A movement-based game using a top-down projector system, suspended PS Eye camera, and PS Move controller

Gameplay Footage

Team

• Arim Yoon - Artist
• Shih Tsui Kuo - Artist
• Stephanie Fawaz - Programmer / Producer
• Zhi Xin Lee - Programmer
• Han Liu - Sound Designer

Game

In this game, the player is placed in the role of a new zookeeper. Unfortunately, all the animals have escaped under their watch. With the help of an NPC coworker, the player is told which animal to catch, and must get them all before time runs out and they get fired. The game screen is projected onto a paper screen on the ground, and the player uses a net controller to swipe at the animals on the ground to catch them. A PS Move controller is attached to the net, and a PS Eye camera is hung next to the ceiling projector to track the position of the PS Move bulb while the downward swing is tracked with the PS Move accelerometers.

Zoo Panic was created in three weeks as part of the fifth round of the ETC course Building Virtual Worlds. The prompt for Round 5 was to create a world that would be well suited to go into the BVW Festival. This meant that the world should be well suited to real-world theming that can enhance a guest's experience of playing the game itself, as well as develop innovative and fun interfaces with the technologies provided to us. Our team chose a zoo world, as a zoo would be simple to theme by putting in various toy animals in the room. It also naturally led to our player controller - the net.

My Role

I worked as both the producer and a programmer for Zoo Panic. I organized meetings for brainstorming ideas and updating team members on progress with prototyping game features and art assets. I also compiled and sent out all feedback our team received from faculty and fellow students regularly. I also provided voice work for the cut scenes and in game voices, as well as some of the animal sounds themselves. As a programmer, I wrote the code that recognized input from the PS Move and correctly map the PS Move position as seen by the ceiling camera. For a good portion of our three weeks working on Zoo Panic, we did not have a ceiling projector available for us to test our game with. We were thus often improvising real-world prototypes by getting projectors and pointing them at walls as best we could for a large, reachable space, which meant we were unable to hardcode values for mapping our PS Move position to game space. To allow us to use any arbitrary real-world projector image to test our game, I used bilinear mapping to take in an arbitrary quadrilateral for the projected image, map it to a 1x1 square, then scale it back into game space. I also assisted with the physical setup of the top-down projection system, securing the PS Eye camera in the appropriate position and orientation with the projector mount.

Theming

Zoo Panic was selected by the jury of faculty and outside professionals to be in the BVW Festival. We themed our space by getting several stuffed animals to place around the room, constructing a cardboard fence that we tore to look broken and letting the animals out, and printing stickers of our in-game animals to give to guests after playing the game. The projected image of the game itself also themed the floor, and the net controller was given to our guests to interact with. This helped give a zoo atmosphere while a guest waited to play and watched others play, got to play themselves, then left with a souvenir from Zoo Panic.