next »

[noio]

This is Thomas, the Kingdom dev. I'm also working on another game though—in collaboration with DROPSTUFF.nl—financed by the Dutch Game Fund. It's a motion controlled game, meant to be played on a 14m² LED screen, set in a public space such as a square or park.

The goal of the game is to sneak up on and grab a little creature, but players have to be careful because fast movement will chase it away. What I hope to achieve is that players will perform a slow motion race amidst the setting of the busy square. Even if nobody is "participating", passers-by will still cause eye-catching visuals on the screen.

And because a devlog without images is like a devlog without images, here is an early preview of the critter's behavior:



CURRENT STATUS

Trailer of the pilot/test at Playful Arts Festival:

[SafetySnail]

This is a super interesting sounding concept. Are the critters looks going to change at all or is it mostly behavioral tweaks now? Where is this going to be set up?

[noio]

I definitely need to tweak the looks of the whole game, not just the critter. I'm working on the behavior now.

The mechanic for "catching" the critter is letting him steal your face, which he now does if you don't scare him ^^:



The first playground for the project will be at Playful Arts in Den Bosch (NL).

[darthlupi]

I think it will be really fun to see people's reaction when the critter steals your face.

I love the idea of asking people to stop to and play.  I don't know if this is feasible or not, but it would be ultra rad it could mimic the movements of the person who was face nabbed for a few moments.

[premonster]

this is awesome!

[pnch]

Interesting challenge! In that kind of setting getting a mechanic in which two or more strangers do get to interact is the barrier between a nice gimmick and something beautiful actually happening I think.

[noio]

Interesting challenge! In that kind of setting getting a mechanic in which two or more strangers do get to interact is the barrier between a nice gimmick and something beautiful actually happening I think.

I am mostly relying on implicitly encouraging players to interact: e.g. one player might try to catch the critter, but another player chases him away. This can also be used collaboratively, e.g. one player chases the critter into another player's arms.

Does anyone have a good name for the critter by the way? ^^

[davidp]

Does anyone have a good name for the critter by the way? ^^

The mechanic for "catching" the critter is letting him steal your face, which he now does if you don't scare him ^^:

facehugger

[noio]

facehugger

I was thinking of something a little cuter. Even though yes, he is stealing your face.

Working on the visuals now, I think we all saw

coming:



I am kind of stuck on a good way to indicate that the player is moving too fast. I want it to be very clear, organic, and aesthetically pleasing.

[noio]

I've been working on making the jelly's behavior a bit more predictable so it's easier for players to figure out what's going on and "grab" him. The image below shows how he "locks on" to a face; giving the player time to strike a pose.

[noio]

• Being more explicit about when the player is "locked on".
• Work on the looks of the jelly.
• Fixed the default swimming behavior of the jelly but you can't see that in this video

[noio]

I have implemented a set of conditions that allow the player to grab the jelly and put it on their head. There is a movie of me doing that below:



I do realize that I'm testing all these things under very controlled conditions, and I'm also too close to the camera compared to the real setup which more like the first .gif in this thread... Outside conditions... *shudder*. I should start testing that scenario ASAP :|.

[noio]

Today I experimented with different ways of indicating to the players that they are moving to fast; aside from the jelly's reaction. I tried out things like making a "freeze frame" of fast moving objects (top) and particle effects (bottom). But this is just a really tricky issue; I feel like I'm not looking in the right place and just making things too complicated.

[Panurge]

Really interesting concept. I look forward to seeing how this comes together.

Suggestions for a creature name:

Dopple (as in doppleganger)

Phiz (as in physiognomy)

Xerox

Echo

Ditto

[Whiteclaws]

Metroid, or Jeltroid or Jetroid or Jelroid

[noio]

The new feature today is a high score table. The players who managed to have their face in the jelly for the longest time will appear and stay on screen. The goal is—then—to steal the jelly before another player racks up too many points/seconds. Obviously I have to work on the appearance of the high scores, but the system is there:



And here is another gif of the grabbing not quite working  

[noio]

Some concept sketches courtesy of my amazingly talented illustrator friend Liea. She came up with the "cute blob" design and I'm going to run with that.

[bleek]

So I hear to are looking for a name....





This was the first thing that came to mind.

[noio]

So I hear to are looking for a name....





This was the first thing that came to mind.

Good one

Right now I'm having trouble with the framerate. When I do face detection on an HD camera feed, the FPS runs slower than Watch_Dogs . This is especially disastrous because the optical flow detection becomes very unstable if the framerate isn't steady.

Here's a GIF of me grabbing the new squishy and putting him on my head. This is way too difficult to do especially for an "installation game", but I am a master at it now.



I have a long way to go and so little time

[noio]

Quick update, hopefully will make another one today. I worked on better tentacle articulation.



The tentacles once again consist of multiple segments, but instead of drawing an image texture, I am now procedurally drawing their outlines and letting ofPath do the tessellation needed for filling. OpenFrameworks is careful to hide all that magic from the user, so no one warns you that it might take quite some processing power to tessellate a smoothed path, as the smoothing adds a lot of vertices.

I can't believe I hadn't looked here for inspiration yet.