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April 24, 2005
Playtesting2
Sunday April 24th, 3-4 pm
10th Floor lab Rm 1005
I bought too many Japanese snacks...
The simultaneous video input thru firewire and USB turned out to work really well. I was really pleased with the relatively clear photos and very little lag. I suddenly feel this game will actually work by the end of the semester, with this break through. Because after this, the problems are more things I can control. Playtesting went well today, I thought.
People came and went. People were usually watching and they enjoyed it, it seemed. There were about 5 games played with different people -- people of different heights and there was one pair that was boy vs girl.
Here are the photo rules I used:
1 pt for a hit (director automatically awards)
0-2 pt for a photo (judge awards)
...2 pts when opponent's face can be seen
...1 pt when opponent's body part can be seen
...0 pts when there is nothing
-- Ideally there would be a seperate judge and ref, but due to limits in time, I just played both.
-- I used a 10ft diameter circle which was perfect. Not too small, not too big. I am not sure exactly if there needs to be a rule or not here but this is something to still consider.
-- The game was only 30 secs long, but it seemed long enough that there were enough hits, it didn't get boring, and people didn't get too tired. I installed a button that manually freezes the timer and score and plays a boxing bell to announce the end of the 30 secs.
-- I curved the straps more so that the box lies further towards the front. This makes it easier for people to get hits and for the camera to take good shots. This was pretty successful I thought.
-- The starting position was good, especially when the players have their arms outstretched, because they can't get into a hit position before the game starts.
-- I am starting to get a hang of the phrases used by the ref, like "get into your ready positions" or "there is 15 seconds left on the clock," etc...
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Comments I got:
-- People ALWAYS ask me why the top of the head. But when I explain the reasons, then they usually think it's fine.
-- People thought it was suprisingly physically tiring although they thought the 30 sec interval was pretty good.
-- There seemed like a little confusion about the photo and hit points. Charles Truett, good friend and avid gamer, gave me some great advice. What if there were no automatic awarding of points by the comp and instead the comp would only show who made the hit. Then the judge would award the points. This makes sense since, there needs to be more clarity with who hits. A lot of people would ask who made the hit when a hit was made. Also, the all the points responsibility goes to the judge. It makes it clearer that way what is happening. In this case the point system would go something like it does above, but he judge would be the only one awarding the total points. So, a sort of control board -- something easy to use -- would have to be created with the following buttons: START, RESET, 1pt, 2pt, 3pt, END.
Posted by kaho at 12:57 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
Simultaneous Dual Video Input on 12" Powerbook
Oh yeah. With Mister Theo Watson's ingenious suggestion, I was able to port 2 video inputs coming into my Powerbook simultaneously. The lab mysteriously acquired the Irez USB ADVC in the last few days. Funny... it had been missing all this past year, and the other adapters in the lab were not working. I had first tried it out with just a USB webcam and the Canopus ADVC-55 that I bought. That worked well. With adjustments on the camera settings in Director, I was able to even out the compression rates so there wasn't that much of a difference between the two. It was so liberating to climb out from underneath the dark cloud of hardware issues...
Posted by kaho at 09:57 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2005
Foul Play: Soccer Terms
When is foul/dangerous play called in soccer.
This is important when thinking about what is dangerous play in Hit Me! These sort of rules can define what dangerous play is. The interesting thing about soccer is that it's up to the ref who decides what is reckless and what is not. The other thing to be noted is that in soccer foul play happens all the time. Players fake injury to get a PK. This thing cannot happen often in Hit Me! then people would get hurt.
A direct free kick is awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any of the following six offences in a manner considered by the referee to be careless, reckless or using excessive force:
kicks or attempts to kick an opponent;
trips or attempts to trip an opponent;
jumps at an opponent;
charges an opponent;
strikes or attempts to strike an opponent;
pushes an opponent.
A direct free kick is also awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any of the following four offences:
tackles an opponent to gain possession of the ball, making contact with the opponent before touching the ball;
holds an opponent;
spits at an opponent;
handles the ball deliberately (except for the goalkeeper within his own penalty area).
Posted by kaho at 12:58 PM | Comments (0)
April 06, 2005
Meeting with Nick
Met with Nick today. Here are the notes from the meeting:
1. Importance of adding "rituals" into the game. Rituals can be used to emphasize certain things in the game, as well as make it a more interesting experience. For example when boxers touch gloves signaling the start of a game adhering to good sportsmanship etc.
2. Photo Issue: Juges vs. Referee. Originally I thought that just simplifying the point system for the snapshots and by having the referee give the final judgement on the snapshot points would be best. However, giving the resposibility to the referee to judge the snapshots and give points would unnecessarily pull the ref out of the action of the game. Having a seperate judge could work better than giving all the responsibilities to the Red. And here the judge can be part of some ritual.
3. Judge/Scorekeeper. Giving the judge the resposibility of adding scores on top of determining the snapshot score is efficient.
Posted by kaho at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)