Projects 'n Such

ITP Thesis Week Page - My ITP Thesis Week project introduction and description page for Frosty Goes to Hell.



Frosty Goes to Hell - ITP Thesis Week Presentation from James McMahon on Vimeo.

Streaming video footage from my Thesis presentation during ITP's Thesis Week, which brought together students, faculty, guests and live online viewers to watch Interactive Telecommunications Program graduating students present their Thesis projects. I explain my involvement and objectives for my project, and touch upon technological issues in relation to it. The presentation includes a Q&A session. ITP, NYU, 2008.




Frosty Goes to Hell - Physical Setup Demo from James McMahon on Vimeo.

Video of a couple classmates trying out my prototype for the Frosty Goes to Hell virtual-reality simulation experiment. As I still couldn't get relative position and orientation data I had to settle for a simulation video, though it was interesting to note the extent of disorientation and sense of fate and consequence with the character. I was in the background behind the camera for all this, mimicking their movements to give them the illusion of cause from their end and studying their reactions and motion




Frosty Goes to Hell - Wiimote Control Demo from James McMahon on Vimeo.

Video of me controlling Frosty after I was able to get the controls mapped to the wii-mote. Was able to completely control character using nothing but twisting the wii-mote so that it could measure acceleration. Still can't get relative position and orientation to work.



Spring Show, May 2008

Some photos below:

Spring Show 1



Spring Show 2



Spring Show 3


After Thesis was completed, we had a small amount of time to polish whatever we could in time to display our best efforts at ITP's Spring Show. I had many issues with trying to convert my game from being a playable concept on the PC to being a working installation game.

I installed Parallels on my MacBook Pro as well as WindowsXP so I could be able to run Virtools, which is PC only. Unfortunately, after a long series of frustrating setbacks, I hit the road block of being unable to run the physics package of Virtools, which costs extra (alot extra) besides my student copy of Virtools. This is essential for the game to even start, as everything is contained within a world controlled by physics behaviors.

Also, I wished to use the MacBook for its portability, especially since considering the circumstances, I wasn't sure if I was going to get the equipment I requested at the show, so I wanted to be able to carry my project independently without having to rely on one fixed place or room. Ideally, I wanted the wii-mote to be sensed by the Mac using DarwiinRemote and the virtools building blocks, but with no physics, nothing else worked, though Mac was reading and interpreting the data correctly.

To solve my basic problem of "how can I get this to where people can play it?," I mapped the controls to the keyboard, saved out an external version of the game that could be replayed on my desktop, and saved it from the PC and transferred it to the Mac so the physics were intact, though I wasn't able to get the wii-mote working with that external game version. I used USB Overdrive software to hook up a game controller and interpret the keyboard controls to the game controller.

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As "Afterward" didn't pan out due to technical and time limitations (essentially, I'd need an entire development team for about a year to pull off the minimum vision I had for that project), I re-visited a project I made in Interactive 3D and Virtual Spaces class, whereby I used physics impulses to control a snowman balancing on a balance beam over a volcanic crater.

I am interested in this not only because it's a chance to refine and improve on one of my first working games (and one that most people seem to enjoy), but also because the gameplay itself is susceptible to modern advances in gaming technology. In short, I'm trying to get the wii-mote to work with this project and control Frosty by merely using body movement and providing a sort of symbiosis of fate and consequence with your character.

Below is a screenshot of the project, entitled "Frosty Goes to Hell."

Virtools Reconstruction Phase - Rebuilding level from original design and adding multiple levels, fireballs, particle effects, interface design and events/behaviors. Models created in Maya and imported.

Construction 1 - Relative positioning and orientation of the balance beam/plank before physicalization.



Construction 2 - First-person view test.



Construction 3 - Multiple level designing, starting with layout of planks, to increase difficulty and improve the life of the game.



Construction 4 - Adjusting the light sources coming from within the volcano and the surrounding environment, and working with text events.



Construction 5 - Positioning and tweaking parameters of particle systems within the volcano responsible for emitting smoke and fog, a huge part of the visual atmosphere of the game.



Construction 6 - Testing for text event behaviors when Frosty passes a certain threshold on the y-axis, thus signaling his inglorious doom. Also checking position of particle systems.



Construction 7 - Experimenting with newly-created Wii-tools building block in Virtools. Attempting to form wireless connection with PC and to get Virtools to recognize relevent stream of data.



Construction 8 - Experimenting with the IR-detection building block in virtools for the Wii. Wii-tools works with wii-mote, and can recognize accelerations.


Still trying to figure out how to have Virtools sense wii-mote's relative position and orientation, instead of only pumping out bluetooth-detected accleration measurements, which limit movement to mouse 2D interface device or rotation-friendly movements.


Storyboard sketches

Introductory Storyboard

Panel 1: Frosty was happy.

Panel 2: Until one day, when he just snapped.

Panel 3: He went on a terrible rampage.

Panel 4: Soon, he was all over the news.

Panel 5: Finally, Frosty found himself surrounded by police, shooting at him.

Panel 6: He began healing himself, and growing bigger.

Panel 7: Desperate now, Frosty called his old friend, but his friend saw the news and didn't want to talk to him.

Panel 8: One of Frosty's hostages found his weakness, and with the aid of police flamethrowers...

Panel 9: Frosty was no more.


Ending Storyboard

Panel 1: Well done, Frosty!

Panel 2: You have now paid penance for your 1st victim!

Panel 3: ...only 5 victims remain!

Panel 4: May the fates smile upon you Frosty, in your quest to find the Light!

Panel 5: (Game restarts, minus intro and opening control interface display)

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Conceptual Iterations - "Afterward"

3D interactive narrative concerning a man's revelations of his past and the grief suffered with his wife after the death of their son, as presented in an abstract dream-world that the man slowly comes to realize through the guiding physical characters of Paula Meehan's "Child Burial" poem, which help him understand his past and regain his memory, and allows him to shift his conciousness from the dream world back to reality.

Sketch 1 - Player examines artwork and images engraved and presented in environment around him, and begins to progressively understand his past.



Sketch 2 - Player looks into lake and watches scene with real-live actors in water, reinforcing his memories.



Sketch 3 - Player comes upon strange artifacts in surroundings, obelisks, a hospital bed, relics from his former life; and is guided by words of wife's poem, which are visible when player is walking the correct direction.



Sketch 4 - The text will be an actual 3D object, able to be walked around at certain points, with event changes when player moves a certain distance past the halfway point on the h-axis.


Below is a printout of the "Child Burial" poem by Paula Meehan, with sketches concerning scene progression and unfolding narrative.

Afterward - an Animatic - Link to rough animatic presentation of storyboard and progression of key scenes throughout interactive narrative.

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