Chicken Little is Afraid of Sky Falling Down-Hangkai Qian-Rudi
CONCEPTION AND DESIGN:
We have played so many games on our computers and phones and it seems normal for people to play games using multi-touch or keyboard and mouse. What I wanted to do is to change the way the players play this game (how the players interact with the game) from click or touch or something to move the whole body to act in order to control the object. The root of the games is the idea 3 in my proposal of getting the fruit on the top of the window. However, I find that If the fruit is only on the top of the window, then the whole gaming process time will be very slow, so I decided to make an infinite game with score system. Moreover, in my proposal, I said it will be two players ‘game. However, when I considered further, there are two bad things if it’s a two players game: firstly, lots of people who come to IMA show are alone, so that it will not be comfortable to compete with a stranger. Secondly, if I make a two-players game, the device will be extremely big. Also, with the score system, we are in fact already can compete with each other. So, in my final version, the game finally come up with a form of single player game. The game’s concept seems simple: the object flying up try to get rid of the obstacles falling from upward. I used a distance sensor, an accelerometer and a hair band to make this game. I want to make the game easy to play，so I chose these sensors. The player needs to wear a hair band with an accelerometer behind his/her head which will detect the angle of inclination and move the chicken Left, right and up and down.
FABRICATION AND PRODUCTION:
My final product is very different from what it is in user test. In my user test, the player cannot move on the y-axis and can only move through x-axis using a distance sensor. There are many feedbacks of my first version of product. Firstly, the height of different people is different, so that I have to adjust the height of the distance sensor to fit different users. Secondly, the velocity of the pillars is the same, so that it’s not like falling from up to down. Even more, they want to move on the y-axis and also, they do not know the story of the game. Luckily, Tristan gave me the story of chicken little and it fit very well in this game. So I changed my title from helicopter to “Chicken Little is Afraid of Sky Falling Down” (much cuter!) The biggest change is that I changed my sensor in the suggestion of Rudi. In fact, the biggest problem I got is that the distance sensor often lose track at some time, which tend to get choppy in the UI. So, I studied an afternoon trying to figure out how to use the 3-axis accelerometer to detect the movement of the user.
CONCLUSIONS:
My project’s goal is to create a gaming experience with the player’s body instead of interacting with mouse or keyboard or button. My inspiration comes from a game by Nintendo “RingFit Advanture”. In that game, player need to move their body to continue the game. The project is align with my definition of interaction: the player receive the gaming animation and move their body in order to move the chicken on the screen, which is a continous loop. Moreover, a good interaction should create joy, and I think I had done it perfectly because all the players loved this game and want to try again when they finished.
Though it is a good interactive experience, there still exists something that need to be improved. Firstly, I used a hair band,which is unfriendly for the users with long hair because the hair band is hard for people with long hair to fit in… I didn’t expect it because both Rudi and me are short hair users… If I have more time I’ll change my design into a pair of glasses and put my sensors there so that it would be more easy for players to play.
Since I did my project alone, it is very hard for me to go over some difficulties, especially for coding (most of my project is on processing) at that time. But when I kept on working on it and ask fellows for help, I will finally get over those obstacles like class, OOP, boolean, switch,and the logic of checking position(quite hard to figure out! The chicken is moving through jumping, so that I shouldn’t write like if x=h but h-50<x<h+50),etc. I find it very interesting to work with my interactive project though it’s hard. When I finally accomplished my project, I felt true happiness that even bigger than when I play computer game! (Seriously!) And I’m really thrilled to see that my project runs perfectly and gain responses like “interesting!” that’s enough for me. That is my goal of my interactive final project.
