Super Not-A-Gon
Based on the mechanics of the wildy popular game, "Super Hexagon", the player must control the rotation of their chracter using hand gestures and avoid colliding with the walls! Try to beat your previous time for bragging rights!
produced by: Zoë O'Shea
Concept
The project originated from a desire to combine the skills I have learned from this module and my desire to make games. One of my favourite games of all time is "Super Hexagon" by Terry Cavanagh (2012). Devilishly simple to learn but notoriously difficult to master, it is a game that requires you to dodge objects for at least 60 seconds. Every 10 seconds the difficulty increases through walls dissapearing or only appearing at the last moment. Pattern recognition plays is key component to success. Combined with a new-retro graphical look and classic gameplay, the game makes use of intense chip-tune music by Chipzel to create an beautifully coherent experience.
Rather than try to recreate "Super Hexagon" I had hoped to base my project off its clean mechanics. In addition to this, I felt that adding a novel interaction method (the original "Super Hexagon" was a flash game played in browers, then on PC using the keyboard, and is now available on mobile touch-screen devices), would be a fun way to test the quality of the mechanics in a new environment. With that in mind, I decided to use computer vision as the new method of control. By tracking optical flow, the game can detect if there is movement to the left or the right of the camera/screen. It interprets this data and moves the player character accordingly. This was difficult to develop into fine controls, and other ideas I am now cosidering are Wekinator/machine learning methodologies, and Leap Motion technologies. Unfortunately, I had to select only one method to pursue for this module and felt that starting with relatively simple pipelines would allow me to expand on the work at later stages and appreciate the differences between them.
How to Play: Wave in the direction of the left or right in front of your webcam to rotate the needle in the middle! Black walls will approach the circle in the center. Avoid them or you lose!
References
Code for Camera Controller/Optical Flow adapted from lecture assignment/solutions Week 14 ("Computer Vision" Part 2)
Super Hexagon Game - http://superhexagon.com/ - Terry Cavanagh (2012)
Add-ons used - ofxOpenCV (https://github.com/openframeworks/openFrameworks/tree/master/addons/ofxOpenCv)
