projector to display the game on the floor via processing. There will then be a countdown in which the player will have a 3 second window to get to the rock (non-lava space / safe zone).

Increasing Difficulty

We think this will game is best suited for a round based design. Like many other games, we want The Floor is Lava to increase in difficulty as the rounds or stages progress. For instance, during the first round the player will have to get to a safe zone with a very large surface area making it easy to get to and stand on while waiting for the next round. When the player gets to round 36 the safe zone will be very small or an obscure shape and on the complete opposite side of the room so it will be nearly impossible to get to and situate yourself in 3 seconds. We intend for the game to be challenging and competitive.

Scoring System

As I said before, we want this game to be challenging and competitive. We think that the best way to promote competition is by keeping scores. Our scoring system will function by simply keeping a counter. When the game starts, the counter will be at 0 and as the player progresses through the rounds they will receive 1 point for each round they complete. Potentially we are thinking of implementing a sub feature that will grant a player more points if they reach the safe zone quicker than the countdown timer. For instance if a the player reaches the safe zone with 2 seconds left on the timer out of 5 they will get 1 point for each second left on the timer. In this case the player would get 1 point for clearing the round plus 2 more, one for each second left on the clock. When the player loses a round, their total score will be added to a leaderboard. The top 3 scores will be displayed on the floor prior to the start of the game and at the end of each game.