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An Immersive Gaming Experience. Specs. 30 students were given the task of creating a highly immersive, fun, interactive physical/virtual game for the Grand Opening of Thomas M. Siebel Center on April 30 th , 2004. These are the specs we were given: 14 weeks till deadline
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Specs • 30 students were given the task of creating a highly immersive, fun, interactive physical/virtual game for the Grand Opening of Thomas M. Siebel Center on April 30th, 2004. • These are the specs we were given: • 14 weeks till deadline • Highly interactive (between professors, corporate representatives and students). • Game must show off the new building including its latest technology (Plasma displays, Networking Cameras, Video Wall, Tracking Hardware System, etc). • Create a “media” worthy event (i.e. entertaining for spectators) .
The Team • After careful consideration we divided the project into the following teams: • Creative • Game design, back story of the game, art concepts, 3D models the look development. • Command & Control • Game Engine, all virtual aspects of the game. • Dynamic Sound Engine • Development of sound engine and soundtracks. • Static • Sets, props, lighting, fog effects, sound, and costumes. • Mobile • RFID Tracking System. • Other • Infrastructure, Quality Assurance, Design, etc.
The Physical Space • In order to create a gaming environment with special effects we needed a contained space, where we could control the lighting, sound, and space. • We decided to use a hallway in the basement of Siebel Center (colored in blue).
The Story 4 Teams of six people, each compete to extract packets of ancient wisdom from an archeological dig site buried deep within a million-year-old intelligent building that isn’t too happy about their presence. Players have a half-hour to gather as many packets as they can before the building shuts down life support and ends their excavations….permanently.
Creative Team • As part of the back story, each of the teams were assigned a particular race, which they were associated with. • The story of the races begin when humans were still alive, experimenting with evolutionary genetics. Unfortunately, even against the public outcry, experiments were furthered and new races based on human and animal genes were born. Since the natural balance of evolution was disrupted a general consensus was made that the human race shall leave Earth, marking it as a scientific reserve.
The Races • Now after millions of years, humans have extinguished but four races lived on. Avian Feli
The Races Komodae Pisces
Command & Control • The job of the Command & Control is to provide the virtual eye into the game. • Since not all the object in the game are physical, the C&C view is critical in locating these objects and directing the field players to them. • We are using Ogre3D as the graphics engine for this project. The C&C receives updates from the game server that tell us where players are located, how much a packet is worth, and so on.
Command & Control The other job in the C&C is driving the virtual transport around the Siebel Center basement. The transport takes packets that have been extracted and drives them to the upload jacks to score points. An Upload Jack A Transport
The Races in OGRE PiscesAvian
Dynamic Sound Engine • Sound Engine generates background music that responds to game events. • Written in Java 1.5, the engine uses Java Sound API, the Tritonus plug-in library, and Javazoom’s MP3SPI libraries to play and manipulate pre-composed pieces in both MIDI and MP3 formats. • All music is original and composed by students and a music Professor from UIUC.
How Does the Sound Engine Work? • An adaptive layer receives events from network server, the show control server, and GUI. • These events are passed to sound engine, which responds by playing two classes of pre-written compositions: moods and grooves. • Moods: • Ambient background pieces. Contain a special subclass, in which the specific instruments associated with each of the races is dominant based on the score of the leading team. • Grooves • Short, rhythmic loops. Grooves are played when an ability is activated. Each groove has unique components associated with each race.
Static • The static team is in charge of changing the physical component of the basement into an archeological dig-site. • With close collaboration between Mike Ross the director of Krannert Center for Performing Arts we were able to acquire: platforms, props, lighting equipment, fog machines, costumes, and professional advice.
Field Mobile Physical and virtual components have been developed for this game, but as the first type exists in reality while the latter is an arbitrary creation and thereby lacks direct relevance within a temporal environment. An additional medium is required for elements of each type to interact; the responsibility for the development and implementation of which falls upon Field Mobile.
Field Mobile • This interaction is possible through the utilization of a RFID technology, connecting the virtual world to the physical by passing highly accurate proximal data into the various virtual components. Ubisense Simulator:
