Interaction and Interface Design

So, it appears from the three previous posts that we are in agreement with the overall high level concept of the Eye Toy game in which we are working. In short, we have decided to create a game where a player or players are aspiring to be musical superstar. To achieve this end, the player must work his/her way through the live music circuit, playing show venues that span from the smallest, seediest nightclubs, all the way to the largest, most prestigious arena venues. During these ‘shows’, the player must ‘play’ along to the game soundtrack by activating and ‘playing’ each of the instruments and ‘singing’ the vocals. These interactions will be activated by the player using his/her whole body, with the Eye Toy as the interactive medium. The more accurately the player ‘plays’ the song, the more points he/she will score. The more points the player scores, the faster he/she will move through the concert circuit.

Now that the basic concept of the game is completed, we must now figure out how the player’s interactions will control the music in the game. This has proven to be a bit difficult, so we as a group have decided on a two prong approach to solve this problem.

First, we looked to another game with a similar theme. The game Donkey Konga is a game where the user plays a conga interface (the conga controller is included with the game) to play the beats that accompany the game soundtrack. The more accurately the player plays along with the music, the more points he/she scores. This is similar to our game concept, yet the Donkey Konga only has to deal with the rhythm of one instrument. Our game will not only be tracking the rhythm of multiple instruments, it will also have to track melodies as well! And, our controller is the entire human body put in front of a video camera.

Where Donkey Konga did give us a good idea was in the way the music is ‘notated’ in the game. The player must follow along with the music by following the rolling barrels. A set of color coded barrels roll from right to left on the screen. At the left hand side of the barrel’s path is a target. When the barrel reaches the target, the player must hit the appropriate conga (congas come in pairs). A barrel of one particular color indicates a hit on the left conga; another color indicates a hit on the right one. Still another color indicates hitting both congas, while a fourth color indicates that the player must clap his/her hands. What we must do now is find a way to modify this indication mechanism to fit our game where both rhythm and pitch must be performed by the player.

Our second strategy was to pick some songs to listen to, and come up with ways that we could have players ‘play’ the songs with there body movements. For this exercise, we picked the following songs:

Songs for Prototyping
We Will Rock You
Bohemian Rhapsody
Devil Wen’t Down to Georgia
Is This Love
Don’t Funk With My Heart
Black Magic Woman

So for next week, each of our group members are going to take these songs, listen to them, and come up with ideas for the interface of the game. Our biggest challenges will be to figure out how the player will indicate pitch and rhythm, how the player will determine which intrument they will be playing at any one time, and how the game will ‘notate’ on the screen what they player’s next gameplay musical action will be.

-LK

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