The Media Computing Project (Winter '23/'24)

Instructors

For any questions about the class, please contact Sebastian Hueber.

Syllabus

MCP this semester revolves around a topic that elegantly combines multiple domains of media computing and HCI: You will create a multiplayer rhythm game with multimodal inputs. During this course you will learn:

• the role of HCI in software and game design
• implementing a GUI app for a desktop OS (macOS)
• playback and manipulation of digital media like audio and video
• detecting the human as input from camera feeds with basic computer vision
• writing simple drivers for USB devices

You will work in groups of three to create:

• A rhythm game that can be played with one or more players. Whether your game is about playing music, or a jump 'n' run game where inputs need to be synchronized to the beat, or something else, is up to you! We encourage you to implement your game using SpriteKit. However, you can also use another framework as long as your software runs on a Mac.
• To allow for a very unique and expressive interaction you are also supposed to create an instrument controller. This could be a driver for an existing device, e.g. a Guitar Hero guitar. You could also use a camera and optical tracking of the user or completely build your own device from scratch in the FabLab. While your game will primarily be designed for usage with your instrument controller, the controllers of the other groups should also work with your game. Therefore we expect a controller to perform exactly four different actions, and each controller will have four keycodes assigned as its possible output space. You will need to ship a small user-space driver application with your controller so that we can all test them out with the games of the other groups in the final session of the lab.

Final Project Trailers