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Vitaliy Dikker

Puzzle Groove

An interactive dance and puzzle fusion game in which a player is visually encouraged to maintain a dance groove to the beat of the music.

http://vdikker.blogspot.com/

Classes
Game Design,Introduction to Computational Media (Thu),Introduction to Physical Computing (Wed PM)


Puzzle Groove is a first interactive dancing puzzle based game in history of interactive games. Its purpose is twofold, to stimulate both the body and the mind. And here is how it works:

User dances in front of the camera, which tracks full body movement as four separate quadrants (two arms and two legs). For each quarter of the body a calculation is performed to determine the intensity of the groove (body movement). Visual color feedback provides information to the user regarding his/her performance for each body quadrant. In addition at each beat of the song a colored square is generated in the appropriate quarter of the screen. Every four adjacent squares of same color that form a larger square breaks apart and earns user points. Additional multipliers are applied to score based on users ability to maintain the groove (consistent body motion) for a period of time as well as intensity of the groove itself.

Background
I have studied very small available selection of interactive dancing games like Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) and Samba De Amigo, which both have inspired me very much.

Audience
Everyone who likes to shake it?

User Scenario
User dances the the music with the intent of generating same colored blocks on the screen in order to score points. Both speed of body movement and groove consistency are taken into account when measuring performance.

Implementation
The (game) plan is to get this Puzzle Groove on one of those large plasmas and then get some serious user testing done during the ITP Winter Show. I would really like to balance and tweak the game live based on user feedback.

Conclusion
I have learned that coding games is painful, tedious and really Fun !