Tag: Mixed Reality

Wave is the project I decided to make my main project for the independent study I took to attend the AR Workshop.

Built with only TouchDesigner, the game was basically Simon, but used body detection and location of your open waving hand on top of color and sound. The player sees a moving orb with a trail when they wave their hand that follows their hand and a randomized one during the prompts.

Here are some posts showing my progress when working on the game:

July 14: Feedback Orbs

Getting closer to my final project idea. I’m getting more familiar with SOPs and just discovered some of the image filters that had better results than when I tried to do it from scratch. This movement is from noise, but I’ll be mapping it to hand movements and the color to starting hand position. Then, I have to set up the Simon system I’ve built in another program (Unity)/language (C#) and add more randomness. Oh, and add sound. If I get 4 colors to work in time, I’m going to do my original idea that uses a full octave.

July 14, 2018 Instagram Post | See it here

July 15: Hello

Switched over from working with numbers to a possible intro. My original idea was called “Wave” because that would be the only instructions. I wanted people to curiously wave to start the game. Having this “hello” too large made me have to wave back and forth as if I were saying hello. I might keep it. The other stuff here I was testing was on/off controlled by opening/closing your hand and hand position determines color.

July 15, 2018 Instagram Post | See it here

After some testing in TouchDesigner and writing out the logic in text, here is my sloppy attempt at sketching out my final project idea – at least a portion of the “set up” part. I still need to learn how to get the what I want from the user in a way that only updates when I want instead of constantly. Then, I’ll have to make a “game over” and failure part (maybe multiple ones like my Unity 3D version). Why did I choose this as my project???? 

July 15, 2018 Instagram Post | See it here

July 17: More Testing

Testing audio. If you look hard enough, you can see me waving in the background to make the colors appear and sound play. Note: as per my style, there is no “off.” It’s just a black sphere moving and non-playing audio “playing.” Second note: this is creepy AF when you forget you have it on in the background. 

July 17, 2018 Instagram Post | See it here

The video used for the sound can be seen here.

July 20

My Wave game so far. The top part is player audio/video control and the bottom is the logic to choose random numbers for the setup. I now have to have an audio/ video control for the setup and a system that has triggers between turns.

The weirdest part about working in #touchdesigner is how it handles switches. I’m used to thinking of switches as decision trees that go to the right onto separate paths. Here, I have options that go into a switch, then it later is used.

July 27: Updates

Making progress! Now, to make “win” “fail” “start” scenes and put it all together. I still need to test with taller people.

Note: I later remade some parts to be more efficient. I challenged myself with this project to use just the nodes and as little scripting as possible.

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July 28

July 29: Trigger System

I’m not sure if I’m doing this right (since I’m weirdly stubborn about not watching tutorials), but it works and others might benefit… I needed multiple triggers to pulse the same CHOP and wanted something more understandable than a bunch of dotted lines. So I made Math CHOPs combine the output of my main reset triggers into a [probably unnecessary] logic CHOP and THAT is what pulses the CHOP.

NOTE: I know there are ways to do this in a script using Python and an editor, but I’m challenging myself to make this thing by clicking and dragging and modifying parameters to get my brain to think of programming logic in a visual way after decades of using text/coding.

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July 30: Better Orbs

I needed to make my orbs look more like what was in my head, so I’m experimenting with a replacement. I was able to use the color/number system already in my game to adjust the colors and needed changes in blur for the Feedback Edges effect.

I put the values into switches so that the index corresponded with the color, then merged them and used those channels as reference in the Feedback Edges parameters. Worked better than I thought.

I later consolidated all those switches into this – WAY better:

July 31: Wave Intro

Finished the intro on July 31 that I started working on during the AR workshop. (This is a sped up video.) The player waves their hand and the ball tracks to it. Waving a few times triggers a change in the Feedback Edges effect and a timer changes it back.

Thanks to Owen Lowery, Kellye Blosser, and Jake Morgan for your help and feedback!

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The TouchDesigner TOX file for the intro can be downloaded here.