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

Group meeting and further ideas

We had a meeting in the group study room in the Swanston library to discuss our game. After much discussion, we came up with several new ideas.

Ziyi designed a game that combines football and pool. The rules are similar to pool game rules, but instead of using a cue stick, we kick the 'cue ball' to pocket other balls scattered around the area. After more discussion, we decided to use that idea.

Then, we went to a sports shop above the Reject shop in Bourke Street to browse and choose the ideal ball for our game. (Refer to pics in Artemis' post below.) After that we decided to have another meeting on the next day to buy the material.

Saturday

We had a meeting in the group study room again. Fandi came out with an idea. to modify the game.

The pic above depicts the idea. It's not very clear here but basically we have 2 goal points in opposite corners of a rectangular playing field. There are two players/teams in the respective corners with the goals. The balls in the middle are neutral balls used to score points.

Each team has their own ball - either black or white (or any colour used to represent their team.) With the team ball, the player must hit the neutral balls in the middle and try to score at the goal opposite their corner.

Just imagine that the team ball is the cue ball and the neutral ball are the coloured balls and the goal is the pocket on a pool table. That pretty much sums it all up. The game finishes if it reaches a certain time limit or score - yet to be decided.

Then I had an idea. Each person is given a time limit to skip rope as many times as they can (maybe 20 sec) before they start to kick the ball to dictate the amount of time they have when its their turn to kick and score. But when we thought about it, it was too complicated and seemed to distract from the main objective of the game, so we decided to scrap that idea.

Then, we decided to go to Hardware Express to look for something that can be used to border off the perimeter of the playing field. We looked but there couldn't find chicken wire, and we decided that chicken wire didn't have to necessary properties to enable the player to bounce the ball off properly the wall if they wanted to. We also considered using wooden planks but it was WAY too expensive and cumbersome to lug around. There must be a simpler and cheaper way to make a portable wall. We decided to think about that again later, so we just went back to the sports shop to buy some balls. We chose this ball due to its size and weight.

After we bought balls we went to an empty parking area/back lane to test them. However, we found that trying to kick and aim the cue ball to hit other balls was difficult enough, let alone trying to aim them to score a goal.

The balls were too small, and perhaps football players would have a definite advantage compared to laymen in terms of precision. So we discussed again to modify the game and make it fairer for everyone, and also easier to play as a steep learning curve would discourage people from playing continuously.

I'm the one who took this photo so I'm not in it...then we had another idea. (After going through a few more ideas we decided on this one as it was active and competitive!)

(Steph's note: I will draw up a better and clearer diagram soon, after we test the game tomorrow.)

Basically, we use the cue ball idea again, but have the target ball MUCH bigger so it is easier to hit, but harder to move at the same time due to its mass. We decided to try using a gym ball as the big ball, and try out the balls we bought as well as soccer balls as the cue ball.

The objective of the game is to get the big ball from the starting point to the ending point in the least amount of time and steps.

A minimum of 2 people are required to play this game. They play on the same playing field. Each one is equipped with a pedometer to measure the amount of steps taken while getting the gym ball from the start to finish point.

NOT THAT ONE! THIS ONE! (Steph: Wtf Pedobear!)

Each player is allowed to use his cue ball to either move the big ball to the finishing point as fast as he can OR he can sacrifice precious time to sabotage the opponent by knocking the opponent's ball off course.

If your aim is more precise, you won't have to run as much to get the gym ball to the end. If you miss a lot, you have to run more to retrieve/re-aim your cue ball and rack up more points on the pedometer and risk losing in terms of number of steps.

The player may never kick his or his opponent's gym ball directly. The cue ball must always be used. The player also may not kick his opponent directly.

We're still working out a fair scoring system that takes into account both time and number of steps taken, will update this part later, after we test out our game tomorrow and work out an appropriate ratio.

__________________________

Here are some of Fandi's old ideas. He's having a problem with his scanner so he told me to post it for the record.

Idea about running upstairs and downstairs (Ziyi Gao)

Hi, here is my first idea of puzzle and stairs. Sorry, I've just learnt how to use the blog. Now I can put some ideas we've already talked about on the Internet.

1. This one is the idea that focuses mostly on the physical effort part of our game design. There are many different ways to get one person tired, and what I thought is to make a racing game to make people not use the elevator and run upstairs and downstairs instead, in a building for at least 10 levels. The question is: how we can make them do that?

2. Competition is one important element for this idea, no matter how weird a game seems, having two sides competing against each other will make the game attractive. With competition, it is possible for us to make human beings do almost anything. So we can have two teams or just two people at first.

3. In order to make the game fun, we will add the puzzle element in it. This is the part where I'm a little bit foggy. The forms of a puzzle can be varied. We can play a game with or without a referee. If we have a referee in it, the job of the referee is to create the puzzle on some certain levels.

Each puzzle contains information leading to the next one; by solving the puzzles or telling the correct order of the levels travelled, the referee will decide which team finished fast enough and correctly.

The puzzle part, for example, can be the hint for the next level. After each time where the player reaches the correct level, he will need to inform the referee in some way or some how the referee can locate the players during the game.

This will require us to think about adding some kind of technology to achieve this. Another of playing it without a referee is to let players set puzzles for each other. To ensure it is a fair game, the referee or players need to calculate and agree that they are running the same distance in the game if they can find out the best order of running the levels.