aram’s blog

aram_simonstabs_3

This game will have two players with two monitors in center facing each player. One player starts game by stabbing the space between fingers at any sequence, then ‘challenger’ should mimic the sequence exactly. In case any mistake was made by the challenger, game will be over.

That’s it. Simple, but rather than ‘following’ the typical rule of five finger fillet, players can create their own rule in very similar way of playing Simon Game. In Simon Game, player should ‘remember’ the sequence of four different colored buttons highlighted and replay it. As number goes higher, the player will have trouble remembering all sequence then make a mistake, game is over.

In fabrication, main platform will be made of wood to create a ‘table’ (this is because knife-skill is played on either a chopping mat or table(like Bishop in Alien2), copper mat will be placed for making scoring areas, Ipac+USB to create keyboard output.

1) What are the three big problems that you expect to have during the production? How will they affect your timeline schedule? How do you intend on solving them up-front?

• Flash! Although what I am planning to build in Flash seems ’simple’, I expect that completing Flash movie files will be the most time-consuming work among others. Therefore, I should put more hours to figure out two-interface for two-players and more complicated scoring system in Flash first, then move to fabricate the whole platform
• Difficulty to trouble-shoot any coding issues - posting them and asking helps fast
• Tendency to get stuck in fabrication - smart way of time-budgeting required

2) Which hardware does your project require? Do you have it all at hand? If not, complete an order of the equipment by next class.

• Wood plate/ Copper Tape(prepared)/ Wires(assorted)/ Ipac(prepared)/Push Buttons(Ordered for testing)
• Two monitors/Two desktops - Exhibition setting (will be requested to admi

3) Provide a timeline of milestones to be acomplish each week, on these dates:

April 1: I missed this class due to my sickness.

April 15: At least one platform for one player should be done in prototyping quality.

I changed my direction to finalize ‘fivefingerfillet’ game for my final and possibly ITP spring show exhibition after 15 minutes meeting with Amit. In order to enhance current piece of work, it appears to be challenging to create more ‘playful’ interface with simple-minded approach - make it ’six-button game’.

I’ve been skeptical of having knife thing even if it’s not harmful, finally decided to get rid of it. Instead of knife, I came up with ‘legs’ mounted on the whole body of system, then each leg would be moving up and down when player presses push buttons on top. They will still can provide similar feeling of ‘knife’ stabbing from top, but only with sound and movement.

One important rule about scoring is not just pressing different buttons fast, but pressing combinations of two buttons fast. For example, each space between fingers could be named as numbers from 1 to 6, then 1-6, 1-5, 1-4… will be the scoring combo.

Also this game will be connected to video of ‘bishop shows his knife skill’ part from the movie Alien2. Seeing the movie clip, players will be encouraged to produce faster speed to make Bill Paxton scream.
(more…)

My idea for final project goes back to very first idea from early this semester. ‘A clock for visual impaired personnel’, I came up with a ‘touchable’ clock idea with several sketches and prototyping model. Since I was not fully prepared for user-testing at that time, colleagues guess of ‘what time is it?’ went all wrong, even the prototype was broken by someone’s pressing too hard on the surface.

Yes, I learned a lot this much hard-way, this experience was even more worthy enough to immediately come up with next ‘obvious’ corrections such as durability, softness of fabric, and most importantly(from Amit), prototype should have ‘function’ that creator intend to show even if it’s hard to realize. - mine was to make people ‘feel’ the roller underneath the fabric.

Now I am researching the roller from data sheet of ‘massage chair’ manufacturer in order to figure out technical difficulties when it comes to ‘minimizing’ it to the size that can fit into palm-sized clock.

1) What are the three big problems that you expect to have during the production? How will they affect your timeline schedule? How do you intend on solving them up-front?

• Lack of electronic parts ordering/surveying experience
• Difficulty to trouble-shoot any coding issues - collaborating required
• Tendency to get stuck in fabrication - smart time-budgeting required

2) Which hardware does your project require? Do you have it all at hand? If not, complete an order of the equipment by next class.

• A clock. typical one. should be palm-size or slightly larger but not too gigantic.
• Roller. Possibly be customized. Survey required.
• DC motor (or Servo motor? )
• Power supply or battery bo

3) Provide a timeline of milestones to be acomplish each week, on these dates:

April 1: I missed this class due to my sickness.

April 15: At least one roller should be working with the cover fabric mounted on top of the clock.

After class, Amit and I talked about future direction of ‘what to do’.

What to do:

• divide each circled area to individual area between each finger
• survey ‘Reed Switch’ to elimiante hanging wires
• get Flash work in visual, having all individual area animated

So, I came up with really simple flash work that shows overall concept.
fivefingerfillet3.swf

1)how MDA applies to my fivefingerfillet game:

:Five finger fillet game consists of a physical platform that users could play by place their palm of hand(desirable one is ‘left’) down to table and attempt to stab the space between each finger back and forth with provided ‘knife’. The rule of this game is to stab all the spaces in order, starting from behind the thumb to after the little finger, and back again. With the spaces numbered 1 (behind the thumb) through 6 (after the little finger), the order would be as follows:

1-2-1-3-1-4-1-5-1-6-2-6-3-6-4-6-5-6-4-6-3-6-2-6-1 (repeats) : European rule

1-2-3-4-5-6-5-4-3-2-1 (repeats) : American rule

Above two rules were found from wikipedia.org . Later, I would like to come up with my own rule.

Again, most famous scene of this game is from Alien 2′s cyborg performing knife skill in amazingly fast speed. My game, however, is not ‘harmful’ way because users will not perform with real knife or any sharp material. To avoid any bloody scene but to give a little sense of enjoying game with competition, I decided to form a scoring system dividing four circled-areas with different level. Also, time factor will be limited to certain degree, for example within one minute player should perform.

For aesthetics factor, I think users will be able to exercise a kind of ‘mimic war’ before whether engaging the real knife skill with real knife.  One might find this game rather ‘boring’ just because there are almost zero percent of being hurt so that he can’t be thrilled as much, this can be improved with synchronized Flash interface with scoring system embedded.

2) behavior modification:

Before I use iTunes with iPod, I barely thought seriously about how pirating music file affect the marketplace of music industry, and further more, why people do it and why not. Since I was visually fascinated with the ‘design’ aspect of iPod first, not knowing that the device should be hooked only with iTunes, nothing else, my mind wasn’t prepared to what is going to possibly happen if I attempt to sync it to other people’s music database. Yes, it did happened, not only once, couple of times - wiping out all music files in my iPod when I carelessly hooked it to one of my friends’ desktop hoping that I could ‘add’ more musics on the device.

As a result of this horrible experiences, now I became more alert about synchronizing ‘any’ data, as well as consider my digital files more ‘property’ things that I should care for. I think the argument between who’s right or wrong is meaningless at this point because people keep buying iPods regardless of Apple’s philosophy of digital contents right. However, it wouldn’t be a great thing to be injected any notion from one company side(this time it’s Apple), not learning or reasonably adapting it.

For healthier user experiences, I strongly suggest that the company should provide more freedom for users can make their own decision to ‘what’ to use as contents of the device.

Finally, I came up with several ideas of building One Button Game with Flash + IPAC. It almost felt ridiculous to spend almost two weeks squeezing my brain to just ‘think’ what I am going to create with deceptively simple game interface, but now I can think that time consuming was worthy to get back to our big point from this class - CONSTRAINT.

I’d like to skip writing about former ideas, however, I do want to point out that an attemp to steal Kacie’s brilliant idea - Chopstick - enourmously contributed to organize my scattered thoughts to one point. With chopstick, you could do not only ‘grabing’ food such as sushi but also could do something funny or stupid; poking foods or someone(?). This poking concept hatches another form of physical activity which is ’stabbing’ where I recall famous si-fi movie Aliens 2. In the movie, android Bishop shows his knife skill to one of his crew performing unbelievable speed of stabbing table with a sharp knife(and the guy who put his hand on table screams). This, obviously, is a game and I would like to make this ‘unharmful’ way using some soft materials instead of a deadly weapon.

The graphic above shows the overal idea of how this system will score. Red circle in the center indicates highest scoring area, then next three different circles do lower ones.

When it comes to physical interface, it wil simply consist of ground(circles) and input(stick = knife).

This is it. Simple..simple…simple thing. After I read the article “How to prototype a game in seven days”, I thought I found some definite direction to create my own game, however, no sooner had I approached the final output with IPAC, lots of coding(action script) problem occurred. Yes, I am stuck in Flash’s action world!

The plot of this game is so simple- toss the ball by using of spring which is moving up and down all the time.

wk6_gamedesign2edit.swf

simple aram_dfc_key1.swf

This it it. As it says, it’s a simple keyboard interface made from Flash. Each button allows user to manipulate the object(currently it’s a mini robot character).

Somehow my creativity was limited this time to expand this project to next step which can join the IPAC interface as physical input. I played around several switches (see picture above) with IPAC first, realized that lack of idea still

First idea in order to enhance user experience with Samsung camera is merging multiple buttons in one long, two-way button. (see pictures below) Industry standard word would be ‘Rocker switch‘.

Before

After

That’d be all for altering ‘physical’ interface. With those two buttons, user can do exactly same navigation as before,by simply clicking either direction to get whatever function. Series of ‘what you can do’ with this button are:

1. Browsing each function by one-time click
2. Selecting any function by center click
3. Fast-image browsing by keep pressing (HOLD)the button

Next step is tweaking a little bit of LCD graphic interface removing the first row icons redundancy.

Application that I am going to use, I am thinking of using Processing or Flash unless some other apps will turn out to be more appropriate and easy to use.

This is ‘in process’ view of Flash window. In comparison to real NV15, my interface shows ‘menu’ first on LCD bottom row.