New website

For the past few days I have been working on a complete new layout for my personal website CrystalMinds. There are several reasons why I did that. First of all, the current blog gave me limitations, I couldn't create my own page with static content. For example a downloads section. If I would keep on blogging things that I have done and created would be very hard to find. Besides that it would be very hard to know if you had the latest version for example my soon to be release MultiTouch!Library.

Second of all, my personal website shows my process as well and I felt like everything I publish on the blog is a process as well that I want to share on my website.

Third of all, I already owned a website and I figured I might as well put everything in one place, I only needed to include a blogging system.

So with that being said I would like to introduce my NEW website at:
http://www.crystalminds.net/

Please change your RSS/Atom feeds and any link you might have to this blog. I am still considering whether or not I should re-post my older posts on my new website.

Software Application : Part IV

#TITLE:
PuzzleGame Version 2 (Final)

#DESCRIPTION:
A standard multi-touch puzzle application.

#INSTALL:
- First make sure the global flash security settings link to the swf.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager04.html
- Run OSC.
- Run FLOSC.
- Run PuzzleGame.swf.
- Define the screen by touching the red crosses with one finger.
- Puzzle away!

#OPTIONS:
- Insert row; You can insert as many rows as you prefer.
- Insert column; You can insert as many columns as you prefer.
These options make it possible to create your own amount of puzzle pieces.
- Next puzzle; Creates the next puzzle by randomly picking an image from the imagelist.

#IMAGE LIST:
In the images folder you can find the photo’s and an XML document. It’s possible to add your own photo’s. Just place a photo with a dimension of 400x300 in the images folder and add it to the XML document. Click as much on the Next Puzzle button till your photo appears.

#DOWNLOAD:
Click here.

#SCREENSHOT:

Software Application : Part III

So the first real application has been written for my multi-touch screen. It's a standard puzzle game which I developed to see which methods and events I will encounter when designing a game and integrate those into the TouchLibrary.

Board Game or No Board Game

Developing is not all that I 've done. I also did research on how to translate the board game 'Settlers of Catan' to a multitouch device. Also talked to people about where the line for them is between something being called a board game and when it becomes a video game. I need to do more research on the matter. Interestingly enough it seems that we actually want to see a board to make it feel like a board game. So for example the videogame 'Warcraft 3' on a touch screen would still be called and feel like a videogame, allthough put the Nintendo video game 'Mario Party' on a touch screen and people call it a board game. So are the die and the old board really needed?

Software Application : Part II

One of the most annoying things I came a cross was while playing and developing with my FTIR touch screen, was that it wasn't precize enough. If it doesn't register properly where you touched the screen that get's very frustrated, mostly if you are depended on it. So I worked hard on adding a calibration handler to my class and succeeded.

With a simple method 'startCalibration()' I can now let the user define the screen size and use those values to give a more precize position of where the finger touches the screen.

It looks like this:

Software Application : Part I

On monday and tuesday I worked very hard on my very own touch class in Actionscript 3. This class is needed to parse the messages send by the OSC. It now includes the following events:

FINGER_DOWN - Dispatched when a finger touches the screen.
FINGER_UP - Dispatched when a finger releases from the screen.
FINGER_MOVE - Dispatched when a movement of a finger has been found.

With these events it was very easy to create a simple multi-touch painting software in flash. Which looks like this:

Project presentation : Part I

The past couple of days I really needed to focus my attention back to my research. Trying to define in a better way of what it is that I am going to do research on. In this thinking process I came to ask myself three questions. For starters, "What is a board game?", it seemed that everyone had a different opinion on what a board game is exactly. The second question was "Where does a board game ends being a board game and begins to become a video game?". And third, "Why bother?". I can't exactly give you the answeres yet as some are a bit vague, but I kept on thinking and this is the outcome which I presented today.

I became really fascinated on a new way of gaming, a new genre perhaps. It's the question mark which lays between the 'Traditional Board Games' and the 'Video Games'. It's not yet possible to imagin the feeling one experiences when playing an interactive board game. And so my new research question became the following:

"What can a multi-user, multi-touch table mean for the future of board games?"

Before this can be answered a couple of things are needed. First I will need to do research on the possibilities of a multi-touch table, look into the benefits and added value of such a device and write down the restrictions of a board game. But also mention the other way around, what are the added value of a board game and the restrictions of a multi-touch table.

After that schedule has been set I can pick a popular board game and begin experimenting by adding benefits of a multi-touch table into the game and look at the outcome.

Why bother? A very annoying but good question. Well first of all, to keep up with time and technology. We are living in a digital generation, with our mobile phones, computers and so on. It's only a logical step that on some point the board game would get modernized as well. And now that the multi-touch technology here, that is possible! Second of all, to remove the restrictions of a board game and to embrase the new possibilities a multi-touch table has to offer.

I decided that my target audience will be your every day family that enjoys sitting around a game board and playing a game.

Then one last thing, the quest for a beamer may have ended. More news coming up.

Quest for the short-throw projector

I had to return the beamer today and tried if I could arrange it so that I could borrow it for the rest of the project. Unfortunatly school couldn't approve to that request and so my quest started in finding a company that could sponsor me a beamer, preferably short-throw, so I don't have to use a mirror. I am still looking.

The current state is that I have no beamer and therefor I can't finish my setup. I decided to investigate into how to write a class for Adobe Flash that can retrieve the data that is being send using the TUIO protocol and to process the data for easy use for my game experiments.

The class will be written in such a way that it will fire events for a finger press, release and drag and will give access to information like finger position, pressure and delta. I will continue developing this in the upcomming days.

Working setup

Wow it has been more then three days that I have posted something. This doesn't mean that I haven't been doing anything related to the multi-touch assignment. On wednesday I had to go to school to borrow a beamer and to talk to a teacher called Willem-Jan who kindly helped me putting some perspective into my research. He told me that writing is a dynamic proces, that I could change everything at anytime.

Also I tried, with help, to figure out what it is I am exactly fascinated by, what I want to do research on and why I should bother. Why would you want to play boardgame type of games on a multi-touch device while the traditional board games already show that they are working and fun? Anyway I got the assignment to make a table with on one side the traditional boardgames and it's uniqueness comparing to a multi-touch version, mostly focussing on the restrictments. On the other side I would have the multi-touch version with it's added value.

The most important thing I have to do research on is a thing I call the 'Casino Effect' in boardgames. Let me give an example to explain, imagin you just won 200 points on the slots, instead of immediatly adding those points to the total score, you let it add the points over a certain amount of time with maybe even some sound that goes louder the closer it get's to the new amount of points. The whole illusion is that those 200 points in this way, feel a lot more.

Some notes on benefits of a multi-touch table:
* Downloadable content
* The size of the board can be as large as you like
* You can play against the computer (together or alone)
* The ability to create your own map
* The ability to share your map with others
* Add-ons or modifications by others to the game can be shared as well
* Easy customization for theme

After this I used the beamer to finish the second prototype and had it soon fully operational. It worked!! And it worked well!! So after playing around with it, looking into how I can calibrate and tweak I talked to Erwin what would happend if you played catan realtime. Something I am going to develop and experiment with.

Also one major issue is, that I have to think clearly how I am going to test.

So on thursday I tweaked my screen a little bit and had to build the whole setup in my house, which was kinda hard because I want everything to be perfect and I didn't have the material. So I eventually fixed it with my coffee table on the side, which is balancing for 50% on my computer and the other 50% it's being pressed against the wall by a desk. Below the coffeetable I have a beamer pointing upwards and next to it the camera. I don't use a mirror because of three ghost images. I used towels to close the whole thing up. To make the blobs better and to fetch the tracing well I used oil on the screen.

Playing with the second prototype: Part II

Today I had to look for duct tape to tape the edges where the infra red light could escape out of the frame and I had to look for some tracing paper to work as a diffuse material. I settle for coroplast PVC tape and patternpaper, which I didn't even know it existed and if it would work.

I placed all the wires and leds within the frame and taped it so I don't have to worry about accidently breaking the wires. After this was done I was glad to see that I didn't have to worry about hoovering hands anymore.

Next was the possition of the diffuse material, it appeared that if I put it in front my blobs didn't get through, that's probably why you need a small layer of silicon to make that work. I put it behind the acrylic, so at the bottom, and my blobs did went through.

Now I have a working multi-touch input device, but not yet a multi-touch screen. So tomorrow I will borrow a beamer to project the image on my screen and hopefully that will be it.

I know the picture below is a bit chaotic, but it does describe what it will look like tomorrow.

Playing with the second prototype: Part I

The light of the leds were so strong that even when you hoovered with your hands from about 30 to 40 cm it would still detect your fingers. Meaning I had a hoovering multi-touch table, not quiet what I wanted. So I tried putting the adapter from 12V to 9V but that didn't make a very big difference.

After playing with it some more I came to the conclusion that the light could break free from small gaps between the acrylic and the aliminium, so now I have to buy some duct type to fill the gaps and hopefully it will work.

In the meantime I had to go to school to return the beamer and I have to come up with a structure for my research subject.

Second prototype nearly done

Today I worked really hard to get the second prototype up and running. Paul soldered the last part of the leds together and I drilled holes in the aliminium so I could screw the L-shaped brackets in. After this was done, we tested the leds at Paul's place with his simple non-modified webcam. We were very nervouse due the fact we only had one chance, doing something wrong would mean that all the leds will burn and I would have to buy new leds. Luckely for us, everything worked like a charm.

With the frame and the leds I went home and had to do something really borring, namely tape every single led so we know for sure it won't break because it might hit the aliminium or something. After that I had to put it in the frame, which was harder then I thought because some of the holes were to large making the led constantly pop out. Next I could test and this is the first result (without the bandpass filter on the camera).

Building second prototype

Alright instead of a story line, this time I'll post a sum of events. So on wednesday eve, I got the 30 IR Leds and with that I had all the equipment to start building the second prototype. I brought all the stuff from the shopping list to my good friend Paul van Dalen, who helped me putting it all together.

Unfortunatly we saw that the 10mm space in the H-shaped aliminium bar was including the thick edges and the acrylic of 8mm did NOT fit in. So we had to find another solution and so we decided to make the aliminium go all the way around the acrylic and let the L-shaped braces stick out a bit so that it can hold it.

It all cost more time then I expected and so at the end of the night we had the aliminium frame, with the holes and we had part of the soldering done. Then the next day, my unibrain firewire camera arrived with the lens and I was able to lend a beamer from school for the weekend.

Tomorrow, saturday, I will again go to my friend to finish the frame. I wish I could take photo's of the development, but unfortunatly I don't have a photo camera.

Tonight I will install and connect the unibrain camera to see it's speed and to see how it picks up infrared light.

Project proposal presentation

So the project proposal presentation was pretty exciting seen the fact that after the five minutes you got for giving your presentation you were told if you were allowed to continue your project or not. Luckely for me it was approved, however, I needed to remove the word properly in my research question. So for now, my research questions is going to be:

"How can you translated a traditional
board game into a multi-touch edition?"

Also I had hard time phrasing that what I want to do, but I guess I can best describe it as finding multi-touch solutions for common game problems that have already been solved in someway for traditional board games. Like the die, that has been found to generate a random number.

If you take a board game like cluedo, you could extract game solutions like the dice, the weapons, the pawns that represent the character, the cards that represent a character, weapon or room, the spaces on the board and the rooms. How can you put all these elements into a multi-touch screen and make the experience of that game even more fun.

As an example I will translate one traditional board game into a multi-touch edition, where I will describe my work progress in my supportive narrative, argumenting every decision I make.

Project proposal presentation preperation

Today was all about the project proposal presentation which must be held at my school tomorrow. In this presentation I will give my working title, "The Multi-Touch Board Game Experience". Honostly I am not really satisfied with that title but I can't come up with a better one so I just leave it. Next I will need to answer the question how my subject is related to my field of studies.

Your finger as an input on single touch devices, instead of buttons, mouse or keyboard is nothing new. We can see it in most devices we know today like mobile phones, pda's, iPod's, etc. The game industry picked this up as well and it was Nintendo that decided to bring up the first handheld console that uses a touch screen as an input for it's games.

Looking at the big companies like Apple, who brought the new iPod Touch and the iPhone, Microsoft, who is going to bring us Surface and Windows 8, and Philips with it's Entertaible we can see that they are experimenting with a new technology, multi-touch, and are currently doing a lot of research on it's potential.

Although I don't know much about Apple's connection with games I do know that Microsoft hired a group called Carbonated games to design and develop games to test their Surface and that Philips has a whole research team on how traditional board games can be modernized. My goal is to contribute in this research about multi touch gaming.

I first wanted to do research on how games can benefit from a multi-touch device, but as that's way to broad I narrowed it down to board game translations. So my research question for now will be: "How can you properly translate a traditional board game to a multi-touch edition?". This is what my supportive narrative will be covering.

For my project, I will build a multi-touch table and as an end result I will have a playable multi-touch version of a traditional board game.

That's basicly what I am going to tell in my presentation tomorrow. Now I need to practice it.

My visit with Laurence Muller

Laurence Muller is a master of Grid Computing student at the Universiteit of Amsterdam, he has been researching multi-touch screens since the summer of 2007. I visited him at his school on friday to see and experience his setup and play with the applications he could offer me. A big thanks to him for answering my endless amount of questions.

The setup he eventually choose was that of RI (Rear Illumination), which basicly means that the infrared light comes from behind instead of in the table top. The reason he choose this setup is because the FTIR setup can't recognize objects and he needed that.

First of all he looked at the photo's on my website and asked himself the question rather or not the camera was seeying IR properly. So I asked him what he used and he used a FireWire webcam from unibrain called the Fire-i Board Camera Color. A lot of people that are building multi-touch devices confirm that firewire camera's are the way to go, because they can process streaming data much faster. There were also some people that claim that USB is also slower because it uses a compression techniques to get the images across the (narrow) USB bus.

I am also going to order my Fire-i Board Camera Color (€68) on monday, together with a 4.3mm standard lens without the IR coating (€12).

The camera then only needs a proper bandpass filter to filter out the visible light and only let the infrared light come in. I will be using black photonegatives for this.

So next, the frame. After the whole frame has been build, with the wires, the leds and the plexiglas I should already detect blobs from the fingers. With touchlib running on the computer I could already test it out. For tracing and dragging of objects however, this setup needs to be improved for better performance. From what I've been told when you drag your finger across the glass there will be more air between the finger and the glass making the blob less clear. To get rid of this, you will need a silicon, like Sort a Clear 40, layer. On top of the silicon you will place the diffuse material, the nuigroup stated that rosco grey is the best way to go, but very hard to get as well. The cheapest solution would be tracing paper. The good thing about Rosco grey is that it blocks IR light from the outside, making the table more usable in different kind of environments.

Alright to put things into perspective, the layers will look as follows:
- Finger
- Projection Screen
- Silicon Rubber Sheet
- Acrylic

Last but not least, Laurence told me that in the meantime I could already look into developing applications for my future touchscreen by using the reactivision tuio simulator to simulate finger touches.

Download the latest version of Touchlib from http://nuigroup.com/touchlib/downloads/
Download the latest version of Reactable from http://reactable.iua.upf.edu/?software

The second prototype

Now that I know that the technique works, I decided that for my second prototype I will build the frame based on the FTIR technique which is shown in the picture below.

The infra red light from the leds will go into the acrylic pane and bounces up and down through the material. When a finger touches the acrylic the light gets frustrated and you will be able to detect a white spot, also known as a blob, with a camera that detects infra red light.

I am still waiting on the leds, but I already possess the acrylic pane. So for the next prototype I still need the aliminium H-shaped bar to build the frame, L-shaped brackets with screws to keep the frame together, wires to connect the leds with, resistors so the leds won't explode and a 12V adapter to give power.

I could buy most of the material at the following store:

Hubo
Badhuisstraat 95-101
2584 HE, The Hague (Netherlands)
(00)(31)703540360

There a bought the H-shaped aluminium bar (30x10x200), the L-shaped brackets and the screws for only € 11.10.

Now I need to go to an electric store to buy the wires, resistors and adapter.

First working prototype

Today I got a working FTIR prototype, nothing fancy yet, but at least it shows that the technique works. I used the following material for this test:

- Wii sensor bar 
Will do for this test, still waiting on my ir leds order.
- Acrylic 
8mm thick, 41 x 31 cm, to maintain 4:3 ratio.
- Logitech webcam
Adjusted to see IR led.

The Wii sensor bar came with my Nintendo Wii system.
The acrylic I bought from a store close to me for only €19, the edges still had scratches so it needed to be polished. I was to lazy to polish the edges myself and so I found a store who could do it for me:

Scheveningse Glashandel
Heemraadstraat 249 A
2586 SW, The Hague (Netherlands)
(00)(31)703550488

I wish I could tell you which Logitech webcam I used and how expensive it was, but unfortunatly I can't trace it back. I can however tell you that I got it from the following store:

MEG@1
Badhuisstraat 81
2584 HE, The Hague (Netherlands)
(00)(31)703227578

It's a ball-shaped webcam that really looks like the Logitech QuickCam. The camera itself is not enough, I had to convert it to an IR webcam. To do this I needed to remove the IR blocker which is found in every webcam (it filters the IR light to a certain degree). If you open the webcam it's the small red piece of glass between the chip and the lens. In my case I had to break it, because it was glued on. After putting it all together again I got the following results by shining the Wii sensor bar to my hand or a ten euro bill:

Alright so I had the IR webcam working, got the acrylic polished and the IR leds from my wii sensor bar. It was time to test it out! I placed the Wii sensor bar against the edges of the acrylic and did some testing with my fingers touching it. Guess what, it worked.

Catan on Xbox Live Arcade

As for an expension on my field research I wanted to play The Settlers of Catan on the xBox, because I heared a lot of good comments on it and I wanted to experience what that fuzz is all about.

The electronic version on the xBox is called Catan, which can be bought and downloaded from the xBox Live Arcade. I already knew how the game is being played and therefor I thought I could get away with just downloading the demo for free. After loading the game I quickly bumped against some annoying demo restrictions, first of all I could only play a match against the computer and second of all in the beginning of the game I wasn't allowed to pick the places for my settlements. But that all couldn't destract me from my purpose to get a feeling of playing the game.

I soon came to the conclusion that I haven't played the game for such a long time that I forgot about most of the game rules. As I didn't feel like going through the whole tutorial first I decided to go with re-discovering the game rules as we go.

The game went really quickly and the resources went all over the place, I had no idea how the trading function worked and I had no idea what the computer had done or what I should do in my turn, besides throwing the dice. Which, by the way, didn't annoyed me so much as I thought it would. You pressed a button, the 3d dice appeared and rolled over the game board (including the sound of rolling dices) and quickly stopped with a number.

After a certain amount of turns the demo version expired and asked me to buy the full game. I didn't feel satisfied with this experience and so I decided to buy the full game. Now I had the option to play against the computer as before or to play online against up to four players around the world, the decision was not hard to make.

Once online I noticed that I could plugin a microphone to my joystick and actually talk to the people in the room. This had an enormous impact on the fun I experienced while playing the game. I came across people from canada, arizona, denmark, germany but also closer to home, the netherlands. They kindly filled in the gaps I didn't know about the game rules and instead of waiting for anyone to accept your trading offer you could easily ask if someone wants to trade and you could actually negotiate.

After spending some time playing and talking to all sorts of people I came to a logic though interesting conclusion that the feeling of enjoying a game doesn't limit itself to the game rules, it's the whole experience around it.

For example I joined a game and it was filled with people from canada and they kindly wanted to answer some of my questions I had for them. One of these questions was how they experienced the dices in the game, at that time I still thought it was one dice, two dices. The guy bursted into laughter and after some time he said I sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger, constantly saying "dices" like Arnold would. So the whole room, including me, was laughing and after that stopped he corrected me and said it was one die, two dice and I learned something. Of course he continued talking like Arnold for the rest of that round.

The thing is after I was done playing the game, I felt really good and wanted to play the game again. Besides I ended up with meeting all sorts of new people which some of them even added me to a so called friendslist on xBox.

To conclude this story I came up with some pro's and con's for the electronic game board:
(Keep in mind that for this example I didn't think of people gathering around a computer like the multi-touch would do, but purely playing solo on a PC, possibly against people online)
+ Try before you buy.
+ Tutorial to lead you through the game rules.
+ Send unbalancing issues or suggestions to the game designer.
+ Possibility to download expansions or modifications from out the community.
+ Not limited to a place, you can play against people from around the world, from their home.
+ Game elements like dice and cards won't get lost or damaged.
+ You don't need to clean up after playing.

- After a certain number has been thrown a lot, you blaim the computer. Rumours are currently being spread that the random function in Catan ain't that random, that it looks at the current game state and decides a number from that.
- You lose the actual feeling of the cards, the dice, etc.
- You can not see the person you are playing against.
- If you don't agree on certain game rules with the people you are playing with, it's mostly hard to adjust them. While with traditional board games you could come up with any kind of 'extra' game rule on the fly and after agreeying start playing with it.
- With the traditional board games people are more tempted to stay till the end while with an online version you have a high change of people leaving if they feel like they are going to lose.
- Cheat sensitive; With catan two people decided to talk to each other in private using the voice chat option on the xbox and agreed to only help each other giving each other what they needed. Besides if someone is leaving he could give all his resources to another player, giving that player an unfair advantage. The other players can't do anything about it because they are restricted to the options the game has to offer. While in traditional board games you could really look into someones eyes and say it's unfair and that you won't play further untill justice has been reached.

IR LED quest

The quest for the IR Leds has begun, I was looking for some 3mm IR-Leds (850nm) in the city, but could only found one company who sold them for €1,- a piece, which I found way to expensive. So I went on the internet and found a website called Leds-buy.nl, which appears to be a dutch company that sells IR-Leds for about €0.19 a piece, or €0.14 a piece if you ordered 25+. I placed my order for 35 leds, five extra just in case, and decided to get my resistors at Stuut & Bruin since they only charged me €0.05 a piece for it. Then I also needed a power adapter to power the leds and this they could sell me for €12,-.

So to sum it up:

€ 12.00 -  1x 12 DC; 1000mA Adapter
€  4.90 - 35x 5mm IR-Leds; 850nm
€  0.25 -  5x 68ohm resistors
----------------------------------
€ 17.25 - Total

Shopping list FTIR setup

I created the following shoppinglist for constructing my touchscreen prototype which is based on Frustrated Total Internal Reflection (FTIR). Tomorrow I will investigate where I can buy the material and I will add the prices.

FTIR Prototype Shoppinglist
______________________

1x
Camera
Fire-I Board Camera Color

1x 
Camera IR Lens
4.3mm Standard Lens (NO IR COATING)

1x 
Acrylic
8mm thick, 41cm x 31cm, with smooth edges

1x 
Metal Polishes  (optional)
Brasso

1x 
Sandpaper (optional)
Norton T223 / P320; Auto-paper P800A and P1200A

1x 
H-Shaped Aluminium Frame
3cm x 164cm

4x 
L-Shaped Brackets

16x
Screws

1x
Adapter
12v DC; 1000mA

30x
IR LEDS
850nm; 20 mA; 1,8V

5x 
Resistors
68 ohms

Graduation project proposal

Last friday we had to upload our graduation project proposal, below you will find some of the questions we had to answer for that.

Short description of the project
Please explain what you will create in your graduation project, in what context it will function, and what the actual expected result will be.

My creation will be a small multi-user, multi-touch table with a unique version of a board game running on it. Most board games that are translated to a PC version or console are directly ported, including objects like dice, cards, pawns, etc. In this version the research will tell me for example if the dice are really needed or if it can be automated by the computer, does it necessarily need to be a dice or can it be solved in another, more exciting, way using the full benefits of the table? It will include all sorts of new game design solutions for that board game, that will work only for a multi-user, multi-touch table and can’t be done without it.


Description focus of supportive narrative
You’ll need to write a supportive narrative related to your project work (e.g. a thesis, essay, paper or design document). What will be the focus of this supportive narrative in terms of subject / topic and direction?

My supportive narrative will be all about the traditional board game to electronic board game evolution. What has been done, what has been thought off, what has been tried, what worked, what didn’t work, and most importantly why. Can an electronic board game eventually replace the traditional board game? Are we waiting for board games to get modernized? And so on. In the end I want to pick a traditional board game that has the most common game elements (eg. dice, cards, etc.). So I can create an example of how those game elements can be implemented in a proper way in an electronic version. I am not automatically saying that everything has to change, that depends on the research. For example do people actually want to throw dice on an electronic version, does that give them the same satisfaction, or can it be solved in another way that is even better.

You have to keep in mind that when people see dice they expect to use it in a natural way, pick it up, shake it and throw it. On a touch screen it comes pretty close, you could pick it up with a finger then shake it a bit and then throw it, but due the fact you don’t actually feel the dice, does it reach the same effect? Sometimes it’s not better to simulate but rather to think out of the box and to try something new.


Interconnection between graduation project and supportive narrative
Very important question: how are project and its supportive narrative related?
How do you ensure that project and the supportive narrative will result in a coherent piece of work which are mutually dependent? (the one cannot go without the other).

At first the supportive narrative will function as a ground work for my prototypes, after that it will function as proof. It describes how I came to a certain solution and if that solution worked or didn’t work and most importantly why. The reason for this is that if anyone would ask me why I got rid of the dices for example, I don’t have to answer “Because I thought it was cool to try something different”, I can tell them that my research proved that the solution I choose worked better then the solution they thought of when designing the board game and I can even give them grounded arguments for that. So with this idea in mind, yea, the one cannot go without the other.


Planning graduation project (in phases)

Write a short planning for your graduation project, up to August 2008 (f.ii divided in pre-production, production and post-production). Make sure to address your research and writing of your supportive narrative in this planning as well.
P.S. Also include any other unfinished course work. Also indicate if you need any extra support in finishing these modules.

January 2008
• Symposium
• Start work groups
• Lecture field research
• Presentation proposal field research

February 2008
• Start field research on girl gaming
• Presentation results field research
• Start second field research on gaming with a multi-user, multi-touch table
• Create weblog with the results of the field research
• Proposal supervision I
• Proposal supervision II : Peer review
• Final version graduation project proposal

March 2008
• Research on multi-user, multi-touch table construction methods (FTIR or DI)
• Inventarisation of the required material, where to get it and the price
• Order the required materials and buy what can be bought immediately
• Design and build the frame (including LEDS), test technique
• Tweak box and table
• Start doing research for the supportive narrative

April 2008
• Learn to build applications for the hardware
• Improve box if needed
• Decide a board game depending on the results of the research
• Quickly start prototyping

May / June 2008
• User test prototypes on usability and experience
• Write down results and conclusions in the supportive narrative

July 2008
• Catch up month
• Final version supportive narrative
• Final version project

My field study

Philips Entertaible

The entertaible is a multi-user, multi-touch table invented by the research team of Philips that can detect touch as well as objects. The concept is a tabletop gaming platform that combines electronic gaming and traditional board games.

“Entertaible offers the means to reinvigorate established board game classics,” comments Gerard Hollemans of Philips Research in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, who leads the research team that developed Entertaible. “However, in the longer term, Entertaible could be used to invent brand new games offering unprecedented levels of user interaction – games that would never become predictable or ever quite ‘feel’ the same twice, however often you played them.”

Source: Philips.com

With this Philips really set a trend and a lot of people are already thinking about the possibilities.
Below you can find some intertesting ideas from the staff of critical gamers and from Tom Bramwell:

* The ability to save your game at any time and finish it later. * Background animations. Unit animations. The board will become alive! * No stacked counters to accidentally push over, or for the cat to jump on, or for the dog to eat, or for earthquakes to shake, or for scarfs to come unhitched and wipe off the board. * Have all your boardgames with you, all the time, and in one box. * Networking over the Internet! This alone creates amazing potential. Play against friends who've moved across the country. Play in tournaments online. Massively Online Board Games! Oh my. * Download user generated content from strangers and from friends: New games, new variants, new art.

Source: CriticalGamers.com

"Other advantages could involve on-screen explanations of the rules as you play through a game, the ability to save your progress mid-play and the option to store loads of board games without needing loads of space for all the pesky boxes. Plus you might be able to hook the thing up to the Internet and download trials of new games some day."

Source: EuroGamer.net

Conclusion:
It seems like people are already busy with the idea of combining traditional board games with video games. Philips is already scouting game designers for their entertaible which shows there is a demand for exciting games that use the full potential of such a device. That got me wondering, how can you translate traditional board games to a multi-user, multi-touch table without the use of objects (eg. dice, cards, etc.)?

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Settlers of Catan

If you are not familiar with this board game and you are interested in how to play it I suggest you take a look here. The Settlers of Catan is just one of the many examples of a board game that has been ported to a video game. The board game was first published in 1995 by Kosmos, the game soon became very popular and ten years later in 2005 the first official spin-off has been published by Oberan Media and was called Catan: The Computer Game and looked like this:

As you can see it has been directly ported to the computer, with that I mean every gameplay element like the dice (top left of the screen), the cards (bottom right), the pawns and everything is right there and you control it by clicking with the mouse on the desired options and in case of placing your buildings you drag a building on the desired place. Interesting enough it does include some new features that come with the benefits of a computer, you have the statistics and your resources will automaticly be placed in your hand. Also now you don't need your friends in order to play the game, because you can play against the computer who is always available. Microsoft acquired the game for MSN Games later on in 2005 and renamed it to Catan Online.

Two years later, in 2007, a spin-off caled Catan was released by Big Huge Games and became a big hit on the xbox arcade for the xbox 360. In the titlescreen they kindly write that this is a "electronic version of The Settlers of Catan board game". Which is fair, because that's exactly what it is. Besides the improved interface and design not much has been changed. It's again a direct port from board to video game with the presents of the board, cards, dice, etc.

Conclusion:
Board games are very easily directly ported to another medium. This doesn't necessarily has to mean that, that's a bad thing, it just feels that a lot of potential is lost in the process. The die for example were a solution from the designers of the board game to calculate a chance, to get a number between one and six, in this case with two dice, between two and twelve. A computer, although logic, has become very good in giving random numbers and so I think a game designer, when porting a board game to a video game, should think of those base solutions and design something that does the same on a computer without effecting the essence of the game.

For example instead of using dice click on the board to begin charging an electric meter and once at the prefered height of the player, release the mouse and see how that electric volt goes through the ground and walks through the board litting up every piece of ground it passes. In beginning, like a wheel, it will go very fast and in the end it will go slower and slower till it finaly stops and lit up the piece of ground that normaly corresponds to a number you threw with the die.

So my questions are the following. Can companies get away with porting board games one on one? Does it give the same amount of satisfaction and fun for the player as with the board game? Is it a different kind of fun? What would happend if you took the essence of the board game and translated that to the full potential of the computer or in my case a multi-user, multi-touch screen? What effect will that have on people? Will they see it as a brand new game? What does it contribute to the experience? And most important is this the end of the traditional board games? Can a virtual version replace it?

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Board Games in Combination with other Media

If you look at some of the board games that are created today you can see that they are getting more and more depended on technology. This also shows that there is a certain need which couldn't be for filled by traditional methods. I am interested in what media these board games used and why, because with the use of a multi-user, multi-touch screen a lot of media can be combined and you do not need to have other media present.

In the above picture you can see the board game LiveQuiz. Like the name already reveales it's your every day quiz game but it's using one unique factor, the questions never get out of date. In other quiz games like the very popular Trivia the questions that are being asked are always about the past, so how can you create a board game that asks questions with today's answers? That's a question that Identity Games must have thought of when designing the game.

They decided to combine the board game with the internet to receive the up to date answers. Therefor besides the board game you need a working internet connection and a device that can go to their website to play the game. The game itself has cards with questions like 'Who is the current James Bond?' and 'Was it colder today then yesterday?' which the answer can then be found on their website. When you get to the center of the game board you need to answer the daily question, this question can only be found and answered on the website. The game has won the award Game of the Year 2007 and it got me thinking in this case, do people actual need the board game? Cause now the way I see it, it only shows the position of the player on the board which can easily also be showed on the computer screen.

In Scene It, another quiz game, you answer questions depending on the video material on the screen with the use of a DVD. This means besides the board game you need a tv and a DVD player to play the game.

Conclusion:
To make a long story short, it seems like we are already trying to modernize the traditional board games by combining it with other media like DVD and the internet.

The internet is being used for a lot of reasons but concerning to games mostly for actual information, downloadable content, updates (to fix any unbalanced gameplay issues) and to play against other players over the world. The DVD is being used to show video material, like films and animations. All which can not be done without the help of none-electronic methods.

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Human vs Computer

I came across this photo on the internet it shows Vladimir Kramnik, a russian chess grandmaster, playing against the computer with the help of a software program called Deep Fritz. It's yet another example of a combination between board games and the computer.

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The Casino

Many elements of a board game can be automated with the use of a computer. A perfect example is that of the dice. A human has to throw the dice to get a random number, a computer can generate this random number for you in a fraction of a second and even automaticly move the pawn to it's new position. The question is, can you get away by removing those elements? A turn can completely go automatic with the user only giving input on certain decisions. So does for example throwing the dice contribute to the fun factor of a game or would we rather want the computer to do this for us?

If you ask me the die makes us feel like we can influence the outcome on the way we throw and how hard we throw it and therefor influence the outcome of the game, hence give us the feel of control which increases the fun factor. It's a psychological thing that casino's know all to well. They use (flashing) light, sound, animations, buttons and other things to trick you, for example imagine that you just won 200 points, instead of immediatly adding 200 points to your score it will quickly at the points one by one to your score with a sound on the background that get's louder and louder as it gets closer and closer to have added all the 200 points. The positive feeling of winning is getting stronger this way. Same goes for the button like 'Hold', we know that it really doesn't influence the outcome of this chance machine, but it feels like we can control it. It seems like we want to be fooled for fun.

Conclusion:
Throwing a die in a board game gives us the feeling that we influence the game. I have seen people holding the die, blowing against it, rubbing it then throwing it and anxiently waiting for the die to stop rolling. My guesses are that these elements really do matter to the fun factor of a board game, but the question that then comes to mind is. Can this experience be translated to a virtual board game?

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Photoplay

Photoplay is a machine that has a lot of games on it and uses a touch screen for people to interact with it. Here you can already actualy see how this touch screen brings people together, if you go to an arcade, bar or any other place where they might have this standing there you might see that in most cases there is more then one people sitting behind it, making it a very social happening. I browsed the internet and found this dutch forum where people were interested in finding those games for the PC and the reply interested me.

"Is there an option that you can buy the game photoplay for the pc?"
Dje

"something like that does exist on the internet, yes, but it's not as fun as the real thing"
Joachim

Source: Fok! Forum

I also remember a certain holiday in france, we stayed at a camping place and in the bar they had this old photoplay machine in the corner and at night it really became the meeting point of many people. It started with two people and by the end of the night a whole crowd was gathering behind the machine.

This machine interests me because it combines touch screen games with people socially interacting with each other around one screen.

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FireFly for Microsoft's Surface

I just got news about the very first game application for Surface, a multi-touch table designed by Microsoft, it's called FireFly designed by Carbonated Games. The video shows that also Microsoft is thinking very hard about the possibilities of gaming on a multi-user, multi-touch table.