Keep the balance!
We want our project to integrate cooperation between humans, which means users need to interact not only with the device but also with people. So, we plan to make a game with the need of cooperation between friends. Bring your friend and play the game together!
In detail, we plan to make an interacting game with a balance board and the screen. Users need to stand on the board to keep balanced first, and then they will move toward different directions mainly with their upper part of the bodies to make the balance board lean to the corresponding direction. There will be images on the screen moving with the users’ movements. There will be instructions for us to know what we are supposed to do. Some of them can be accomplished by ourselves, while others need our friends and us to accomplish together. The concrete plan of carrying out the project is as follows:
1. After consulting Andy about the balance board, we are suggested that we should buy one online and adjust it according to our needs. We will add sensors to the balance board. Based on the delivering date, we may accomplish this by 2nd, December.
2. We want to use processing to create different scenarios. We will start on creating the image of the image and make the image move according to the Arduino input.
3. One difficulty we imagine is how to make the image move as we move. We may use the sensors on the balance board to perceive our movement and transfer the information through Arduino to the processing. Then the image on the screen will move based on the information.
Our inspiration comes from the online game and the discussion with our professor. We played an online game named “the bouncing ball”, from which we decided to make a simple game but use the tool that needs to interact with our body. However, the outcome will be too similar to the original version and we need to add more experience to our project. After our professor shows two examples which are “decoding the bomb” and controlling an image on a board controlled by hands respectively, we learned that we may add more cooperation part and focus on the different playing experience. How can we play a game with not just our hands? Inspired by the motion-sensing game, we believe we can use the whole body to play the game. To differ from the motion-sensing game, we think about the balance board as the tool but also the challenge. We stand on the board, instructing the direction to the image through it while restraining ourselves to keep balance. It is a game that needs you to relieve power while restraining yourselves. With the cooperation part, we want to drive people to retake the simple happiness that sets in the collaboration face to face. Some of the tasks even need you to touch each other to accomplish. Make people interact physically, assist with each other in a limited situation, and get closer hopefully, is the purpose of our project.