Sandcastle

Created for Round 4 (the "story round") of Building Virtual Worlds, Sandcastle is a virtual performance piece about a boy and a girl at a beach, each trying to build his and her own sandcastle, only to be thwarted again and again by a large wave. Each of the two performers are wearing head-mounted displays and are holding special devices that track the positions of their hands. Using the head-mounted displays and trackers, the actors' live performances are inserted into the virtual beach.

Sandcastle was very well-received by the class instructors, and was lauded for its simplicity, charm, great interactivity between the performers, and flawless network programming of two head-mounted displays.

Funny remembrance from Future Walt: About 10 minutes before we were to show the final presentation of Sandcastle, I decided that the story was way too long. So I got the team together and we cut out about half of the story. We rehearsed once and then performed it live to a great reception -- the shorter version was so much better. Thankfully none of the software needed to be modified because all the events were triggered either by the performers' actions or by special keys programmed into the game that I would press during the performance.

"Old School" Reenactment

Here's a video worth maybe a couple laughs. Especially if you want to see me in drag.

For the Visual Story class at the ETC, my team, The Warner Brothers, re-created a scene from the movie Old School. I co-star along with Dan Driscoll.

Flint Ball

Today I showed off Flint Ball, which is a small multiplayer game that my team made for Round 3 of Building Virtual Worlds.

Flint Ball is a game of stone-age soccer played by large audiences. Each member of the audience is given a remote control, and the audience is divided into two teams. Each team is further dived into two in-game "players". For each player the inputs of the remote controls are averaged to determine the direction in which the player should move. There is also a camera connected to the game, and if one of the teams jumps out of their seats then the ball will be kicked forward a short distance.

The audience playing the game seemed to have a great time -- there were many yells and shouts!

Wormhole Workout

I just finished showing off the game my team made for Round 2 of Building Virtual Worlds. The goal of the assignment was to make a game for a "naive guest", who would play the game without any introduction or instruction.

We decided to use a real bicycle as the player's control mechanism because almost everyone knows how to ride a bicycle. The player pedals the bike to control its speed and turns by using the handlebars. The player also wears a "head-mounted display", which allows him to look around in any direction by simply moving his head.

Our "naive guest" seemed to have a lot of fun, and the game was well-received by the whole class. People really liked both the bike integration and the visual aesthetics.

Future Walt reports that Wormhole Workout was chosen to be in the end-of-semester BVW Show. Hurrah!

Introducing: The Warner Brothers

First year students (like me) at the ETC are required to take a class called Visual Story, which is basically a film class for folks who aren't Film majors. Us students are assigned into teams by the instructors, and then we go off and make movies!

My team is I think really fantastic. Jan, Dan, Mike, and Charlie are really great to work with.

Here's a little introduction video we made. It's not gonna win any Oscars, but it was a blast to make!

Hopper's Escape

Yesterday we had our final presentation for the first team assignment ("Round 1") of the Building Virtual Worlds class. It was terrific fun, and I'm super proud of my whole team, Katherine, Craig, Andy, and myself, for pulling off what I think was a really ambitious idea, especially after a disappointing half-presentation.

The goal of the assignment was to tell a story about "one creature afraid of another". So we decided to make Hopper's Escape, a game about building bridges out of shadows (tracked by Playmotion technology) to help a toy kangaroo escape from a baby. It is a very short game in which the player stands in front of a projection screen and then uses her shadow  to guide a toy kangaroo who is trying to escape from a creepy baby. When the kangaroo encounters an obstacle such as a flowing stream, the game switches modes and the player uses her shadow to build a magical bridge over the obstacle.

I'm proud to say that the game was extremely well-received by the class instructors. One of our instructors, Jesse Schell, who is usually very reserved in his praise, exclaimed "Oh man, I'm in love!" In particular he lauded the use of dual game modes (guiding hopper and building bridges) that were "both novel and interesting."

Future Walt is proud to inform you that Hopper's Escape was shown to great applause in the end-of-semester BVW Show. It was one of the only two worlds from Round 1 that made it into the show.

Here's a video of the game from the show:

Exploding Demon Bunnies vs The Eyeball Monster

Over the past week or so I made a short little game for the Building Virtual Worlds class at the ETC. It was made for "Project 0", which is the very first assignment in which students prove that they have the skills needed to complete the class.

As a programmer, I made a game using pre-existing art and sound assets. I present to you, Exploding Demon Bunnies vs The Eyeball Monster.

It's basically a very short "Zelda-esque" boss fight. I consider the game a success because it proved my programming skills and is fun for a play-through or two.

You can download it from this page.