9 Amazing Prototypes

Of my 6 ideas, I decided to focus on Haunted Fridge, the shoot-em-up game that uses real world energy use to generate levels, and Sound Ball (working title), a set of physical balls that can be manipulated to create sound and music.

ROLE


Haunted Fridge Role
Haunted Fridge should be a casual game. One of the reasons people would want to play is to see the levels inadvertently created by their friends. This could also lead to peer pressure to be more energy efficient as people become more acutely aware of the energy habits of themselves and the people around them.


Sound Balls Role
In addition to free form play, the Sound Balls could be used in a performance setting. Most likely this would be alongside other instruments, either electronic or not. Both the surface they are being used on and the gestures used to manipulate the balls would contribute to the performance.

 


Sound Balls Role 2
The Sound Balls afford free form play and exploration. If made available in an inviting place, people could interact with them, making amusing sounds and learning the system. The balls should create pleasing sounds no matter what happens to them, to make play fun without any introduction beng necessary, but should also allow more advanced users to to have some purposeful control over the sounds being made.

Look and Feel


Sound Balls look and Feel
I found the bocce balls were about the weight and size I imagine the balls being, so they act as a good stand in for the real thing.

 


Haunted Fridge Look And Feel 1
The website should be simple. I don’t need to create a new social networking site, just a way that people can play the game using their friend’s data.

 


Haunted Fridge Look And Feel 2
I like the devil head I used for my spring break project, but the different sensors should look like different demons and ghosts. These designs are loosely based on Himalayan demon masks. A few can be seen here.

Implementation


Sound Balls Implementation 1
My first sound balls prototype uses OpenFrameworks to generate a sound based on the the distance of each ball to the other ones.
Source Code


Sound Balls Implementation 2
This implementation prototype shows how I could use openFrameworks and Super Collider to create sounds based on the balls location to one another.
Any time a ball is being moved, it creates atone based on it’s speed and average proximity to all other balls.
When two balls collide, a chime sound is cerated based on the distance to the next closest ball not in the collision ad the speed of the collision.
At this point, the physics are somewhat wonky, but that was not the focus of this test, since these balls should exist as real world objects.
Source Code


Haunted Fridge Implementation
This is a more robust version of the sensor I used for my spring break project. This can sense and log 4 values: Freezer open, fridge open, faucet running (including volume), and dishwasher being run. This would essentially be the central unit getting the info from the sensors. It was made by loading Firmata onto and Arduino and having that communicate with Processing to create a text file that looks like this.
Source Code


BONUS Haunted Fridge Implementation
Here’s the game I made over spring break. This is a good (if simple) example of what the final game would feel like
Source Code