Brian and Majdi Brainstorm

Coal Miner

Toys

In the Mountains of Radness

The game is one that uses marker interruption in order to work. The player places his hand, fingers, what have you, and it sends out ripples and creates mountains based around the object that is interrupting the image, based on the size of the interruption. When the player removes the object the mountains all fall back down flat.

On a Pedestal

The player selects a panoply of objects to set on a pedestal, these are things like gummy men, rock people and firebirds. The player then has a wand and selects what exactly the tip of the wand represents. This can be a sun, a freezing ball or a constant jet of rocks. The player takes the wand and brings it close to the creature on the pedestal who react to the object on the wand. Gummy Men melt under the sun, but the firebird bursts into more beauty as the sun wand is brought closer.

Deadly Roll

There is a ball that has a marker on it. Create structures in the augmented world. Roll the ball at the augmented world to destroy the structure. Somewhat like bowling but instead sitting down and rolling a ball to destroy an object. Hold the device in one hand and roll the ball with another.




Gascious
The game makes the player a gaseous blob. The faster you rotate or move the device the more
the blob is distanced. The closer the individual pieces of the blob are the more damaging. Have a
small house with small cubes running around and destroy the town . If the gaseous blob has too
many parts that are far apart from one another the blob is diffused and destroyed and the player
must get the blob back together.

Games


Kaiju Kazoo
The player holds up a kazoo and looks at the little hole that holds the wax paper. From that hole a little kaiju crawls out and a city springs up all along the kazoo. The player tilts the kazoo and the Kaiju rages across it, tearing it down, all the while making kazoo noises. If the kazoo is ever tilted too far to one side, the Kaiju rolls off and dies.


Plane Airbourne
One the map there are different classes of towns or areas. Choose plane, create a path on screen, or place a card at the destination to where you want the plane to go. Plane then takes path, then when ready, click to drop cargo.  The game would be something like the Red Cross:Video Game. Different supply needs would make the player choose which plane was suitable for the job or had correct supplies. The easiest path to the destination may have enemies in the way so a rethinking of the route may be in need. The correct cargo needs to be   to the correct destination.

You Won

You Lost

Think Tank: Idea Dump

Being tasked to come up with 4-6 new ideas for AR games is difficult, not impossible but difficult. AR is such an untapped market because its so hard to create something that is compelling in the medium. As a result I spent most of my time thinking of ways that we can emulate the success of other mediums as well as coming up with some cool ideas that are abstracted away from all mediums. Everything is short, purposefully so, to keep anything from being too concrete - but rather to foster our own creativity to create something new and compelling.


Toy Ideas


#1 Stretch Armstrong Toy

So I spent a long time thinking about our current mechanics and coming up with places that I've seen similar success. In the 90s, Stretch Armstrongs were the shit. Everyone that had one played with it much longer than anyone should play with a toy that has a face looking like he's taking the dump to end all dumps. \

I just want to crap. Please, let me crap.

The toy was extremely simple and there was absolutely no point to the damn thing - but people played with it for tons of time. It eventually declined in popularity though they were a toy that everyone had for over a decade. Now, there's a movie coming out supposedly this year based off that toy (which by the way sounds ridiculous) but I think that there is a strong possibility for creating a toy/game where you have a character that you stretch and manipulate to create something or do something. Or even wilder - take an original stretch armstrong and put markers on the arms that way we can take the tangible stretchyness of his arms into the AR world. The possibilities are endless.

#2 Rotation Puzzle

This idea is sort of out of the blue compared to the other ideas floating around the class but I thought it might be cool to construct a marker made of rotating circles similar to the different color tracks seen above. You'd rotate them and the things on each track would rotate with it, each track being a different marker. Lining up stuff is something people have fun doing sometimes. What we'd do with this is left up to the imagination, I'm taking a shot at it below in the Game Ideas section though. The only problem with game using this would be the lack of ability to just play it anywhere. They'd need the physical puzzle - not just a regular marker.

#3 The Holodeck

This was just an offshoot idea I had about how much I've wanted to see a good VR like environment be made. I think AR could have some functionality to create this effect though it would have to be something of an installation. I'm picturing big image markers on the walls all around you, in a room filled with little nicknacks that also have markers (you'd wear goggles or something to overlay the AR over, so you could use your normal phone camera but have the video output over your eyes so you only see what we want you to see maybe? Anyways, we could create a really cool AR art piece or maybe an environmental game where you discover a story (like Dear Esther). It doesn't lend itself great to being a toy than being sort of just an experience.

Game Ideas


#1 Torture Man

I basically came up with this based off my thought process about stretch armstrong. It was more or less just tying that toy into something that you could make a game of. This led me to thinking of things like medieval torture methods. Who doesn't love the rack?

That's right. Nobody.

So, I figured we could have some sort of game based off of how much pain you make this fake character go through. Perfect for the sadist in every family. Imagine the game Pain, but with stretching and such.

#2 Rot8

Rotation Puzzles - So called Rot8 (Ro-teight), is essentially a game based around creating the correct scene by rotating the puzzle pieces correctly. The scene could be something like a 3D city, or something abstract (making use of our ideas for procedural art maybe?) You rotate the pieces till you find the solution, things like time could be used to give the player a score (maybe load it up with achievements too?) I see it being like the game Toys or like some old puzzles that I've seen in the past (the picture I used earlier is a word puzzle using a similar concept).

#3 Spin Sykle

This one would also make use of the rotating marker piece. The idea is that you'd have something like a space ship or something on the outer ring and objects come from the center outward. Sort of like going into a wormhole or something.

It's like this but more geometery wars-like maybe? Could look cool.

So you've got your ship your rotating to pick up goodies / kill bad guys. What do you use the other rings for you ask!? You can rotate those parts of the worm hole. This means if your ship fires a laser and its not going to hit anything in the trajectory it has currently you can spin that part of the marker to line up its trajectory and hit an enemy or something. You can use this to do all sorts of cool effects manipulating what enemies / obstacles / and scenery stuff do in the game. It also could look really cool to have stuff coming out of the table or wall which is a very gratifying effect that I enjoy a lot.

Conclusion

While I did a lot of brainstorming and had other ideas here and there, these were the ones I thought were the most interesting and could be used by other creative minds to become something special. I'm always thinking of new ways to do things with this technology (especially markers, I think coming up with cool markers is the best thing that only AR has) so I will very likely be updating this blog again soon with others here and there until we've got our heading and are dead set on what we're producing.

~Joe

MineCart WaveCrasher Ship Rig

So going from my other ideas of blowing on things I thought of a nice toy/concept involving ships and wind. This originally came from the idea that maybe mesh deformation is the wrong direction to go since it can create a level of complexity we simply don't need.

We could just turn this into a big section of blocks that can move in six directions, up, down, left, right, forward, back. These may need to be blown into proper positions or maybe to form a certain larger shape in the same way you build up a lego set. They could click into place and make awesome creaking sounds. I'm thinking maybe build an old ass creepy haunted house with wooden blocks or something.

THEN I went a little further for more of a toy. I want to see multiple levels of ocean/sea similar to the way that FLOW works, but in each section it's like being or sailing on top of that sea. You can either choose to blow the sails of ships and send them reeling in different directions or choose to blow on the water to create things like tidal waves. It could be fun to just straight up drown people.

Taffy Blow 'Em Up Glass

So I was thinking that to better utilize the AR elements of our flexible taffy/mesh deformation game we could basically leave certain holes in the mesh "open". While these holes are open you can rotate around the taffy and use your phone to target it and blow into the microphone to mold the taffy at that point. The holes could disappear and reappear to make a game out of it. The point would either be to blow it into a certain shape or keep it blown up long enough for it to dry/cool down and harden.