Argh! Pirates!

[pilesofspam]

I could probably use some suggestions on the name, but Pirates Ahoy is already taken.

Anyway, this is a game that I did for my son Ben's 4th birthday (July 2009) and never really got around to releasing. I can release the source no problem, but I'll need to make a new pirate ship before I can release the content (anybody here have a decent pirate ship?)

Back to the game- this is similar to the game I did this year (Planet Wars) in that you shoot directly at the screen with a giant PVC cannon, which really just shoots an eyesafe IR laser which is picked up by a CCD camera. I built a circuit that picks up the laser dot on screen and translates it to an X,Y location- it's the same one I'm using for Planet Wars. So now I've got a pirate's cannon and a spaceship with a gun turret in the basement.

For the birthday party, I also had an air compressor outside and ran a line inside. The cannon has a small compressed air chamber that I ran at about 40psi with a solenoid controlled dump valve attached and just vented outside the cannon. It gave a nice satisfying 'BOOM' locally when you shot a cannon ball, and it complemented the ingame sounds nicely. I don't have it hooked up for the below video.

Anyway, here's a video of the game in action. When we have kids visit, they never want to leave.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwNK34K3PKg

A year from now my younger son will be 3 so I'll have to start thinking about something original for him as well.

[hybrid]

Arrr, what a wonderful cannon Very cool simple setting. But definitely both the sw and the hw are perfect for kids.
It's great to hear that there are even multiple times each year that we can expect some nice app from you

[Virion]

interesting one good to have a dad like you haha

[Acki]

yeah, then cannon-controller is great !!!

[cobra]

Very nice! Coolest dad in the Irrlicht forums.

[TheMrCerebro]

OMG!!
I like it! It's like arcade games

[pilesofspam]

OMG!!
I like it! It's like arcade games

Pretty much, except in this one, there's no way to lose. I wanted to add a lot more, but I had some contract work going on last year so I didn't have time to realize the full vision. Turns out, it didn't matter at all- the kids loved it anyway. When Ben has a friend over they still ask 'Can we play the pirate ship game?' so I guess it was a success.

I've got some free time this weekend, so I'll try to get a web page up detailing the camera, hit detect circuit, and the laser module. When I get it up, I'll post here to point to that page in case anyone is interested in building their own. Just one thing- I live in the US, so I designed it to be compatible with NTSC. For any friends overseas, let me know and we'll redesign one for PAL. It should be just one chip change.

[DeM0nFiRe]

Haha, you know, your kids would probably still love you if you just gave them a birthday cake

[pilesofspam]

Haha, you know, your kids would probably still love you if you just gave them a birthday cake

That's something that is very true, and important to note. What made this a good project for Ben is that he helped me with the development and building -both hands on with the cannon or as an idea man during development of the game. He learned a lot and possibly developed some new interests. Same with Planetwars.

What made it a good project for me is that I was working with my son on something we're both interested in (although for different reasons) and the non-negotiable deadline keeps the heat on to get the project done!

[jorgerosa]

I could probably use some suggestions on the name, but Pirates Ahoy is already taken.

How about "Piratas"? Its the portuguese word for pirates.
Or "Piratinhas"? Its similar (but in a very very cute way) to "little pirates".

... pirate ship before I can release the content (anybody here have a decent pirate ship?)

I have one, developed by me, its not really a pirate ship, and dunno about being "decent"...
Maybe, if you add a black flag on top, with a white skull should be enought to give it that feeling...
Anyway, if it fits your needs, just say and I´ll be glad to send it.
Screenshot here: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=39568

Great work! This is really a genius at work!
Happybirthday to the kid!

[grumpymonkey]

niiiceee your son must be really proud of his dad.
plus the graphics are good, Water looks amazing, and the cannon adds that extra fun factor to it especially since its for little kids

also, how did you do the water? Looks really good from the video..you mind posting a screenshot?

[pilesofspam]

It's really taken straight from the water in the irrlicht examples (specifically example 8- special effects), but I changed the textures that were used. It has been a while, but I think those textures I created with 'Wood Workshop' available here:
http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/download_ww.htm
And then I changed the color on both with the gimp, just by grabbing the colors slider and making it more blue/green.

The water isn't really all that big, I just keep the camera close enough so you can't see the edges.

For a screenshot, here you go:

Apologies if this messes up the forum formatting, I just grabbed a screenie on the desktop here.

jorgerosa: Excellent suggestions- I especially like Piratinhas! Also- your pirate ship is exactly what I had in mind when I started- but I was still too new to Blender to pull it off. That is really nice, and I'd love to include it in place of this ship, with proper credit to you, of course. The current one was done by somebody in google sketchup and I can't find the original author to ask permission.

I now have the source code and schematics for the laser shot detect up on sourceforge. It's set up with an arduino bootloader on it so it's pretty easy to modify if you're so inclined. I'll get a better set of build instructions up over the next few days.
http://lasershotdetect.svn.sourceforge. ... hotdetect/

[jorgerosa]

Glad it fits your needs
Here goes it DOWNLOAD: http://tusfiles.net/sx2ws8dejk1m
(Its exported from .3DS to .obj I double checked everything, it´s all OK. That website could look messy with lots of announces, but its a smaller button that says "download" at middle of that webpage)
Please feel free to use it as you wich. Just try not damage that nice meshes with your cannon ball...
Happy Birthday little Ben!

[pilesofspam]

Thank you! I imported into Blender, did some resizing and exported with irrb (really handy utility)

Here's a screenshot of Piratinhas with its new jorgerosa created pirate ship!

I think that the only change I'll make is to plant a jolly roger on the sails.


I now have some build details up for the laser hit detect used in the game here:

https://sourceforge.net/userapps/phpbb/ ... um.php?f=3

But since that's kind of independent of irrlicht, anybody who's curious about that should ask about it there.

Meanwhile, thanks to jorgerosa, I should have no problem publishing the complete source code to this game. I'll get it up in a few days.

[jorgerosa]

...I should have no problem publishing the complete source code to this game. I'll get it up in a few days.

Cool!!! Thankyou!!! Now, just an idea (just in case you want to improve your game water effect, of course). Have you see what these duddes have donne about the water / ocean / sea / blood (...) effect? Here: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... 219#232219
Worth take a look, their work is really very very impressive!