Most of the documentation found online were from Cubetto’s 2013 Kickstarter campaign. The ID system was done with resistances. In their 2016 Kickstarter campaign of the same product but polished, they had switched to magnets and HAL sensors for the ID system.
Diagrams found on Github suggesting a resistant based ID system:
It seems they were very generous at sharing their behind-the-scene documentations including a few detailed youtube videos on early prototypes for the 2013 Kickstarter campaign, but not so much for the commercial one in 2016. It would be interesting to see how they designed the arrangement of the HAL sensors in order to keep the interference at the minimum.
1. TOWER of SHAPES: 2 Players collaborative. 2 players work together to build up a structure with shapes provided at both sides.
2. JUMP!: 2 Players competitive. The mechanics are similar to the hockey game last time, but with gravity and physic. The goal is to climb up to the top using only platforms of the same color. Every time when lands on a different color platform, a match question will be asked.
3. Math Quest: Single Player, 1st person dungeon maze style, every time when the player tries to open a door, a math goblin will show up and ask a question. If answer is correct, move on to the next door, if not, lost a heart. The player has 3 hearts. Final boss is a giant purple dragon and will ask 3 consecutive questions.
4. Battle Punch!: 2 Players competitive. 2 Players answer math questions, the player who answers first will throw a punch. The slower player can answer to guard and even counter attack. Who lose all their health points lose the game.
Quest-to-Learn teachers, Limor Levy and Andrea Henkel were leading the “tinkering” part of the boss level (12/06/13) and interested in having a digital simulation of the tinkering experience in SMALLab. She showed me a web game called Tinker Ball as a reference to what they had in mind. The game was made by Lemelson Center for the study of invention and innovation. In Tinker Ball, the player has to build a contraption to guide a little ball into a randomly placed bucket at the bottom of the screen. This is a potentially effective learning mechanism – theory building and iterative process – if bundled with properly design supporting lesson plans.
My biggest dissatisfaction from a game developer’s point of view is the poorly integrated physic simulation. The physic interactions between the ball and all the tools are far off from the reality that they stop learning moments from stimulating. I immediately accepted the proposal and took on the challenge to develop this new SMALLab game in two weeks. I’ve recently tested out a new development pipeline to build games and it involves a physic engine, so this project came at the perfect timing! SMALLab hasn’t had any game using a physic engine before because the concept of gravity might be confusing on a floor projection. Now is the time to find out.
The new SMALLab game is designed to have two phases. They are the tinkering phase and simulation phase. Players will be going back and forth between the two phases to improve their contraption until the ball successfully falls into the goal bucket in the simulation phase. In terms of game control, some of the objects in this game require angle adjustment and it’s challenging to have two separate control states – position and rotation, on a buttonless SMALLab controller. After a few testings, I decided to have those objects start rotating on itself once the player picks it up and stops rotating after the player drops it off. This way, the player only has to worry about one thing at a time. During the testing, I thought of making use of the rotation data from Optitrack. However, because I am developing this game remotely, I decided to save this task for later.
After sent in the first prototype and discussed with Limor over the e-mail, I realized what she envisioned was more complicated than Tinker Ball or maybe her imagination had grown since last time we talked. It has become more like a Rube Goldberg machine builder. The first time I saw a Rube Goldberg machine was in an old Jackie Chan movie called “Drunken Fist”. My most recent trendsetting experience with Rube Goldberg machine was by Shogakukan’s Pitagora switch (ピタゴラ装置) on YouTube. At first, I was worried the current prototype is lacking the defining element of a Rube Goldberg machine – the chain reaction. Tinker Ball type of game reminds me more of LEGO’s Great Ball Contraptions (GBC) or games like “Screwball Scramble” than Rube Goldberg machines. I thought that a Rube Goldberg machine focuses on triggering different contraptions with various types of energies like the game “Mouse Trap”. However, after researched further, I was convinced that creating a modular contraption to guide the same ball to a goal bucket is a type of Rube Goldberg machine.
The origin: Rube Goldberg’s “Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin”
I finished coding the game early and decided to work on the visual of the game before the SMALLab testing and rehearsal which is the week before the boss level. The visual presentation of the game is one of the many elements I utilize to build engaging play experiences and it is often inspired by the overarching theme of the semester. However, the upcoming boss level doesn’t have a theme to follow so I came up with my own look & feel – creamy pastel colors and wallpaper patterns. Because of Pitagora switch videos, I was determined that this game needs a Xylophone background music. Iva made me the perfect one in minutes with her music composing magic.
Limor and Andrea designed an amazing excise for students prior to the SMALLab experience. They made a paper version of the game and have the 6th graders cut and paste the paper tool pieces into a design that they imagine would take the ball to the goal bucket. This is done a day before SMALLab. Till this point, they have not seen how each tool actually behaves in matchbox tinker so they have to come up with their own theories around each tool. The result of this exercise is an amazing collection of creative solutions to one single problem – ball in the bucket. This preparation built up such a fun and engaging need-to-know for students to want to find out if their own crafty design actually works out in the digital simulation.
The day has come, anticipating students surround the white mat with their own design in hand and eyes on the glowing projection in the dark SMALLab room. We ran the usual schedule, 8 home bases in one day, and that is about 120 students in 4 consecutive 45-minute sessions with breaks in between. After Andrea explained the game to students, we ran the first simulation. I heard a student yelled out and I continued to hear it many times throughout the day in different sessions, “This ball is so bouncy!” They noticed the differences in behaviors between their imaginary ball and the ball in the game. Many of them also realized the dryers are stronger blowers than what they had originally imagined in their paper prototypes. By the way, gravity on the floor wasn’t a problem at all!
I noticed an interesting embodiment piece that some students had difficulties getting the angle they want when placing the tool down in the workspace. This is their 2nd time in SMALLab and not very good at working with their body in the space yet. In order to get the right angle, the player has to predict the rotation and side out the controller early to cover up the delay caused by the hand motion. This requires good eye-hand coordination and it was definitely a challenge for some students.
“Let’s just build a tunnel for a ball to go down!” and this happened…
The ultimate next step is to have the working contraptions printed out from a 3D printer so the students can see their own creations in action in the real physic space. This will bring the learning home and to the next level. It rounds up the play experience in full cycle with paper prototypes, digital simulations, iterative designs, and real working products.
12/03/13 Basic build is finished, sent an e-mail to Limor for more ideas for artifacts that are relevant to the boss level players. If spacebar is pressed (drop a ball) while dragging, makebody() of the dragging artifact will not run therefore ball goes right through. 12/12/13 Update to Ver.2 for the desktop application, change the control to mouse-friendly. 12/16/13 Major slowdown on gameplay when first tested on the SMALLab computer because all the PNGs used in the game. Switched to OPENGL in 1.5.1 solved the problem. 12/17/13 When the controller lost tracking while carrying a tool, it takes the tool to (0,0). When this happens to a cog, it simply disappears and left with a small pink circle at (0,0). Solved by repositioning all the tools that land on (0,y). “Where is the ball?” heard that a lot during their first building phase. When two objects collide, they also make the ball impact sound.
PUSH is a Flash application designed to explore concepts surrounding Simple Machines, which is integrated into the Q2L 6th grade math and science domain “The Way Things Work”. PUSH was built specifically to create game-like learning experience through collaboration and embodied play. In PUSH, students work collaboratively to help a group of digital creatures to push an object (in this case a hat) up on a hill by physically exerting ‘force’ through a set ‘distance’, at the same time tackling a common misconception in mechanical work with inclined planes. The support provided by teachers to the students in the space in terms of discussions and walk through, accompanied by worksheets, creates a different level of learning experience for the students.
PUSH is divided into four parts – title screen, level selection, gameplay, and result/formula screen. With the teacher’s guidance, students will learn to play the game utilizing their body in the SMALLab space. The students will have to make a decision on which inclined plane will require more work than another. They will then physically pushing a digital hat up on different inclined planes. By going through PUSH, the students will soon be confronted with the misconception about an inclined plane lessening the amount of work done. An experienced teacher will find moments during PUSH to take advantage of opportunities for learning. An example is when students are pushing the hat up on the hill with the digital creatures, only the force that goes along the inclined plane will be counted. In order to do better in the game, students have to “push” (actual physical movement) along the path of the inclined plane. This is a great opportunity for the teacher to step in and reinforce the fundamental concept of mechanical work.
The embodied play component in PUSH is made possible by using the Gaming SMALLab platform. It is a mixed-reality learning environment that empowers the physical body to function as an expressive interface experiencing custom-built scenarios and media-rich content through full-body movement and gestures. PUSH reads optitrack data through a custom middleware because Flash don’t have access to UDP ports. The middleware parses the data from Tracking Tool and send them to Flash using a socket server.
12/05/13 Ran PUSH for Leah, there were difficulty translating position data precisely into PUSH. In PUSH it was mapped to 1280 pixel wide but the screen resolution of the new projector is set to 1024 pixel wide. After configuring the resolution back to 1280 pixel wide, it fixed the position problem.
Old versions: [ver.17]Mac desktop version: Proteincraft [ver. 1][old]Win32 desktop version: Proteincraft_win32bit (see update details at the bottom of the page)
How to play: Mouse: Drag’n Drop tRNA Up key: Switch between Shape mode and Text mode Right arrow key: skip to the next codon set on mRNA ESC key: exit the game
In Spring 2012, SMALLab team at Quest 2 Learn New York worked with our Living Environment teacher, Dan Bloom, to create a game scenario about protein synthesis. After the kick-off meeting with Dan and a few rounds of quick prototyping on the subject, I decided to narrow down the multi-level gameplay idea and focus solely on the translation portion of the synthesis. According to Dan’s experience, students have more difficulties with translation than transcription because it is harder to visualize the relationship between codons and anti-codons in the classroom. Through the use of scale, sound, visual cue, collaboration, this new SMALLab scenario creates an immersive playground for students to practice their knowledge on translation.
Proteincraft puts students in the moment when DNA translation happens. In order to succeed in the scenario, students must help Messenger RNA(mRNA) find the right Transfer RNA(tRNA) by matching codons with their correspondent anti-codons. Every successful match consists of three steps. The first step is to read the next codon on mRNA and to find the matching tRNA. Secondly, brag the tRNA to ribosomes. Thirdly, crank the white circle on ribosomes to the left side to advance to the next codon. Repeat these steps until all the codons are matched. The teacher moderates the entire experience and interrupts at moments for learning opportunities. In the picture above, Dan is pointing out to players that in order to start the translation, the initial tRNA (met) has to be found first.
In addition, this game can be viewed in the text mode. All the color and shapes are replaced by the black-and-white letters that represent each of the four bases in the textbook. Teachers can switch between modes by pressing the UP arrow key. Here are notes from Dan that becomes the guidelines of the visual system of both modes in Proteincraft:
1) The bases in DNA should be shaped so that they can fit in to each other. ====T (thymine) – blue, be shaped with a pointy triangle on the end ====A (adenine) – red, be shaped with an inverted space for a triangle ====C (cytosine) – yellow, be shaped with a semicircle on the end ====G (guanine) – green, be shaped with an inverted space for a semicircle 2) The bases in mRNA and tRNA should be the same except instead of T, there is… ====U (uricil) – purple, should be shaped to fit into A
The scenario was a success with Dan’s class. Students had no problem warming up to the game because all the colors, shapes, and letters are inspired by diagrams Dan showed in the classroom. During the gameplay, teams of students have to find an efficient way to work together in SMALLab. Some teams assigned their teammates different roles – capturers, crankera, and translators while other teams spread out in the space like football players all waiting for the right tRNA to swim by. Spectators definitely play an important role in the overall play experience, they give verbal suggestions to the player team – “AUU not UUA”, “Green-Yellow-Red”, “tRNA has no T in it”, “tRNA let’s go!”.
Visual and sound design:
At the beginning of the research, I watched many scientific renderings on protein synthesis. Surprisingly, none of them look the same graphically even though they all look “realistic”. All of them are subjective and technology-dependent. It is more like a strategy to attract longer attention span with realistic-looking visuals than anything else which is understandable. I made an animated gif of my favorite rendering so far:
Dan showed me diagrams and illustrations that he used in the classroom. They are mostly represented in geometric shapes and are carefully color-coded. That set me free, I am going for color-coded geometric shapes! – to connect the scientific facts to design elements. Even though they are geometric shapes, they still follow the principles of translation dearly. Instead of coming up with a fictional realistic form, I draw a connection between Dan’s diagrams and the design elements of Proteincraft’s visual system, e.g., each of the four bases is represented visually by a unique shape and a unique color. The shape of an amino acid is dynamically determined by the shape combination of its three bases.
The tRNA and mRNA in this game synthesize sounds too. Usually, SMALLab game scenarios are designed and produced in less than five weeks, so we usually don’t have time to do serious sound design. However, during a check-in meeting, we decided to bring the connection to sound elements too. Claudio’s sound design took the relation between codons and amino acids to the next level! When the player successfully brings back a correct tRNA, the game will play three tones that match the codon combination. Claudio designed the tones and a matching ambient music that really gives the play experience an awesome upgrade.
SMALLab Version:
Desktop Version:
10/18/12 proteincraft playtest with 9th graders, suggested moving mRNA to the top of the screen to avoid shadow cast by the projector in SMALLab 11/20/12 project release postponed due to a scheduling conflict 01/18/13 SMALLab Proteincraft released 06/11/13 plan to convert proteincraft to desktop and android. 06/18/13 [android] curveVertex() slow app overtime. Image memory leak on android still a problem. 09/27/13 desktop demo completed. 09/28/13 Desktop ver.1 released (Mac and Windows) 09/29/13 Desktop ver.15 released (Mac): implemented amino acid names(desktop ver. only feature), text mode visual tweaked 09/31/13 Desktop ver.17 released (Mac): fixed a major data parsing error that caused amino acid name mismatched 11/14/13 Ran SMALLab version for 9th graders made the following changes: ===1. fly speed of tRNAs now starts slow and gradually speeds up ===2. the visual of crank mechanism now flashes when ready to use ===3. games now automatically change to text mode after the 8th tRNA is found ===4. minor visual tweakings
11/19/13 Desktop ver.20 released (Mac): minor visual feedback improvement, added replay function
SPECIALTY CLASSROOM TECHNOLOGIES
Q4 Special Report
Center for Digital Education, Converge
I was invited to give a talk on SMALLab installation at Quest to Learn NY. There were 4 speakers in this talk including me. Overall, it was a great experience knowing that there are other schools and educators working their guts off to bring quality educations to students. We are specialized in innovative learning experience design. Over the years, we have developed a design pattern that helps us focus on creating game-like scenarios that work. The culture we built here brings people with completely different backgrounds to work together in harmony. It is a honor to be part of this school since the very beginning. During the webinar, I learned that many schools right now are implementing industrial certification as part of their curriculum. Students will graduate with a certificate or a recognition that will get them jobs in the industry. I thought that was awesome.
SMALLab EVOquest was featured in this video! We went through a selection of SMALLab games that I helped build over the years and picked EVOquest as an example of connected learning. It connects to other learning spaces well and has a very fun mobile app to go with it. Don and I also built an augmented reality app for this interview to work with EVOquest from the street, extending our connected learning to places in between major learning spaces – home space, school space, and afterschool space. The interviews happened both in New York and Chicago. New York Department of Education doesn’t allow film crew in school premises so all the SMALLab footages were actually shot in Chicago instead of New York.
“The children really got into the game, and you could hear good reflection statements and questions. they were learning.” – Daniel O’Keefe, Curriculum Designer, Institute of Play
CIRCLES is a multi-player territorial game that reinforces the concept of Circumference = 2 x π x Radius. In this game, players are divided into 2 teams and each team holds the correct value of π in their controllers. Teams are competing to capture as many circles as possible with matching circumferences. Each circumference is created by pairing their π value with a roaming radius in the space. The process of creation is companied with a robotic voice saying “1, 2, 3, and a little more!” which is directly connected to the π lesson prior to the SMALLab experience. If the circumference matches the target circle perfectly, the team captures the circle and scores! However, a mismatch offsets the team’s π value and deactivates their controller temporarily until the value counts back to π again.
SMALLab Team: Kyle Li <SMALLab PL/Game Designer>, Lena Kotani <Math Teacher>, Daniel O’Keefe <Curriculum Designer/Learning Expert>, Shulamit Ponet <Mission Lab Game Designer>, Richard Bowman <SMALLab IT>
Open logic System is to rethink the role of game logic in a SMALLab play scenario by releasing certain key decision moment to the hands of teachers, players, peers, or spectators. An example will be the debate mechanic in Ross’s Civsift game, Ross holds the final decision on which defense argument makes more sense than others. This method definitely makes the problem solving moment more creative than ever, however, it requires teacher to participant more which might cause problems since every scenario has very short production time.
For the Boss Level this trimester, students are creating a play together. The idea behind the theme is to introduce system and components, and to create relationships between them. All kinds of workshops are provided to take students through different aspect of a stage play, such as script writing, site design, light design, prop design, and character design. To celebrate the theme and system thinking, in SMALLab we put on a real-time digital puppet show, named Quellywood. The characters are borrowed from Systemia, another very popular trimester theme at Q2L New York.
Students are divided into teams and each team collaboratively acts out a puppet show in SMALLab. A team consists of 2 puppeteers, 2 prop masters, 1 voice actor, and 1 director. Puppeteers use the SMALLab controllers to act with the digital puppets. They can create different facial expressions on their puppet by moving the controller up and down in SMALLab. Prop masters are in charge of sound effects, props, and the backdrops of the show. The voice actor and the director are usually the same person who dubs and keeps the team in sync with their script. They will spend the first 15 mins of the session to write a story. An online version of the Quollywood is available to them as a simulator during the writing. Afterwards, they rehearse their script once in SMALLab, make some last-minute changes,and go into the official recording. Projection screen, including sound effects and voice-overs, is recorded while they act out the whole play, we then corp out the stage area and publish the show to Youtube and BeingMe.
In this play experience, we have built in a few mechanisms that requires players to communicate with each other in order to put on a successful play. There is a special sound effect that requires both prop masters to trigger certain backdrops in a specific sequence. There are tricks to create seamless prop exchange between the two puppets and they are heavily relied on the synchronization between puppeteers and prop masters. Voice actor has to work with puppeteers to sync the voice-overs with the mouth animation.
Step 1: Writing and Simulating
Step 2: Rehearsing and Iterating
Step 3: Recording and sharing
The cheer at the end is real! That is all of us in the room congratulating them a job well done! A urban fairy tale in 45 mins!
