Tim Stutts: ITP Project Blog

The lovable associative matching game has undergone over 20 revisions and several beta tests with children at Seton Hospital. The game–programmed entirely in Processing–will debut at the ITP Winter Show with other projects in the Inclusive Game Design Class.

Play it here.

I’ve uploaded some stills from the latest Conveyor Player Game. Charley and I recently took the game to Seton Hospital for testing game play for children with disabilities. The game now features six object categories ( animals, colors, transportation, food, numbers, and letters) , each with six associated objects, that the player pairs together to earn matches. Each correct match is accompanied by an exploding star ( or “spider web”, as one child referred to it as ), encouraging dialog, and a jumping box. Incorrect matches play the phrase “try again” with a sideways nodding box. There are sound effects for the belt, objects landing on the belt, exploding star, correct match, incorrect match, and winning. Music plays at the start menu and win phase of the game. The final version of the game will be available for play freely online within the month.

New Changes:
- code more modular
- multiple items selectable
- items bounce on the conveyor belt
- energy meter below belt gives player a timed challenge, but everyone wins in the end
- cool end animation with falling boxes

Play game here.

Pictured here installed on a Mac at Seton Pediatric Center.

We also installed the touchscreen interface and button controller.

Improvements:

- start menu to control speed / usability functions

- three speeds

- two button modes

- begin button with delay between game start

- boxes nod if match is correct, shake side to side if answer is incorrect

- added small points once object is falling to the matching box

- animation for when points are scored

- working belts

- piston to push new objects onto belt

- some additional modularity in the code

Play it for yourself here.

After spending several weeks working on a plan and starting a beta version “Sunshine” the video game, I have decided to can this project, at least momentarily, to work on a game that is more playable and adaptable to the children at Seton hospital. I am collaborating with Charlie Miller on a matching game, where kids sort objects out moving down a conveyor belt. While the object drifts down the belt, a teacher can coach the student on their choice, before it’s said and done. Matches are at first made by pairing identical objects together, but eventually by association; putting all fruits into one bucket, all vegetables into another. Also, to make matters more challenging, will be additional conveyor belts and buckets incorporated into later levels. Players are rewarded with points, sound effects, and kudos from their peers. Play the beta version here.

I created a switch from a children’s book, removing one of the card stock pages and replacing it with conductive strip metal. When the book is closed the circuit is complete, and sends a trigger to the iPac chip. It can be used to play a Flash game. I’m contemplating modifying the book further, so that each page is a different switch. I would also like to make it more durable, through use of thicker and better hidden wires. As the child flips through the book, on screen animations come up on the computer screen, thus bridging a long standing gap between old and new narrative media.

In the distant future the Sun is losing energy. Your mission is to fire hydrogen rockets at it from your base on Earth. Just avoid hitting those pesky inner planets!
http://itp.nyu.edu/~ts1200/Inclusive/Sunshine/orbit3/index.html

As a teenager in the mid-1990’s I spent many afternoons designing cities in the popular Maxis title, SimCity 2000, on my parent’s Gateway PC. This early simulation game, originally created by Will Wright, allows the user to start from scratch, generate a custom terrain, lay the foundations for a town, and build it up into a metropolis. There is no clear goal in playing the game, aside from generating revenue to build whatever the user desires, or for that matter, destroy the town through subjecting it to relentless natural disasters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnsx_u9ZOGg

The reason why I use SimCity 2000 as my example, as opposed to the later SimCity 3000 or more recent EA distribution of SimCity 4, as that by the end of SimCity Classic era, and onward to SimCity 2000, the groundwork for the game and game play had essentially been established; most other changes after this point were “improvements” the graphics engine and sound, rather than additional variables or infrastructures to improve game play. It is conceivable that once mastering SimCity 2000, a user could become bored of SimCity 3000 after the initial infatuation of cosmetic improvements wore off. Furthermore, these surface level changes do not seem to lend themselves to accessibility.

Terrain Generator function allows users to set the grounds. This process could be made easier through more responsive game interfaces; click and drag a pain.

One of the first things I would propose to improve accessibility would be to make SimCity 2000 freely available and playable online. SimCity Classic is already available as an online game http://simcity.ea.com/play/simcity_classic.php, though this basic version is not as fully developed as the sequel, and misses some key aspects such as accurate proportions of town infrastructures; police stations are is large as small neighborhoods, and two-dimensional top-down perspective that removes the users special perception. The bandwidth is there to make a 3D game such as SimCity 2000—which is more along the line of pseudo-3D ( 3D structures do not exist as vectors, but are rather 2D flattened graphics, with special layer properties that gives them an air of dimensionality )—playable over a network, perhaps even within a browser. As an online title, users could establish forums to discuss game-play, or maybe even watch other users playing the game, offering up critique.

Police department dwarfs low income houses. Design flaw?

For improvements to the visually impaired community of players, it would be great if users had the option of setting the colors of all the structures before building a city or opening a tutorial. Perhaps this could even be worked into an HUD, where a user could mouse over an object, it’s name would be revealed through both text and speech, and then a color spectrum would pop up, giving users a choice of how to represent water or commercial zones or bare land. Also it would be nice if a translucent letter “R” might hover over a residential zone, an “I” over each industrial zone, and so on, so long as it didn’t obstruct the players visibility. The reason why the distinction between zones is crucial is because of the strategy involved not only in the placement of, but also maintaining health ratios of different zones. Residential zones, for example, seldom develop properly next to industrial zones, but without proper visual distinctions a player would have little means of knowing the differences between zones, aside from spotting an occasional dead-giveaway smokestack—typical of industrial zones, but not all industrial zones can be factories, particularly if the game is to maintain it’s status as a simulation, so this is something to consider, when making visual changes to the game.

In terms of audio accessibility, one of the few improvements I noticed between 2000 and 3000 were the addition of the government advisors. In this mode an appointed head of mass transit, might inform you of inefficiency in the current transportation system, and suggest additional highways or subways around traffic-heavy areas. Some text to speech functionality was probably built in to the aspect, but it would be nice of these problems were notated on the city map as text, and once clicking on them the user could then see and hear an advisor’s report. This notation aspect could also remind players with short-term memory loss of the continuing problems faced by the city, in a way where they wouldn’t have to access this information in a separate window.

to the colorblind this would present an unclear view of low value residential areas alongside industry.

Finally, the technology is in place to make SimCity accessible to the deaf and blind. I envision an interactive table where the player could use their sense of touch to both build a city and feel it out at the end—similar to the bed of nails toy that people use to make imprints of the their hands and face, only motorized. Vibrations to a wristband could relay information about the conditions of the city, while the tabletop map changed slightly from moment to moment. This and other accessibility technologies are within the reach of the game developer.

Dong is Downward Pong: you may only use the down key to move the paddle. Some changes I made to the original game:
- changed controls of player paddle to only allow for downward motion; if paddle goes too far it is reset at the top again

- changed the logic of the enemy to fit the new downward only rule; will continue to move downward until ball is within range and then hover there

- instructions pop up on how to play then disappear after player has successfully hit the ball

- bigger, colored ball and paddles for added fun

- ideal for player with limited control of individual fingers

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ts1200/Inclusive/Dong/timpong.html