Firemen!

[pilesofspam]

My youngest is turning 4 this year! In previous years I have created irrlicht birthday party games for my older son (turning 7 this year). So here's the party game for this year- Fireman! The concept is pretty simple- crayon backdrop of a simplified cityscape, and... oh no- there's a fire in the window of that building! Quick- put it out! Basically this action continues with an option to make the fires increase in speed until you can't keep up. For a 4 year old birthday party, I'll probably keep the speed stable, and limit the number of simultaneous fires you can have. Control of the hose will be with a wiimote that you point at the projector screen.

The posting rules state that you need a screenshot, so here's my (poor) experimenting with a water particle generator under the mouse and joystick example:



I'll update here with progress!

[fmx]

Interesting stuff
I remember what you did last time, you're a very unique dad I must say

[Cube_]

I agree that this is interesting, but what did he do last year?

[CuteAlien]

Last year was: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/forum/v ... =6&t=44269
And if you search a little around you find previous projects as well - always a nice combination of hardware and software.

[Cube_]

wow O_O
That is epic. <---me on his earlier projects and this one

[pilesofspam]

Thanks! I'm really glad to have the help of this forum when I run into a snag, or I just need a fresh set of eyes on my code.

Played around a little more- right now it's easy to cross compile, so I captured a quick video of a steerable stream in windows with fraps:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP74467115A

[pilesofspam]

Quick update- I got the wiimote working as a mouse using this page's instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CWiiD

However, just like the wii, when doing this with a projector you're aiming well below the screen to where the sensor bar is set up. It's not really an intuitive place to point a fire hose.

The wii sensorbar is not really a sensor, it's just an array of IR LEDs mounted a fixed distance apart, designed to be picked up by an IR camera on the wiimote. So I've decided that I need to put a bright infrared dot in the middle of the screen. Options include:

• 1. IR LED (or sensor bar) moved to the middle of the screen - not going to do this, it would always be in the way!
  2. Project an IR spot like http://spritesmods.com/?art=virtwiibar&page=1
  3. Laser an IR spot up there with an IR laser module (I have a few on hand)

It's worth noting that for Linux Wiimote support, you only need 1 spot, not 2 like the actual Wii. Hopefully one of these methods will work well. By the end of the weekend I should have an update with the cityscape background (my wife is the artist in the family- she's creating the background) and I should have my IR spot figured out!

[pilesofspam]

Well, time for an update. First, my wife was in Chicago over the weekend, but she still got a great start on the crayon cityscape. Lots of windows. Here's a preview pic!

Next thing I worked on was the 'virtual sensor bar' as mentioned before. Ran into a bit of a problem here. First thing I tried was the IR laser method. This method worked great, but only if I kept it cranked full on at the 5mW level. I was hoping to modulate it way down into eye-safe levels. A red laser pointer is eye safe at 5mW because you can SEE it and blink. The same is definitely not true with IR lasers.

I'm not running a non-eyesafe IR laserbeam across the room at a 4YO birthday party, so that's out. My next attempt was to light up a high brightness IR LED and focus it onto the screen. So I lit one up like so:

And at the other end of the tube (13" tube, to roughly match the focal length of the lens at the end) is a lens to collimate my IR to a spot!

This didn't work at ALL. My LED isn't nearly bright enough to be picked up by the wiimote. Again, I can put a 2.4Watt IR led in there, but lensing it down to a spot becomes dangerous to your eyes (and possibly my screen!)

This puts me squarely back at option 1. I'm going to put an IR LED as inconspicuously as possible in the middle of the projection screen.

[DarkDepths]

Hey there! This sounds really cool. I just have one question. Is it really necessary to mock-up your own sensor bar? I mean, you are building it specifically for your projector screen, right, so couldn't you just translate the perceived mouse coordinates to the coordinates that you want?

[pilesofspam]

Hey there! This sounds really cool. I just have one question. Is it really necessary to mock-up your own sensor bar? I mean, you are building it specifically for your projector screen, right, so couldn't you just translate the perceived mouse coordinates to the coordinates that you want?

Yes- very good idea- however, the wiimote doesn't have a very wide field of view. My screen is 16x9, and maybe 104" diagonal (2.6m). At the intended playing distance (about 8' from the screen) it loses sight of the sensor bar when pointing halfway up the screen. I can increase that by stepping back another few feet, but I'd prefer not to- just from an immersion standpoint.

Meanwhile, here's the backdrop:

[pilesofspam]

Alrighty- more progress. I now have a fire placed ready to show in every window. The object is that a fire pops up, and if you don't put it out fast enough, it'll spread to adjacent windows until everything catches on fire.

I thought that I'd add a smoke particle generator, but it's getting a little busy already with a lot of fires burning, so maybe, maybe not.

At any rate, here it is (my wife wants to change the color of the sky, so maybe that's next)


BTW- if anybody has a better particle to use in the water stream, let me know! I'm out of my element here, and made this one by taking a photo of water, lightening it up a good bit, and making it mostly transparent. It looks a little like cotton candy.

[hendu]

Your water's only lacking the specular reflections, the color is fine.

[kazymjir]

These buildings remembers me "fire fighter" game from Atari