Ice Cream Parlor
September 13, 2005 10:11 PM
Assignment:
Hack a mouse or keyboard to create a custom input device for a specific task.
Solution:
I was thinking about how although people always claim that the mouse is an intuitive instrument, it’s really not, it’s just that we’ve become accustomed to it. There’s really nothing intuitve about sliding a mouse on a horizontal surface to control a tiny cursor on a vertical surface. I thought of a couple ways to improve the mapping between the physical control and the thing being controlled on the screen. Mainly that they should look similar and they should move similarly.
The Ice Cream Parlor game addresses these two points. To move the bowl on screen, you move an identical (although slightly larger) bowl on your desk. By eliminating any vertical movement in the game, the mapping between the controller and the game became clearer; To move the on-screen bowl left, move the real bowl left. The user is now in proper orientation to both the on-screen and physical bowl as well (facing it straight on).
Game Play:
To play Ice Cream Parlor you must use the bowl to catch ice cream as it falls from the sky. An indicator in the upper right corner tells you which flavor you should be catching in order to keep your hunger level down. Catching other flavors increases your hunger level, as does letting scoops of the desired flavor fall to the ground. The target flavor switches periodically throughout the game.
Technical Stuff:
I built the bowl controller out of plastic Ziplock bowls and a small Macally optical mouse. The software was built with Processing.
Files:
Play online version of Ice Cream Parlor
Download Source Code
Download Zip File of Source Code + Graphics
Project: Ice Cream Parlor | link
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