Multimodal Media Madness - Winter Semester 2005/2006

The Gaming Industry has surpassed Hollywood's revenue. Even with such popularity, the input methods for Video Games remain largely unchanged. The success of Dance Dance Revolution and Sony's EyeToy show the potential of alternative input methods. Recently, Nintendo released a teaser video debutting their new controller. Sony is considering gestures and emotions. In the future, game input may be fundamentally different.

In groups of 4, come up with an idea for a game that uses two input devices from this list:

1. The Lightstone Sensor. This biofeedback device is produced by the Journey Through Wild Divine. It outputs two values: Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Blood Pressure Volume (BVP). These values can be changed through breathing and relaxing (e.g. slowing down the heart).

2. Point & Sweep. Large screen public displays are everywhere. Currently, there are few way to interact with them. The Point & Sweep interaction uses mobiles phone as a form of interaction. You can read more about it here.

3. Phidgets. From their site: "Phidgets are an easy to use set of building blocks for low cost sensing and control from your PC." These devices act as physical widgets that input data through hands on interaction.

4. The Gyro mouse. This device looks and acts like a wand. It produces the same output as a mouse.

5. Previous Work. You can use any of your previous assignments. This includes motion data, color input, and sound. Note, motion data + color input will count as two seperate input devices, and so on.

6. ?. You can use any other input method you want. Since it is not on this list, integration will be your responsibility. Hint: bonus marks for using your own input device.

You can program in either Quartz Composer (QC) or Max/MSP. For input devices 1-3, you will need QC. For 5, you will need Max/MSP. Note, QC also does sound input. However, it does not do video processing.

Note, although using QC seems daring, its learning curve is very low. Check out the online tutorial. Now check out Futurismo's work.

Email a description of your game and the input methods you are going to use.

The assignment will be graded on the following rough scale:

• 1.0 - exceptional work that clearly went above and beyond what was given on the exercise
• 2.0 - exercise was completed satisfactorily as per the assignment specification
• 3.0 - exercise was completed, but has some problems
• 4.0 - incomplete exercise
• 5.0 - little or no effort was put into the exercise

Late assignments will be graded with a penalty of 0.5 per 24 hour period after the due date.