Space Invaders 2006

Kuan Huang, Evan Barba

Space Invaders 2006 is a video game which is projected against an architecture. A player is controlling an "aircraft" to fire down the "invaders" on the building by moving his/her body in a physcial space. The interface of this game is designed in a way to fit the interface of the architecture.

http://www.hawk-huang.com/portfolio/thesis.htm

Classes

Final Project Seminar

Keywords

Motion Capture, Outdoor Projection, Architecture, video game

Description

Space Invaders 2006 is a collaborative project done by Interactive Telecommunications Program and Computer Science Department. The idea of playing video game in public space at a low cost is originally from "Vmob" research group(of Computer Science Department) that we are involved in. In the past one year, some testings and experiements were conducted within NYU campus. For our thesis projects, we decided to put together all the experience and lessons that we learned from previous testings and make an outdoor playable mobile video game in 3 months.

Personal Statement

We are both video game fans and want to explore what is the next level of interaction that can help make a game more engaging. And through the engagement of playing a game, players and viewers can get compelling experience.

Audience

random people on the street.

User Scenario

This game can be played on quite a lot buildings. It only needs a computer, projector and a video camera.

Implementation

Opencv library is used to track a player's motion.
The video game is originally an open source game that was developed in openGL.

Conclusion

Based on the data that we collected during the outdoor testing, 90% people joined and played this game for at least one minute. 80% people want to see more and more this type of game happened on the street in the future. More than 95% people want to share the experience of playing or watching this game with their friends. Also the unique experience that players and viewers have gained from this game help them remember this game for quite a long time. We hope that this type of game could bring a new level of social interaction experience to many public events such as advertising camp, festival, outdoor parties.

Additional Documents