Flash

I've started on the Flash program for our game. I'm about 25% the way through but I've got the rough idea down and I can show you guys on the next meeting.

Basically it's an interface that looks like a very very simplified (think stick figures ala Wii) version of Streetfighter/Tekken. There's only 2 characters and a hp bar on screen.

There will be 2 buttons that correspond to each player's mouse.

When clicked, the stick figures will be animated in a simple way (punching the opponent's face) and possibly playing a sound. Some hp will also be knocked off the hp bar.

That's about as far as I got until I discovered one big problem - we can have 2 mice, but there will only be 1 cursor on the screen. -__-

So I thought my whole idea of having 2 buttons to trigger the damage for each character was destroyed until I did a quick Google search and found a trial version of TeamPlayer.

Basically, TeamPlayer is a program that gives each mouse/touchpad/tablet connected to your pc it's own cursor. So there we go! Problem solved.

So I'm thinking our game will be like your typical fighting game - only you can actually physically hit your opponent instead of mashing buttons on a dpad/keyboard!

This also allows freedom of creativity of movement, as you don't have to remember that down+front+punch is a hadoken, you just have to complete the simple task of hitting that button (mouse) - and you can do it however you want!

So now we can express our inner violent selves without actually harming the opponent (this is where the pillows come in) AND have a tangible outcome on screen. (How do you judge who wins a normal pillow fight anyway?)

That said, the Flash program is not done yet, so we may still come across some other problems in the game.

I've got a regular wireless mouse from a friend, and Apple single-button mouse from another friend, and Floyd has kindly agreed to loan us his Apple mouse for our demo. (We still have to go pick it up from him though)

Here's the screencap of the Flash program so far:

As you can see, there are 3 cursors on my screen so that's working well. There's 1 on each hp bar and 1 in the middle. The trial version of TeamPlayer only allows a max of 3 cursors so that's just nice - 2 for the mice on the players and one for us to control the program.

Also, TeamPlayer only runs on Windows OS and not Mac. So that's why I ran the .swf file on Internet Explorer.

Let's meet up tomorrow or Monday to test out the physical part of the game. Preferably Monday, because I'd like some time to finish off the Flash program.

Dots

Here's a webcam pic of our dots. Floyd already took a pic on demo day, but I thought I'd post it up again anyway for the record.

16.66 dots...but we'll round it up to 17 okay? : )

Summary: Pillow Fight

Okay, to make it easier to understand, I'm going to recap the pillow fight game in simple words.

Method of playing:

Hit the mouse on your opponent's chest with a pillow to score points.

Goal:

There are 2 ways to play this game:

1. To score the most points within a given time frame.

OR

2. To land the 'killing blow' on the opponent.

Game mechanics

If we're playing the first method:

The wireless mouse is hooked up to a flash program on a laptop. The flash program has buttons that add to your score when clicked. Every time you hit the mouse, it clicks, and the hit tally goes up.

If we're playing the second method:

I will create a virtual character on flash that will 'die' in x amount of hits. When the character has one last hit left before it dies, it will scream/make a loud noise, which will let the players know it is time to land the killing blow to win the game.

For both methods:

I can try to program the flash program to play a funny sound each time the mouse is clicked (i.e. whenever the player is hit.) This is purely to add to the fun atmosphere of the game, and need not be explained to the players.

***

For a more elaborate explanation, check out the previous post below.

If there are any more questions, please let me know and we can work it out together. :) The two methods of playing the game are what I've come up with so far, but we can still think of more ideas and make the game better/simpler/fun-ner.

Pillow fiiiiight!

So...I was thinking of a pillow fight game. Wait, wait...hear me out.

This came from our team's ideas to modify our first game by:

1. Having a moving target to make the game more dynamic -instead of lights on a wall

2. Involving more violence in a safe way! (As suggested by Fandi - he mentioned pillow fighting before also if I remember correctly)

3. Involving more technology besides button lights (Floyd said we need to involve computers.)

4. Having a scoring system, so we have a proper 'goal' instead of just hurling balls trying to break our cheap-ass lights

So I combined all those ideas and came up with a new game!

Basically you need a minimum of two players. Each person is equipped with a pillow and a vest with wireless mouse (or mice) attached.

The players are given a time frame in which they have to attack the other player by hitting the mice with the pillow, which clicks on a counter on the laptop to count the number of times a person is hit.

The person with the highest amount of hits wins!

If the budget allows, we can have more mice and we can have different scores allocated for different parts of the body. For example, the arms which are more vulnerable may be valued at 1 point, whereas the torso can be allocated 3 points as it can be easily defended.

It can also be a team game - people can play by their own rules: one person can hold back and opponent and let their teammate hit to their heart's content if they wish! It's up to the victim's teammate to save them...or take advantage and hit the captor! Play dirty, play fair - it doesn't matter. Just have fun :)

We can also use those cheap foam swords if you want a more epic feel. But I've always liked pillow fights and I'm sure Fandi does too :P Also, judging by the response towards Hungry Balls, I think pillows are more indestructible than foam swords. And we can just all bring one from home! Easy on the wallet :)

Will attach some illustrations soon, am currently playing DotA. Brb.

Update: With flash, we can also easily program the buttons to generate sounds when the mouse is clicked. We can do random sounds like YEEOOWWW! ...or like a DotA tribute: m-m-m-monster kill!!!

Update #2: If we have many mice, we probably need a USB hub so we only need one laptop. If we use flash, we can also record which body part was hit how many times, and in what sequence - some sort of stat chart, if the player wants to see how the fight went.

Update #3: Added pics. I was thinking about how we could have a shared virtual body. Then I thought: why not change the mechanics of the game so that although there are 2 real players, there is only one virtual body? This virtual body (depicted by a picture on the laptop) can be hit a certain amount of times before it 'dies.' The player to strike the killing blow will win the game. So the game now involves strategy as well as senseless hitting.

Trying to keep count the amount of blows would probably be too distracting, so perhaps we could program the mouse clicks to have different sounds with each blow, maybe starting from soft groans and escalating to shrieks of pain...and right before the killing blow - "PLEASE DON'T KILL MEEEE!" (Or something else memorable/really obvious so that the players know it's time to strike.)

Just an idea, lol. XD But I think it would be kinda fun. I'll handle the programming part, don't worry about that first.

(Just had a shitty game of DotA, so there's lots of violence on my mind right now D: )

Most importantly:

1. It fulfils the criteria of involving exertion and computer technology.

2. It's cheap to implement - we only have to borrow some wireless mice. Preferably Apple mice due to their one-button surface, which makes it easy to hit. I can provide the laptop, flash, vests and pillows. (I'm sure you all have some too :D)

3. It keeps with the Junkfooders' theme of violence and stress-relief.

4. It is intuitive - doesn't need much explaining.

5. It's gonna be shitloads of fun!

What say you, fellow Junkfooders?

lecture card..

Well done,every body,let's review what we doing today~~

We mmet at our best place and use cutter cut the cardboard, but we only get one cutter,so we do it one by one.

we setting all lamp button, and cut it.

ok.....we finish it !!!good work!!

and we put two color on the cardboard, red and black..

lots of newspaper,very terrible!!!!!

what function of newspaper??put it in the cardboard, in case the lamp will drop on the ground!

we finish this ,and we try it,but it not working.......

so we desicide just put the lamp button on the wall

and use white and black to build teams.

looks everyboday like it, and they feel very happy, when we see they're happy, we also very happy....and Artemis(me) always say:"free battery"...

finally, because the boys play so exciting, and tall broken into two parts.

Thanks,guys~~

We do every well!!!

Conclusion

Upon entering the lecture theatre today, team morale was low after a last minute failure at implementation of our game outside class. Intimidated by the fancy looking technology of the other teams, we were reluctant to even set up our simple - even primitive - game.

However, we pulled ourselves together and spent the better part of an hour setting up, taking it down again (we were chased out of the neighbouring lecture room) and hunting for a new place to set up.

We finally found a workable location in front of the lifts of Building 10. The corridor was long enough, and we had an empty wall. However, we obstructed the pathway and terrified a good many people emerging from the lifts. :P

As we set up, we got many curious looks from passers-by, and we were pleasantly surprised at how enthusiastic people were to learn what our game was about.

At first, we tried using the rubber band resistor, but it was soon tossed aside as it just got in the way and distracted from the main purpose of the game.

We saw that the game was tiring enough in itself, without using any extra equipment. Someone also suggested that we spread out our lights to make them harder to hit. This worked very well, so thank you for your idea. : )

We saw people panting, sweating and collapsing on the floor after a mere 10 minutes throwing and running to retrieve the fallen balls. So, I think we fulfilled the exertion criteria. :P

I also noticed that people completely abandoned the original rules of the game almost immediately. Instead of splitting up into teams, everyone just starting hurling the balls indiscriminately without pause! I guess it's just fun to hit stuff; maybe rules just get in the way of fun sometimes.

Anyway, our team cheered up so much after seeing how much people enjoyed the game. The best comments we got were:

1. "I just feel so good when I manage to hit the light!"

2. "It's so tiring, but it's worth it."

3. "Stress from assignments...ARGHHH!" *flings ball viciously*

We certainly didn't expect such a warm response, and I can't even explain how good it felt - seeing people continue to play with undiminished fervour even after the balls and lights were brutally pulverised.

Thank you for your support and making us feel like we finally did something right after all those failed attempts. :) Hope you guys liked our free gifts :P

Yes, we enjoyed ourselves tonight and hope you guys did too!

Here's a short video for you guys to enjoy!

I'm also uploading another (funnier) video to YouTube and will embed it here when it's done. It's too big for blogger to host. Also, Floyd's in it, so if you wanna see him in action, definitely watch it!

More pictures from Artemis to come - our trials and failures in constructing our game.

Update: Here's our video!

Great success!

Well done junkfooders! :D What an unexpected hit.

Videos and summary of our game coming soon. : )

Game trial video...

Nearly finalized idea!

Today, our team hashed out a new game idea - very simple and affordable. However, we had to decide whether it was fun enough and whether it was tiring.

We bought our materials - button lights - at the Reject Shop and headed to a back alley to test our new idea.

The whole surface of the light is a button. If you press it once, it lights up; if you press it again, it switches off. This made it ideal material for some kind of scoring system.

Here's how our game works:

The lights are mounted on a wall in a random fashion. (See pics in post below.) There are 2 players, and two types of lights. One is white and one is black.

An equal number of each light will be mounted on the wall. The aim of the game is to throw balls to hit and light up all the light buttons of your colour (either white or black) before the opponent does.

White player wins!

It may seem simple enough, but each player is allowed to hit his or her opponent's lights to switch them off. So you can choose to sabotage your opponent as well as trying to light up all your light buttons.

We thought of many variations of this game - we can have 2 teams, but one team aims to light up all the lights, while the other team aims to switch them all off.

You win when you light them all simultaneously/turn them all off at once.

However, we decided that this might take way too long - unless one player has a much better aim than the other. That wouldn't be as fun, would it?

Exertion factor:

A few of us played and it was mildly tiring as we had to bend over toretrieve the balls after they bounced off the walls.

We decided to try adding other factors to make us exert more energy while playing and Tata's idea about the slingshot kept bugging me, so we tried adding the element of elasticity to our game.

Tata and I strung up a long chain of rubber bands, designed to restrict a player's movement. We forced a very unwilling Ziyi to model them for us and try it out:

One end of the rubber band rope was anchored to the library door (we played very quietly) and the other was wrapped around his hand.

If you tugged too hard, you would be met with a counter-force pulling your hand back, forcing you to exert more energy to throw the balls.

However, we thought this would make running to retrieve the balls very hard as it limited the distance you could run.

So we asked him to loop the other end of the rope around his other hand and put it around his back like a coat.

Both his arms were pulled back, and you had to exert more energy to bend and throw the ball. It is very much similar to the door method, but allows more overall mobility.

Ziyi commented that he felt very silly= while wearing the contraption, so I thought why not make it even sillier?

It wasn't photographed, but Tata and I looped one end of the rope around each of our throwing hands and we mimed the ball-throwing action in opposite directions.

This resulted in much hilarity as we bounced back towards each other, and we couldn't stop laughing. We thought it would be good to mount the button lights on opposite walls and play in this manner - tying the opponents to each other, so they would have to fight and struggle to gain the upper hand.

You would also have to learn to compromise with your opponent...or strain your and your opponent's arm really hard while running to retrieve the fallen balls.

Not everyone was very enthusiastic about the idea, but we're going to try it out tomorrow. After all, being silly is part of the fun, right? :P

Problems encountered:

The adhesive was not strong enough. The light buttons can fall off the wall if hit too violently.

We attempted to pad the lights with bubble wrap, but it obscured the player's vision and looked clumsy and less attractive. Tomorrow we are going to try using jac paper - a very strong but temporary adhesive to mount the buttons on the wall.

Someone suggested imposing a penalty for knocking the lights off the wall, but it kind of ruined the mood when the light fell off the wall. So, we're going to find a more secure way to mount the buttons instead. Also, with the elastic in place, perhaps the player won't throw as forceful as he would unrestricted, so the lights probably won't suffer so much impact.

We'll have to wait til tomorrow to see. :)

WED meeting

We put button lights on the wall.

Fandi~~hit it!!!

We use the ball to hit the buttons on the wall to make them light up.

The adhesive used to stick the buttons on the wall peeled the paint off, so we decided to tape them to a plastic sheet before blue-tac-ing the sheet to the wall.

Fandi mounted our improve button system on the wall.

This is the improved implementation of our game (we're not going to ruin RMIT's paint job!)

We will present our idea tomorrow. Let's review what we did today...firstly, we put the button lights on the wall and use the oversized tennis balls to hit them~

Everyone seems to find it fun, so we improved upon it a little bit, and played again~~~

I will put the video on the blog~~~

Idea about pool+soccer (Ziyi Gao)

Hi, everyone! Here is my original idea about the combination of pool game and soccer. The basic idea is to combine the interesting elements of pool to be tiring. So we can set a playground laid out like pool table. (But it better be big enough to fit the main idea about getting tired.)

The fun part of pool is that the people have to practise their accuracy and compete with each other to see who can pocket the all balls first.

In this game we will keep this important setting, but replace cue sticks with the players' feet. Even though we know it's hard to keep the accuracy of kicking, but still it is worth to try and think about the materials we can use to achieve this.

The ideal pool is based on the perfect collision of balls, that's why the make the pool balls hard and heavy; also the table surface has to be as smooth as possible. So we need have some materials that have those kind of characteristics.

To make the game tiring, we set some fun rules about it. Maybe after finishing one player's turn to kick, he needs to run one lap around the playing field as fast as possible to decrease the round time of the opposite players. As long as the runner finishes, he can kick and make his next move - no matter if the opponent has not yet moved.

To add some technology in the game, we better start working on the goal or scoring system. We can't actually dig a hole in the ground- and we better not. So, we may consider having buttons in the goals. Or - just replace the hitting target with a button.

By the way, the gaming area must be closed, that's the beauty of pool! (Bouncing balls off the walls.) Also, world cup is happening, so I like ideas related to soccer.

Humans vs Zombies v2.0

My modified idea for Humans vs Zombies.

From the previous post, you probably can tell that we have already settled for a different idea, but I'd like to post up some development for the record. :) It's also to elaborate on why we chose to scrap the game and come up with new ideas.

The original post on Humans vs Zombies is here.

From the feedback I got during the mania session, I determined that:

1. If it can't be explained and understood in a minute, it's probably too complicated

2. The game required very precise understanding and slight misinterpretations could potentially spoil the game

3.The use of technology in the game is not required and to involve technology just to fulfil the criteria of our assignment seems wrong. Technology should simplify the game/make it more convenient, and not be thrown in just for the sake of throwing it in.

So, from those points I simplified the game with help from my teammates and here is Humans vs Zombies v2.0:

Teams: Civilians, Soldiers and Zombies

Story: It's the zombie apocalypse! Soldiers have set up heavily guarded bases to eliminate the zombies. Humans aim to head to these bases for shelter and protection.

The playing field is set up like this:

Soldiers are equipped with stun guns, which are used to stun the zombies to clear the way and give the civilians a chance to escape into the base.

To do this, we will probably use some kind of dart gun or nerf gun as their pellets can be felt, but does not hurt.

When hit, zombies are stunned for 5 seconds before they can start moving again.

To do this, zombies will be equipped with pressure sensitive pads on their body. When activated, they buzz and countdown for 5 seconds. In this time, the zombies aren't allowed to move. After 5 seconds, it buzzes again to indicate the end of the stun period.

Zombies maim humans by touching them at melee range. The maimed human is then unable to move until rescued by another human who touches them to re-enable movement.

To do this, we can have the civilians wear bright red button-light that is lit up when they are running around. When the zombies hit the button, it goes off to indicate that they are maimed. Another human has to come along and light it up again to rescue the maimed human.

Soldiers may not leave the base.

Zombies may not leave the infected land.

Humans may go anywhere they want - at their own risk!

The humans win when all the civilians are safe within base.

The zombies win when all the humans are maimed (and thus no one can be rescued.)

Sounds fun? :D We can also make the players dress up for their respective roles to give a more realistic atmosphere. (We can TP the zombies ~__~) Oops, those are mummies. My bad -___-

Problem: Soldiers don't have much exertion involved, as they don't have to run around like the humans and zombies.

We can maybe overcome this by making them use slingshots that are hard to pull, like Tata's idea in the earlier post. However, they will probably be shooting at a very slow pace. So we should probably reduce the amount of zombies to negate this problem.

-Steph