The October Berlin Mini Jam was crazy enough – we had a triple splitscreen with blinds made out of cardboard and and a MakeyMakey game using fruits and vegetables as controllers. (“And to shoot, you just touch the plum.”)

Fueled by this energy, I made this toy prototype for the theme “Lab Experiment”:

Remote Person Control

One person gets a computer and
a gamepad: The Controller.

One person gets a smartphone, earphones
and closes their eyes: The Robot.

The Controller can now steer the Robot
with transmitted voice commands:
“Left, left, stop, forward, forward…”

Like I say in the video, it’s not finished. It is just a toy right now – I ran out of time to make it a game. I’m thinking about adding commands like “Move your body” and “Move your right hand” so you can actually steer the Robot’s hands too – and then have a command like “grab” to pick up stuff, for example.

The prototype was already a fun experience even with just simple directional controls though. It feels really interesting to use a gamepad to control something in real life (and a human on top of it) instead of something on the screen!

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs

While working with Unity is normally a pleasure and developing Android has proven to be far more straightforward than other mobile platforms, this time I just got terribly unlucky. Here is how I spent my time:

• 4h reading up on and implementing the network stuff (connecting, waiting, synchronizing and dealing with disconnects)
• 0,5h getting and eating food
• 1,5h “fun” while trying to get Unity/ADB to recognize the HTC Nexus One Mini Christiaan lent me
• 1h “fun” with “Unable to find suitable jdk installation Please make sure you have a suitable jdk installation. Android development requires at least JDK 6 (1.6)”
• 15min “fun” with “Error building Player: ArgumentException: Illegal characters in path.”
• 40min of actually implementing the gameplay: Input/Sound
• 5min testing and generally being a happy person

Closing Words

And now, a screenshot from the video, so that Facebook etcetera knows which image to use:

Who knows where exactly I’ll take this? Certainly not me, although I have some ideas. Maybe the next jam will be the time to find out!

]]> https://blog.dragonlab.de/2013/09/remote-person-control-first-jam-prototype/feed/ 1 1417 https://blog.dragonlab.de/2010/08/dragonflute-an-egp-prototype-in-development/ https://blog.dragonlab.de/2010/08/dragonflute-an-egp-prototype-in-development/#respond Fri, 13 Aug 2010 21:18:32 +0000 http://blog.dragonlab.de/?p=224 Continue reading Dragonflute, an EGP prototype in development]]> So – the EGP prototype for this month which I announced earlier is coming along quite well!

In Dragonflute you control this cute little fellow:
(<– Click the dragon to download the current Windows release)

(edit: This it the outdated development version. Click here for the release blog post.)

As the theme of this month’s EGP and the name suggest, you don’t do this my mashing franatically on your keyboard, but but by making sounds, recorded by your microphone. I hope you have one. :)

The dragon will either follow the PITCH of the sounds you make (which I prefer), be it by singing, whistling or by playing an instrument, or the VOLUME (which is fun too, though the game should then rather be called Screaming At Dragons).

Current status is that I don’t have any goals or gameplay yet, only the calibration and the initial control mechanic, so is a mere (but already quite fun) toy.

Next things up will be some things he can collect, and maybe some enemies.

And yeah, so far there are quite some keys which need to be pressed. This will be changed later, too, of course – I already have some great ideas for the GUI. :)

Well, try it out, make suggestions, leave feedback, have fun and stay tuned, more to come!